Curse

twicky_kid · Sep 14, 2007, 07:24 AM // 07:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

Way too read a post. What Zur was saying is that warriors were insanely strong back in the era when people would only take wards+a blindbot or aegis. And lots of people started dying.

I agree here. Defensive capabilities are too huge, I really, really want more deaths on a gvg. 50% block cap?

Warriors haven't really changed from a year and a half ago. They have always had the same bar with 1 open skill slot.

Wards have changed to block instead of evade but that makes no difference in how the skill works. In fact less wards are being used now than before. Melee, Foes, and Stability used to be common to run into. Blind bots still exist. Aegis has been around just as well. Its now moved from the ele/mo blind bot and flagger to the monks.

All the defensive skills from back then are being used right now. Add in SoD, DA, WYS, and LoD up to today. Now, we do have more defense now but VoD comes much faster. So you have a combination of highly defensive builds and a very short amount of time to break the defense. There has not been a huge flux in defensive skills being used but the VoD timer is the real culprit to me. Its ok to have defensive skills just give me the time to be able to work through them.

Ec]-[oMaN · Sep 14, 2007, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

There has not been a huge flux in defensive skills being used but the VoD timer is the real culprit to me. Its ok to have defensive skills just give me the time to be able to work through them.

I do feel it is a tad too early, but increasing it to 30min is ridiculous. Furthermore I don't really agree with the saying that increasing VOD gives you more time to break the D, if you couldn't do it and score kills in 18 what's to say you will in any amount of time? People simply want these matches to drag on longer? Plz... if anything because of your team lacking you want to further bore the match out in hope of mistakes...

Zuranthium · Sep 14, 2007, 04:05 PM // 16:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theli

Bull's Strike: increased recharge time to 10 seconds.

Yes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

In fact less wards are being used now than before. Melee, Foes, and Stability used to be common to run into. Blind bots still exist. Aegis has been around just as well. Its now moved from the ele/mo blind bot and flagger to the monks.

You needed Ether Prodigy to power all of that. Ward and Aegis are more accessible with GoLE around and also more powerful because of the ability to fake-out the cast and increase the chance of avoiding interrupts.

They seriously need to cost 15 energy.

~Z

Greedy Gus · Sep 14, 2007, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Wow, no. If GoLE and SoD had been in their current forms a year and a half ago, we would have constantly seen the majority of teams bringing all of Ward, Aegis, and SoD. In the past people DID get slaughtered back-and-forth in matches because the defensive networks weren't as strong. Eviscerate and Bull's Strike used to be even better than they are now and Gale was on a 3 second knockdown, remember. It's not like teams were gimped offensively.

I never argued that teams were gimped offensively. My whole point is that meta defense conforms to meta offense. Before factions, and still before NF, the gold standard most popular balanced build was dual warrior, dual mesmer, dual ele, dual monk; the EvIL archtype. Sometimes people would run the primary Te version with a ranger instead of 2nd mesmer. When the average physical offense you are worrying about is 2 warriors, or possible 2 warriors and 1 ranger, having any more than 1 level of passive physical defense is extraneous and wasting resources in the wrong area. The standard defense was a flagstand ele with water snares or blinding flash, sometimes with a single ward, and a heal party.

Now, the standard most popular balanced build has a paragon in place of the flagstand ele, and many even run a 2nd one in place of a ranger or mesmer. It's not hard to see why teams have to ramp up their physical defense in response, and moreover, because it's coming from more sources on average, the passive/spread defense is even more important.

Now of course you have to account for a few other things. This passive defense has a tipping point where once you have enough layers, each layer individually is going to be more worthwhile. Now add the fact that the majority of the current player-base is the monkey-see-monkey-do type, who have come up the ranks more quickly than a natural skillful progression due to top teams leaving. And we end up with blockway getting out of control. If it's the dominant strategy at a tournament level to reach that tipping point of having 3-4 layers of defense (which happens to be fairly easy to run, rather difficult to counter), it's going to spread like wildfire on the ladder.

Most people have known for at least ~one and a half years that there's an intricate balance between offense and defense (that it seems anet almost accidently stumbled upon, because they don't seem to mind screwing it up). That is that there is a good balance point of 2 warriors + support vs. active defense + monks. For every extra warrior (in the past, derv/para included now), active defense (snares, blinds, etc.) is weakened, and passive defense is strengthened. The opposite is also true (don't want a ward or aegis when the team has 1 warrior and extra shutdown/control, you want active snares/blinds on that warrior).

There was always an option to run 3 warriors or more, but the threat of coming up against passive defense that cockblocks your offense in addition to the opportunity cost to your defense/shutdown in bringing that extra melee guy was enough to hold the balance in place (you could do it, but there were risks/rewards, and it depended on the meta).

