Curse

JR · Aug 21, 2006, 11:18 AM // 11:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Poison Ivy

Actually with 10 energy and 10 duration, the a Warrior could whack away his energy in no time unless that person cancels Distortion.

Er, isn't that exactly what I was saying?

Vindexus · Aug 21, 2006, 11:36 AM // 11:36

If you want to know if something is overpowered, ask yourself if you would run it just as much if it was nerfed slightly. All the places I currently run Distortion, I would still run it if Distortion had an 8s recharge.

JR · Aug 21, 2006, 11:42 AM // 11:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindexus

If you want to know if something is overpowered, ask yourself if you would run it just as much if it was nerfed slightly. All the places I currently run Distortion, I would still run it if Distortion had an 8s recharge.

I would still run distortion if it had a 10s recharge, on a flagstand character. On something like a Cripshot on base harrasment I may change to Whirling, as the point of Distortion in that case is that you can chain it for a while.

Patrograd · Aug 21, 2006, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindexus

If you want to know if something is overpowered, ask yourself if you would run it just as much if it was nerfed slightly.

To play Devils advocate a little, I'd run Deep freeze if it did zero damage, but I'm not sure its overpowered.

I think that the game is currently very melee orientated. Distortion is a natural melee counter, and the more melee you have, the more distortion you will see to counter it. Despite all this distortion, the melee teams are still the ones getting wins, still the ones at the top of the ladder. it is possible you could make an argument based around that simple fact for strengthening distortion and other melee counters rather than weakening them, to force a little more variety into builds (not that I am making such an argument, just saying that it is possible you might view things in such a way)

LightningHell · Aug 21, 2006, 12:27 PM // 12:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

To play Devils advocate a little, I'd run Deep freeze if it did zero damage, but I'm not sure its overpowered.

I think that the game is currently very melee orientated. Distortion is a natural melee counter, and the more melee you have, the more distortion you will see to counter it. Despite all this distortion, the melee teams are still the ones getting wins, still the ones at the top of the ladder. it is possible you could make an argument based around that simple fact for strengthening distortion and other melee counters rather than weakening them, to force a little more variety into builds (not that I am making such an argument, just saying that it is possible you might view things in such a way)

Agreed, thinking of making some ranger stances somewhat usable would be a start. At least I think that's what you're getting at anyway.

Nightwish · Aug 21, 2006, 12:40 PM // 12:40

Distortion is a good skill, nothing more to deserve a second nerf. On top of its base cost, you still need energy to fuel the evasion. It is purely self defense compared to skills like blinding flash, reckless haste etc.

Vindexus · Aug 21, 2006, 12:48 PM // 12:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

To play Devils advocate a little, I'd run Deep freeze if it did zero damage, but I'm not sure its overpowered.

Hmm, too true. Perhaps I'm wrong?

llsektorll · Aug 21, 2006, 01:00 PM // 13:00

distortion is an annoyance for balance builds.... i guess rspike can be effective with distortion given their monks are crappy.... spike a distorted target until you know his energy is at 0 then spike him again for a kill.... you can probably use the same tactic on warrior spikes but the time to build for warrior spike is much longer... so it might give time to regen some energy back to distort again on the spike... it takes a bit of tactics.... facing distortion is an utter annoyance in my opinoin...

rii · Aug 21, 2006, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindexus

Hmm, too true. Perhaps I'm wrong?

I don't think so, since the damage is barely ever used on deep freeze. Sometimes having some linked damage can be useful to punish aoes, but frankly you can take it unlinked and have no problem. Why? Because the best thing about it is the fact that it snares 'in the area' for 10s unlinked. If they were to actually nerf it, it would be to either a water-linked hex duration (ala shard storm/ice spikes) or they would reduce the unlinked snare.
You would then be asked, would you still run it if it scaled 1-10s on a 1-16lvl scale, or
would you run it if it only lasted, say, 6s?
(I think the answer may still be yes in many places though)

As for distortion, I would not say it was overpowered. It's a good counter to melee-centric builds, so if you run a melee-centric build expect to see it everywhere. As for how good it is, it's not fantastic. Even with a 5s duration you can nuke a nice amount of energy out of someones bar, especially if they are only running at 3 illusion.

Someone said above that melee-centric builds are facing distortion teams and still winning, which perhaps leads to one of two conclusions:
1) Distortion isn't actually that good (otherwise the distortion teams would whup 10 kinds of hell out of you as a melee-centric teams), or
2) melee-centric teams themselves are overpowered, in that even if someone skews their entire build with counters they still can't do the business.
There is of course the option that if you skew your entire build around counters to melee-centric's you just gimp it -.-. IMO.

Greedy Gus · Aug 21, 2006, 01:33 PM // 13:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

Do you think that is the fault of other defensive stances being trash, or Distortion being too powerfull?

I guess that's the money question

I'll leave the skill balancing to the people paid to do it, but I think there must be a good reason that almost every other block/evade stance has forced downtime and most are not even possible to attribute with other professions.

To me, a decent comparison would be to dazed skills. They're nearly terrified to have a usable skill that inflicts dazed; if they followed the evasion stance example, they'd have one really great dazed skill that can be used by multiple professions.

dgb · Aug 21, 2006, 02:00 PM // 14:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR-

I think at 10 energy you wouldn't really have to change up the energy loss per hit. The double duration effectively does nothing, as Distortion is used to save on spikes, and yet it costs the same amount. As such I think that is a big enough hit already. Then there is the fact that you are now commited to ten seconds of having Distortion up, and losing further energy if the opponent decides to wail on you. This effectively makes it unplayable on a Monk, as such I would argue that 10 energy cost with 5 duration is less of a nerf than 10 cost, 10 duration.

