Wintersday in July 2010 Balance Thread

[Shayne Hawke]

This will be a thread for discussing changes to the 4v4 Snowball Arena for Wintersday in July. I'm posting this far in advance so that suggestions can be passed on to the developers before the event approaches and time can be made for the changes to be put in place.

Here is the idea I've been kicking around today that I'd first like to discuss:

Yellow Snow: Remove from play.

Ice Skates: Replaces Yellow Snow; 0e, 25r, change functionality to: "Stance. For five seconds, you move 25% faster. If your movement speed is slower than normal, you move at normal speed."

For clarification, this would allow Grenth players with no other speed-based effects on them to move at 125% movement speed, and if snares (Cripple, Icy Ground, Icicles) bring them under 100% movement speed, they are brought back up to 100% movement speed. Those of you unfamiliar with Ice Skates can look up the original use and description here near the bottom of the page.

[Ninja Ninja]

I think yellow snow isn't functional because its so underpowered, so would adding more conditions like poison and or dazed be a good improvement?

[Shayne Hawke]

Originally Posted by Ninja Ninja

I think yellow snow isn't functional because its so underpowered, so would adding more conditions like poison and or dazed be a good improvement?

Not sure what you mean. Yellow Snow removes one condition on you from the top of the stack. If players on Dwayna's side are able to stack more conditions on Grenth players on top of Crippled, the best possible use of Yellow Snow becomes unreachable.

If you mean adding additional conditions onto the projectile of Yellow Snow, it's a thought, but there's not anything I can immediately think of that has as much influence on what happens in the game as Cripple, and I wouldn't want to just attach Cripple to Yellow Snow, because then Grenth would have a snare and condition removal in one skill.

[Martin Alvito]

I think what he's trying to say is that making Yellow Snow apply Poison AND Disease would be superior. However, that just isn't correct. All you're doing with that is forcing the opponent to cycle Fort/Snowcone earlier. That confers a modest tactical advantage.

AoE Cripple confers a dominant advantage.

The best solution remains to nerf the duration of the Cripple on Avalanche further. +/- 4 seconds would be tactically useful without being OP, and you could leave the AoE effect to punish pure chaining. Alternately, you could leave the duration and double the recharge on Avalanche, although I think that's a much harsher nerf when Yellow Snow rips a long duration cripple every 12s.

[Bristlebane]

How about 7 fixed skills and 1 random? The random skill shouldn't be overpowered to avoid people try abuse it too much. Theese random skills could balance out each other like:

1 run skill, 1 slow hex,
1 condition skill, 1 condition remover,
etc

Just to make a slight variation to the games.

[kedde]

Just remove avalance or yellow snow from play. Really, its been several years where some non-retarded people have kept asking for a slight resemblance of balance to this format which is otherwise quite fun and balanced.

As a sidenote, get rid of the motherRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing fake presents. That concept in itself is simply utterly retarded.

[Eragon Zarroc]

meh, just hope you get onto the team with the advantage and if you don't play better than the team with the advantage ;-)

[Shayne Hawke]

More ideas I'd like to throw out there.

Blinding Snow: Increase recharge to 15; change functionality to, "Spell. You interrupt target foe's action. If the interrupted action was a skill, that foe is Dazed for 5 seconds."

Jack Frost: I would like to maybe up this guy's level so that he has a little more health and becomes more of a threat on the field. At the moment, three Snowballs will toast this spirit, which makes it a pretty simple matter to take out. Buffing up its health to be about twice that would be enough to need six snowballs to take it out, or maybe even four and a Mega.

Ice Breaker: I'm not really a fan of how this skill works now and think it would be better as some kind of ally-targeting heal based on how many hexes and conditions a player has on them.

[Martin Alvito]

Ice Breaker and Jack Frost are 4v4 beasts. They just don't scale up well to 8v8. Both are extremely powerful in a 1v1 situation, which happens regularly in a 4v4 match but rarely lasts for long 8v8.

They're basically the reverse of Holiday Blues, which is lousy 4v4 but frequently monstrous in 8v8, especially on the ice.

If you think Blinding Snow needs a modest nerf, increasing recharge from 10 to 12 is probably the fairest solution. The Daze wouldn't be that helpful, and going from a maximum of six interrupts per minute to four is a harsh nerf to a more or less balanced class.

[Shayne Hawke]

Just noticed that I left the Blinding condition in the suggestion, so I removed that.

What I wanted to do was remove the Blind because it essentially does nothing except act as another cover condition for harassing Grenth players. I figured Dazed would be an okay condition, because that one already exists in the arena and can shut a player out of combat for a few seconds.

[Thevil King]

i srsly dont know why there is a need for this much change

yellow snow-tbh if u are targeting teh 4v4 situation, change or no change does not have that much effect overall. however,speed boost is definately not the way to go, because in effect ur just making blue more powerful instead of red. thats not fixing anything.

aoe is only powerful in the start, where ppl congregate to fight for the first present, which means blue just have to hold out for a few more presents for the late game. in other words, its a matter of knowing the strategy for whichever side u get. ofc, 8v8 is a different matter, so if u really are desperate to make any changes, go for that instead.

jack frost-again, in 4v4 its good. in fact, its alrdy very op in 1v1 and 2v2 situations, which most games boil down to. there is no reason to make it even more op

icebreaker-whether you are a fan of it or not does not mean it should be nerfed or buffed. and guess what, in my experience its exactly the opposite, as monks are often relatively weak compared to most other classes. does that mean it should be nerfed and then buffed again? no, its irrational and retarded, also a good way to screw up the game

blinding snow-while the bad mesmers will still be bad, good mesmers will still be good, and 1 or 2 seconds will do nothing to change that

of all ur suggestions, the only thing that have some merit would be removing blind condition, but that is not really essential

overall, 4v4 is jsut good the way it is. even tho it does have its problems, but it is very playable compared to most gw formats. for 3 yrs it is so, and i most certainly do not trust any changes by anet that plan to "make it better". in fact, besides the dervish, every other class is effective and, at the very least, can contribute to the team in a significant manner if played right in the 4v4 game.

if u srsly have nothing to do and want to change snowball, do it for 8v8 but leave 4v4 alone, and make them separate.

regardless, if they do in fact make any of the above changes, or any other ones, the good players will still inevitably adapt and farm the format, and bad players will continue to complain and lobby for more "balances".

[jazilla]

My two cents: Having the Devs put work into a seasonal "game" within the game when we have whole attribute lines that need adjustment still is bad for the game. The whole Motivation attribute needs a lot of work. I will only use that example. I think if they try to fix any of the Arenas that are seasonal, they need to address lag in Rollerbeetle racing to be honest. I am only a lowly, "Numchuck Skillz" but I personally see that as a bigger issue than the skills you mentioned for Snowballin'.

/nothanks

[Yuris Sayuri]

Remove aoe effect of avalanche.
Replace glyphs disease with burning (7 sec)