Curse

Shriketalon · Jun 18, 2010, 06:10 AM // 06:10

So, now that the Great Big Mesmer Update is complete, Anet is working their way through Dervish improvements. In the meantime, however, are there any other pressing issues for PvE balance as a whole that you think need to be ironed out? With the new ability to split primary attributes between PvE and PvP, are there any that could use a tweak or two? Any individual attributes that need improvement, minor spot fixes to even a single skill, or entire classes that need serious tinkering?

Share your thoughts and ideas, all things PvE balance related.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Personal whims to follow. Can't have a balance thread posted without the author ranting and raving about his own ideas, now can we?

The three main things I would like to see are the following.

1) An end to the Healing Nuker and Nuking Healer absurdity.

In particular, I'm talking about the smiting monk being a better all around nuker than the average elementalist, and the ER infuser out healing any dedicated healing profession in the game. But while nerfing ER and making RoJ less of a dumbfire pure damage skill would help, it is a deeper problem than that.

Elementalists need a way to get through armor. HM's naturally high levels mean creatures have naturally more armor. Problem is, while fire/water/lightning/earth damage is thusly inhibited, holy/dark/shadow/chaos/untyped damage is not. The result is that the iconic nuker profession doesn't deal enough damage in HM to be competitive with other classes, who have AoE capabilities to deliver untyped damage all over the place.

Fortunately, rectifying this problem is relatively simple. Take a bunch of the underused skills, glyphs in particular, and change them around to provide degrees of armor penetration, linked to Energy Storage. Glyph of Elemental Power (made redundant by consumables) and Glyph of Essence (same result as Sacrifice, but generally inferior) would be perfect for this, as would a change to Intensity to make it provide armor penetration instead of a flat damage increase.

Meanwhile, Monks have the worst energy management of any caster in the game. Ritualists can siphon it from spirits, grant themselves double energy regeneration or restore it with a flick of the wrist. Mesmers can steal it, drain it, juggle it, manipulate it like a puppet. Elementalists can regain it, gain tax breaks on it or restore it. Necromancers have never had an empty energy pool in PvE in GW history, and wonder what everyone keeps fussing about. But Monks have absolutely nothing.

In part, this is as designed. Monks gain a lot of beneficial effects by giving up energy, bonding in particular, as well as some special enchantments that increase costs for higher yields. The problem is that monks who are NOT bonding and not using these special skills have squat when it comes to keeping their energy up. Whereas their counterpart healer class can slurp up energy from spirits, a healing or standard protection monk relies completely on a secondary profession merely to keep casting if the battle lasts any reasonable length of time.

Ergo, providing monks with ways to meet their energy needs (ones that do NOT work while bonding) would do wonders for making the class no longer bound in holy matrimony to other class's e-management skills.

On a side note while talking about the monk, it would be nice to see a split in Divine Favor that allowed the PvE version of the skill to be less restrictive. At the moment, it is the only primary in the game which is class restrictive, only working with Monk spells, whereas all other professions get their bonus to any skill that falls into their category (strength effects all attack skills, FC helps everything, etc). This is also, strangely, appropriate, as adding the DF bonus to Restoration skills might be overdoing it. Ergo, it might instead extend the bonus to any monk skills that target allies, making signets more viable, and a different effect on monk skills that target foes (making single target smiting actually worth a damn).

2) Serious love for the Ranger.

The PvE Ranger has some major issues. Nature Rituals are weak, never gaining the spirit boosts ritualists received, and are generally not worth a slot. Traps lack effectiveness in casual play, not sufficiently rewarding a ranger who brings them alongside the bow rather than picking up a staff and doing nothing but trapping. Beast mastery is still...awkward business as usual, although it has improved to some degree. But most importantly, the marksman line is largely useless, outside of one elite and perhaps three other skills, with a million different ways to fire a single shot that deals insufficient damage. It has way too many single target skills that have no effect other than a paltry damage increase, far below single target damage for any other weapon, melee or range.

