Curse

wolfy3455 · Jan 30, 2007, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Prior to jagged bones we receive 10e per death and noone has claimed that soulreaping was was broken until a skill was produced to exploit it.

I still feel soulreaping is not the culprite I see jagged bones as the culprite and I agree that minion death should be adjusted to only benefit the master. aside from that IMO soulreaping is just fine. Anet just needs to do better research and skill design before implimenting it into play.

People complained it was broken when spirit spammers powered bloodspike. They complained harder when rit spirits superpowered bloodspike/foc spike. Even after the 1/2 nerf, people still said it wasn't enough.

If two out of the three (arguably 3/3) chapters have produced something that overpowers soul reaping, don't you think theres something wrong with it? Perfectly balanced mechanics are not that easy to overpower. If a skill is being used purely because it sets off another skill/mechanics trigger, the skill/mechanic is the problem.

The other emanagement attributes use breakpoint systems If leadership was uncapped and triggered off spirits/minions, it would be overpowered. Soul reaping currently has no breakpoints and no limits.

Thomas.knbk · Jan 30, 2007, 09:48 PM // 21:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

And instead of always building/testing things to prevent abuse of SR, it seems much more intelligent to design SR in a way that isn't abusable

My. Point. Exactly.

twicky_kid · Jan 31, 2007, 02:29 AM // 02:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

My. Point. Exactly.

Players will always find a way to abuse a mechanic. Abusing a skill is much harder because skills can be changed with little impact on the entire game (in the long run).

It is impossible to prevent anyone to abuse a mechanic especially when the mechanic is energy related. Players will either find a way to abuse it or not use it at all.

As for my reasons of why the regen idea would be a little too much for spike builds is this:

SR currently gives you a lump energy. You don't really control when you get that energy. Many times SR triggers at near full energy. Even though you gained 30+ energy from the SR triggers over the last 10 seconds that doesn't mean every single point went into your pool.

If you change it to regen you'll have greater control over that energy and be able to make the most of it. SR is unpredictable which is downside. If you change it to regen it will be perfectly predictable. You will always know "ya, I can drop these 3 10e spells right now and wait another 5 seconds or so to get the energy back." SR in its current form will not allow that because it is not 100% sure you will have the energy available when you need it. That does make SR better on its weaker side. Comparing it to skills in the regen form I don't even see an energy skill that would match it. I don't think making a primary attribute stronger than what a skill could give us is a good idea.

Blood spike isn't strong atm because there are better options ie "JB." Take JB out of the picture and buff blood spike (or w/e spike doesn't have to be blood) and you will most likely see a strong resurgence.

We just need a simple solution to this problem not make things more difficult than they already are. Game mechanics are always going to be exploited in some way by the players. Its happened in every game in the past, present, and future.

wolfy3455 · Jan 31, 2007, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

Players will always find a way to abuse a mechanic. Abusing a skill is much harder because skills can be changed with little impact on the entire game (in the long run).

Abuse strength please. If you can abuse any mechanic, then provide an example of abusing AP to make an imbalanced build.

Quote:

As for my reasons of why the regen idea would be a little too much for spike builds is this:

If you change it to regen you'll have greater control over that energy and be able to make the most of it. SR is unpredictable which is downside. If you change it to regen it will be perfectly predictable. You will always know "ya, I can drop these 3 10e spells right now and wait another 5 seconds or so to get the energy back." SR in its current form will not allow that because it is not 100% sure you will have the energy available when you need it. That does make SR better on its weaker side. Comparing it to skills in the regen form I don't even see an energy skill that would match it. I don't think making a primary attribute stronger than what a skill could give us is a good idea.

This is so full of holes. First, if you're at max energy, why do care that your cyclic energy engine isn't giving you a benefit? Those same minions are going to be recycled and continue giving abusive energy when you do need it. The spirit spammers will still be spamming spirits. You're not relying on random deaths, you're relying on things under your control, which will be stable unless the other team makes the effort to shut it down. And on top of that, deaths should be coming after spikes, so unless you're running 16 soul reaping, the gain from sr won't exceed the cost of the spike. Unless the bloodspike has one spike per 10 seconds (it which case the caller should uninstall), this nerfs bloodspike against the teams that would lose to it anyway.

Quote:

Blood spike isn't strong atm because there are better options ie "JB." Take JB out of the picture and buff blood spike (or w/e spike doesn't have to be blood) and you will most likely see a strong resurgence.

JB can go into a bloodspike just as well as the hex pressure that abuses it. The reason why you see the hex build so much more than bspike is that its a stronger build. It can afford to run dedicated healers. It can split (not very well, but much better than bspike ever could). Its almost closer to SB/RI than Bspike in that it shuts down your offense while posing a threat, though its through insane pressure rather than a spike.

