Curse

Dominator1370 · Jan 30, 2008, 06:11 AM // 06:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Emu

12323434 is just as mind-numbing as instagib, just differently styled.

You're right about the problems with sins. Here, I'm going to have to disagree, though. Theoretically, on your so called "pressure" sin, you're just mashing 1234123123. However, theoretically, on your Warrior, you're C+spacing for a while to pressure, then spiking with 1234. I know there's a lot more involved, but if you're going to break down a Sin to that degree, take the rest of the classes down as well.

The major difference between 1234123 (or C+space) and 1234567 is that one is meant to pressure and one is meant to insta-gib. When you're pressuring, there are numerous measures that can be taken. When you're insta-gibbing, there are substantially fewer options, and they're kind of all-or-nothing.

The problems with Sins being (balanced) damage characters are the same problems that exist with using an Elementalist as a damage character, which Ensign's epic post discusses at length. Warriors get free pressure with their auto-attacks, and more-or-less free adrenaline spikes. Dagger auto-attack DPS is pretty bad. Sins can do decent (sometimes unprotable) DPS by spamming attacks (a la the Shattering Assault chain), but that gets energy intensive, while the Warriors get that for free. At the same time, the Sin has to use skill slots for that DPS, meaning you almost have to choose between a pressure Sin and a spike Sin; a Warrior can pressure with no slots, meaning it can use its slots for spiking and fulfill both roles.

At the same time, Sins have a lower natural AL and can't carry shields while they're using daggers. They're much easier to kill. They're supposed to make up for this by using skills to keep themselves out of harm, but when you're devoting most of your skill slots and energy into putting together a maintainable attack chain for decent DPS, there isn't a ton of room for mobility skills. Besides, you're going to want your Sin to be able to function in a place where they can pressure the targets you want pressured. At least some of the time (and probably most of it) that's going to mean the enemy's mid- or backline. Mobility doesn't help worth a damn when you're extending a Sin into the enemy backline and leaving them there for a prolonged period of time, and (assuming it's possible) if your Sin has to constantly shadowstep/kite to and from the backline to keep from getting wailed, you're better off with the Warrior. Sure, your Warrior isn't invincible, but it can sure take a lot more of a beating that your Sin can. That means more time pressuring and less time running around trying not to die.

Basically, this means a few things: Sins need to be able to pressure effectively with minimal skill-slot and energy usage, and they need to be able to survive effectively without running some kind of retarded tank build. It doesn't mean Sins can't be fragile and rely on mobility, but they have to be able to maintain respectable DPS if they want to have any kind of application besides Sinsplit, and that means they can't spend all their time hiding next to your monks.

Now, how do we do this? First, we need to fix Sin damage. Raising dagger base damage so that it's competitive with other weapon-types seems dangerous: I'm sure another class could find a way to exploit them. The same goes for raising double-strike or critical hit rates. I think it would be a good idea to introduce Sin damage buff skills. There could be preparation-type buffs for pressure (for the next xx seconds, your attacks do Y) and/or more weapon spell-esque buffs for spiking (your next x dagger attack skills do Y). This lets us back away a little more from the idea of having to spam expensive attack skills to be effective. If we did this, we could tone down attack skills to compensate. It would allow substantially more bar compression, meaning your Sin could actually bring fit enough skills onto their bar to be useful.

I think it might be interesting (since we're reworking the Sin anyway) if we dropped most/all of the attack skills in favor of attack buffs. We could make sure they only worked with daggers, and make sure you couldn't stack too many of them, some kind of "If you are under 3 or more enchantments, lose all enchantments" clause. That way, rather than some wierd L - O - D scheme, when you want to spike, you throw up your buffs and just attack like normal. We could even rig up the buffs so that they have to be used in conjunction with certain other buffs, kind of like L - O - D, except it doesn't go to hell when your first attack misses. That's neither here nor there, though.

Next, we need to make sure the Sin has survivability to some extent. There are a few options here, but what I think I like best is to work on the Sin's defensive skills. To make sure they don't wind up on casters, we could use the "while attacking" concept that exists in a few Sin skills, or we could go the Natty Stride route and add an end condition. This, coupled with Sin's mobility skills (and room on their skill bars to slot them) should go a long way to help keep the Sin alive at the stand. Depending on recharges and the like, the Sin would probably still need to be very conscious of threats and ready to utilize its superior mobility, but the ability to hit a defensive stance or the like and prolong your stay in the enemy backline long enough to do some damage would be a huge benefit.

