Curse

Alathys Tylderaan · Jul 27, 2005, 04:09 AM // 04:09

I never shard this idea, but wouldn't it be funny to see how many spirits get put up when you have to maintain spirits, like monk enchantments. See how many spirits they put up then.

As for NR, someone suggested a few pages back about it having levels of stripping going off the rank in WS, that sounds like a birlliant idea for it and something that seems prefectly viable to still use it

EmperorTippy · Jul 27, 2005, 04:18 AM // 04:18

I think NR should be made so that it strips the enchants/hexes at the end of its life not the beginning. And the strip only happens if NR's time runs out not if it is killed by the other team. This would make it a minimum of 30 seconds before the stripping happens and give the other team a chance to stop the strip from happening. Also leave NR as a non-elite if this happens. Allow it to be spammed with oathshot but so long as the other team kills the spirit no stripping occurs. Also this should be combined with Fertil Season being made so that it only buffs spirits by 50% of it's stated effect (If it says +400 health a spirit only gains 200 health).

Odd Sock · Jul 27, 2005, 04:40 AM // 04:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alathys Tylderaan

As for NR, someone suggested a few pages back about it having levels of stripping going off the rank in WS, that sounds like a birlliant idea for it and something that seems prefectly viable to still use it

Well it's a partial solution to the problem. You'll still see lots of problems with it being abused and trashing enchantments and hexes. It's the entire logic behind NR that is outright ridiculous. Here you have 450+ skills in this game at least 250 of them being a hex or enchantment. Then you have NR which is affected by Expertise and only cost 5 that comes around the corner and just destroys it all. It's just ridiculous, why did they even bother coming up with all these neat skills if no one will use them because of NR ? People in this thread even went out of their way to create a build that can disable one NR caster. By the way guys what happens if they have more than one copy ? You know... cause you don't have to spec WS for NR to be any good. You're screwed basically.

Rebalancing the skill sadly require a nerf to it. I hate to ask for nerfs but it's just way too overpowered and completely destroys the game. Of course this will create an uproar in the community. Regradless what needs to be done is quite simple:
- Nerf NR: link it to WS so that it removes a linked amount of enchants/hexes. Link it to WS so that the increase in cast duration is reflected. Increase the cost from a ridiculous 5 to at least 10 if not 15. Before trashing this prospect, give it some thought and put yourself in a situation where you'd want to design a build with NR being 15 energy and WS linkedd. It would still be usefull just not totally overpowering and build/game destroyer.
- Buff the following skills: Rend Enchantments (decrease cost to 10 or decrease it's cooldown as well as health lost), Chillblains (decrease it's cost), Strip Enchantments (overall revamp)
- Buff hex removal without NR, hex stacking would just overpower every monk or caster class thus recreating another inbalance. Remove Hex is nice as it is, the big one is Convert. Under energy denial it's just impossible to even use. Even under normal circumstances, it's cost is just horrible. Making it 10 energy would certainly aid the situation.
- Maintain Melandrus' Resilience so people learn how good a skill it is if the ''Heal Ball of Doom'' makes another appearance.
- Nerf Fertile Season affecting other spirits: I know this sounds harsh but it makes spirit killing such bad thing for your offense. Here you are taking ressources from the offense to scrap off 250+ health to THEN be able to attack the actual ennemy. This is wrong in so many ways and again is counter intuitive to the way this game is designed.

As I said above, before commenting on these proposed balances actually give this thought. Pretend like you're redisigning your team's GvG or Tombs build under those conditions. You'll see it isn't quite so bad and would make using skills like Life Bond actually useful again.

EmperorTippy · Jul 27, 2005, 04:47 AM // 04:47

*already has 4 builds made depending upon how NR gets nerfed*
My friends and I have em and have already started praticing with em so that we will be ready to beat all you people as soon as the nerf that we all(most all) know is going to come. Also already made 3 taking into account possible healing ball nerfs.

Now on topic. No one seems to like my idea for fixing spirits and you all won't even say that it's bad so please explain why you think its bad. (milidly sarcastic)

Zrave · Jul 27, 2005, 04:47 AM // 04:47

I would also prefer if there was less flaming and more proper discussion in the thread. My purpose here was to catch the devs' attention and having people flaming back and forth isn't quite a ringing endorsement for the thread.

There are more issues that I didn't include in the original post, like putrid explosion. This is because my main issue was the lack/slowness of balancing itself, rather than the problematic skills themselves, but I think that this one is big enough to go into some detail.

