Curse

Greedy Gus · Jul 14, 2009, 12:44 PM // 12:44

Of course macro-management of the overall battle is a factor of skillful play, including the choice to split off one or more characters from the main fight in one or more directions, especially when it entails the decision-making of when to enter into small-scale skirmishes where individual micro plays an even more important role. But even then, many of these decisions have been distilled down to nearly rote pavlovian response in the current state of the game, and your example is quite fitting in this regard (the overwhelming obviousness of it, rather than a tale of some elaborately skillful improvisation that were commonplace years ago).

It's easily arguable that the game has gotten more shallow as it has evolved while being taken apart to abuse and win, and this is the perspective that people are coming from that you need to understand. It's not that playing a mindblast guy could be done by a program; obviously some intelligence is required to think and run around the map. But it's the relative differences and ideals that should be strived for that have been so mismanaged and trashed, and that some people still feel they should speak up for in dwindling hope that ideals & visions for depth will be pursued in the future.

This is a pointless discussion to have as you already know the responses, but want to try and circle through them to somehow catch a technicality. Your entire effort had been to mischaracterize Neo's point about desirability, or you just never understood it. Either way his views are what 90% of the informed posts on these boards looked like years ago, and that they seem so narrow now just might correlate with everyone's proclamations that the game is dead and that the weak community left are the minority who actually agreed with the direction the game took.

Revelations · Jul 14, 2009, 05:06 PM // 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

you'll simply include "splitting" into the net of "skills" that Neo mentioned above. But splitting isn't a skill. It can't be, because if it were a skill you would have to agree that - God forbid - the E/Me Mind Blast template actually takes skill!! Next it'll be "but splitting is a skill everyone should know! I want skills that actually take SKILL to use on my bar!". But that can't be either, because using the E/Me bar still takes skill. Just look at lutz's post (#345). And then it'll be "but those are not REAL skill, REAL skill is Distracting Shot (reflex, anticipation, yomi), Bulls Strike (yomi, timing), and Guardian (anticipation, yomi)".

Grats, you just worked out that mindblast eles require split awareness. Now compare that to the plethora of additional abilities required to play a decent ranger and repost.

lutz · Jul 14, 2009, 06:56 PM // 18:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Of course macro-management of the overall battle is a factor of skillful play, including the choice to split off one or more characters from the main fight in one or more directions, especially when it entails the decision-making of when to enter into small-scale skirmishes where individual micro plays an even more important role. But even then, many of these decisions have been distilled down to nearly rote pavlovian response in the current state of the game, and your example is quite fitting in this regard (the overwhelming obviousness of it, rather than a tale of some elaborately skillful improvisation that were commonplace years ago).

It's easily arguable that the game has gotten more shallow as it has evolved while being taken apart to abuse and win, and this is the perspective that people are coming from that you need to understand. It's not that playing a mindblast guy could be done by a program; obviously some intelligence is required to think and run around the map. But it's the relative differences and ideals that should be strived for that have been so mismanaged and trashed, and that some people still feel they should speak up for in dwindling hope that ideals & visions for depth will be pursued in the future.

This is a pointless discussion to have as you already know the responses, but want to try and circle through them to somehow catch a technicality. Your entire effort had been to mischaracterize Neo's point about desirability, or you just never understood it. Either way his views are what 90% of the informed posts on these boards looked like years ago, and that they seem so narrow now just might correlate with everyone's proclamations that the game is dead and that the weak community left are the minority who actually agreed with the direction the game took.

I'm pretty sure E/D eles require more individual awareness and micro when on split, since you have to be aware about healing your allies at touch range and not dying and not getting interrupted. You have to continuously make the choice of: heal ally or do damage? If you don't do enough damage, things don't die, and you eventually will. If you don't heal enough, you die. You also have to maintain at least 2 enchantments for any of your skills to do anything, so it's pretty critical to constantly be doing something.

Regardless, you're probably terrible, since this is what you're saying:

WE SHOULD ALL SIT AT STAND AND HONOR 8V8 FOR 28 MINUTES BECAUSE WHOEVER GETS MORE POWER BLOCKS, DIVERSIONS AND DSHOTS OFF SHOULD WIN RIGHT? THERE SHOULD BE NO OTHER WAY OF PLAYING THE GAME.

