Curse

Yelling @ Cats · Jul 26, 2010, 10:09 PM // 22:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

Strength wasn't even brought up. I don't know what you are reading, but it sure isn't this thread.

Oh, sorry, I thought you said reducing nature rituals cast time would make them viable.

Oh that's right, you did.

I can understand not keeping up with what I'm saying, but come on, at least try to keep up with what you are saying.

Xiaquin · Jul 26, 2010, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yelling @ Cats

/snip

Practicability and power are the same thing now? You keep changing your words. We're done here, moving on.

Yelling @ Cats · Jul 27, 2010, 01:34 AM // 01:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

Practicability and power are the same thing now? You keep changing your words. We're done here, moving on.

Yes, yes they are.

Even though you have yet to mention "practical". I said "reducing the cast time won't make them viable for the majority of PvE".

You responded with "It worked for ritualists"

This just shows a blatant disconnect with the game. Nature Rituals aren't impractical because of their cast time, they are impracticable because 9 times out of 10, they are more detrimental to your team than they are the enemy, and when they aren't detrimental, they are a wash with no benefit.

And to finish off the response, yes, if a skill is weak as hell, it is impractical to bring on a limited skill bar, DUCY?

Morphy · Jul 27, 2010, 03:23 PM // 15:23

Just fyi, it's perfectly possible to build your team around a NR. Nature's Renewal, for example, doesn't affect Weapon Spells. Abuse it.

To Chicken To Die · Jul 28, 2010, 07:41 AM // 07:41

Nature rituals is just a non completed concept for changing the enviorment and basicly the battle grounds. It would be fun if the spirits would become natrual making them unkillable (offourse with ballanced changes on durations and recharge).

Traps are what they are traps. Attacks you don't see or notice untill your on it. Traps are already powerfull enough to kill others

Apok · Jul 28, 2010, 08:05 AM // 08:05

I'd like to point out that, even if Nature Rituals are buffed via casttime and recharge, people will still only use EoE.

You see, Ritualist spirits had the benefit of only affecting either the opponents or the allies. Nature Rituals, on the other hand, require a whole gimmick be made just to be effective.

Wanna use NR? Well, bring Tranq too because you sure as hell are not bringing enchantments and they might.

Wanna run Favorable Winds? You better have a bunch of bows out and ready to fire.

Muddy Terrain? No speed buffs!

Quicksand? Signets, or a bunch of e-management.

Primal Echoes? Why bring signets at all?

QZ? Only if you have ER Prots, EP healers, or Necro/Rits.

(Greater) Conflagaration? Either bring fire shields or run Mantra of Flame.

Is this a bad thing? Hell no! If anything, it is the perfect example of zone-preperation. Watch PvP and you will see teams using these tactics based on what meta they have to counter, and the spirits they use haven't been changed for years. (well, you used to, and then NF came....)

Also, why buff traps? Even if they were instant cast, no one would run up to a mob and put them down; they'd either get killed or just end up doing less damage than a DwG rit. Traps are fine: little tactical wtf moments for the team.

Scary · Jul 28, 2010, 08:55 AM // 08:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

I'd like to point out that, even if Nature Rituals are buffed via casttime and recharge, people will still only use EoE.
.

Well, I use a lot more Spirits than only EoE. I love to make ranger based hero teams.
And I will be most likely not the only one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

You see, Ritualist spirits had the benefit of only affecting either the opponents or the allies. Nature Rituals, on the other hand, require a whole gimmick be made just to be effective.
.

True.
The only buff the spirits would need.(pve that is) is that they give the
advantage to the using team. They might change the duration or either
the recharge time of it.
But that would give the spirits a total new life if they did this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

Wanna use NR? Well, bring Tranq too because you sure as hell are not bringing enchantments and they might.

Wanna run Favorable Winds? You better have a bunch of bows out and ready to fire.

Muddy Terrain? No speed buffs!

Quicksand? Signets, or a bunch of e-management.

Primal Echoes? Why bring signets at all?

QZ? Only if you have ER Prots, EP healers, or Necro/Rits.

(Greater) Conflagaration? Either bring fire shields or run Mantra of Flame.

Is this a bad thing? Hell no! If anything, it is the perfect example of zone-preperation. Watch PvP and you will see teams using these tactics based on what meta they have to counter, and the spirits they use haven't been changed for years. (well, you used to, and then NF came....)

.

That is what makes a game challenging. Take account of the oponents skills
and team builds. It's way to easy at this moment in PvE.
........They should buff the droprate to when they gonna change this

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

Also, why buff traps? Even if they were instant cast, no one would run up to a mob and put them down; they'd either get killed or just end up doing less damage than a DwG rit. Traps are fine: little tactical wtf moments for the team.

Same as spirits.. I use them rather often. Not for offensieve purposes.
But more for defence and spreading conditions.

So, all to the end..
It's just how A player wants to play his game..

I , would like to see some changes to spirits and traps in PvE so they give
ones more a opportunity to make other team builds.
Could use 1 or 2 hero's more in the team dough

oops brought that up again

Xiaquin · Jul 28, 2010, 04:59 PM // 16:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

I'd like to point out that, even if Nature Rituals are buffed via casttime and recharge, people will still only use EoE.

