Curse

minor · Feb 24, 2007, 12:54 AM // 00:54

I hope anet takes a deep breath and thinks before they add any more skills that affect the entire party. They seem to cause a lot of issues and balancing them is very difficult.
We have had spirit spamming rits that were a pain to everyone and were a must run character. Not learning from their mistake they tried again with paragons. Same result almost; a must have character that was abused till nerfed.
The other problem I have with party skills is that they have to suck in Ta and to a lesser extent Ha (whens it 6v6). Part of the reason for ABs being 3 man teams I understand is the party skills not being balanaced for them. A solution to this might be to make energy cost scale with number of players. For example heal party would only cost 10 in TA but still be 15 in GvG and maybe 25 if we had 12 man AB teams.
Even the heal party e/mo to me is a very button smashing build that is very effective thanks to heal party/ extinguish. One player hittting 3 buttons can stop a truckload of condtions and damage. I know its "part of the game", but it requires not a lot of skill for a great result.

Simply put party skills are balanced on a razors edge, a little too far one way can be overpowered, a little nerf its useless; so take it easy with em please Izzy?

Thom Bangalter · Feb 24, 2007, 04:58 AM // 04:58

Extinguish is shitty, but of all the mechanics to pick on, why single out heal party, aegis and the like? these skills have been in place since day 1.

skillsbas8 · Feb 24, 2007, 05:41 AM // 05:41

Whats the point of this?
There are skills that are more effective with less people on the battlefield ie ZB

minor · Feb 24, 2007, 01:46 PM // 13:46

point one is out of 4 new classes 2 have been buff the whole party machine train wrecks.
point two even accepted skills like aegis, heal party etc encourage button smashing to win. Why take a guardin and have to watch where it needs to be placed when you can aegis like QQ was last night. Granted an aegis chain takes a little skill to keep going, but not much.

If you think im off base on point 2 fine, but if you think we need another class like the rits or paras, you have a lot more faith in anet then me.

Thom Bangalter · Feb 24, 2007, 01:49 PM // 13:49

because spirit spam rits and motivation paragons are so good now?

minor · Feb 24, 2007, 01:57 PM // 13:57

No but we had tolerate them for how long?
Read last line in 1st post.

Patccmoi · Feb 24, 2007, 06:18 PM // 18:18

His point isn't bad in itself. I'm not sure about stuff like Heal Party or Aegis. I think that Aegis is fine overall.

But party skills that were added WERE nearly all overpowered. Motivation Paragon and Rt Lord spammers both caused serious problem to the metagame.

And... no they're not a problem now. Why? Cause they got overnerfed and are now as a whole bad skills. Cause ANet didn't have any clue of what to do with them in a sense. Leave them somewhat viable, and they'll be abused. So they just made them hardly worth it at all. And personally i think it sucks, but i'm not saying they should've done otherwise. Defensive party-wide (or earshot in general) skills are just stalling the game and implementing them in the first place was a bad idea. Some are bearable, but they can easily lead to horrible game play.

Problem with radar range skills is that you can use them while out of fight, reducing the viable counters a LOT. And then they add some that are in earshot and what's their great idea? They make them shouts/chants and barely add any counters in the game to them so that you're still out of many viable counters. So in the end, they just have to severly nerf the skills and it's just pointless to add skills that are gonna be nerfed to be unviable soon enough.

The energy scaling thing isn't necessarily a bad idea, but i don't think it's a fix in general. But it COULD help balancing some party skills this way, by doing something like 'if more than 4/6 players are affected, you lose 5E', or this skill takes an additional x seconds to recharge, etc... Some shouts could've been balanced better this way than by nerfing the effect imo.

Kyune · Feb 24, 2007, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Problem with radar range skills is that you can use them while out of fight, reducing the viable counters a LOT. And then they add some that are in earshot and what's their great idea? They make them shouts/chants and barely add any counters in the game to them so that you're still out of many viable counters. So in the end, they just have to severly nerf the skills and it's just pointless to add skills that are gonna be nerfed to be unviable soon enough.

Although the nerf already happened, if any kind of patterning is occurring, it's not unrealistic to expect new skills in the next couple of expansions which seek to hamper shouts/chants and possibly echoes as well in the way that unnatural sig/spiritual pain sought to keep spirits in check.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'd be worried merely on account of pre-nerf spiritual pain coming to be.

Ensign · Feb 24, 2007, 09:22 PM // 21:22

I don't think there's anything neccessarily wrong with party-wide buffs as a concept. There are problems with them in Guild Wars in as much as the game isn't really built to handle them very well, and that they're consistently much, much stronger than they should be.

The biggest problem with party wide defensive buffs is that instead of providing actual counters to the defenses going up, the solution to defensive buffing in Guild Wars has been to switch targets. Well the trouble with party-wide defenses should be obvious - you can't just switch targets to avoid them, and the tools to remove them are just as lacking as before.