I don't even think you play this game anymore, or you haven't played GvG at a respectable level for at least 2 years, since all you're talking about is absolute garbage.

Look at the old Ether Prodigy flagger bar. What micro did it have on it? Was there ever a "oh man, this skill is so hard to use" skill? No. I mean, if you really want to simplify every bar down to its non-macro capability, they're all pretty easy actually. Blessed Light Mo/A monks turned into - "heal low hexed/condi'd targets with Blessed Light", prot stuff that's getting hit, run away with your assassin skills. E-Surge mesmers turned into: use E-Surge, and all of your skills pretty often. Crip Anguish flaggers turned into: use lots of skills when people come near you, and laugh as they degen out. Tainted Flesh mesmers? lol. Don't even mention smiters and trappers, who were literally "click all your buttons as fast as possible". What it sounds like is you want every class to be a Ranger or Warrior.

scruffy · Jul 14, 2009, 08:02 PM // 20:02

E-Surge mesmers turned into: use E-Surge, and all of your skills pretty often.

i thought that was particularly lol worthy

dom mesmers took precision back then, energy denialing when they weren't on low set, blacking out and galing at opportune times...

i think what you meant to say is that nowadays all mesmers do is use their skills pretty often, pblock on recharge and diversion on recharge and shame on recharge blah blah blah

*a-net buff energy denial skills please because right now any character that can do 100 damage on a small recharge does more energy denial than a mesmer does*

Master Fuhon · Jul 14, 2009, 08:19 PM // 20:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Neo already crushed this topic, showing an admirable patience in dealing with you, jeydra, fuhon, etc when most of us couldn't be bothered. Eden just crushed your recent bent in post #354, again reiterating the ideas already posted in this thread.

Everyone can push their own opinions, but trying to characterize the entire credible gvg community as backing you here is just wrong.

You contradict your own criticism of players who you say ‘do not represent the GvG community’, because at this point, you are making declarations of arguments you were never a part of.

If you manage to propose reasoning opposed to any of my previous positions, I will discuss the reasoning and defend as necessary. I stopped the conversation with Neo based on it revolving around the claims of a dictionary; I can’t argue with a representative of someone else’s argument. But I was giving that argument based on the claim that someone could successfully implement enjoyable builds that the whole community would agree are desirable. My view was based on applying observations that desire is an illusion; a claim that goes back at least as far as Siddhārtha Gautama. A common dictionary definition is representative of what people from a particular time period think, rather than what is. People who write dictionaries have not beaten desire to see it from the outside.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

This is a pointless discussion to have as you already know the responses, but want to try and circle through them to somehow catch a technicality. Your entire effort had been to mischaracterize Neo's point about desirability, or you just never understood it. Either way his views are what 90% of the informed posts on these boards looked like years ago, and that they seem so narrow now just might correlate with everyone's proclamations that the game is dead and that the weak community left are the minority who actually agreed with the direction the game took.

The past community was not defined by ‘knowledge’ but by exploration of knowledge; the game was still new and the posts looked like “this is what I do” and “this is what happens when I do this”. Now it looks like “this is what everyone should do” and “this is what should happen when someone does this”. But since you didn’t understand my argument with Neo, you won’t see that this happened because the players are stuck in desire. The first time a person made the claim about something needing to be changed and became a focal point; this was a person who had removed at least an illusionary layer of desire. When it was imitated, it was done by people still caught up in a large illusion of desire. Let’s be realistic; when the desire illusion started to wear off, people pursued the same illusion.

The changes being made now are the changes that have always been made. Someone gets a chance to win with his own desirable build, and then the build and the strategy get obliterated so that another desirable build can win. What Neo said should be done is what is being done, and what is being done is exactly what I argued against. The classes that stay desirable are full of so many defensive passives (Rangers, Monks, Warriors) and the classes that continue to get obliterated are the expansion classes and midliners. So the big 3 are kept into play because they are ‘desirable’. Point the finger at individuals, call out names; the skill balancing strategy has not changed. If it really was oriented at fixing overused/overpowered stuff, Apply Poison and warrior IAS would have been nerfed. Mind Blast was added to the equation and the equation was not changed.