You see, Ritualist spirits had the benefit of only affecting either the opponents or the allies. Nature Rituals, on the other hand, require a whole gimmick be made just to be effective.

Strategy != Gimmick. NR, for example, can work by utilizing weapon spells and direct healing for a back line. Mesmers have plenty of non-hex skills. Necros can run MM or support without a problem. None of those are gimmicks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

Wanna run Favorable Winds? You better have a bunch of bows out and ready to fire.

<---Ranger. I'll take my FW, thank you, because I don't want to be locked into a recurve bow or use up my prep on RtW. As long as you are smart about using it, your benefit is greater than an enemy's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok

Also, why buff traps? Even if they were instant cast, no one would run up to a mob and put them down; they'd either get killed or just end up doing less damage than a DwG rit.

Traps are not meant to be front-line usage. The point of a trap is catch aggro. What with PvE being run at 200mph by SoS, super-buffed physicals and SY! spammers, there's no practical use for them because parties are bulldozers. A long time ago people had ideas to pull enemies into traps. You get laughed at, today. If they were a lot faster (PvE-only, of course) I think it could change some minds. Balance would still be a key issue, since I believe they were/are exploited for trapping all of the UW. Perhaps a page out of GW2, by limiting one of each trap type active at a time.

Morphy · Jul 28, 2010, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

Strategy != Gimmick. NR, for example, can work by utilizing weapon spells and direct healing for a back line. Mesmers have plenty of non-hex skills. Necros can run MM or support without a problem. None of those are gimmicks.

Bro, if anything is a gimmick, this is. A gimmick is a loophole in a game that allows inferior players to beat superior players. Nature's Renewal and running Weapon Spells to work around the downside will give N/Rts an edge over a regular Monk without requiring any skill to do so. That's as obvious a gimmick as it gets.

Please note,as balance isn't important one bit in PvE (despite what people may claim around here, they're deluded fools) this only applies to PvP.

Xiaquin · Jul 28, 2010, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morphy

if anything is a gimmick, this is.

Changing tactics is not a gimmick. You have many types of skills, use them. Strategies don't apply to general use. You can't run NR or any spirit to give you unstoppable power, but each spirit can give your party an advantage if you seize it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morphy

A gimmick is a loophole in a game that allows inferior players to beat superior players. Nature's Renewal and running Weapon Spells to work around the downside will give N/Rts an edge over a regular Monk without requiring any skill to do so.

A loophole implies you are going around the rules. What rules? You have interrupts, you have ways to kill a spirit. PvE gets along fine when enemies use them, PvPers have no excuses here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morphy

Please note,as balance isn't important one bit in PvE (despite what people may claim around here, they're deluded fools) this only applies to PvP.

Well we're going to have a problem getting anywhere in discussion as long as you sweep PvE under the rug. Cooperative and competitive game play is equally important and both worlds have strong communities that deserve balance. I noted above that a speed buff to nature rituals be PvE-only. You're welcome to propose any PvP versions.

Shriketalon · Jul 29, 2010, 12:44 AM // 00:44

The problem with the whole NR discussion is that the amount of work put into designing the team simply isn't worth the rewards.

You have to have the entire team disregarding enchantments or hexes, have to babysit the spirit to stay within its radius yet keep it out of combat (sixty second recharge means that if it fall, it's not coming back for a while), and in return.....hexes and enchantments take longer to cast.

Why bother?

If you are facing multiple hexers of the same type, they are going to be casting redundant spells, so you might as well just have great hex removal. If you are facing a few opponents with horrific spells of terrible magnitude, bring a shutdown mesmer to Migraine/Panic/Frustrate/Arcane Conundrum the hell out of 'em. If enchantments from, say, and enemy monk are a problem, that same mesmer can also shut him down as well.

Nature Spirits just lack punch. Instead of changing the map, they provide tiny little tweaks who's ability to interfere with enemy abilities is simply not worth the restraint they place upon allies. If they are going to be worthwhile, they need to be redesigned to be more synergistic with team abilities.

Yelling @ Cats · Jul 29, 2010, 03:48 AM // 03:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shriketalon

The problem with the whole NR discussion is that the amount of work put into designing the team simply isn't worth the rewards.

You have to have the entire team disregarding enchantments or hexes, have to babysit the spirit to stay within its radius yet keep it out of combat (sixty second recharge means that if it fall, it's not coming back for a while), and in return.....hexes and enchantments take longer to cast.

Why bother?

If you are facing multiple hexers of the same type, they are going to be casting redundant spells, so you might as well just have great hex removal. If you are facing a few opponents with horrific spells of terrible magnitude, bring a shutdown mesmer to Migraine/Panic/Frustrate/Arcane Conundrum the hell out of 'em. If enchantments from, say, and enemy monk are a problem, that same mesmer can also shut him down as well.

Nature Spirits just lack punch. Instead of changing the map, they provide tiny little tweaks who's ability to interfere with enemy abilities is simply not worth the restraint they place upon allies. If they are going to be worthwhile, they need to be redesigned to be more synergistic with team abilities.