Peace,
-CxE

Patrick Smit · Feb 24, 2007, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Enchantments are not really a problem, shouts, and to a lesser extent weapon spells are, they are invulnerable unless you cripple the source. The few counters against shouts are also very vulnerable to hexremoval, unlike shatter/drain enchantments and such

Kyune · Feb 26, 2007, 02:56 PM // 14:56

One of the things about weapon spells that bothered me was that there aren't really any "anti-weapon" weapon spells--I remember looking at dulled weapon thinking it would be a counter to them, but then getting disappointed at finding out that it's just a hex.

Essentially the idea is that the anti-weapon spells are cast on an opposing target and provide some form of debuff. Balancing is another matter though, seeing as weapon spells can be easily overwritten.

Elrodien · Feb 26, 2007, 04:45 PM // 16:45

Very true Kyune, weapon spells have no counters while most other game mechanics do. There should be something there hex wise at least or warrior based (wild blow style) that breaks a weapon spell. Slightly off topic though...

Patccmoi · Feb 26, 2007, 05:46 PM // 17:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I don't think there's anything neccessarily wrong with party-wide buffs as a concept. There are problems with them in Guild Wars in as much as the game isn't really built to handle them very well, and that they're consistently much, much stronger than they should be.

The biggest problem with party wide defensive buffs is that instead of providing actual counters to the defenses going up, the solution to defensive buffing in Guild Wars has been to switch targets. Well the trouble with party-wide defenses should be obvious - you can't just switch targets to avoid them, and the tools to remove them are just as lacking as before.

Peace,
-CxE

It seems ANet is actually trying to do that though : give actual counters to the defenses going up. Isn't what Grenth, Assault Enchantments, etc. was about?

Sadly they made it too good with Grenth, having no drawback at all. But for enchants at least, Assassins have a decent bunch of overall viable counters (Expunge, Assault Enchantment, Shattering Assault (which could really use not being bugged)...) and Dervishes aren't that bad either even without Grenth (Rending Touch we you can throw on any /D, Rending Sweep depending on the build, etc.)

I think that the problem of many party-wide defense is mostly HOW they were implemented : shouts and huge range spirits. Shouts have no way to be removed, and huge range spirits could be used out of fight range which made countering them more complicated than it should've. If it was more in form of enchantments or the like, of if there was some way to remove shouts or spirit effect (say temporarily for spirit effect, like for 5..10s target isn't affected by any beneficial binding ritual, possibly in a versatile enough skill that'd have a general secondary effect not to be overly narrow) then it wouldn't have been as bad.

It's true that the way to pressure was kinda always to switch target when they get protted, but i'm not too sure how bad this is as long as it's still possible to temporarily make a target truly vulnerable. I mean, when you look at what something like Grenth, which allowed people to not switch target, made to the game, it was a serious dumbing down. I think that the balance of enchant removal isn't that bad. It could be better if there was some more interesting enchant removal in the 10-15s recharge range (some with secondary effects), but as a whole i don't think it was that great when something like Grenth was around.

Thom · Feb 26, 2007, 11:31 PM // 23:31

More removals isn't the solution to all game balance. The point of ritualist weapons is to provide buffs with significantly different properties:
1)Unstrippable: Reliable buffs that can survive a strip heavy meta-game.
2)Non-stacking: This is a natural restriction to the usefulness of weapons. In even the most weapon condusive meta-game, you would never want more than 4 of 64 skills and 2 is more reasonable.
3)Natural balance: Without removal uncertainty, it is easier to calculate the balanced power of a skill. Without stacking you have fewer interactions to worry about, especially in the same attribute. A weapon should be less powerful than an enchant and you can have several weapons in an attribute without worrying about uber synergy.

Shouts:
1)Unstrippable (see above).
2)Indirect counters: instead of removing the shout, you hex the shouter or otherwise apply pressure to that character. Skill counters that neuter an entire defensive strategy means that shouts are more risky.
3)Skill intensive: A shouter requires significant skill commitment to be optimal. The micro-management of echos and shouts means ease in disruption.

Spirits (ritualist and ranger):
1)Positioning sensitive: Playing a spirit spammer well requires putting a premium on position awareness. If placed too far back, they are ineffective and hurt ones ability to extend, but place to far forward leaves them open to be killed. Casting is so vulnerable, that positioning where you can avoid interrupts/extended mesmers is important.

2) Movement sensitive: Ineffective when any type of movement is required. A spirit reliant team needs at least 9 seconds to have defenses set (unhindered).

3) Synergy/Multiplicity: Many ritualists use spirits for more than the primary effects and spirits include things beyond buffs. Considering that things like union, shelter, displacement and fertile provide 90% of the "spirit" buff effect, I see this more as an individual skill balance issue. Spirit based strategies become increasingly useless at higher levels of play due to (1) and (2).

My point: A bunch of direct counters of the enchantment removal/wild blow variety won't improve gameplay. Not everything needs a counter to be balanced and not all counters should be reactive. Basic utility: interrupts, diversion or a reliable spike, should be enough for a skilled team to limit spirit spam and shout spam. The meta should dictate direct counters beyond basic utility.