Generally speaking, Rangers in PvE have only been good at two things; Barraging and Interrupting. The latter category has had its thunder completely stolen by the new Mesmer abilities, and the former is far too dependant upon other profession's skills, like splinter weapon.

There was a good idea posted a while back about making the pet the center of a Ranger's damage output, and finding a different function for the low damage bow. This is a reasonable idea; change many of the underperforming bow damage skills to something like condition play, the ability to chain together various debilitating effects (so, Marauder's Shot, for example, might cause weakness if the target was bleeding, thus providing synergy with Hunter's Shot or Barbed Arrows and granting a ranger access to conditions he currently can't inflict). Meanwhile, infuse the nature spirits with a rit-like buff, and make them actually worth a skill slot, especially the elites. Finally, perhaps give traps a bundle mechanic akin to ashes, which would let the ranger carry them around and deploy them where needed.

3) Better ways for Paragons to shout at people without wearing pants.

The upgrades to the Command line did wonders for offensive 'gons, but Motivation is still seriously lacking. Part of the problem is way too much specialization with far too few skills; no one uses something like Lyric of Purification because there simply isn't enough signet use in the average party to make it worthwhile. Furthermore, paragons are actually punished for playing in a standard party, because they can heal a group of all casters or all physicals better than they can a mixture of physicals and casters. And there is no middle ground; chants either have a benefit, or they are worthless on any given target. If you use Aria of Restoration, the warrior on the frontline isn't getting any benefit, just like using Zealous Anthem isn't helping your mesmer friend.

Motivation needs some serious reworking in the way that chants and echoes function, as these skill types are the core feature of the attribute line. Chanting needs much, much better targeting (a system where it heals MORE if the skill they used was the specified type, for example, with a minor boost if they use something else). Either that, or echoes need to become a way to manipulate chants to give the paragon direct control (so a finale might end chants on an ally for a selected benefit, thereby allowing a paragon to use something like Aria of Restoration and then activate Purifying Finale to make the aria relieve the warrior's conditions, since he could not otherwise benefit from its effects).

Balistic Pve · Jun 18, 2010, 06:19 AM // 06:19

DwG Nerf.
Ruining money in an >Elite< area.

headlesshobbs · Jun 18, 2010, 06:39 AM // 06:39

I'd love a number of skills costing less mp and being spammed out just as if I were playing Diablo.

Do not suggest I go play Diablo.

Eluvatar · Jun 18, 2010, 06:42 AM // 06:42

agreed, paragons are know like rits were (SoS or gtfo) people only want a paragon if they are running imbagon cause thats the only thing that they can do, they need to get a buff like the rits did as do the dervish they still suck.

rangers, meh I never liked em but they could use a buff, only time I ever used a ranger hero was to do SoO runs

I agree that eles should get a pve buff for some armor ignoring but it needs to be though a pve skill or you would give that buff to ele bosses and they could still rape an entire team in a second, and yes monks should get some way to regain energy without relying on a secondary, hero monk is mo/me with rupts and a person is mo/e with gole and it sucks, thou I do think the buff should be pve only as monks are fine in pvp as it is (maby buff em against mesmers

)

belshazaarswrath · Jun 18, 2010, 06:47 AM // 06:47

My personal wishlist goes something like this.

Necro's

Buff FoC-10 energy 1 sec activation 10 second recharge...it'd be a notch better than enchanters conundrum. I'd like to see something like this.

Rangers-

I think rangers do alright damage wise...although maybe some power creeps in the marksmanship line wouldn't be too bad. I also like the spirit idea.

I think traps are fine as they are personally...

Eles-

They need to completely revamp water in my opinion.
Give fire absurd power creeps or add armor ignoring.
Earth is a pretty good as is...maybe more aoe?
Air...is frankly in good shape if you ask me.

Para's-

Up their damage capabilities
Make their extremely conditional skills not extremely conditional...

Dervs-

They need help...but I dunno how they could help them without making them way overpowered.

Rework some earth prayers and Wind prayers maybe?