The problem with putrid is not strictly its effect, but rather that whichever team gets off the first one has a huge advantage, especially if they are able to chain them off. This causes necros to repeatedly mash the putrid explosion button (<3 linkie's stealth post), and I've heard of players that use turbo controllers to attempt putrids 20 times per second. You might have seen this before, just watch necros in tombs, standing in one place rocking back and forth. Eventually, which team gets the first putrid is going to boil down to luck rather than skill, and one putrid chain and your team is down.

Also, for the same reasons I explained above, I wasn't too concerned with what specific nerfs I would recommend. But since a lot of the discussion in this thread seems to have revolved around that, I'll give my suggestions

1) NR - Elite, removes 0-2 enchantments/hexes (0 enchantment at 0 survival, 1 at 4, 2 at 12)

2) Ether Renewal - remove per enchantment clause, then rebalance | Zealot's Fire - decrease duration to 30 seconds, add 2 second cooldowns to draw conditions/divine boon

3) Fertile Season - Not affect spirits | Oath Shot - no changes

4) Warrior Armor - remove +20 vs physical from gladiator's armor (I'd still use it)

5) Putrid Explosion - make it cost energy even if you don't hit a corpse. This will stop people from mashing on the button, and tactical use will prevail (hence skill over luck). This should fix the bigger problem, but it might still need a cooldown. I think this is a particularly important skill to fix because by itself it negates the use of pretty much every other corpse exploting skill, hence sacrificing diversity.

---

Back on the larger topic though, I can't agree with the approach of some people that think no balancing should ever take place. We have very good mechanisms to detect when a skill is overpowered, instead of just your or my opinion. Just analyze the environment, see how many people are running it, and if applicable compare that to strategies that in theory are weak against it. I would not be surprised if arenanet has logging mechanisms that monitor the use of skills inside ToPK and GvG. So if every team has a necro with putrid explosion and no other corpse exploiting skills, thats a good indicator. If 80% of teams are running nature's renewal and 95% of maintenance enchantments are benched, thats a good indicator. If most teams are bringing a E/Mo smiter, thats a good sign too. The goal should be diversity - all strategies should be counterable and thus not dominate the environment. The strategies I mentioned are the ones that I considered hard to effectively neuter, or that needed too specific a counter (again, breeding away from diversity).

Just to draw a comparison, look at Magic the Gathering, the game from which the skill system of this game is inspired. Albeit rarely, every now and then an overpowered card escapes their in-house testing and needs to be banned or restricted. Surely, it is a much harder choice for them to do that because it will forever make those cards worthless, which will undoubtedly upset the many people who may have bought it a considerably inflated price. Sometimes it just has to be done, because tourneys will be reduced to one deck using the overpowered card and another deck designed to beat it 55% of the time. Thankfully that is not the case in GW at all. Being a strictly eletronic medium, you can just make fine adjustments to the skill, like increasing cost etc, reducing duration, etc. The decision is much easier then.

taion · Jul 27, 2005, 05:10 AM // 05:10

Sarus: Sorry for being confusing. Yeah, that was pretty much the point I was trying to make, except clearer and more concise. Here, I'll try to restate myself more clearly. There are ultimately two problems with the current environment.

Nature's Renewal is symmetric, so countering a NR build essentially degenerates to making a NR build with the Oath Shot guy (if any) replaced with another character and NR slots replaced with other skills, but this has all the downsides of a mirror match (both sides are running more or less the same skills) but none of the upsides (pure mirror matches are pure skill contests, but these aren't). This is a consequence of a heavy reliance upon symmetric effects from the ranger ritual line. Consider T1 Magic for what is IMO the closest analogy – symmetric disruptive effects such as Smokestack or Balance are extremely powerful (and they need to be to be balanced, because they're symmetric), and as such there are very few of these effects, because by coincidence or intention, Magic devs made powerful symmetric cards significantly scarce that they could never dominate a metagame, whereas this is not the case with ranger rituals as they currently are in GW.
GW's general metagame as seen in random GvG and Tombs evolves relatively slowly, and generally sucks. Consider the current GW tournaments, which to my knowledge currently consist of the Alienpod Opener, the ESL 8v8 League, and the SoW Invitational. From what I've seen, the metagame here does not strongly resemble the GvG metagame seen in random rated matches. The great peloton of guilds constitute a significantly more "scrubby" environment. So many incidental guilds just happen to run whatever little crappy builds they have that are effective against the counters to NR that the anti-NR builds cannot currently grow popular enough to advance the meta-game. If NR is causing the GW metagame to be degenerate, I see it more as a sign that the GW metagame is inherently flawed, in that there are too many bad teams out there that still run otherwise good builds, except with the flaw that the builds are countered wholesale by NR. Honestly, though, with the tournament and league scene finally starting up in some capacity, who cares about Tombs or random GvG? Let people run what they feal like – Magic metagames are determined by Pro Tours, not by weekend casual gaming sessions.