That's probably a long enough post for anybody, but I want to talk briefly about Rits. I don't think they're that hard to fix. The problem with Rits is that they can expend a considerable amount of resources in putting up spirits, and all your opponent has to do is avoid them. In circumstances where they cant (like VoD), they tend to become overpowered. The obvious solution seems to be to make the presence of spirits not so game-breaking and then increase their mobility. As awesome as it would be for spirits to walk around on their own, it probably isn't going to happen. The best solution seems to be to re-work skills like Draw Spirit substantially. Of course, being able to warp an army of spirits around the map is probably going to be broken whatever you do to it, but being able to occasionally reposition a few powerful spirits could make all the difference.

Sorry for such a long post. I just hope it was useful in some way.

Captain Robo · Jan 30, 2008, 06:29 AM // 06:29

I have, and will, never play(ed) hero battles. Retarded format, incredibly niche environment, micromanaging dumbass bots are all extremely unappealing forms of gameplay to me.

In regards to the OP, I wholeheartedly agree on the Assassin/Ritualist issue. I'd give a harsher analysis to the Paragon; because while he doesn't exploit the game in the way that Sins and Rits do, Paragons provide a massive link in the defense web chain while pumping out stupidly powerful DPS and having a fat armored ass. Paragons need quite a bit more work than the Dervish to be where they should.

The issue of having more classes than player slots for 8v8 GvG inevitably lends itself to a rock-paper-scissors metagame (Build Wars), and this is something that classes such as Assassins and Ritualists exploit on a massive scale. If you don't bring Ancestors/Splinter, you're disadvantaged against a team that does; if you don't have strong split countermeasures (and sometimes even if you do), you get rickrolled by assassins.

If you bring both... well your build is now clunky because you tailored it to beat another specific build. It may excel at that, but your matchups versus everything else will be unfavorable.

I would have loved to see Ritualists come into their own as a healing support class, as they are largely outclassed by monks in all respects. The lack of an initially defined role, other than "I'm a WoW shaman clone. Spirits =/= totems!" combined with numerous nerfs and random buffs to the class essentially makes it the red-headed stepchild of the character line up. It does two things really, really well... but the rest of the Ritualist skill tree is either outclassed by alternatives or just plain sucks.

Assassins on the other hand, started out balanced. I'm just going to put that out there right now: the Factions era Assassin was a great class. However, once people realized how devastating Sins were on a split, you started seeing Dual-Sin builds (like the one War Machine ran) which absolutely owned Frozen Isle. Once Nightfall rolled around, sins never stopped being broken, and each nerf to the class has only diluted the character. It still has problems, it still gets stupid kills, it still wins games it has no business winning. The assassin is now a character that will never be good without being TOO good.

Quote:

So in order to fix sins, what I’m hearing seems to be a combination of the following:
-Nerf spike damage
-Buff pressure/autoattack dps/utility
-Increase survivability so that the pressure can take effect

If you buff their frontline survivability and damage output, they're better than warriors.
If you buff their utility and skirmish skills, they're better than rangers.
If you nerf them in any way that would actually fix them, they're absolutely useless.

Attack chains are essentially 1-3 second solo spikes. Changing this would mean completely overhauling the way that the assassin does damage.

ManiSan · Jan 30, 2008, 09:21 AM // 09:21

I enjoy playing Rit... Thats a lot of work, and they use very technical builds imo.
I wont say they're really interesting as "stand alone" class. Ppl use them because they add a new layer of offensive/defensive skills, ex:weapon of warding add its effect to wards, guardian, etc... You're finnally right when you say that they rely too much on 2 skills (ancestor/splinter).
For sins.. Without any doubt, I do really hate them. The teleport ability has nothing to do in gw, and they're still way overpowered. To add to this statement, Ill say that sins is the class of choice for 12 years old kids.

Bobby2 · Jan 30, 2008, 09:50 AM // 09:50

Euh, the Sin has been 'fixed' enough IMO. The SP formula took a few serious blows to the nuts, the only other viable offensive Shadow Steps are Aura of Displacement and Shadow Walk - the first not offering a snare, so players have a decent chance at kiting most of the time, the second not allowing for an IAS.

