Curse

Shendaar · Mar 13, 2008, 09:18 PM // 21:18

If you give an "example" then that means that you actually think its a good idea, if you don't then you are pretty much retarted.

The "example" is bad. I rest my case.

Teh Jace · Mar 13, 2008, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Environmental effects aint gonna fix anything. Dont add random factors (like dshot from ghostly in HA or ganking teams) into TA. I dont wanna be a witness of a situation like -on this map a group of 10 horny ice imps lvl25 spawn every 2 minutes-. This is just crazy.

Ofc I would appreciate any improvement (observer, statistic, whatever) for TA but it shouldnt go the way u suggest... srsly. And we all know developers are focused on gw2 so stop dreaming.

All I want is a proper TA skill balance which is very hard to achieve cuz... Im not gonna repeat myself.

Nerf HC, foul feast... everyone will be happy.

BTW : urania is a female (and she fails hard

).

Sun Fired Blank · Mar 13, 2008, 09:31 PM // 21:31

I'm sick of the constant sniping; if this thread is to have any value to a potential reader, it has to remain completely devoid of insults, either towards individuals, format players, or player types. If someone insults you, use report and shut up, or speak to them privately. You're becoming obnoxious, and I honestly don't want Mokone to close the thread. This doesn't benefit anyone if you constantly bicker and moan until Mokone closes it. Grow up. Jesus. If you can't be remotely civil, get out.

June, there are plenty of very competent folks that have problems versus HC, smite or not. Quite frankly, it depends on the quality of the team that you face. For example, my groups can routinely stomp a moderately competent or qualified HC-smite; it's not entirely improbable for them to steal the game, but our chances are very strong. If the other team is of equal or higher calibur and using the setup, our chance is about 25% to 75%, driven purely by our setup versus their setup. In my experience, a competent HC-smite group using DH and Cripslash is by far the hardest even you're perfectly set up for them. You're right; W/N, W/X, R/Mo, Mo/X is a fairly strong counter for the HC-smite. You simply output more damage than they can survive and crack them before they crack you. Other forms of balanced are more questionable, but depending on your flex option, you can be okay.

zling, you could persuasively argue that gladiator promotes title farming and consequently makes abuses more widespread. However, the mentality of certain people does not change the abusive nature of certain builds, nor does it change the strength of those abusive builds.

Most problem builds are not explicitly designed because they're simple to use; they're designed to have a competitive matchup versus an already prevalent build. Unfortunately, these counter-builds are almost always predicated on the abuse of certain brute force options, and are usually so unidimensional and straightforward that even a monkey could use them.

One steady problem of any format is that abuse predominantly comes from:

Engines - options that augment a variety of things
Solutions - options that singlehandedly marginalize other options or tactics
Damage Compression - options that output disproportionate amounts of damage in very short periods of time

If you think about it, almost everything form of abuse to date in every format. HC-smite is a case study of these factors. These problems are clearly not symptomatic of the format, and changing the format is unlikely to help change this.

Magebane Shot is an example of a very strong solution; you trade it for anything you can hit. However, while Magebane Shot is a bit more powerful than it should be, it doesn't simply make certain options unviable, and I wouldn't say that Magebane Shot forced any toning down of skills. Spotless Mind, however, is a great example of something that has completely redefined the viability hexes.

In line with this, you get other examples that can be very dangerous but are perhaps held in check by the meta. Prepared Shot (engine) for the Machinegun Ranger (damage compression). Signet of Midnight (solution), Signet of Humility (solution) and Mantra of Inscriptions (engine). Wail of Doom (solution) and Foul Feast (engine, solution). Contagion (engine). These options must be nerfed if they become obviously abusive.

I say this as a lead to Talania's point: I don't believe that the TA format should dictate playstyle outside of topographical considerations and the numerical restriction of 4v4. Those restrictions are one reason that environmental effects would be unhealthy; in a format of such constraints, you simply could not bring any real solutions to handle them, and many options would be rendered completely unviable merely on the risk of encountering those effects. If anything, such a move clearly ignores the underlying problem of disproportionately powerful options, and would likely to reduce diversity through the undesirability of certain options and the mandatory inclusion of more redundancies, causing format homogenization (likely similar to HB).