The balanced build paradigm shift in NF to adding a paragon as the 3rd mainstay physical pressure character tipped the delicate balance. BTW, this was without the same opportunity costs of running a 3rd melee, because paragons have solid defensive options and a ranged attack. The problem is that it necessitates extra passive defense (remember, active defense is weakened by additional characters needing shutdown), but passive defense options are fairly bad by themself. Aegis, ward melee, or D Anthem alone aren't that difficult to shutdown, especially in terms of just opening a window to slaughter the other guy in. But when they're together they become strong enough to hold out.

As far as my personal experience, I've had first-hand experience of the old delicate balance being thrown off. My guild was one of if not the first guild to run nothing but a solid balanced build (using the old Te archetype) in 2007, at least in the top 100. This was in february/march, when the meta was still trying to find it's place between NF stuff that was still overpowered, SF/eurohex/recall split/etc. Our defense consisted of a flagstand water ele and two stance monks. We didn't run aegis monks even when it was huge, because it wasn't as fun / prefer to run admirable stuff / we're scrubs / whatever.

Anyway, it was very apparent that a single cruel spear paragon addition to the other team makes active defense not viable. At best our water ele can blurred the para instead of the ranger and continue to pump snares out against the wars when possible, and/or we can bring up the bsurge/icy shackles flagger to assist while a war runs the flag, but they just don't work well. You really are forced to bring passive defense into a balanced build to handle 2 wars + para + ranger builds (which is itself, a balanced build due to the defense the para brings). And you can't just bring one aegis, or a ward; those get blown up by the enemy mes or ranger way too easily.

The options are now to give up on the balanced build and run a steamroll type build (which furthers the meta toward heavy passive defense btw), run an additional active defense flagstand character (makes your build not so balanced, much more spikey), or to join in and run 2-3 layers of passive defense.

Some people say that this meta is a recent development due to the more recent skill balances, but I disagree. I think this is close to the balanced version of the game post-NF, it just took awhile to see because izzy is bad at balancing for a competitive game (for the first 10 months after NF, he was still balancing by forcing new metagames on us [hexes/etc.], and taking his time at that), and degenerate stuff fuzzies the meta to say the least. I do believe that at this point, we have the fundamental game, and you can finally see how NF broke (in various ways) the subtle interesting gameplay nuances like offense vs. defense, active vs. passive defense, & battle lines / positional play. I don't think it's a skill balance issue, though of course skill balance can fix it (nerf something to oblivion and it will disappear, whether the problem was the numbers on the skill or the new mechanics/interactions).

There are however, definitely skill balance problems that exacerbated the issue. I don't disagree with you at all that some defensive options are just too powerful, and stuff like glyph lesser brought in some unsavory playstyles. Things like smited trees with spammable eviscerate, and assassin instagib shadow prison combos introduced in NF pushed the offensive threat level to new extremes which also make heavy defensive options attractive/necessary.

But, I will continue to disagree with the popular (albeit less so in the past week, people seem to be understanding better) opinion about passive defense skill balance being the main culprit of the current boring gameplay. I'll admit that one area of the theory/balance discussion that I may not understand well enough to judge the effect of atm is how dom mesmers have been changed & neutered in different ways since the past, a point ensign and others have brought up recently.

Bankai · Sep 14, 2007, 09:18 PM // 21:18

I don't think it's the defense that's boring, but the way the defense works. For example, compare it to this. You have a level 28 warrior boss. He's attacking a monk. The monk has some dp, so he'd die in one hit. You have no prot spirit, but you do have Defensive anthem, Aegis, Wards and SoD. Now, it just becomes a game of chance.

Shmanka · Sep 15, 2007, 12:11 AM // 00:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

I don't think it's the defense that's boring, but the way the defense works. For example, compare it to this. You have a level 28 warrior boss. He's attacking a monk. The monk has some dp, so he'd die in one hit. You have no prot spirit, but you do have Defensive anthem, Aegis, Wards and SoD. Now, it just becomes a game of chance.

100% wards kick ass too.

Zuranthium · Sep 15, 2007, 01:27 AM // 01:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

I never argued that teams were gimped offensively. My whole point is that meta defense conforms to meta offense.

Yes, that's true, but only in that teams will adapt their defense to the meta - not lessen how much they can bring. People are going to use whatever is the absolute highest amount of defense that can be placed into a build and still leave enough room for the offense to push a kill through from time to time. Not EVERYONE will do this, obviously, but as long as the option is there it's going to happen.

Regardless of offensive options being somewhat stronger overall right now than in the past, people 1.5 years ago still would have run the amount of defense that is seen today if they had been able to. Battles used to be gritty matches where teams constantly traded kills and pushed each other back and forth a lot. If you could create a team back then with the amount of defense that is available today, the benefit is that you almost never have to push back and recoup and the other team becomes overwhelmed. So at the present, with all that defense in place, everyone sits around at the flagstand and a kills only happen half as often, if that much, depending on who was able to find the correct timing to push a kill through.