Anyway this is all just stuff I'm coming up with at around 3 A.M. It's probably all stupid.

dancing gnome · Jun 18, 2010, 06:59 AM // 06:59

I am going to ignore the things they said they are already working on (dervish, paragon and I think smiting buffs).

I totally agree with most of the OP, elementlalists need to be reworked for HM. The armour penalty is just too harsh on their nuking abilities when compared with other classes.

The ranger has been lacking in PvE for ages but people don't think there is a problem simply because they have that one elite (and the supporting rit skill) and because of their survivability and slight versatility obscure builds can complete content in incredibly inefficient ways. I'd like to see them get a nice PvE buff to bring some versatility back to the ranger end game builds.

Pet AI is better but still bad. It's frustrating when you need to always lock on a new target if the pet has already selected one and won't change when you change. I also think there is a pretty big delay when beginning to attack an opponent which makes pets almost humorous when trying to take down a kiting foe in HM. Basically making pets as efficient as a warrior hero would be a significant improvement (sadly).

Sam6555 · Jun 18, 2010, 09:42 AM // 09:42

I read about 75% of OP's post, and when it got to speaking about DF it got me thinking.

Why not make all characters primary attribute more personal to that character?

Like Mesmers FC got buffed to make Mesmers more playable, why not buff others? Maybe give all primaries a recharge effect like what FC got, or give them all a form of energy gain like one of the Myst elite skills 'gain x energy for every enchantment on you when you use a skill' But maybe change it a little for each such as wars/rangers wouldn't gain much from that, perhaps it could be for every attack skill on you skill bar or some such.

instanceskiller · Jun 18, 2010, 09:51 AM // 09:51

^ I completely agree with above (Dancing Gnome that is), especially eles. I wouldn't mind if, instead of ridiculously high armor, they had ridiculously high health. Even if they make it so that the extra health causes monsters to be killed in the same time as had they had the extra armor instead, at least I can see my eles be up on par with the other casters professions.

However, whilst the fire magic will benefit from this as will probably earth, and seeing as air magic is already fine without it, and even more so with it, this leaves water magic to be the most underpowered and least useful of all the ele attributes. I speak only with regards to pve as I don't pvp by the way, but I do here they're quite useful. Water magic will probably need a big revamp in pve. The only skills that I know of in pve that are useful are blurred vision and a couple others. On the other hand, I know A LOT that aren't useful such as Teinais prison, I mean, 10 energy cost, 2 sec cast AND a 30 sec RECHARGE!? all to slow done ONE target for what? about 18 seconds? How exactly is that useful in pve?! I could say this for a lot or even more of the water magic line. A lot only serve the same purpose which is to slow down, but really how often do we need to slow down in pve?

Swahnee · Jun 18, 2010, 09:56 AM // 09:56

I don't think that these suggestions have anything to do with "balance". They are related to "fun" IMHO, which isn't a bad thing at all, if you ask me. However, the reason why elementalists (for example) have become weaker than other classes is the fact that now the "important" play is the HM one, where monsters have high armor. This was the thing that broke the balance. Before this, elementalists did big damage against a lot of foes (except maybe the lvl 24 rangers and warriors, and the uw and fow monsters, in which cases maybe necro were better), and also the little damage and conditions spreading of rangers maybe had some more sense. With the big bad monsters we have now, the only thing that matters is raw armor ignoring damage, so every class wants to have it. Since not all classes were designed to be good with armor ignoring damage, what happens is that we are in the middle of a endless chain of buffing: now necs, phys (buffed), rits and mes (maybe) do damage, and the others ask for buffs, but after those buffs some other class will be "inferior" in some way (because they weren't designed to be all armor-ignoring damage dealers), and will ask a new buff. After some of this steps, somebody will start to whine because the game is too easy (why ANet introduced HM?), so there will be the necessity of buffing monsters again, and so on

In the end, i really hope that the most of you will have fun with the new updates (and maybe your suggestions will work in this direction) because in the end this is what a game is all about, but i think that balance in PvE is a lost cause.

On topic: i would like to see an improvement to monsters AI to make row damage less important, and support/disrupt/pressure more needed.