Party wide skills can be hard to balance and they should be balanced for standard 7+1 GvG game play. This means they will be slightly weak in HA and useless in TA, but TA has been fine with that for a while now. Obviously these types of buffs are the hardest thing to get right, but I feel Anet can learn with experience.

Patccmoi · Feb 27, 2007, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom

More removals isn't the solution to all game balance. The point of ritualist weapons is to provide buffs with significantly different properties:
1)Unstrippable: Reliable buffs that can survive a strip heavy meta-game.
2)Non-stacking: This is a natural restriction to the usefulness of weapons. In even the most weapon condusive meta-game, you would never want more than 4 of 64 skills and 2 is more reasonable.
3)Natural balance: Without removal uncertainty, it is easier to calculate the balanced power of a skill. Without stacking you have fewer interactions to worry about, especially in the same attribute. A weapon should be less powerful than an enchant and you can have several weapons in an attribute without worrying about uber synergy.

Shouts:
1)Unstrippable (see above).
2)Indirect counters: instead of removing the shout, you hex the shouter or otherwise apply pressure to that character. Skill counters that neuter an entire defensive strategy means that shouts are more risky.
3)Skill intensive: A shouter requires significant skill commitment to be optimal. The micro-management of echos and shouts means ease in disruption.

Spirits (ritualist and ranger):
1)Positioning sensitive: Playing a spirit spammer well requires putting a premium on position awareness. If placed too far back, they are ineffective and hurt ones ability to extend, but place to far forward leaves them open to be killed. Casting is so vulnerable, that positioning where you can avoid interrupts/extended mesmers is important.

2) Movement sensitive: Ineffective when any type of movement is required. A spirit reliant team needs at least 9 seconds to have defenses set (unhindered).

3) Synergy/Multiplicity: Many ritualists use spirits for more than the primary effects and spirits include things beyond buffs. Considering that things like union, shelter, displacement and fertile provide 90% of the "spirit" buff effect, I see this more as an individual skill balance issue. Spirit based strategies become increasingly useless at higher levels of play due to (1) and (2).

My point: A bunch of direct counters of the enchantment removal/wild blow variety won't improve gameplay. Not everything needs a counter to be balanced and not all counters should be reactive. Basic utility: interrupts, diversion or a reliable spike, should be enough for a skilled team to limit spirit spam and shout spam. The meta should dictate direct counters beyond basic utility.

Party wide skills can be hard to balance and they should be balanced for standard 7+1 GvG game play. This means they will be slightly weak in HA and useless in TA, but TA has been fine with that for a while now. Obviously these types of buffs are the hardest thing to get right, but I feel Anet can learn with experience.

Good post and good points overall, but i still think that defensive shouts are problematic. Because i don't believe your counters there actually work well in practice. For Weapon Spells personally i never thought they were a problem because of the single target, unstackable part.

In a non-Paragon heavy meta, no one will want to bring something like Vocal Minority, and to be honest out of a dedicated hex build it's nearly a wasted slot because it won't stick (will be a priority removal and without a full hex team it'll just be gone). And that's the only counter to shouts (out of Diversion spam, but Diversion spam is the counter to absolutely any character build in the game so there's not much to say about it. You can't have Diversion spam on everyone else in the other team). And 'otherwise apply pressure to that character', when that character is a Paragon using defensive shouts (so even more solid than a normal Paragon) is often just gonna end up wasting your team's offense. Paragons are freaking brick walls, they can just stand there and tank (which is often actually the best thing a Paragon should do since this way they have low crit rate on their back and monks can just heal whatever damage is done to them, and they have better adrenal recharge). Then you have the fact that Paragons energy efficiency is stellar if they use 1-2 4 adrenal shouts so EDenial only works to some extent.

As for skill intensive, that's pretty debatable. Many very efficient builds don't require that much Echos or the like and most will just use Refrains and still have good millage out of it and they don't need to be recast often at all. When using Echos is about all you have to worry about cause you can just stand there chucking spears without really any fear of being targetted or spiked, it's not that skill intensive.

Some skills do work against Paragons, but i think that the main problem is actually that general skills DO NOT work against them. I'll agree with your point about Rt spirits, and general counters are in fact enough to handle Rts most of the time with their current skills (no amount of normal counter could allow a team to punch through a turtling Rt Lord defense by their GLord before the severe nerf that kinda killed Shelter though). But for Paragons, normal counters just fail. They stand there and use their shouts. And before those defensive shouts were nerfed to be subpar and unattractive, you just couldn't do much at all about them (which lead to those stupid Paragon spikes). Is it the shouts themselves that were broken or the full char concept (big tank with a range weapon using those defensive shouts and gaining good energy out of them) is debatable though.

As for balancing party-wide skills for 7+1 GvG, i agree. But i think that it WOULD be nice though if there was some adjustment with something like 'if this skill affects more than 4 person, you lose 5E' or 'if this skill affects more than 4 person, it takes an additional 5-10s to recharge'. It would allow for much more flexible skill balance on them and give them an interesting strength for lower arenas and prevent them from being too good when they buff a full party.