Bspike was stronger when there wasn't anything worth spamming with infinite energy. It would still be stronger (IMO) on altar maps because you can afford to only use 2 slots on attack skills, and use the rest of the team as monks when a nonkiting NPC is tanking two teams trying to kill it. But as it is, JB is a stronger build, not only because it abuses JB, but because its just better.

Saider maul · Jan 31, 2007, 05:08 AM // 05:08

If they are going to change soul reaping then they better change expertise.
Because that is an exploit of a mechanic to.

Changing a mechanic over a skill is just not right.

Patccmoi · Jan 31, 2007, 06:27 AM // 06:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saider maul

If they are going to change soul reaping then they better change expertise.
Because that is an exploit of a mechanic to.

Changing a mechanic over a skill is just not right.

Expertise is a mechanic. It's not 'an exploit of a mechanic'. And expertise WAS changed recently to actually remove the exploits it had on many things (like 2E Distortion).

And the change suggestion of SR isn't just because of a skill. JB only highlights the problem. The problem is there since a long long time and always lead to broken builds (Blood Spike, FoC spike, JB...). I'll repeat it again : SR is designed in a way that leads to obvious abuse potential, and redesigning it so it doesn't while keeping an overall very similar strength should be a good idea instead of always risking to run into another SR abuse.

And no Twicky, there is lots of emanagement mechanic that aren't really abused because they're designed in a way that is hardly abusable. Is Critical Strike heavily abused creating unbalanced team builds? Is Leadership heavily abused so that Paragon have infinite energy to cast 15E skills under QZ?

Those things aren't abused like that because they are capped and work in a way that you can't 'activate' the energy gain faster than a certain speed (for example Paragon shouts either cost as much as you gain or nearly, or in the case of adrenal one you need AT LEAST 1 attack between each, but in reality it's much more than that in the end). And mostly no one else in your team can actually hasten that energy gain significantly, you have to do it yourself. Soul Reaping is designed so that anyone in your team can give you energy directly in various ways (spirits, minions, suicide...) and by leaving it as a raw energy gain you put no cap on it at all.

Mysticism is designed the same way too btw, but at least most enchants don't end fast enough to matter. But run a D/X in an environment where you have many team enchants ending all the time (say Order of Pain, Dark Fury and Aegis going on over and over) and that D/X will have TONS of energy. I think that Mysticism is actually a risky primary attribute too because there's always the risk of a skill coming out that can be abused to power it (for example, an elite order enchant with 5/1/2 that ends on your next attack. You could have 1 D/N using that and OoP-Dark Fury and a bunch of D/X that would be fueled huge energy through it. This skill doesn't exist, but it's just to show the risk behind Mysticism which is the same as Soul Reaping, and in a way even more controllable. But it gives smaller gains so it's hard to abuse as much atm, but a theoritical skill could easily turn Mysticism into a broken energy engine).

Those game mechanics just scream abuse me. Giving SR regen instead of raw energy gain doesn't scream abuse me at all because you can't raise that regen in any way. You can keep it going on maybe, but hell 7 regen on someone, while very good, is still within what the game can handle (a guy with Blood Ritual or BiP could spam it around for the same effect and that's not exactly broken). 15 pips of e regen isn't, it's totally out of the bondary of energy balance on skills and leads to grossly overpowered builds.

And i don't see -at all- what would be wrong with making SR SLIGHTLY more predictable. Atm SR is considered garbage in PvP out of builds abusing it because of how unpredictable it is. What exactly is wrong with making it slightly predictable? It would just make it a little more viable without actually having an SR abuse included in your team build.

Saider maul · Jan 31, 2007, 07:51 AM // 07:51

lol sorry was a late evening. flip it around. Expertise is a mechanic that is being exploited. ( I.E Thumpers + Touchers) although thouchers are a bit less dangerious.

honestly i'd be totally fine with the dervish mysticism mechanic benefiting only from enchantments the dervish cast on itself.

I need to use the edit button instead of double posting.

Thomas.knbk · Jan 31, 2007, 08:27 AM // 08:27

If thumpers and touchers are an exploit or not if stuff for another thread, but they're not nearly as imbalanced as soul reaping is at the moment.
spamming conjure nightmare under QZ without worrying about energy management > 3 energy irresistible blow.

twicky_kid · Jan 31, 2007, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

If thumpers and touchers are an exploit or not if stuff for another thread, but they're not nearly as imbalanced as soul reaping is at the moment.
spamming conjure nightmare under QZ without worrying about energy management > 3 energy irresistible blow.