Thanks for the lengthy, passionate post. It's great to hear a beating heart.

~Z

Greedy Gus · Sep 15, 2007, 01:44 AM // 01:44

I think part of what I missed to recognize was the complete swap of priorities. You're wrong that teams 1.5 years ago would have run the same defense teams run now if they were able to. Because back with the old ladder/season system and old VoD, teams ran only as much defense as absolutely necessary, and pumped everything else into offense. Around the time iQ curbstomped iB & EvIL by playing VoD so well, this style completely reversed to what you mentioned, only having as much offense as absolutely necessary, and pumping everything else into defense.

Part of it is that the defensive emphasis works better in tournament play, which Anet has tried to push to ladder into, and part of it is the increasingly shorter gametime before VoD.

I think I'm still largely correct about the paragon / defense issue, but I admit that you're very likely correct that fixing it won't fix the defensive gameplay. I'm not sure how to reverse that trend. Vanq has been posting ideas on the pros of the old ladder system, which inadvertently fixed the offense/defense balance by putting a premium on playing a lot of matches in order to scramble for rating in a short season. That's not a very elegant fix though, more of a band-aid regression, especially because it breaks down at the premier (tournament) level.

Vanquisher · Sep 15, 2007, 02:53 AM // 02:53

Nerfing passive defense would go a long way into fixing that problem. Of course, a lot of the offensive options would also have to be toned down, but it's pretty clear that the costs of most defensive options are nowhere near balanced with respect to the benefits they provide.

Zuranthium · Sep 15, 2007, 02:58 AM // 02:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

I think part of what I missed to recognize was the complete swap of priorities. You're wrong that teams 1.5 years ago would have run the same defense teams run now if they were able to. Because back with the old ladder/season system and old VoD, teams ran only as much defense as absolutely necessary, and pumped everything else into offense. Around the time iQ curbstomped iB & EvIL by playing VoD so well, this style completely reversed to what you mentioned, only having as much offense as absolutely necessary, and pumping everything else into defense.

That is true, but people were were still trying balanced builds in the style of today (defensive, spikey). In HA, that was actually a common template. In GvG, it wasn't as good. It IS really good now, however, and if it had been that good back then, I'm pretty sure the trend would have caught on before iQ made VoD-way relevant.

But, yeah, Paragons (and Wearying Strike!) do need to get toned down along with the problem mass-defense spells. There are literally hundreds of skill/class changes I would like to see (

) but these are clearly the most urgent right now.

~Z

Teh [prefession]-zorz · Sep 15, 2007, 03:32 AM // 03:32

1 question...if they are so much blocking, why don't more people put a Rigoris Mortis on a curse bar?

Zuranthium · Sep 15, 2007, 03:58 AM // 03:58

Rigor = easy to interrupt. People have played around with the skill, though, and it can work sometimes.

Degen also goes through blocking but not everyone wants to, or should have to, play hexes.

~Z

twicky_kid · Sep 15, 2007, 05:37 AM // 05:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teh [prefession]-zorz

1 question...if they are so much blocking, why don't more people put a Rigoris Mortis on a curse bar?

Extremely long recharge for a skill that can simply be removed.

Riotgear · Sep 15, 2007, 07:11 AM // 07:11

Quote:

but it's pretty clear that the costs of most defensive options are nowhere near balanced with respect to the benefits they provide.

I think the cost is there, it's just that the RISK isn't there. GoLE's mechanics are partly responsible, because it provides its benefit even if the cast fails. Paragons.... is there any risk in doing anything on a Paragon?

Vanquisher · Sep 15, 2007, 07:18 AM // 07:18

The cost is not there. 10 energy and 30s recharge on a skill that can be chained to give all party members a 50% chance to block. Shield's Up is worse.

Riotgear · Sep 15, 2007, 07:56 AM // 07:56

Okay, Aegis is too low at 10e.

The cost is there on Shields Up, the problem is that the cost doesn't matter with Leadership.

Vanquisher · Sep 15, 2007, 01:18 PM // 13:18

When skills are not micro-intensive, such as Shield's Up, DA, Ward, Aegis etc. they should not have benefits anywhere near as high as they do.

Farin · Sep 15, 2007, 06:39 PM // 18:39

You used to be able to do other stuff rather than stay at the stand the entire game. If you were a warrior you could run up to a flagger and actually threaten to kill him . Nowadays they just put up SoR up and laugh at your face so it's a pretty dumb thing to do.

Neo-LD · Sep 15, 2007, 07:09 PM // 19:09

If you look at it that way, nerfing SoR would instantly make an entire family of builds viable again. /ponder.

lacasner · Sep 15, 2007, 07:50 PM // 19:50

Guided Weapon=10 energy
SoR=+24 armor

Would this solve anything?