What made the SP formula broken was:
teleport + IAS + hard-snare

With the massive (MASSIVE!) Black Lotus Strike nerf the new template is SP Trampling Ox, which power is significantly less than the old version. Not only is it less DPS, but it also requires an extra slot for the attack chain so there is no more room for Expose Defenses, which was another VERY strong point of the old SP. So Guardian, NatStride etc all instantly became viable again.

Speaking of which...
...seen what they've done to Expose Defenses?

Now there are those of you who will say: AoD Shock beats SP by a mile anyway. And it's an arguable case, since the dual KD lock is an effective snare as well. However, with the debilitating nerf of Horns of the Ox this build's strength has also been significantly reduced. Currently the best I've seen is AoD with a pre-cast Hex... followed by the Trampling chain.

You're not going to convince me that's too broken to deal with.

EDIT: on Assacasters - don't even go there

Zuranthium · Jan 30, 2008, 10:27 AM // 10:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

If you buff their frontline survivability and damage output, they're better than warriors.
If you buff their utility and skirmish skills, they're better than rangers.
If you nerf them in any way that would actually fix them, they're absolutely useless.

Meh, that's too black-and-white. There's a happy medium to be found in there somewhere.

If Assassin's are to be re-tooled I'd like to see all Offhand attacks become Lead attacks, and then all of these those skills reconfigured appropriately. After that, make Dual Attacks follow Lead attacks and, when a Dual Attack is used, cause all other Dual Attacks on the skill bar to become disabled for 4-5 seconds. No more crazy attack chains. The skills can be balanced around their own uses without fear of people creating the 123456 Assassins (they could still, I suppose, but it wouldn't be as effective as putting skills with more utility on the bar).

~Z

Kaon · Jan 30, 2008, 10:47 AM // 10:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Meh, that's too black-and-white. There's a happy medium to be found in there somewhere.

No. He's perfectly right. I see a lot of pvetards or ra/hb people posting in this thread (while they shouldnt) and totally miss the point.

The [CONCEPT of the assassin (and ritualist, and paragon, and dervish, yet this topic only adresses the first 2) is flawed, and therefore the class will either be brainlessly overpowered, an easier/skillless way to gank, or totally useless.

I'd prefer the latter option over everything else. The prophecies classes hit everything right, they allowed for every role in the game:

Ranged damage, aoe damage, heal, prot, support, spike, pressure, knockdowns, hexes, split, degen, conditions. You name it.

Factions and Nightfall didn't add any new mechanics. Assassins are just warriorgankers on easymode. Ritualists are just an inferior ele/monk wannabe. The mechanics that they DID add removed skill from the game and served only to grief: Shadowstep (although this was lots of fun at the start it became clear later on that it is simply wrong in gvg and removes skill), and Weaponspells.

Shadowprison removes skill from the game and allows sins to be so mobile it isn't even funny that only base camping is a viable strategy.

Weaponspells are just utterretardation. Weapon of Warding, Weapon of Shadow, Splinter weapon, Warmongers Weapon... Unremovable overpowered effects. Why are they not enchantments? This class does exactly the opposite of what makes a game fun: Unforgiveness. Counter-strike is fun because it's unforgivable (you die = dead), this allows you no second chance (except next round) but it also allows individual players to show themself much more.

Weaponspells are the opposite of that, once they put it up you just have to deal with it, you can't remove them. The game becamse so much more forgivable... Back in the day when 2 criprangers faced each other 1 would almost certainly die (less health, no mending touch, distortion prevented dshot on cripshot) because you can't run away. Nowadays a cripshot rangers will NEVER solo another ranger.

The game years ago was more fun because the core roles were well defined without shit classes. And because the game was less forgivable; if you made a mistake you really paid for it, but it wouldnt mean instaloss because if the enemy made a mistake he'd pay for it as well.

RhanoctJocosa · Jan 30, 2008, 11:25 AM // 11:25

Great post JR. It's just a shame that the only way to fix sins/rts is to remove them from PvP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

I'd prefer the latter option over everything else. The prophecies classes hit everything right, they allowed for every role in the game:

Ranged damage, aoe damage, heal, prot, support, spike, pressure, knockdowns, hexes, split, degen, conditions. You name it.