A couple of more general notes to everyone in the thread:

It was more prevalent in the (closed) HC-smite thread. A lot of very strong players are giving mixed responses on their ability to defeat HC-smite and HC-balanced. I've spoken to many competent players that report various problems defeating HC setups. I also know these players have fairly strong records versus other strong players that claim to be nearly undefeated versus HC setups. That said, I don't believe that any of them are wrong; there are many factors that could explain this disparity, but I do think it's rather misleading for some of these people to be so casual about HC.

Also, there is a huge value to extrinsic and intrinsic authority. So for example, while I certainly regard everything that someone says, many of you should probably be prepared to back your statements through an extensive and reasoned argument, because many people in this forum have a great deal of extrinsic authority to sit on.

urania · Mar 13, 2008, 10:10 PM // 22:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Unknown X

Area effects?

^^

You are talking about my idea, right? Or someone else's? Or sniffing glue?...Also by reading up you can see that I actually do state that it's an example. You're going nowhere with this I think you just have a soft spot for Urania. At least he puts a little passion in his argument even if he does misinterpret the point.

Quote:

I don't know how many of you have played The Deep but there is an area where after a certain length of time you get teleported to a nearby enemy. If they add a clause such as *Whilst Running* if a Shove spike team was on the run around the map after a Spike, one of them could end up at the other teams feet. Thats a basic idea it could be anything along those lines and maybe someone has a better idea.

A similar idea could be implemented against spam builds also, such as the HC Build/Touchers etc. An environmental affect that causes loss of energy/exhaustion.

to be honest, i think u have the memory of a gold fish. or just pretend to be dumm.

anyhow, make HC cost 10 energy, maybe add a 1 or 3/4 cast time. should fix it more or less.
and please, do sth about spotless spells bug.
and reduce energy gain and number of conds transferred with ff.

as far as pew pew rangers are concerned..IDK.

@jace, dont spill the beans

(<3 u too btw)

The Unknown X · Mar 13, 2008, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Ok, Sun Fired Blank sorry it was my fault. Oh and nice answer

Zelos Wingate · Mar 13, 2008, 11:22 PM // 23:22

I Think Nerfing the recharge time of HC would be better then changing the cast time. If the recharge time was changed to 15-20 sec instead of 5.

Meaning that if the monk was forced to CoP or HC being shattered, the build would obviously become very energy consuming and the whole team would be on a big pressure.

and agreed on the spotless bug

the_deSKtructor · Mar 14, 2008, 08:24 AM // 08:24

I don't think that the real problem with this skill is the cost or the recharge of it. Those 2 changes will just make CoP less viable, meaning that they will be able to use it less often. Of course, this might help in making them easier to kill but imo, it won't fix the main problem of this build.

The bar that HC monks usually run is: HC, Patient Spirit, Vigourous Spirit, Spotless Soul, Spotless Mind, Dwayna's Kiss, Contemplation of Purity, Optional.

The build relies mainly on spamming heal enchantments. I think u can agree with me if i say that all those enchantments are perfectly fine in any other build (patient spirit is a good counter against degen, vigorous is really good in meele-heavy teams, spotless skills should be good in what they do even with their bug fixed). HC was meant to affect healing skills cost AND healing power.

I think that the main problem of the build is that it affects the cost of Healing Enchantments while not affecting their healing power. That said i think that the best fix for this skills would be:
A) make it not affect enchantments cost.
B) make it affect enchantments heal power.

To achieve B we can:
- reduce enchantments duration, but this is gonna lead to an even more powerful Patient Spirit
- reduce enchantments healing, but this is gonna do nothing to skills like spotless, breeze (olol), and so on
- reduce your Healing Rank while affected by HC, that will effectively reduce enchantments power properly.

Imo, reducing the Healing Rank would be the best way to fix the skill. -5 in your Heal Rank equals to a 25% heal reduction with most of the spells (so basically, this will mantain the skill untouched for healing spells) and enchantments.

Drink Ice Tea · Mar 14, 2008, 02:53 PM // 14:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_deSKtructor

I don't think that the real problem with this skill is the cost or the recharge of it. Those 2 changes will just make CoP less viable, meaning that they will be able to use it less often. Of course, this might help in making them easier to kill but imo, it won't fix the main problem of this build.

The bar that HC monks usually run is: HC, Patient Spirit, Vigourous Spirit, Spotless Soul, Spotless Mind, Dwayna's Kiss, Contemplation of Purity, Optional.