The question isn't is SR abusable under JB? The real question is SR abusable without JB?

We all know the answer is no. SR was balanced before there was JB. Most players considered it weak before the JB abuse.

Any mechanic that has to do with energy players are going to find a way to abuse it. You are going to have to balance skills around the mechanic.

Expertise was changed but a very small change. Since Expertise was multi functional you could change it without it being useless. SR doesn't have that option. Its very 1 dimensional. Something dies you gain energy. If you decrease it in its current form then you only make it weaker when not running JB. Its already weak enough under normal play.

Expertise was abusing many different skill types from many different classes. There was no way they could change all those skill to fit expertise so it made more since at that time to change expertise.

SR has 1 skill that's its beeing abused with and that is JB. Before JB SR was fine. Change JB and SR will go back to being normal. No need to change an entire mechanic just because of 1 skill. You will cause more problems than solutions.

Patccmoi · Jan 31, 2007, 05:38 PM // 17:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

The question isn't is SR abusable under JB? The real question is SR abusable without JB?

We all know the answer is no. SR was balanced before there was JB. Most players considered it weak before the JB abuse.

Any mechanic that has to do with energy players are going to find a way to abuse it. You are going to have to balance skills around the mechanic.

Expertise was changed but a very small change. Since Expertise was multi functional you could change it without it being useless. SR doesn't have that option. Its very 1 dimensional. Something dies you gain energy. If you decrease it in its current form then you only make it weaker when not running JB. Its already weak enough under normal play.

Expertise was abusing many different skill types from many different classes. There was no way they could change all those skill to fit expertise so it made more since at that time to change expertise.

SR has 1 skill that's its beeing abused with and that is JB. Before JB SR was fine. Change JB and SR will go back to being normal. No need to change an entire mechanic just because of 1 skill. You will cause more problems than solutions.

Yes, and that's why one of the most common backline in HA even out of JB builds was 1 N/Mo, 1 N/Rt and 1 Rt/E spamming offensive spirits. It definitely had nothing to do with SR giving those Necros insane energy, it's obviously because N/Mo are better monks and N/Rt are better at Restoration than Rts, right? And Bloodspike using Bone Minions at level 0 to get 30E per kill to use tons of 10E monk skills on their full team had nothing to do with SR abuse either, ofc. Stop saying 'we all know' as if things were fact when they're not at all.

You're talking in this post as if people are asking to destroy SR. SR would be as good or arguably better under 'normal' conditions, it would just be worse when tons of things die all the time (which makes SR far, far too strong atm), but it would still be very good.

And you still say that 'every mechanic giving energy will be abused' while totally ignoring the ones given that aren't the case, like Leadership, Critical Strikes, etc. which are designed in a way that is hardly abusable at all. And overall, balancing skills over a broken mechanic is the stupidest thing you can do to game balance because you're repeatedly destroying skills that will never see play again instead of fixing the source of the problem with those skills which often isn't the skill themselves. Because if JB didn't provide your full team with a ridiculous amount of energy, it'd actually be fine and an interesting skill allowing you to always have a minion to use with all the minion skills, one of the only viable way to use them in PvP. A Jagged Necro is still a viable char on his own, you don't fully 'sacrifice' the slot, i mean that guy spreads bleeding, poison and disease on his own as well as direct damage through minion attack and Death Novas, he's not a worthless slot totally sacrifice as an energy engine. If you make it so JB can't enchant a Jagged Horror, sorry but you'll never see that skill in PvP again because then you can't keep a minion around to bomb with, etc. and the whole interest of the skill is gone. Nobody really cares about 1 Jagged Horror enough to bring Jagged Bones. They care about the fact that they can keep that Jagged Horror up through bombing, using it to damage, spread condition, heal themselves... What's wrong is that it gives the team far too much energy.

Don't change SR and every chapter risks bringing a skill or 2 that will lead to a new SR abuse. Change it and the worse abuse you can get is keeping Necros at 7 pips of regen, and that's not that big of an abuse because 7 pips of regen is well within the border of how the energy on skills are balanced (you don't spam stuff under QZ like a madman with 7 pips of regen at all. Just using a 15E spell every 10s already uses all your energy regen under QZ). There's already direct ways of keeping a couple of targets that don't need to be Necro primary at 7 pips of energy with things like Blood Ritual and that was never broken.

Saider maul · Jan 31, 2007, 07:22 PM // 19:22

1 question..... How did a Jagged bones thread turn into an offtopic nerf proposal for soulreaping?