QFT

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Factions and Nightfall didn't add any new mechanics. Assassins are just warriorgankers on easymode. Ritualists are just an inferior ele/monk wannabe. The mechanics that they DID add removed skill from the game and served only to grief: Shadowstep (although this was lots of fun at the start it became clear later on that it is simply wrong in gvg and removes skill), and Weaponspells.

QFT

Also, [email protected] and that other random guy.

Riotgear · Jan 30, 2008, 11:57 AM // 11:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

This class does exactly the opposite of what makes a game fun: Unforgiveness. Counter-strike is fun because it's unforgivable (you die = dead), this allows you no second chance (except next round) but it also allows individual players to show themself much more.

A number of people detest CS for exactly that, the fact that you get to spend an absolutely retarded amount of time WATCHING the game instead of PLAYING it. If I wanted to do that, I'd go "play" Xenosaga, at least then I get some interesting (if extremely cryptic) story during the agonizingly long breaks in gameplay.

.... and what does this have to do with weapon spells anyway?

Weapon spells are hardly overpowered because they're unremovable, most of the time the effect wouldn't warrant removal in the first place. If anything, adding a variety of interesting effects has helped make Ritualists a more-interesting utility class.

The problem with Splinter isn't that it's unremovable, it's that it does too much damage and it's 5/1/5. The problem with Warmonger's isn't that it's unremovable, it's that it's a retarded effect and everyone knew from Nightfall's release that the only thing keeping it from being broken was Channeling being a crappy line, which is no longer the case. The problem with Warding and Shadow is... uh, nothing.

Quote:

Weaponspells are the opposite of that, once they put it up you just have to deal with it, you can't remove them. The game becamse so much more forgivable... Back in the day when 2 criprangers faced each other 1 would almost certainly die (less health, no mending touch, distortion prevented dshot on cripshot) because you can't run away.

How is this due to weaponspells and not due to Mending Touch?

frojack · Jan 30, 2008, 12:15 PM // 12:15

The assassin? I firmly agree. Offers far too little outside of a spike. Has unique utility (well someone finally found a use for SoS, Shadow Shroud should follow soon enough...), but these skills will always be more intuitive on a mid-line class who won't get line-backed and killed like a squishy. No free pressure... I truly see no value in the class beyond ninja-step.

Grouping the ritualist with this shitty class however, is entirely unfair. The old ritualists were horrible abominations. That is a fact most people can agree to. The only real problem was Anet's reluctance to fix the situation quickly, in contrast to the NF situation with the paragon (a far stupider' character but I'll get to that later...).
Then there was the abuse by necromancers. This was also a product of Anet's reluctance to do anything as they had this rather pleasant emergent behaviour; where in which one broken mechanic (SR) abused the ashes of another (spirits) to create a situation where you could survive a fight without a monk (the prime single-point failure of the entire game. Never liked that much to be honest...). Well... Nice or not from a design point of view, this e-factory broke the game.
The VoD farming exercise is well documented...

So yeah, theres a lot of hate (some entirely justified) for the class... Still doesn't change the fact that it has the most positive potential of all of the retarded new classes.

A Rage/Splinter: The most dominant (if only) offenders... A Rage needs adjusting. A third of the damage could be removed and its damage-scale median value dropped. It would be a more balanced but still powerful and valuable tool. The Splinter situation is a product of the bad AI. Pre-VoD it is a good, solid damage spreader on badly positioned teams. If the high-power farm situation could be solved then there would really be no problem...

The concept of melee buffing is an interesting one. Sundering Weapon for example, with a few changes, could be interesting for punishing all foes, especially over-extended warriors. There are other tools in that stupid line that could be strong tool-box additions...

(random example no1: A 10e, 1 sec cast, Guided weapon, which lasts 0-4(maybe 5) seconds, on a 15-20 second recharge).

(random example no2: A 15e exhausting Xinrae's Weapon that punishes spam/gimmicky skill multiplication (hello Clumsiness) & shut-down characters, physical disruption perhaps included, with a light 0-10 second additional disable).

The spirits could happily stay dead. You only need about 4-5 solid skills in the line to justify the attributes and they really don't have to be binding rituals.