Putrid is genuinely overpowered, though. The "counters" to it really just suck.

The Ages · Jul 27, 2005, 05:13 AM // 05:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zrave

Zealot's Fire - decrease duration to 30 seconds, add 2 second cooldowns to draw conditions/divine boon

I Dont think the Duration is much of an Issue its eather on or off, And impact sure but at the moment Have not seen a need for it to be tweaked.

I Can see Adding a Cooldown on Devine boon, Its a Enchantment spell to boost healing powers that in MY opinion is being missused to trigger Zealots fire. Though I Feel that is not needed much eather.

The thing with Smiters that use this type of Setup is they are EASY to Disrupt because they are predictible. One skill can go along way to cut down there offensive abilitys that is Diversion. They Primary use two Low cast No Cooldown spells (Draw Conditions and Boon) Turning there No Cool down spells into 40sec Cooldowns.

Sense Diversion is a good skill to have along reguardless of your Opponent it does not have the side effective of Nerfing you against most other builds (Like the Spirit Spam teams do)

Mandy Memory · Jul 27, 2005, 06:07 AM // 06:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tellani Artini

Here's what a total ritualist shutdown player could look like, just for fun.

R/Me
Signet of Humility
Leech Signet
Distracting Shot
Savage Shot
Oath Shot {E}
Diversion
Serpent's Quickness
etc

Signet of Humility with oath shot+serpent's quickness will keep his oath shot locked down constantly and allow you to use your interrupts more often. If the target is using a stance to block/evade attacks (whirling defense, etc.), use leech signet to interrupt rituals and diversion when he's nearly finished casting rituals, then use bow attacks when the stance wears off (he can't use oath shot to recharge it). If they're using a stance to stop interrupts (mantra of resolve/concentration), hit them with savage shot then distracting shot, then leech signet if that didn't break the mantra.

If your team can handle it, use quickening zephyr to make signet of humility easier to manage.

If you really hate spirit spam, give this build a shot

If I take this build and put in fertile season and NR, I have just made a build that can counter an amazing number of builds in the game. I think I might try that.

Damn, putting the broken skill and its counter on the same build, thats crafty.

entropy · Jul 27, 2005, 06:36 AM // 06:36

I agree with Taion. One of the few ways to counter a NR build is to build ur build around NR as well. (i hope im simplifying it...). Making your build not use NR is hard and wastes way too many skill slots...

Orochim4ru · Jul 27, 2005, 06:49 AM // 06:49

Quote:

One of the few ways to counter a NR build is to build ur build around NR as well

That's the problem. 1 skill shouldn't wreck 250 other ones. Interupts, for example, are counters to long cast time spells. They have a targetted use, a specific range of shutdown, but nothing more. NR not only pillages existing defences, but it also prevents them from being set back up in a decent amount of time. That double ability, with both of them being incredible, is farcical. Holy Veil, for example, is a completely useless skill. Why use it if NR does everything it does, applys it to the entire party, and gives you offence at the same time?

Vorlin · Jul 27, 2005, 07:48 AM // 07:48

You can look at NR and see that it was designed to be self-balancing, in that using it would be so costly/limiting that you'd only whip it out in certain situations and thus it wouldn't see a lot of play most of the time. In practice, it seems to have turned out to be so overwhelming in PvP that this self-balancing isn't working, so ANet is going to have to come up with some modification to it.

It's a good rule of thumb that any time something becomes universal in PvP that you might have a balance problem (e.g., every warrior always uses sword instead of hammer or axe). Not always, but often. And any time you have a spell/skill that effect -every- opponent across a wide spectrum with -no- counter, you have to have -some- reason that it won't be universally applied in every situation or you're going to have problems.

taion · Jul 27, 2005, 09:26 AM // 09:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mandy Memory

If I take this build and put in fertile season and NR, I have just made a build that can counter an amazing number of builds in the game. I think I might try that.

Damn, putting the broken skill and its counter on the same build, thats crafty.