Grav · Jun 18, 2010, 09:56 AM // 09:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shriketalon

Meanwhile, Monks have the worst energy management of any caster in the game. Ritualists can siphon it from spirits, grant themselves double energy regeneration or restore it with a flick of the wrist. Mesmers can steal it, drain it, juggle it, manipulate it like a puppet. Elementalists can regain it, gain tax breaks on it or restore it. Necromancers have never had an empty energy pool in PvE in GW history, and wonder what everyone keeps fussing about. But Monks have absolutely nothing.

Without meaning to sound picky, they do have Divine Spirit, which I find is a handy "ohshit" button at least in PvP.

I haven't PvE'd as much on my monk but in my limited experience, a good team is the best energy management of all.

Ratman · Jun 18, 2010, 10:09 AM // 10:09

I play ranger now for almost 4 years and have some ideas to buff some of the skills. First of all all these changes are for PvE, I hardly play any PvP so don't know if the skills will be OP when used there.

The pet AI is annoying i've seen worse (mainly low lvl melee henchman). A thing that i would like to see is better pet/bow builds. The last we've seen of those was in the time of b/p barrage. Now all pet build you see use daggers, scythes or spears. These build work just fine but I would like to see a bow/pet build that can compete.

My main idea would be to have pet attack gain more syncrony with a bow. Something like:

Energie - 10, Recharge - 10 sec
Bestial Pounce - Your animal companion attempts a Bestial Pounce that deals +5...17 damage. If the attack strikes a foe who is casting a spell, that foe is knocked down. While wielding a bow shoot an arrow that ends any stance being used by your target.

(Make the skill so it still is useable without a bow but is more powerfull while wielding a bow.)

Also make the cast time of all nature rituals max 3 seconds. And give some of the elite rituals better effects. Like:

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Lacerate - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 Spirit. Creatures above 50% health begin bleeding for 5...14 seconds whenever hit by a physical attack. Creatures under 50% health receive 20% less benefit from healing. This spirit dies after 30...126 seconds.

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Infuriating Heat - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. Non-spirit creatures within its range gain adrenaline twice as fast and gain 0...1 energie whenever they hit with an attack skill. This spirit dies after 30...126 seconds.

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Equinox - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. All creatures within its range suffer from Exhaustion whenever interupted. This spirit dies after 30...126 seconds.

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Famine - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. All creatures within its range under 50% energie take 5...25 damage each seccond. Whenever a creature within range of this spirit dies all creatures within range gain 3...7 energie. This spirit dies after 20...78 seconds.

(This skill may seem to oppose its first effect but a famine is a widespread scarcity of food. So if someone dies it means food for others. Also as almost anyone can tell e-drain is worthless in HM. But the energie gain for every kill seems usefull to me.)

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Greater Conflagration - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. For creatures within its range, all physical damage is fire damage instead. Whenever a creature within range takes fire damage they start Buring for 0...2 seconds. This spirit dies after 20...78 seconds.

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Quicksand - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. All creatures within its range move 50% slower. Whenever a creature within range of this spirit dies all non-spirit creatures within range suffer from -3 health degeneration for 5...15 seconds. This spirit dies after 20...78 seconds.

Energie - 10, Recharge 15 sec
Melandru's Resilience - Elite Shout. For 8...18 seconds, party members within earshot are unaffected by the effects of nature rituals.

(Melandru's Resilience is only used in some farm builds. So an effect like this seems mutch more variable in combination with nature rituals. Let your opponants suffer the negative effects while you take a walk in the park.)

Well I could go on but I think this is enough for now.

Xsiriss · Jun 18, 2010, 11:03 AM // 11:03

Make paragons fun and useable.
Make dervish fun and useable.
Buff useless elites (especially the old ones). At the moment a lot 'elites' are just skills with different functions, not inherantly powerful.
Reduce the ohFFFFFFness of HM so that you don't have to use gimmicks.
Oh and 5 heroes pl0x.

Voice of Reason · Jun 18, 2010, 11:33 AM // 11:33

1. Rangers need party support through nature rituals, so give them effects that are beneficial to a team. Energy denial is retarded in PvE, reducing healing is counterproductive, etc.

