Curse

Killed u man · Apr 19, 2008, 11:01 PM // 23:01

To Riot and guy above:

That's what I'm saying. But you guys are stretching it too far by saying "zero" attention. Zero attention would mean one would put a melee down against a SF-spike.
Zero attention would mean that on splits, the Para would put his DA up when there is but casters in the enemy team.
I also pity the fool whoever puts up DA pre-battle. Waste of 3-4 seconds on DA is already half the skill down the drain. Sure, it's a shitskill (I'm a hater) but nonetheless, saying it requires no skill, or near no skill is bogus.

You need some passive awareness which, in my book, means:
-Noticing what is near you (Enemy Warrior, ...)
-Noticing the "main" movements of the battlefield around you. (Pushing-Retreat-Turtle-ing-...)
You could define this as "zero" skill, but meh, not worth arguing about.

It simply comes down to:

Active: good
Passive: baed

TheOneMephisto · Apr 19, 2008, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Active: good
Passive: baed

Not necessarily. Some amount of passive defense is often needed to keep the game and balance healthy. As long as the balance between effectiveness of active and passive defense is kept and passive defense isn't overly effective, it often plays crucial roles in how games play.

Riotgear · Apr 19, 2008, 11:57 PM // 23:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

That's what I'm saying. But you guys are stretching it too far by saying "zero" attention. Zero attention would mean one would put a melee down against a SF-spike.

I said barring obvious cases. When the other team isn't running anything that would be affected by it, that's an obvious case.

Quote:

Sure, it's a shitskill (I'm a hater) but nonetheless, saying it requires no skill, or near no skill is bogus.

DA is a skill you cast on recharge, that does not require skill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Not necessarily. Some amount of passive defense is often needed to keep the game and balance healthy.

It's somewhat necessary to keep degenerate builds with stupid amounts of physical attackers in check. That's about it.

Greedy Gus · Apr 20, 2008, 02:46 AM // 02:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Not necessarily. Some amount of passive defense is often needed to keep the game and balance healthy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

It's somewhat necessary to keep degenerate builds with stupid amounts of physical attackers in check. That's about it.

Again, this misses the mark a bit. If you want to be very specific, it's the partywide/group defense that is somewhat necessary to keep heavy physicals in check, in comparison to single-target 'aimed' defenses. Although 'passive' & 'party'wide tend to go hand-in-hand (discussed on the first page here), they don't necessarily have to. Completely 'passive' defenses are absolutely not necessary as far as game design is concerned, though they can make for some nice variation and micro-relief (see some other games' "auras").

Ward melee is a good example of a more admirable, less 'passive' party defense skill that keeps 3 physical builds in check (or did before paragons broke everything), because it still requires some deal of thought for successful use. Ward v Melee especially has a proper risk & reward involved when there is some respectable AoE threat in the meta like the old e-surge or smiters. It's not as "fire and forget" like aegis is, or the even worse culprit: unremovable DA. In the future, you'd hope that the designers would take these factors into account when implementing the (necessary) party-defense, and shape it to be more active. Anything very passive should have a fairly low effectiveness and/or high costs/risks involved.

Jam Jar · Apr 20, 2008, 03:44 AM // 03:44

What about a monk built for heal party?

I mean it looks passive, but would you spam it when everyone's at full health?

dies like fish · Apr 20, 2008, 04:02 AM // 04:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jam Jar

What about a monk built for heal party?

I mean it looks passive, but would you spam it when everyone's at full health?

That's not defense. It's just used to clean up damage that the defense allowed through.

Div · Apr 20, 2008, 07:37 AM // 07:37

Passive defense is everything that adds to block/blind/miss/heal/defense, mostly in the midline, that's fire and forget. Stuff like wards and motigons, and to an extent stuff like life and recuperation.

rawr's old build is excellent in playing for the VoD game. Their tactics is something teams can learn from if you want to play very passively until VoD.

Ensign · Apr 20, 2008, 08:18 AM // 08:18

Passive defense in Guild Wars isn't 'true' passive defense from a wider perspective. Passive abilities are any abilities that do not need to be activated to have an effect; see examples from a wide variety of games where you simply pumped in the attribute points to make your character better. Guild Wars doesn't have much in the way of passive defenses in that sense; the term is instead used on abilities that require very little timing, targeting, attention, or otherwise effort to use correctly. Spirits are the best example of completely passive play in Guild Wars; defensive shouts work in there as well. At this point, it's a term used on virtually any defenses that don't need to be targeted to work; a use of the term so broad that it hardly has any meaning anymore TBH.

Kaon · Apr 20, 2008, 02:36 PM // 14:36

This thread was already over after JR's post. Stop beating a dead horse.

Isil`Zha · Apr 20, 2008, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Errr, Passive Defense is more what like Ensign mentioned.

There's very little options for passive defense in Guild Wars.

Passive defense would be:
Armor
Health
Elemental Resistances
Absorption

Basically anything that is a part of your gear or an inherent ability of your character.

Any skill would be active defense because you have to activate it.

Passive, in the context of passive defense, literally means " not participating readily or actively" or "being the object of action rather than causing action."

So in one sense, passive defense is anything defensive done to you by someone else. IE: Any defensive abilities you gain from your Monk, is a passive defense on your part.
However, that makes it sound confusing, because from the Monk's point of view, it is an active defense.

Really, passive defense is just what was mentioned already - any inherent abilities that you possess that you don't have to activate. To further illustrate using a Dervish:

With your armor and equipment say your health is 501. Then you cast Vital boon and end up with ~580 health. That extra health is an active defense - you have to take action for it to be there, and have to maintain it. Your 501 health is always there, you don't have to do anything to keep it up.

Age · Apr 21, 2008, 12:40 AM // 00:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

This thread was already over after JR's post. Stop beating a dead horse.

I and others would like to grasp it all in from other peoples opinions.

wuzzman · Apr 26, 2008, 10:57 PM // 22:57

passive defense is the stuff that prevents 3 warriors, a ranger, and a para (or just another ranger) from giving you a new ass hole.