<EG>

Thomas.knbk · Jan 31, 2007, 07:27 PM // 19:27

It's not offtopic. JB/SR is imbalanced, and this thread cocluded that not Jagged Bones, but Soul Reaping needs a change. Secondly the purposed change is not a nerf to soul reaping, but a buff for the most part. It's only a nerf to abusing soul reaping.

Divineshadows · Jan 31, 2007, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

JB/SR is imbalanced, and this thread cocluded that not Jagged Bones, but Soul Reaping needs a change.

I wouldn't mind one bit if soul reaping got changed to what Ensign suggested AND jagged bones was changed to only trigger soul reaping for the owner of the minions. I would not shed one tear if jagged bones was never used again in PvP. Also, the change several months ago to spirit deaths only giving half the soul reaping was never a strong enough change. It should have been changed to no soul reaping trigger or 1/4 of the trigger.

TLLOTS · Jan 31, 2007, 10:42 PM // 22:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

The question isn't is SR abusable under JB? The real question is SR abusable without JB?

We all know the answer is no. SR was balanced before there was JB. Most players considered it weak before the JB abuse.

Any mechanic that has to do with energy players are going to find a way to abuse it. You are going to have to balance skills around the mechanic.

That merely treats the symptom, not the problem. Do it that way and you'll be forever rebalancing skills around soul reaping until Guild Wars ends.

Better to take care of the real problem via Ensign's suggestion so that soul reaping becomes even more predictable, but it also gets a nice hard limit on how strong it can be.

Razz L Dazzle · Feb 01, 2007, 01:06 AM // 01:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

I wouldn't mind one bit if soul reaping got changed to what Ensign suggested AND jagged bones was changed to only trigger soul reaping for the owner of the minions. I would not shed one tear if jagged bones was never used again in PvP. Also, the change several months ago to spirit deaths only giving half the soul reaping was never a strong enough change. It should have been changed to no soul reaping trigger or 1/4 of the trigger.

I would agree that these would be sensible changes to soul reaping, Jagged and the rest.

Sinful Doom · Feb 01, 2007, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divineshadows

I wouldn't mind one bit if soul reaping got changed to what Ensign suggested AND jagged bones was changed to only trigger soul reaping for the owner of the minions. I would not shed one tear if jagged bones was never used again in PvP. Also, the change several months ago to spirit deaths only giving half the soul reaping was never a strong enough change. It should have been changed to no soul reaping trigger or 1/4 of the trigger.

agreed 100% on all points. ;p

Darkpower Alchemist · Feb 02, 2007, 02:41 AM // 02:41

The point of SR is to give the Necromancer energy management. To say it is a problemed attribute, is equivalent to Touch Rangers abusing Necro touch skills because expertise effects them. You all wanted to make expertise not work for touch skills also, if I am correct?

It would seem that the only answers that people can come up with for the more powerful builds or skills is the same thing they cry foul over.

Nerfing/balancing(The slash is because it is a thin line between the two words in this case).

If it doesn't do what it does, the skill is useless and shouldn't have been made. If it does as the description says, it is exploitable by Necromancers as a powerful energy battery. Necros can make their way back into GvG possibly with this one elite, yet that bothers people for that same reason.

Who wants to get mowed down by a minion factory? Last I noticed, deaths in high level GvG were few and far between, and this skill could keep the MM involved in such a battle in the game.

Broken? I don't agree, but exploitable...yes,very. Necromancers are powered by death in all of its forms, so to say when a minion dies it shouldn't give energy is contradictory. Death is Death, and you can't change that. Just because you want to hope that you can justify a reason for it not being so doesn't make you right.

Half the SR return on the reborn minion may be more viable than an SR revamp. Also, it gives 1/4 energy to other Necromancers in the area. That should slow the battery effect without destroying its inherant purpose.

Wasteland Squidget · Feb 02, 2007, 02:45 AM // 02:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darkpower Alchemist

Necromancers are powered by death in all of its forms

I'm sold.

Incidentally, Jagged Bones = 15s recharge now.

yesitsrob · Feb 02, 2007, 02:54 AM // 02:54

I think this will probably make necro energy management significantly less sick. However I don't believe it was the correct way. Jagged Bones wasn't the problem so much as soul reaping was. Spirit based energy management is still ridiculous, and they really should get the balls to fix the real issue. Because I don't doubt that other soul reaping based problems won't arise, whether it be soon or in future chapter.

Saider maul · Feb 02, 2007, 03:35 AM // 03:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

I'm sold.

Incidentally, Jagged Bones = 15s recharge now.

LOL.. I was hoping for a 10/1/10s but oh well Olias just has to run shambling horrors and bone minions to make jagged bones work efficently.

I hope this is then end of soul reaping abuse so the mechanic is sure to be left alone.