Super awesome ritual ideas

Reduce ritual casting times.

Fix the lolskills like Practiced Stance.

If bows aren't for DPS, give rangers DPS in Beast Mastery and fix all the gimped bow attacks to make them cause conditions or something.

Make all trap damage armor-ignoring or just increase trap damage. Maybe give slight recharge reductions (2-5s). Also, make expertise affect traps, so the PvE traps find use.

2. Give eles nuking capabilities by giving them some form of armor penetration. Intensity could be changed to give 20-25% penetration.

Buff ranger rituals so that some give benefits to various forms of elemental damage.

3. Buff paragons but avoid them being OP by either giving them more single-target stuff or giving them more skills that have a smaller benefit if more people are affected and vice versa.

aspi · Jun 18, 2010, 11:53 AM // 11:53

SoH on my ranger, I would love to see that

wilson · Jun 18, 2010, 12:09 PM // 12:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Voice of Reason

Also, make expertise affect traps, so the PvE traps find use.

Expertise reduces the cost of all ranger skills?

Quote:

Originally Posted by GW

"For each rank of Expertise, the Energy cost of all of your attacks, Rituals, touch skills, and Rangers skills are decreased by 4%. Several skills, especially those related to Energy costs and skill recharge times, become more effective with higher Expertise."

wiki link

AmbientMelody · Jun 18, 2010, 12:18 PM // 12:18

Here are my picks for general PvE changes, to address the problem of Elementalist's global damage output and other issues:

a) Reduce the level of PvE foes and reduce all/most of extraordinary armour buffs to monsters. To compensate, vastly increase number of PvE monsters per each monster group. In case of monsters with extraordinary armour (e.g. better armour against fire or slashing damage), it should always accompany a logical weakness (which could be seen by looking at the monster), such as extra-vulnerable to water or blunt damage.

b) Rework HardMode. Remove the ridiculous level boost, faster casting on spells above 2 second casting, bonus movement & attacking speed and the others. To compensate, further increase the number of monsters, as well as monster variety per group (higher profession variety per group, different species mixing with each other into groups). Introduce randomness in group creation per instance as well as slight skillbar variations per individual monsters (e.g. standard bar with 3-5 skills plus 1-3 additional random skills from a chosen pool). Improve the monster AI, but still make it possible to aggro & pin down mobs with a 'tanking' character, to allow elementalists and other characters to nuke them more freely.

c) Limit EOTN PvE skills to one per skillbar, make it possible to have only one Sunspear/Lightbringer PvE skill equipped at a time (EOTN + NF allows for 2 PvE skills in total to be equipped at once). To compensate, make chosen, underpowered 'combo' PvE skills slightly stronger. Revise skills, attributes and core mechanics of underpowered/unbalanced professions, such as Paragon, Elementalist, Ranger and Dervish - look into ways to create a wide array of viable skill, attribute & equipment choices, rather than running the one & the only viable, overpowered build. Look into ways to differentiate individual PvE instances, especially for HM, to make each instance a vastly different experience in vanquishing/completing missions.

d) reminder: support the Holy Trinity, don't break it. In case of support classes, give them direct offensive/defensive skills to make them viable in fast-paced PvE combat.

Sam6555 · Jun 18, 2010, 01:00 PM // 13:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by AmbientMelody

Here are my picks for general PvE changes, to address the problem of Elementalist's global damage output and other issues:

a) Reduce the level of PvE foes and reduce all/most of extraordinary armour buffs to monsters. To compensate, vastly increase number of PvE monsters per each monster group. In case of monsters with extraordinary armour (e.g. better armour against fire or slashing damage), it should always accompany a logical weakness (which could be seen by looking at the monster), such as extra-vulnerable to water or blunt damage.