The people who are responsible for the state of Mind Blast are the people playing the same favorite class/build all of the time, confirming how ‘desirable’ it is to play them (think Shadow Form). It’s what the designers chose to stick to when a first batch of changes produced an exodus of players, not something they came up with by listening to forum discussion. Skill balances are about giving builds time in the spotlight, to appeal to people who want to win and only want to play one thing. This was how the old guard was replaced originally, and that is how the new guard will be replaced. Those who stick around get used to the change, play the classes that change less, or accept not winning all the time.

lutz · Jul 14, 2009, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by scruffy

E-Surge mesmers turned into: use E-Surge, and all of your skills pretty often.

i thought that was particularly lol worthy

dom mesmers took precision back then, energy denialing when they weren't on low set, blacking out and galing at opportune times...

i think what you meant to say is that nowadays all mesmers do is use their skills pretty often, pblock on recharge and diversion on recharge and shame on recharge blah blah blah

*a-net buff energy denial skills please because right now any character that can do 100 damage on a small recharge does more energy denial than a mesmer does*

No, Feanor, you're forgetting the main point, which is micro is so much more important than macro! I mean, macro (which includes awareness of when to use skills and when opportune moments pop up) is so useless, pfft, who cares about the timing to use Gale or Blackout - all you have to do is click a button! According to him, skill is in interrupts and quarterstepping, not anything about caster awareness.

Aeon221 · Jul 14, 2009, 08:53 PM // 20:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

If you managed to actually read posts, you'd notice that the macro-sense of the game is far more important than anything else. You're "good" if you have a good macro-sense of the game. Macro isn't necessarily basic stuff, since a lot of skirmishes come down to how good the players are on each side. It comes down to a TA-style format, except you can disengage whenever you want (provided you don't get snared), and you don't need to "stay alive forever" - instead, you just only need to "stay alive long enough for your monks to arrive". These skirmish-based battles are highly skill-based.

No wait, you're probably going to edit this post to fit exactly how you think the game should be played.

I can't say I give much of a crap about the thread -- I'm here to take pot shots at eles -- but I did enjoy this paragraph especially.

The Duke of Parma came to an essentially similar conclusion. The difference in experience between a raw recruit and a veteran soldier showed not at all in mass battles, but was crucial in the skirmish.

So, really, it's a perfect encapsulation of why HA requires less skill than GvG.

Jeydra · Jul 14, 2009, 10:36 PM // 22:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

Grats, you just worked out that mindblast eles require split awareness. Now compare that to the plethora of additional abilities required to play a decent ranger and repost.

Read post #345, and then repost.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

This is a pointless discussion to have as you already know the responses, but want to try and circle through them to somehow catch a technicality. Your entire effort had been to mischaracterize Neo's point about desirability, or you just never understood it. Either way his views are what 90% of the informed posts on these boards looked like years ago, and that they seem so narrow now just might correlate with everyone's proclamations that the game is dead and that the weak community left are the minority who actually agreed with the direction the game took.

I wasn't into serious PvP three years ago, so I can't comment. I can only comment on what I've seen - and what I have seen in my time was a desire to nerf anything that doesn't conform to the so-called "balanced" build. Perhaps the E/Me template is a bit silly, but read Ensign's posts #125 and #128.

I've said this before elsewhere and I'll say it again. All things being equal I'd pick the option that takes more skill, but when things are not equal "skill" takes a very distant back seat. Neo's ideas of desirability are certainly good, but only when the options are equal, and in this case they aren't. I would much rather split stay viable instead of dead.

Far as I'm concerned Ensign crushed every counterargument earlier in this thread. You can claim the opposite, but that's what I read it as.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

WE SHOULD ALL SIT AT STAND AND HONOR 8V8 FOR 28 MINUTES BECAUSE WHOEVER GETS MORE POWER BLOCKS, DIVERSIONS AND DSHOTS OFF SHOULD WIN RIGHT? THERE SHOULD BE NO OTHER WAY OF PLAYING THE GAME.

That's not all, you should include:

WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS BUILD AND ONLY THIS BUILD AND IF WE PLAY IT WELL WE SHOULD WIN AGAINST ANY OTHER BUILD.