The build relies mainly on spamming heal enchantments. I think u can agree with me if i say that all those enchantments are perfectly fine in any other build (patient spirit is a good counter against degen, vigorous is really good in meele-heavy teams, spotless skills should be good in what they do even with their bug fixed). HC was meant to affect healing skills cost AND healing power.

I think that the main problem of the build is that it affects the cost of Healing Enchantments while not affecting their healing power. That said i think that the best fix for this skills would be:
A) make it not affect enchantments cost.
B) make it affect enchantments heal power.

To achieve B we can:
- reduce enchantments duration, but this is gonna lead to an even more powerful Patient Spirit
- reduce enchantments healing, but this is gonna do nothing to skills like spotless, breeze (olol), and so on
- reduce your Healing Rank while affected by HC, that will effectively reduce enchantments power properly.

Imo, reducing the Healing Rank would be the best way to fix the skill. -5 in your Heal Rank equals to a 25% heal reduction with most of the spells (so basically, this will mantain the skill untouched for healing spells) and enchantments.

I like option A it seems like a perfectly suitable nerf to the HC build which only makes Dwayna's Kiss be affected and would completely stop the spamming of enchants. Even though i don't really think the HC needs a nerf. =/

Swamp Fox · Mar 14, 2008, 03:15 PM // 15:15

i might be misunderstanding this whole thing about making TA balanced, but if you make it where the outcome of a match was decided solely on player skill (and lag or lack of lag) then all the actually skilled people in TA would only team with people of equal skill and the lesser skilled wont be able to win because the builds would depend more on the person's ability and understand and less on a team's build ability to overly counter the other team

possible problem i see, ignore me if i make no sense

Teh Jace · Mar 14, 2008, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swamp Fox

i might be misunderstanding this whole thing about making TA balanced, but if you make it where the outcome of a match was decided solely on player skill (and lag or lack of lag) then all the actually skilled people in TA would only team with people of equal skill and the lesser skilled wont be able to win because the builds would depend more on the person's ability and understand and less on a team's build ability to overly counter the other team

possible problem i see, ignore me if i make no sense

Thats what we want to achieve. Reward skilled players, punish lamers. In ice-hockey if u suck ur coach will send u home

What if the minority (now very tiny minority) of skilled players started playing gimmicks? Nothing would stop them.
And I say again TA is very prone to skill balancing. In gvg if u face some kind of lame gimmick u can always split. In HA u have 64 skill slots at ur disposal + pr0 dshot on ur ghostly. In TA u cant split nor u have 64 slots.

But srsly... Anet fails hard. Almost 3 years of gw and it takes ages for them to notice the current gimmicks. Moreover their ignorance of TA and HA is just funny. Players should balance the game, not ppl who are not interrested in playing.

Shendaar · Mar 14, 2008, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swamp Fox

i might be misunderstanding this whole thing about making TA balanced, but if you make it where the outcome of a match was decided solely on player skill (and lag or lack of lag) then all the actually skilled people in TA would only team with people of equal skill and the lesser skilled wont be able to win because the builds would depend more on the person's ability and understand and less on a team's build ability to overly counter the other team

possible problem i see, ignore me if i make no sense

That's the point lol. If you are not good enough, why should you win?

Swamp Fox · Mar 14, 2008, 04:59 PM // 16:59

well if thats what you are trying for, i doubt anet is going to ruin TA or arenas for some people just to help other people, would seem like having favorites in my view, and if this was to happen im sure even less people would play TA and this kind of goes back to what someone said about TA being full of people only interested in farming glad points in the sense that yall want other stuff nerfed so you can have an easier time by not worrying about "gimmicks"

Owoc · Mar 14, 2008, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Obliterate HC. Strike it down, make it bleed with the sheer power of the nerfstick.

the_deSKtructor · Mar 14, 2008, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swamp Fox

well if thats what you are trying for, i doubt anet is going to ruin TA or arenas for some people just to help other people, would seem like having favorites in my view, and if this was to happen im sure even less people would play TA and this kind of goes back to what someone said about TA being full of people only interested in farming glad points in the sense that yall want other stuff nerfed so you can have an easier time by not worrying about "gimmicks"

First of all i think that the majority of the players want a game that rewards skill over the build. If they are gonna balance TA out it won't be full of people that wants to farm glad points, it would be full of people that want to improve. Really, if someone wants to max out titles then he'd better go pve.