Essentially there are quite a few interesting and unique options... What do you think the classes you neglected to mention do that make them not deserve the same contempt the Factions additions received? All I personally see is redundancy or broken mechanics:

One is about as squishy as an assassin save for a broken mechanic that allows condition immunity. It has a lot less actual utility, misses one of the most fundamental features of a strong front-line (knock-down) and only works for a limited period. All the balance suggestions like Dwayna style condition removal or significant duration reduction, would simply kill Melandru. Amusingly enough, much like the balanced/broken situation of the assassin others have alluded to. I don't care about the high crit damage, a hammer is still scarier in that regard. It just doesn't do enough outside of godmode to justify running it instead of another warrior. As nice as high-damage spiking with it can be.

the other is just an oxymoron of class balance. Un-removable buffs similar to those of the early Ritualist abomination, but far more unstoppable, and delivered by an armour plated, ias'd brick-wall with front-line dps at range (already repeated add nauseum in this very thread). This is quite possibly the dumbest class of the lot. You nerf any one of it's reality-defying skews in favour of the other, and it moves quite comfortably into redundancy (with the exception of Cruel Spear, as I likes' it lots'... ^_^).

So I'd like to see you elaborate some more on this if you would. Your of the most experienced players around and it's always good to learn from one of the best...

Sinful Doom · Jan 30, 2008, 12:19 PM // 12:19

QFT 99.9% of Kaon's post from this page. I really do miss the unforgiveness that is now not present in this game.

makosi · Jan 30, 2008, 12:33 PM // 12:33

My problem with Assassins is that solo-ganking someone in under 4 seconds is extremely bad for the game. Ganking, pre-Factions, was either more predictable (because you saw crap running to you) or a co-ordinated team-effort. The old Shadow Prison (Black Lotus, Horns etc...) build that was killing people in one go was great at killing stuff but it was not in the game's best interests.

Consequently, Assassins have been nerfed and can no longer instantly solo spike someone down unless their target is naive and completely lacks spacial awareness. This is also a problem because people choose not to take them if they are not effective at 'assassinating'. Sins will kill NPCs but elsewhere they are playing the roles of (bad) warriors - contributing no pressure over time but simply aiding a spike. The concept of the Assassin sounds like a really cool idea to a 12 year-old but it doesn't fit in with the GW ethos. PvP during prophecies thrived because it was a brain-game and you had to think about your performance instead of aiming and shooting. Sure, there were exceptions, but the core selling point of the game was personal skill = victory. Pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 on Assassin does the opposite.

As said before, Ritualists roles' are like an amalgamation of bad Eles and Monks and generally gimmicky. The idea of the Spirit Spammer (which, to be fair, only live in RA and AB) is hardly different to a load of army turrets. You create ghosts that throw balls at whoever dares to go near - passively being a nuisance.

As for Splinter Weapon and Ancestor's Rage, they are too cheap and spammable and I'm confused as to why they outshine the remainder of the Channeling line. I wouldn't say Weapon Spells are overpowered because they can't be removed but rather they are respite from the extreme Enchantment-hate brought about in each chapter. Numbers have to be reassessed, that's all.

tigros · Jan 30, 2008, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Uhm... why are assassins and ritualists broken as classes? They all can fit (or should fit) in specific roles that their profession allows for or is better fit than another classes are... and they both do fit on the current meta, true, one more than the other...

If we look at the current meta, we observe the fact that most often than not half a regular or standard GVG team is made up of 2 monks and 2 warriors - that is only 2 of the 10 professions available in GW. However, they're a staple of the GW PVP team build and not much considered overpowered or unbalanced...

If we assume that the 10 professions should have an equal chance of fitting on an 8 team GVG team roster, then all of these professions combined should be balanced enough to allow a specific team build and strategy that would go along with it in a so called balanced build. Thus we should be able to see various combinations of all 10 professions being used because they would provide similar strengths and weaknesses in those multitude of combinations and thus, tides in battle would be decided by skill and not by mix of professions or builds.

Once you have a specific team setup made of less than the 10 different professions (well, realistically you can only have 8 different professions in a team) that becomes the meta and once these are usually no more than 6 of those 10 professions (assuming the 2 monks and the 2 warriors) than the whole game could be called unbalanced, not just the classes that do see most of the play or those that don't.

And if we think that Prophecies only had 6 classes that were supposed to fit on a GVG team of 8 (which is still the tendency in the meta, no matter which those 6 professions are, there usually aren't more than 6 anyways)... it becomes obvious that the 4 new classes have broken that balance because they offered more supply for a demand that there was not really there, so they needed to become powerful to see play... so they did become powerful and prolly that's why they're still powerful because they're like outsiders on an already saturated market...