I DO NOT WANT TO RUN WARRIOR'S CUNNING BECAUSE THE SKILL IS BAD.
WITHOUT WARRIOR'S CUNNING I CAN'T KILL E/ME'S.
PLEASE NERF E/ME'S.

Greedy Gus · Jul 14, 2009, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

I'm pretty sure E/D eles require more individual awareness and micro when on split, since you have to be aware about healing your allies at touch range and not dying and not getting interrupted. You have to continuously make the choice of: heal ally or do damage? If you don't do enough damage, things don't die, and you eventually will. If you don't heal enough, you die. You also have to maintain at least 2 enchantments for any of your skills to do anything, so it's pretty critical to constantly be doing something.

This is just laughable to the point where it looks like parody of your own opinion. Either you truly have no perspective to see how much of a joke this tough decision-making is, or you're just trolling everyone.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

Look at the old Ether Prodigy flagger bar. What micro did it have on it? Was there ever a "oh man, this skill is so hard to use" skill? No. I mean, if you really want to simplify every bar down to its non-macro capability, they're all pretty easy actually. Blessed Light Mo/A monks turned into - "heal low hexed/condi'd targets with Blessed Light", prot stuff that's getting hit, run away with your assassin skills. E-Surge mesmers turned into: use E-Surge, and all of your skills pretty often. Crip Anguish flaggers turned into: use lots of skills when people come near you, and laugh as they degen out. Tainted Flesh mesmers? lol. Don't even mention smiters and trappers, who were literally "click all your buttons as fast as possible". What it sounds like is you want every class to be a Ranger or Warrior.

I actually flagged before e-prod was reworked, when flaggers dueled on rangers, mesmers, and some eles, and then when flaggers became heal party + team support chars (and I created and ran an early support E/Mo flagger before anyone at least in the top 100). I can honestly say that individual decision-making (micro and macro) played a much bigger role then compared to today, mostly based on power creep. Back then, good flaggers were much more distinguishable from adequate ones, to the point where everyone knew specific flaggers like LuLu and Ensign for skill and/or innovation, or specific teams like EviL for team flagging strategies. The difference is that now everyone has a bar full of super tools to accomplish whatever they need to do, and they need to do less due to power creep of the other characters' skills. When all of your skills pretty much suck, then it does require good micro to get the needed production. Most people would be hard pressed to name any great flaggers anymore, as it just isn't as punishing on mistakes or open to excellent play giving an edge.

There have always been and always will be templates with less individual micro like some you mention. But the point elaborated on in this thread is that there can be higher ideals to strive for, and characters' effectiveness should better resemble their level of desirability if the developers want a game with more depth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

Regardless, you're probably terrible, since this is what you're saying:

WE SHOULD ALL SIT AT STAND AND HONOR 8V8 FOR 28 MINUTES BECAUSE WHOEVER GETS MORE POWER BLOCKS, DIVERSIONS AND DSHOTS OFF SHOULD WIN RIGHT? THERE SHOULD BE NO OTHER WAY OF PLAYING THE GAME.

I don't even think you play this game anymore, or you haven't played GvG at a respectable level for at least 2 years, since all you're talking about is absolute garbage.

For context, I played in one of the first american guilds to bring korean 4/4 split to our meta in top 40 during gwwc and qualified for the american regionals. I made and played a number of early heavy offense 6/2 and 5/3 splits designed to counter the metas throughout 2006. In early 07 with sof I helped bring back classic Te balanced when everyone was experimenting with hexway, recall split, and eurospike, and we played in a style to gain a reputation as a very good split guild. That was probably the last golden age of 'try shit' fluid split, and we played nightly against teams like MH, FFs, dV, OUT, etc. playing similar stuff and had amazing 20 min intense constant split druids/frozen games. Then we played heavy physical split during blockway and did way better than we should have.
I also played obs flame spike in GWWC, playing nightly against iQ's rangerspike and EP's & Prav's mixed spikes. I made a strong spike/pressure build and ran it into the top 10 during a GWFC season right before factions came out that was nearly identical to KGYU's future classic condi pressure. And I have played primarily melee pressure or balanced ranger/dom shutdown builds whenever I've played the last few years after the game devolved post-NF as it changed meta to meta based on huge skillbalances.