Well, that, and most people don't want to rework their build away from something they are comfortable with. I mean, changing weapons to take advantage of OoP is one thing...removing all hexes and enchantments is another. Yes, it can work, yes it can give a slight advantage, but as you said, that advantage is so slight that its laughable.

And to the guy saying it isn't gimmicky...it is about as gimmicky as it gets. The fact that the entire team is building around a skill isn't the only thing that makes it a gimmick, the consequences of the team not building around it is what makes it a gimmick.

Trapping is a gimmick not because trapping itself works, but because if the entire team isn't trapping, it is terrible. Just like how NR is a gimmick because if the team doesn't build around it, it hurts your team just as much if not more than the other team.

Morphy · Jul 29, 2010, 05:28 AM // 05:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiaquin

Changing tactics is not a gimmick. You have many types of skills, use them. Strategies don't apply to general use. You can't run NR or any spirit to give you unstoppable power, but each spirit can give your party an advantage if you seize it.

I don't know what you're trying to prove with this but until you disprove my arguments for it being a gimmick the useless fluff that you bring up here won't mean anything. As for strategies not applying to general use, Nature's Renewal actually does apply to general use (ie: the team build that uses it doesn't have hard counters) in HA so that would make it... Not a strategy?

Quote:

A loophole implies you are going around the rules. What rules? You have interrupts, you have ways to kill a spirit. PvE gets along fine when enemies use them, PvPers have no excuses here.

What rules? Why, what about the very fundaments of balance? I pretty much explained it in the sentence itself, it violates the very first rule of balance: the fact that inferior players should always be defeated by superior players.

The problem lies in the fact that you are always prepared for the Enchantment/Hex hostile environment and your opponent isn't. You can't just go in and kill a spirit like that as teams will always attempt to put it in a hard to reach place and even if you could, it would still require a lot of dedication just to make the battle equal. This is exactly the kind of thing gimmicks do.

Quote:

Well we're going to have a problem getting anywhere in discussion as long as you sweep PvE under the rug. Cooperative and competitive game play is equally important and both worlds have strong communities that deserve balance. I noted above that a speed buff to nature rituals be PvE-only. You're welcome to propose any PvP versions.

I just came here because you said Nature's Renewal isn't (part of) a gimmick, which is simply untrue. Balance doesn't make sense in PvE because balance applies to you and whoever you are fighting. Guess what? Players are always superior skill-wise to NPCs which would mean they'd win all the time. Does that sound like a reasonable or even fun scenario? If you would balance mobs out against players you would get stuff like Zaishen Challenge. I think we can all agree that part of the game isn't particularly challenging.

By the way, people will obviously not run NR if it had a lower cast time in PvE because the most powerful protection skills are generally Enchantments. As for the other rituals, I think QZ might have a chance.

Ka Tet · Jul 29, 2010, 08:31 AM // 08:31

I think you are making different arguments. Unless I'm wrong one of you is discussing pve, the other pvp. Those 2 things are not compatible, which is why they split pve and pvp skills.

Morphy · Jul 29, 2010, 08:38 AM // 08:38

This is true, but he used the word "gimmick" and "Nature's Renewal is not a" in the same sentence which I needed to critisize.

jazilla · Jul 29, 2010, 04:25 PM // 16:25

Hey Morphy and Xiaquin: might want to read the first post again. This was ALWAYS only about PvE. It's also only about bringing Nature Rituals and Traps up to speed with the current speed of the game play. Take it to PM's if you want to argue.

Xiaquin · Jul 29, 2010, 05:58 PM // 17:58

I've been exclusively talking about PvE. PvP was injected into the thread (and quite offensively, I add).

The definition of "gimmick" argued is extremely vague and misappropriated, in my opinion. It was never worth discussing and I shouldn't have been baited into it. So, for the second time in the thread, moving on and not continuing a pointless argument.

Morphy · Jul 30, 2010, 06:22 AM // 06:22

Not at all vague, I pretty much literally used the definition here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gimmick.

More on-topic: people would obviously start using Nature Rituals in PvE more with a low cast time.

Shriketalon · Jul 30, 2010, 11:55 PM // 23:55

I guess the question I would pose to the community is thus: what should the Ranger's abilities be that they currently are not?

Should traps be changed to the GW2 model, single shot effects where you can only have one, thus making them more potent?

Should nature spirits be divided so that some only effect enemies, some only impact allies, and some change the world to do both?

What should be the overall goal of the lackluster Marksmanship line, and how should it relate to Beast Mastery?

Brewing something up, so I'll post it later, but I'd like to just brainstorm how people envision how the Ranger should function and what it currently cannot do properly.

Essence Snow · Jul 31, 2010, 01:03 AM // 01:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morphy

More on-topic: people would obviously start using Nature Rituals in PvE more with a low cast time.

Agreed...much like the decrease in rit's spirit casting. Also would be nice for traps and possibly reworking Trapper's Focus to increase traps damage verses the speed at which they r laid.