Just my two cents...

DreamWind · Jan 30, 2008, 01:39 PM // 13:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

The game years ago was more fun because the core roles were well defined without shit classes.

Winner! It is more likely for PvP to go back to Prophecies only than for Anet to make the game fun/balanced again with Factions and Nightfall classes and skills involved.

Of course, neither one of these are going to happen...just the first one is more likely.

rohara · Jan 30, 2008, 02:11 PM // 14:11

the ritualist class is probably my second favorite to play, but i agree the spirit mechanic is quite gay. too many of their skills require a spirit to be in place for you to get the maximum effect, and spirits just don't see much play in gvg because HAI INTERRUPTERS I'M CASTING A 3-5 SECOND BINDING RITUAL WITH A 60 SECOND RECHARGE. not to mention, spirits are just adrenaline builders for warriors.

ranger spirits have the same problems, only the ranger class is already so great it doesn't need spirits for maximum skill efficiency, and rangers have plenty of block skills to decrease the chance of being interrupted while creating the spirit. the rit anti-interrupt spells are shit and a waste of a skill slot. i can't think of a way to fix spirits other than nerfing the crap out of the spirit's effect and reducing the energy cost, cast time and recharge, which probably still wouldn't be enough to encourage people to use them outside of gimmick builds.

however, i quite like the weapon spell mechanic. powerful spells, but unstackable, and they have good synergy with other rit skills. i wish the same were true for shouts and chants. that would nip the gayagon problem in the bud.

item spells, on the other hand, are a terrible mechanic. i hate sacrificing my equipment benefits just to hold a damn pot, and i hate having to drop said pot to trigger results. item spells should be some seriously awesome shit to warrant such a drawback but alas, they are not.

as for assassins, i actually like the shadow stepping mechanic. what i don't like is the forced 12345 chain (lead, offhand, dual, w/e). this leaves sins with very few options for effective chains, and all it takes is one interrupt/block/miss to break their chain and render them useless. sins are either really good or really bad, and its quite easy to force them into being bad. sins can't replace warriors or dervishes in the frontline, so the only thing they can do is gank bases. i, for one, am not bothered by sin splits. they're certainly annoying if they have aura (but no more annoying than dom mesmers are to casters), but far from overpowered. get in, spike, get out. stop the spike and you've won the battle - stop most of the spikes and you've won the war. they don't stand a chance at VoD unless they get those NPCs down, in most cases. they're a one-trick pony, but they fill a role no other class can. in the melee line, you've got your adrenaline-based warriors, your caster-ish aoe dervishes, and your stealthy spike assassins. they have their place - its just a very, very, very small place...

imo, paragons are the most broken class in the game. they are what rits would be if all their binding rituals were 5e, 1sec cast, and 10sec recharge, produced untargetable spirits, and spawning power worked like soul reaping, only for spirits. ridiculous! party buffs are a good mechanic and i'm glad it was added into the game in the form of the paragon and rit, but it was implemented very poorly.

anyway...to sum it up, i think the rit, sin, and 'gon classes fit into GW just fine. shouts, chants, and spirits just need a serious overhaul. just my .02. necros could use some work too.

tigros · Jan 30, 2008, 02:43 PM // 14:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by rohara

what rits would be if all their binding rituals were 5e, 1sec cast, and 10sec recharge, produced untargetable spirits, and spawning power worked like soul reaping, only for spirits.

Making spirits non-targetable (they're spirits, not material creatures!), reducing spirit area of effect, shortening duration and increasing effects so it's not so much spawn and forget could make spirit positioning much more tactical and could force tactical moves on the map because of their placement at key times in key places... They would become more like wards, forcing team placement in their area of effect at key times, such as a pressure, spike or smth similar...

An interesting mechanic I would say...

Items spells... I agree they are queer and should have effects that would compensate for the loss of weapon/offhand bonuses...

Otherwise I like the ritualist class very much, and is in my top 3 favorite classes specifically because they are something different than all the other classes...

However, I think that the spawning power having a notable effect only on spirits (and weapon spells lately) is a broken mechanic, because it should enhance all ritualist specializations (damage which could become dark/chaos damage instead of lightning, healing - to act like divine favor for monks and make them viable replacement for this ominous class, weapons and item spells and thus kill the necro/rit hybrids for example...)