My perspective is from playing in and actively participating in the community during all of GW's best periods and some of the worst, with every playstyle imaginable, and from various vantage-points of rank from competitive top 30 to casual sub-500. From that perspective I'll call anything as I see it, knowing how high the bar can be set for a vision of where things could potentially be.

Anyway I'm not even arguing about the fire ele at this point, but someone had to chime in that you're terribly wrong and Eden was right.

Reverend Dr · Jul 15, 2009, 07:01 AM // 07:01

The most confounding issue of mind blasts is that a single mind blast on the split can win a game, yet not once ever threaten the guild lord's life.

Mind Blast is the splinter weapon of the new end-game meta.

Yue · Jul 15, 2009, 01:37 PM // 13:37

Quote:

heal ally or do damage? If you don't do enough damage, things don't die, and you eventually will. If you don't heal enough, you die.

Old bloodspike.

Quote:

This makes a really shitty argument. My VoR bar applies:

The VoR bar doesn't have the added utility of blowing shit up on demand, funneling damage on demand (and no, wastrel's isn't it), and is notoriously easy to kill, not to mention there's no energy management. It's a much more fragile template, and one that's out of place in anything outside of a hex build. And even if you run a hex build, splitting that mesmer off to solo gank the lord will yield quite different results than splitting a MB ele.

the Puppeteer · Jul 17, 2009, 12:31 AM // 00:31

So I heard anti-block skills/ block punishing skills are good...

Revelations · Jul 17, 2009, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Read post #345, and then repost.

Honestly, did you even read all 25ish words in my post? Every single thing that Protoss wrote other than "keep your attune up" is required by every single character on a gvg team, backline partly excluded. The mindblast bar requires ONLY this - literally the only skill that you don't basically mash on recharge is meteor. Obviously there are small exceptions to this, such as not being stupid with attune and slightly limiting Trogdor when your blue bar is a bit low (lol).

Compare this to skills on a warrior or ranger bar. Mashing bulls on recharge isn't going to do shit. Spamming interrupts on recharge is going to get you laughed at, unless it's poison spreading with savage. Mashing natty stride on recharge is going to get you spiked in it's downtime. Dchop on recharge isn't going to hit a thing. Shock on recharge, lol. Look at the huge decision you need to make every time you activate frenzy. Is your cancel up? Are their warriors near you if not? Do you have a midliner keeping an eye on you? If you blow some adrenaline are you going to be able to not explode if you get turned on? For most decent warriors this decision has become second nature, but it takes a shitton more game skill/knowledge than knowing whether or not you should use <insert standard non-meteor mindblast skill here>. Also, on that warrior, you still need every single macro/split awareness skill that the mindblast does, perhaps more, since you don't have an insane defensive skill to keep you up long enough to get back to a backline.

The derv variant requires slightly more awareness than the distortion one, though in micro terms it still requires nothing of the ability of a good warrior/ranger/most other split characters. I agree that it requires a lot of macro awareness, however every single other split bar does, andthis is stupidly easy to achieve when you don't have to focus on the micro awareness of your bar as well.

Nittle Grasper · Jul 17, 2009, 06:55 PM // 18:55

Increase the requirement for the +1e per spell casts for AoR, I'm more than sure that's where the core problem was in the first place as no would suddenly realize that MB+distortion=good idea JUST now. If AoR required 12ES then peps would have to spec 11ES+1 for the 12ES, which means peps can only spec 6 into other skills. Distoration would only last 3 secs instead of 4, Dwanya's Touch would heal for 90ish (attune+AoR+Featherfoot, 100+on yourself), Featherfoot would only lasts 11 secs (13 with enchant mod) making peps unable to perma maintain it. And worse comes to comes worse Flame Djinn's replaces AoR :/

Ec]-[oMaN · Jul 17, 2009, 07:09 PM // 19:09

The energy return from AOR isn't why it's taken, it's a cover enchant and heals up the tiny dmg taken through distortion. Sure it's a bonus, but that's about it.