Tamuril elansar · Mar 14, 2008, 05:58 PM // 17:58

TA isn't really that important, people like me run stupid spike builds for fun of it, altho shovespike bores me, i like to play Ride the lightning spike and such.

also, lame builds should be destroyed.

The Unknown X · Mar 15, 2008, 01:48 AM // 01:48

Echo Shadow Form Assassins are starting to annoy me and it's completely pointless apart from attempts to infuriate players.

Thankfully it's not too common from what I have seen but it's very annoying. Maybe some players don't take TA seriously but what's the point of wasting the time of others that do?

I don't know the precise build but it involves Deadly Paradox, Arcane Echo and Shadow Form. This repeated process allows the player to keep Shadow Form up almost constantly.

I know that Life Steal, Signets, Touch Skill and indirect AoE can go through Shadow Form and some skills can remove Shadow Form entirely but who goes into TA setup to beat one of these?

Has anyone else come across this in TA?

bhavv · Mar 15, 2008, 01:56 AM // 01:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_deSKtructor

Hi. My name is Healers Covenant and i recharge in 5 seconds. I like to bring on my bar Patient Spirit and Vigorous Spirit, so i can even be covered. Also, my energy managment is so strong that i don't even have to swap set to get rid of edenial.

Please, stop posting meaningless stuff.

Funny that you all missed the part about energy denial. A good mesmer can easilly beat a HC monk without any problems. Alternatively you can stick a kd hammer warrior on them and they will become useless without any prots. A HC monk ALONE is still a very weak target. Its when the smiter is put in with one, the HC can survive. And I know what Im talking. Ive been playing HC for days now and on its own it is only good for RA. In TA if you cant kill a HC monk, your group fails.

The Unknown X · Mar 15, 2008, 02:07 AM // 02:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhavv

Funny that you all missed the part about energy denial. A good mesmer can easilly beat a HC monk without any problems. Alternatively you can stick a kd hammer warrior on them and they will become useless without any prots. A HC monk ALONE is still a very weak target. Its when the smiter is put in with one, the HC can survive. And I know what Im talking. Ive been playing HC for days now and on its own it is only good for RA. In TA if you cant kill a HC monk, your group fails.

I think what people don't like about the HC Monk is the lack of skill involved in playing one :/ I don't think Energy Denial will be of much point either, the_deSKtructor does touch on this in his reply. If you're going to run Mesmer against this then I would go with Anti Spam such as Diversion(Although then you run the risk of Magebane Rangers). Also Shattering Assault Sins can be effective unless the HC is covered well.

More commonly now I see HC Monks with Soldiers Defense instead of Return and a Paragon using lot's of Shouts and Chants.

bhavv · Mar 15, 2008, 03:19 AM // 03:19

Yes as a HC monk I got completely slaughtered by a team with two shattering assault sins. When I play sin in Arenas, shattering assault is just about the only build I play.

If HC doesnt require skill, then does that mean old skool boon prots didnt require skill either? I remember when boon prot was nerfed there was a huge outcry against that decision. Now we have something very similar - extremely energy efficient healing and everyone wants it nerfed. Is HC really as overused as LoD was? Should it be yet another healing elite nerfed into uselessness so that all we have left is WoH? I really would like to be able to use other healing elites then boring WoH thank you.

yum · Mar 15, 2008, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhavv

Yes as a HC monk I got completely slaughtered by a team with two shattering assault sins. When I play sin in Arenas, shattering assault is just about the only build I play.

If HC doesnt require skill, then does that mean old skool boon prots didnt require skill either? I remember when boon prot was nerfed there was a huge outcry against that decision. Now we have something very similar - extremely energy efficient healing and everyone wants it nerfed. Is HC really as overused as LoD was? Should it be yet another healing elite nerfed into uselessness so that all we have left is WoH? I really would like to be able to use other healing elites then boring WoH thank you.

Again, sins are the weakest option for frontliner. If you're that experienced a player, I don't need to explain why. Generally, decent teams don't run a gimped format just to counter a lame build and lose to others.

And you're wrong. Boon-prot was nefted coz a bunch of idiots thought they were so popular. (the mindset of those who suggested a nerf to Evis and RoF on wiki).