The entire point, of course, is that were the metagame more efficient, you'd see both NR and FS often enough that you'd be better off running other skills in those slots. This would then allow builds made to counter such builds more powerful, and onward through the metagame cycle until we're back at NR-focused builds, simply because NR is the best-in-class skill.

Ensign · Jul 27, 2005, 09:34 AM // 09:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vorlin

You can look at NR and see that it was designed to be self-balancing, in that using it would be so costly/limiting that you'd only whip it out in certain situations and thus it wouldn't see a lot of play most of the time.

I can tell. 5 energy? No attribute investment required? One skill slot? Hoses roughly one third of all the skills in the game? Yeah, that's incredibly costly, definitely something that I'd hesitate to use outside of extreme situations.

*sighs*

Not directed at you, mind you...just, if this is their idea of a self-balancing effect...

*sighs*

Peace,
-CxE

Sammiel · Jul 27, 2005, 03:02 PM // 15:02

What about making rituals exempt from all 'recharge accelerators' such as QZ, Serpent's Quickness, Oath Shot, etc. That would help reduce the spammability of NR + FS unless an entire team was running it. And at that point the team would likely be putting a huge investment in rituals and have little to offer in the way of damage, energy denial, or interrupts. Of course, then enchantment/hex removal would likely have to be buffed also.

Also, this would preserve the 'oh crap we need to shatter lots of enchantments NOW' aspect of NR for stopping healing balls. Though I don't know if it would be enough. Maybe drop the cast times too with that change so that rituals can be deployed in a more timely manner when needed. That change may make it worth it to slot NR for use in certain situations but would reduce its ability to be spammed. It would also help the problem of level 1 spirits being viable, since a level 1 spirit with a 60s hard recharge time would only be up half of its recharge time. I think it would take a level 6 WS skill before its duration would match its recharge time.

JoDiamonds · Jul 27, 2005, 03:37 PM // 15:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shinsei

Clearly, I mean, look at last week's update. "Closed equipment exploit.". Obviously, something as big as that takes 9 days, no doubt.

Mmmm. I'm sure they've done nothing else in that time, like all of the stuff they've announced they are working on.

Vorlin · Jul 27, 2005, 04:40 PM // 16:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I can tell. 5 energy? No attribute investment required? One skill slot? Hoses roughly one third of all the skills in the game? Yeah, that's incredibly costly, definitely something that I'd hesitate to use outside of extreme situations.

*sighs*

Obviously they failed, which you and I (among others) agree with. Considering the number of skill/spells and class combos, I'm surprised they haven't had more such 'failures'. Have some faith, I'm sure when they figure out how to change it appropriately that they'll do so. No need for excessive sighing.

Saerden · Jul 27, 2005, 04:50 PM // 16:50

I wont comment on balance issues, because they are a very complicated field. There is however, a dimenison to this thread that is not really represented:

[since there is a similar thread at TGH, some of my comments where posted there already]

Because of the current state of the game, there is no guarantee that INSERT CURRENT IMBALANCE ISSUE HERE is indeed that pressing. The Grind killed lots of potential competition, creativity - and changed the mindset from experimentation to "do the effective thing as fast as possible". People who had to do 5 fuse runs wont find better ways to do it after they find a good one. People who leveled 3 chars just want to get done with it quickly. The "Skip cutscene u n00b thing" is very telling. People who are stuck farming low level monsters after they run out on refund points dont get the message that experiments are good. Sure it does not affect iQ, or any of the good beta guilds, but it creates an atmosphere amongst the the "scrubs". Putrid owns. So do we
1. find ways around it?
2. be done with thinking and just use it?

People just dont want to explore after they found a really good peak. Who will tell wether there are things everyone of you missed? The first peak in GW retail where wa/mo. Everyone cried nerf (everyone who had no clue). The second peak where e spikers. Now more people called nerf. Then came the spirits.
I agree that it is entirely possible that skills are "overpowered" in the sense that effect >>> cost >>> cost of counter.

However, "nerfing" may have a price:
After release, "the fixes" and THE FIX (aka faction), and with all those balancing issues at hand: do you honestly trust ANET? They may nerf NR, and then just get the taste. The metagame would pick up speed very fast, because now its - like in almost every other MMORPG - dev driven. What do they nerf / buff next month? Thats even less competitive then the game you are playing now.

There is no guarantee that balancing is not a linear process like people claim it was in Starcraft. Maybe it turns into an neverending circle of buff / nerf.