Imagine having ritualits be as good healers as monks and introducing another variable in the game... teams spec-ing for enchantment removal or for weapon spell mitigation... adds complexity into the gameplay if you won't know for sure that you will face 2 monk backline or a 2 rit backline or a combo mo-rit backline... but this needs to put rit healing/prot on par with monk healing/prot...

But again

if you take rits in the general GW context, they're a class that could use some serious tweaking. If you put them in the GVG context... they're pretty good as they are but could become more versatile.

Honestly... I would like to see ritualists becoming at least as versatile as the monks... and they have all the premises for it...

Restoration line could transform into more healing to match a different healing playstyle.... Communing line could transform into more prot to match a different prot playstyle... Channeling could transform into a more special damage type (chaos or dark as mentioned before) and be in a way a different damage dealing playstyle similar to what smiting is... spawning power could transform to fuel all these lines more properly... similar to divine favor, for ex...

I think that having two different classes able to perform the same roles in a team build through different game mechanics is a good idea (enchantments vs weapon spells require different conditions to be met and different counters to be thought of and different strategies or approaches to be considered) and would force more flexibility and more variability in a team composition.

It's like deciding which is better: having either one or more enchantments on a target and having these enchantments prone to enchantment removal or having a single irremovable weapon spell that would be the best specific counter to a specific problem at a specific time... is stackable vs non stackable and I think that non stackable is a more active style of play...

If you think of the standard team roles they are mainly three:
1. damage - which is usually melee damage -> warrior, dervish
2. healing - which is usually monks, but rits could come in as well -> monk, ritualist
3. utility - which could be any of the above classes, plus the rest of them -> war, mo, ne, me, rit, ran, ele, derv, para, assa

If more than one class would be able to viably fill specific roles at a similar power level, I think more team builds would be viable and the game would be more dynamic and more interesting... (the reason would be what I wrote earlier, having 10 professions to fill only 8 spots on a team).

But this means a huge overhaul of the entire class/profession lines... so dunno if it's realistic...

Blame the Monks · Jan 30, 2008, 03:13 PM // 15:13

Warriors
Monks
Mesmers
Rangers (in their current state)
Ele (high eman potential + some good skills make a great bitchbar, but not a nuker)

^ Those classes are the only ones that have a broad, deep, and versatile skillset. With mesmers/rangers/ele, that skillset is limited to only a few choices, but at least in play it works out pretty well. Each class scales very well with skill, can react to a lot of different things and roles, and has been the bedrock of balance for months and months.

sin -- who passed on the idea that a teleporting instagibber was good for the game? Seriously?
derv -- bad warriors with your choice of a lame dw spammer or RA enchantment crapper
para -- effectively unremovable passive defense + high ranged DPS. Again, who the hell approved this concept.
rit -- you get spirit poop, lots of ra type hybrid gimmicks, and NPC farming
necro -- gimmick spike, soul reaping exploits, hex spamming, and pooping. Brilliant.

^ These are the classes that either by inherently flawed design (sins -- combos and shadow step) or lack of quality, versatile skills (derv) produce almost all gimmicks. They get play from time to time filling non degenerate roles, but in general, they are what creates build wars. On top of that, you have the NF power creep and various bullshit introduced by incompetence, and then (sometimes) pushed back out. They lack toolbox skills, they lack flexibility, they lack depth.

The balance and interplay between warriors + mesmers + rangers on offense/splitting against monks/eles on defense has been great. The interplay between gimmick vs gimmick has not been.

Killed u man · Jan 30, 2008, 05:24 PM // 17:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

sin -- who passed on the idea that a teleporting instagibber was good for the game? Seriously?
derv -- bad warriors with your choice of a lame dw spammer or RA enchantment crapper
para -- effectively unremovable passive defense + high ranged DPS. Again, who the hell approved this concept.
rit -- you get spirit poop, lots of ra type hybrid gimmicks, and NPC farming
necro -- gimmick spike, soul reaping exploits, hex spamming, and pooping. Brilliant.

Bottom line of this thread... We had an "all-round" system before Faction... (Ye, Necro's were indeed gimmick since day1, but they never really saw serious play in GvG, besides Bspike)

All the classes introduced afterwards were not needed. WHAT do you add when every role is already fullfilled by an existing one? Anet had no choice but adding retarded, unneeded classes. On top of that, they didn't even "test" them out in the first place. Sins, Rits, Para's and Dervishes are by far the worst add-ons to GW since day 1...