Razz L Dazzle · Jul 17, 2009, 09:08 PM // 21:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ec]-[oMaN

The energy return from AOR isn't why it's taken, it's a cover enchant and heals up the tiny dmg taken through distortion. Sure it's a bonus, but that's about it.

I'd prefer a nerf to Distortion- 5 energy 8 recharge. (-3 energy per block)

Opens a window of vulnerability. (50% down time) I'm not a big fan of Distortion elementalists and would almost prefer it switched to fast casting and allow Domination mesmers to run it. Since the trend is becoming stances over party wide blocks. I think the -3 is a sufficeinet deterent to energy pools and makes the stance more balanced.

I'm fine with mind blast and Aura. Only other part of this template that bothers me is the duration of featherfoot grace on the E/D. I'd shorten the duration so it can't be permanently maintained then i'd be ok with the Mind Blaster.

Lishy · Jul 17, 2009, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Distortion is getting a nerf next month. Linsey told me a week ago or so <_<

Jeydra · Jul 18, 2009, 12:17 AM // 00:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

Honestly, did you even read all 25ish words in my post? Every single thing that Protoss wrote other than "keep your attune up" is required by every single character on a gvg team, backline partly excluded. The mindblast bar requires ONLY this - literally the only skill that you don't basically mash on recharge is meteor. Obviously there are small exceptions to this, such as not being stupid with attune and slightly limiting Trogdor when your blue bar is a bit low (lol).

Compare this to skills on a warrior or ranger bar. Mashing bulls on recharge isn't going to do shit. Spamming interrupts on recharge is going to get you laughed at, unless it's poison spreading with savage. Mashing natty stride on recharge is going to get you spiked in it's downtime. Dchop on recharge isn't going to hit a thing. Shock on recharge, lol. Look at the huge decision you need to make every time you activate frenzy. Is your cancel up? Are their warriors near you if not? Do you have a midliner keeping an eye on you? If you blow some adrenaline are you going to be able to not explode if you get turned on? For most decent warriors this decision has become second nature, but it takes a shitton more game skill/knowledge than knowing whether or not you should use <insert standard non-meteor mindblast skill here>. Also, on that warrior, you still need every single macro/split awareness skill that the mindblast does, perhaps more, since you don't have an insane defensive skill to keep you up long enough to get back to a backline.

The derv variant requires slightly more awareness than the distortion one, though in micro terms it still requires nothing of the ability of a good warrior/ranger/most other split characters. I agree that it requires a lot of macro awareness, however every single other split bar does, andthis is stupidly easy to achieve when you don't have to focus on the micro awareness of your bar as well.

We're right back at the skill argument, and I'm going to skip the niceties to get to the point.

The point is: I don't care. Given two unequal choices skill goes out the window. The E/Me Mind Blast template does (or perhaps did, since it's gotten a lot less common lately) the great job of keeping splitting alive. Removing it extracts a great price in build variety.

If you are going to argue that the so-called skillless nature of the E/Me template warrants it nerfing, then I ask you to exhibit an alternative that keeps splitting viable. Until you do, I'll oppose nerfing it.

PS: I'd sure love the day when the only viable characters are Rangers and Warriors, since they take so much skill. I'm sure the game will be so fun when the only way to win is to DChop / DShot each other's Healing Signets

Revelations · Jul 18, 2009, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Jeydra, WHY is it that you don't consider other splits viable in the current meta? What factors do you believe are preventing other templates from splitting?

Because I'm pretty damn sure that two near invincible eles with 75% block chance collapsing on you/raping your base is a pretty good incentive not to split something other than a similarly powerful bar. Plus a cripshot to ensure that something dies.

Splitting warriors is just not viable against distortion. Splitting a ranger is going to be similarly effective unless he's cripshot. The only bar that can really stand up to those guys on a split is shatterstone. You would probably find a much larger split diversity were the mindblast bar to take a hit.

Jeydra · Jul 18, 2009, 08:44 AM // 08:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Revelations

Jeydra, WHY is it that you don't consider other splits viable in the current meta? What factors do you believe are preventing other templates from splitting?

I don't know. Why don't you tell me? Why was it that before the buff to Mind Blast splitting didn't occur in appreciable amounts? What was it that prevented other templates from splitting?