b) Rework HardMode. Remove the ridiculous level boost, faster casting on spells above 2 second casting, bonus movement & attacking speed and the others. To compensate, further increase the number of monsters, as well as monster variety per group (higher profession variety per group, different species mixing with each other into groups). Introduce randomness in group creation per instance as well as slight skillbar variations per individual monsters (e.g. standard bar with 3-5 skills plus 1-3 additional random skills from a chosen pool). Improve the monster AI, but still make it possible to aggro & pin down mobs with a 'tanking' character, to allow elementalists and other characters to nuke them more freely.

c) Limit EOTN PvE skills to one per skillbar, make it possible to have only one Sunspear/Lightbringer PvE skill equipped at a time (EOTN + NF allows for 2 PvE skills in total to be equipped at once). To compensate, make chosen, underpowered 'combo' PvE skills slightly stronger. Revise skills, attributes and core mechanics of underpowered/unbalanced professions, such as Paragon, Elementalist, Ranger and Dervish - look into ways to create a wide array of viable skill, attribute & equipment choices, rather than running the one & the only viable, overpowered build. Look into ways to differentiate individual PvE instances, especially for HM, to make each instance a vastly different experience in vanquishing/completing missions.

d) reminder: support the Holy Trinity, don't break it. In case of support classes, give them direct offensive/defensive skills to make them viable in fast-paced PvE combat.

You don't really play PvE much do you?

In some groups, it's the size of them thats too much already. In others it's the power of the mob.

Size doesn't matter, it's how you use it.

Mintha Syl · Jun 18, 2010, 01:01 PM // 13:01

Not for balance, I don't thing "balance" would ever be possible as it's not an objective concept.
Anyway I'm with most of the OP's ideas. Especially the ranger part, I'm only lately noticing how low damage they do confronted with other calsses, like dervishes and assassins, even if the latter have the melee inconvenience.
Ratman raised some good points, especially making bow more linked to pet, more things like strike as one but more useful.

instanceskiller · Jun 18, 2010, 01:30 PM // 13:30

Ratman-Whilst I think some of your skill ideas are OK some just sound random.
First, Bestial Pounce...

I don't see the reasoning behind ending stances with your bow. It has absolutely no connection with a bestial pounce.

Next, your famine...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ratman

Energie - 10, Cast Time 3 sec, Recharge - 20 sec
Famine - Elite Nature Ritual. Create a level 1...8 spirit. All creatures within its range under 50% energie take 5...25 damage each seccond. Whenever a creature within range of this spirit dies all creatures within range gain 3...7 energie. This spirit dies after 20...78 seconds.

(This skill may seem to oppose its first effect but a famine is a widespread scarcity of food. So if someone dies it means food for others. Also as almost anyone can tell e-drain is worthless in HM. But the energie gain for every kill seems usefull to me.)

I think this may just be a tad much overpowered in conjunction with heavy e-denial and exhaustion. Whilst it does bear some resemblance to real life famine, people can survive without food for a few days, but with your version of famine, they won't last 20 seconds! As well as this, it sounds like your justification for the energy gain when something dies is cannibalism.
If used in pvp, I think there might be some legal issues...

Next, your Melandru's resilience...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ratman

Energie - 10, Recharge 15 sec
Melandru's Resilience - Elite Shout. For 8...18 seconds, party members within earshot are unaffected by the effects of nature rituals.

(Melandru's Resilience is only used in some farm builds. So an effect like this seems mutch more variable in combination with nature rituals. Let your opponants suffer the negative effects while you take a walk in the park.)

I don't why it would be a shout to be honest...can you imagine it? Charging into battle and shouting "Melandru's Resilience!" every 15 seconds? I think you perhaps wanted it classified as a enchant spell that enchants allies within earshot.

There are others but they are quite minor so I won't. There are a couple good ones though.

Voice of Reason · Jun 18, 2010, 02:22 PM // 14:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by wilson

Expertise reduces the cost of all ranger skills?
wiki link

PvE traps are PvE skills, not ranger skills.

Quote:

I don't why it would be a shout to be honest...can you imagine it? Charging into battle and shouting "Melandru's Resilience!" every 15 seconds? I think you perhaps wanted it classified as a enchant spell that enchants allies within earshot.

Rangers don't have enchantments.