I'd argue 10e no matter the duration/recharge makes it unplayable on a monk. You're commiting at least 13 energy into it (if you want any real use) which is going to really hurt.

How about 5e, 10 duration 10 recharge with again a look at the loss breakpoints. You certainly can't spam it with the 10 duration but it's an emergency that would work well. And you can focus swap it out to drop it.

Thom · Aug 21, 2006, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Really the game needs more skills like distortion. The skill occurs cost for instances of actual effect, which is pretty much the definition of effectiveness. It isn't exactly a cheap skill, but the costs are only ones you desire. These types of skills will always see PvP play. Boon is another skill with this type of mechanic and sees significant play.

Fenix Swiftblade · Aug 21, 2006, 04:12 PM // 16:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom

Really the game needs more skills like distortion. The skill occurs cost for instances of actual effect, which is pretty much the definition of effectiveness. It isn't exactly a cheap skill, but the costs are only ones you desire. These types of skills will always see PvP play. Boon is another skill with this type of mechanic and sees significant play.

Whenever you hit a foe in melee, you deal +X damage and lose X energy?

As for distortion, it's certainly a good skill, but you do have to pay for it. On a monk, losing 3 energy every hit is worth it, but it isn't cheap. And if you want to get it to lose less than that, you need to put a significant investment into Illusion magic. 11-9-8-8 to get the energy loss down to 2 on a monk isn't that bad, especially with a headpeice and superior divine favor rune for a total of 15.

As for Distortion being the only good evade stance, I think most if not all of that is because all the others are trash. 60 second recharges aren't going to get you anywhere. I think the biggest thing is that there aren't really any other pure evade stances. They all give you some secondary effect that you really don't care about, but make the skill require a long recharge or be broken. Even with these secondary effects, most of the stances take far too long to recharge anyway.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I would say the majority of the evade stances are balanced for a PvE setting, where you can expect to be raged on by a lot of enemies. Distortion isn't an option there because you''d lose your energy too quickly, but if the other stances had short recharges you could get an unbalnced ammount of damage mitigation from a single skill. Compare that to GvG in which you'd never really face more than 4 warriors at a time, and any more than 2 would be unusual. These stances couldn't recharge on the scale of distortion without a similar drawback, but a smaller recharge wouldn't make them unbalanced. You would still run into the problems of having your secondary profession restricted, and having to put points into the attribute of the skill, but with a short enough recharge you might actually be justified in doing so.

Patrograd · Aug 21, 2006, 04:31 PM // 16:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vindexus

Hmm, too true. Perhaps I'm wrong?

No I dont think you are. Just an exception that possibly proves the rule, and it was a selective nerf on my part. if you dropped the duration or reduced the AoE I dont think anyone would use it

Red Locust · Aug 22, 2006, 12:02 AM // 00:02

You'd have to nerf a lot of things about deep freeze for it to become unused.

Anyways, distortion is definitely a great skill that a lot of people use, but I doubt it's overpowered. If you're not running 8 illusion, you'll easily run yourself out of energy with a warrior on you. It really only helps vs. adrenal spike, since pressure will force you to burn all your energy in order to conserve health, meaning you're effectively shutting down your own character.

In that case it's not invulnerability, it's invulnerability at the cost of your energy and hence your offence. It's a trade, as opposed to a skill like whirling defense that has no drawbacks to its use. Monks trade energy for health all the time, and to me distortion works in much the same way.

Rangers might be the exception, they can get crazy efficiency out of distortion, but it still burns your energy dry after a couple of frenzied warriors get on you.

Phades · Aug 22, 2006, 01:46 AM // 01:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

To play Devils advocate a little, I'd run Deep freeze if it did zero damage, but I'm not sure its overpowered.

The snare duration should scale on that skill, but put into any situation deep freeze by its self is not all that strong or difficult to adjust to. This would be like contrasting it against knockdown skills for instance.

tomcruisejr · Aug 22, 2006, 03:52 AM // 03:52

distortion is "powerful" coz warrior/some ranger block/evade stances are lame.

distortion is ok. others are underpowered.

nebuchanezzar · Aug 22, 2006, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Evasion is the biggest thing. Its not blocking. Sure there are ways to still hit but, most stances block which means KD from IB etc. Wards evade. So look at it more like a portable ward. Usuable at will for short bursts.
Some skills are no-brainers and this is one of them. It's been nerfed, still using it. Wild Blow wastes your adrenaline as its back up in moments.
It allows over-extending, it counters melee in general, it is very annoying to face. Still dont think its broken though.

Bronus · Aug 22, 2006, 08:33 AM // 08:33

I've noticed more and more evaders in RA, which forced me to change up my Ranger build to permanently have seeking arrows on the bar.

Side note: It's an expensive skill to use, but the Mes has ways of mitigating it.

Bottomline is, if you plan to do damage in most scenarios via melee/ranged, you have to bring something to defeat evade. Especially with all the lamo Touch Ranger builds out there.

romO · Aug 22, 2006, 07:47 PM // 19:47

I think in order to see more use out of other defensive stances as well as wild blow, Anet needs to remove elemental weapons from the game to bring on the reign of PHYSICAL RESISTANCE!!!

Seriously, I want to use that skill SO badly, but without a cancel stance, one would be trained by warriors and dead within seconds (or at least 66 seconds, as you can't get out of it for that long).