@The guy saying he sees alot of QQ'ing, but few ideas: There is nothing to be fixed... IF Anet decided to rewrite the role of Sins, rits,... They will have to do it in such a way, they will pretty much become identical to already-existing classes (such as Rit=Ele, Sin=Warrior, paragon=warrior with heal party

) OR they will simply become "useless" again...
There was never any need for new classes, Anet nailed it with Prophecies, everything was "balanced" (In a advantage/disadvantage way), but then they needed something to promote their new games...

Keithark · Jan 30, 2008, 05:48 PM // 17:48

they should just give us the choice at the guild battle tab..either chose GvG or Core GvG ...in GvG it is like it is now and in Core GvG there are no sins/dervs/gons/rits or the ability to use them as secondary profession. You click the game type you want to play and get paired up wit opponent who desires the same gametype.

Zuranthium · Jan 30, 2008, 06:21 PM // 18:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

The CONCEPT of the assassin (and ritualist, and paragon, and dervish, yet this topic only adresses the first 2) is flawed, and therefore the class will either be brainlessly overpowered, an easier/skillless way to gank, or totally useless.

Uhh...wasn't that the point of the thread, though? To talk about the large changes these classes need? Why are you even bothering to conform to the mold that is the present-day Assassin? We're going outside of that box right now.

~Z

DarkNecrid · Jan 30, 2008, 06:28 PM // 18:28

I disagree about Ritualists, Ritualists while having the whole spirit thing, don't see spirits in play now, and are now a viable midline class that I don't really think is bad for gameplay, since people in GvG turned away from spirits for the reasons you said.

I think something like this would work nicely eventually, having a supportive Rit.

Weapon Spell Rit

Ritualist/Elementalist
Spawning Power: 14 (12+2)
Channeling Magic: 9 (8+1)
Restoration Magic: 11 (10+1)
Communing: 2 (2+0)

Wielder's Boon (Restoration Magic)
Heal target ally for 48 points. If that ally is under the effects of a "Weapon Spell," Wielder's Boon heals for an additional 59 Health.
Energy:5 Cast:0.25 Recharge:4

Wielder's Remedy (Spawning Power)
For 29 seconds, whenever you cast a weapon Spell on an ally, that ally loses 1 Condition.
Energy:5 Cast:1 Recharge:10

Wielder's Zeal [Elite] (Spawning Power)
For 29 seconds, whenever you cast a weapon Spell on an ally, you gain 5 Energy.
Energy:10 Cast:1 Recharge:10

Splinter Weapon (Channeling Magic)
For 20 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next successful 3 attacks deal 32 damage to up to 3 adjacent foes.
Energy:5 Cast:1 Recharge:5

Vengeful Weapon (Restoration Magic)
For 8 seconds, the next time target ally takes damage from a foe, that ally steals up to 48 Health from that foe.
Energy:5 Cast:0.25 Recharge:3

Guided Weapon (Communing)
For 6 seconds, target ally's attacks cannot be blocked.
Energy:15 Cast:2 Recharge:5

Glyph of Lesser Energy (Energy Storage)
For 15 seconds, your next 2 Spells costs 10..16 less Energy to cast.
Energy:5 Cast:1 Recharge:30

Death Pact Signet (Ritualist None)
Resurrect target party member with your current Health and Energy. If that party member dies within 120 seconds, so do you.
Energy:0 Cast:2 Recharge:8

I haven't really tested the template out, and with Sineptitude...yeah whatever, but I think eventually something like that could work pretty decently. The build doesn't get raped by enchantment removal (all the enchants have short recharges + longer durations), the weapon spells provide nice, needed, supportive effects, and with Vengeance Weapon/Wielder's Remedy/Wielder's Boon/Wielder's Zeal, you get a mini-RoF+RoD, that removes a condition, with some light healing, that bypasses prots, and the entire combo winds up costing you 20e, and you can spam it for quite a bit. It's nothing super over strong, but I think as time passes the effects it adds or can add to your team can really add up. You can GOLE + Guided Weapon x2 on a spike for guaranteed damage since your attacks can't be blocked, etc.