Note that im not really against anything, nor do i support it. But i would really like to read the opinions on the MMORPG metagame vs arcade metagame (no patches, thats why Sirlins articles are so interesting to read in the days of MMORPGS)

While i respect Ensigns opinion on everything concerning game balance, a iQ tag wont make you omniscient. And giving the metagame to the same people who brought us the grind ...?

Jul 27, 2005, 05:21 PM // 17:21

Dont look at balancing as everything is a "nerf or buff". That just skews perception and ultimately makes everything look negative. Look at it as does doing this preserve the diversity of the game(options) while still keeping skills relative to each other in a power check?

Right now both of those conditions are failed with NR in the game. Options are down the drain since hexes, enchantments and enchantment based energy management are gone with the exception of Ether Renewal, which happens to be another broken skill.

NR which is relative to enchantment and hex removal clearly stomps both of them out of the way easily. The power balance between this one skill and 2 entire classes of skills is way out of check to a level of borderline stupidity. The "best" class for enchantment removal options is the Necro and it gets outdone by a class with no enchantments and no other form of removal. Similar argument for Mesmers.

So now you just have to ask yourself: Is this more about creating a nerf/buff cycle just because they can, or is it about trying to level the playing field between all the skills in the game? They never truly can, but having 200 of your skills playabale as opposed to 75 is a better state for your PvP competition.

IxChel · Jul 27, 2005, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Nice suggestions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zrave

1) NR - Elite, removes 0-2 enchantments/hexes (0 enchantment at 0 survival, 1 at 4, 2 at 12)

2) Ether Renewal - remove per enchantment clause, then rebalance | Zealot's Fire - decrease duration to 30 seconds, add 2 second cooldowns to draw conditions/divine boon

3) Fertile Season - Not affect spirits / Oath Shot - no changes

4) Warrior Armor - remove +20 vs physical from gladiator's armor (I'd still use it)

5) Putrid Explosion - make it cost energy even if you don't hit a corpse.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Odd Sock

- Nerf NR: link it to WS so that it removes a linked amount of enchants/hexes. Link it to WS so that the increase in cast duration is reflected. Increase the cost from a ridiculous 5 to at least 10 if not 15.

- Buff the following skills: Rend Enchantments (decrease cost to 10 or decrease it's cooldown as well as health lost), Chillblains (decrease it's cost), Strip Enchantments (overall revamp)

- Buff hex removal without NR, hex stacking would just overpower every monk or caster class thus recreating another inbalance.

- Nerf Fertile Season affecting other spirits

Someone else also suggested making Nature's Renewal affect enchantments/hexes when it has run full-term (so you can kill it first to avoid that effect), rather than when it is created.

JoDiamonds · Jul 27, 2005, 05:42 PM // 17:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zrave

Arenanet has confined itself to making very subtle adjustments to the skills, sometimes even in a hidden way.

If I understand the general gist of the original poster, this is the essential problem:

Arena Net seems unwilling to make large scale changes for PvP balance.

Some of my disparate thoughts to that charge (since all of the details are merely that):

This has been true so far.
It's only been a few months, and during that time I don't really feel that the metagame has stagnated for very long. In particular, I at least recall complaints of "wide warrior walls wreck the world." and "eight air elementalist excise us elitely!", before the current metagame.
There's still tons of "rogue" builds being used.
It's entirely reasonable for Arena to mostly make small changes, and only occasionally make big changes. In particular, they really need to wait for the metagame to stagnate for quite a while before making big changes because "the metagame is broken". A "while", in my mind, is up to a month or two of almost the exact same build being used by everyone (depending on when you start counting; even ultimately dominating trends take a while to catch on).
I wouldn't even want them to make -frequent- large changes; I'd prefer they wait a bit, and do them at larger intervals so players know when things are really getting shaken up.

That's my initial thoughts. In short, I think large scale changes are and will continue to be necessary as time goes by, but they don't need to and shouldn't happen often.

Guild Wars is still relatively young.

Quote:

4) Balance between different types of armors (warriors in particular)

Is it really for the good of the game that we have an obviously superior armor and some obviously inferior ones? Some reasonable strategic choices in armor would be interesting, to say the least.

I'm frankly confused by this. Do you mean that warriors armor shouldn't just be better than Mesmer armor, or are you referring to the different types of Warrior armor? Do you mean just high level armors, or that it's bad that there are different levels throughout PvE (seems unlikely)?

Just confused.