Curse

Gebo · Aug 12, 2007, 07:42 PM // 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

so in other words, you've experienced every reasonable pvp arena in gw, and still make such ungrounded statements about the game. what does it say about your intelligence and skill as a player?

my point still stands though: exhaustion is handled by the player, no the profession.

average rit energy bar: 40-55
if using an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~20-35 in the worst case
take one hit of exhaustion, and thats a little under 1/2-1/3 of your energy bar gone. and 25e spells are uncastable. and with some dp, you might as well be a warrior.
compare that to... an ele primary. average energy bar 90-115
lets say you're going to run the same build, except with minor changes to get the extra energy.
with an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~70 to 95 in the worst case.
take a hit of exhaustion and still have 60-85 energy, more than the rit even started with.

make spawning power either increase energy pool or decrease exhaustion, or implement one of the multitude of better suggestions as an alternative to exhaustion.

ungrounded statements? read your own post.

around · Aug 12, 2007, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Protip: don't use an item spell.

I'm having a hard time thinking what decent item spell is worth using. Maybe Songkai if you're just powering out 5e spells, or...er...actually, I can't think of any.

Chicken Ftw · Aug 12, 2007, 08:27 PM // 20:27

Obvious troll is obvious.

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Gebo
Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Aug 2007
Character: lol at gwg
Profession: Rt/N

Hi Miral. Enjoying the ban?

GloryFox · Aug 12, 2007, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Quote:

spawnofebil
Protip: don't use an item spell.

I'm having a hard time thinking what decent item spell is worth using. Maybe Songkai if you're just powering out 5e spells, or...er...actually, I can't think of any.

Protip: huh? Do you play a Ritualist much? I'm sure you do but there are many useful item spells available for the Ritualist you might want to read up on them.

Item spells are a staple of the Ritualist class. I find many of them useful in both PvP or PvE settings. If you combine with Empowerment as I do with many builds you suffer little drawbacks and still gain the benefits of the Item.

Take a look at Empowerment

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Empowerment

@Sab

You may not like the tactic but its what the class does as opposed to an Elementalist who spams AoE or a shadow stepping knockdown assassin who appears from no where kills you then disappears. (boy I find them annoying but hey its what the class does so deal with it...,,,right?). There are also many ways to counter said tactics through many class options. If you find yourself running into many Spirit fences over and over and over again you should consider taking at least one counter skill. I can think of many counters and if you are good at PvP I'm sure you can find the counters as well. Lets face it not everyone is or should be an Elementalist, Warrior, and Monk.

around · Aug 12, 2007, 08:48 PM // 20:48

Quote:

Item spells are a staple of the Ritualist class.

Doesn't mean that many/any of them are actually good. Which ones do you use?

moriz · Aug 12, 2007, 09:03 PM // 21:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gebo

average rit energy bar: 40-55
if using an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~20-35 in the worst case
take one hit of exhaustion, and thats a little under 1/2-1/3 of your energy bar gone. and 25e spells are uncastable. and with some dp, you might as well be a warrior.
compare that to... an ele primary. average energy bar 90-115
lets say you're going to run the same build, except with minor changes to get the extra energy.
with an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~70 to 95 in the worst case.
take a hit of exhaustion and still have 60-85 energy, more than the rit even started with.

make spawning power either increase energy pool or decrease exhaustion, or implement one of the multitude of better suggestions as an alternative to exhaustion.

ungrounded statements? read your own post.

like i said, it's handled by the player. if you can't handle it, i guess you're just not good enough.

GloryFox · Aug 12, 2007, 09:17 PM // 21:17

Quote:

posted by spawnofebil

Doesn't mean that many/any of them are actually good. Which ones do you use?

Thank you for asking, I use quite a few of them for various reasons but I will list the most common ones. Please also note there are many spells such as Caretakers Charge that almost require that you have an Item equipped to use them.

Cruel Was Daoshen - fun with timed spikes.
Anguished was Lingwah - fun to use in Aspenwood or Alliance Battles impractical for PvE, fun in some GvG matches. (should be in Channeling IMO)
Defiant Was Xinrae - is not fun anymore, exhaustion plus your energy reduced kinda sucks now. Makes this item spell almost pointless since your energy is reduced for casting it plus exaustion now. Effective energy loss of 20 plus exhaustion problems.
Mighty Was Vorizun - was good for E management as it increases the amount of energy you had to cast communing spells, however ANET has killed the communing line to only a few very narrow builds now. This skill is still a viable option for those builds that can still be used by communing.
Tranquil Was Tanasen - good for restoration Ritualists in PvP as it adds armor and you cannot be interrupted. + Use with Empowerment, Its a very underused skill but I still like it since most don't expect it.

Vengeful Was Khanhei - One of the single best farming skills in the game. Plus I use it in Alliance Battles and some other PvP just to annoy warriors and Sins. Outside of farming I don't bother with it in PvE thats what spirits are (were) for.
Attuned Was Songkai - Just a great energy management skill overall since it reduces the overall cost of spells and binding rituals when held. I also use this with Empowerment. Attuned Restoration Rits have massive amounts of energy to heal and spam weapon spells.

I guess what it comes down to is "One mans treasure is another mans garbage." I find each of these item spells useful in some ways for both PvE and PvP.

moriz · Aug 12, 2007, 09:34 PM // 21:34

ritualist item spells are kinda like assassin lead attacks. nice to have when you can fit it in, but still kinda useless. generally, there are better choices than the item spells, so they never see play.

around · Aug 12, 2007, 09:35 PM // 21:35

And out of those item spells, which actually require you to hold them to have an effect, and which synergise with the exhaustion-causing skills?

Ensign · Aug 12, 2007, 09:55 PM // 21:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

tell me exactly how you beat Rit Spike 1v1.

Well, there's actually an easy answer to that, though it boils back down to old R/P/S again.

The way you've always dealt with the various defensive spike teams was to put enough damage on them that they had to stop spiking and start healing to avoid taking casualties. Usually once they got onto their back foot, they had trouble turning things back around without the ability to put pressure on a team, and having to stop healing for several seconds to spike again just sped up the meltdown. Traditionally, that meant using a lot of disruption to slow down the spikes until your offense had a chance to break through their defenses, at which point you got to sit on their face. When they're in pure healing mode, they're actually pretty inefficient, since healing and prot doesn't stack terribly well and they end up wasting a ton of energy on redundant tasks.

The big issue with Rit spikes was how hard they were to disrupt. The spikes themselves are composed of 1s casts that are a pain to interrupt; their defenses are unremovable passive prots and the strongest heals in the game. Everything they use costs 5, and they aren't reliant upon some sort of energy engine to function. Add in the massive redundancy in the build, and you couldn't practically slow them down significantly through energy pressure, interrupts, etc.

The only real weakness of the build was that it didn't have any real power prots (relying on Vital Weapon, occasionally replaced by Weapon of Warding) and the heals, while super efficient, aren't super fast. So instead of disrupting it heavily to slow it down while applying pressure, the only really effective way to fight it was to run a build with a massive damage output, one that they couldn't keep up with, and make their lack of mitigation and prot a weakness. The old Searnthump teams did a very good job of ripping through ritspikes traditionally. Trouble being that such builds lost pretty much everywhere else because of their tactical inflexibility, and their vulnerability to traditional prot and disruption.

So you actually needed fewer tactics to effectively fight rit spike, but you had to abandon the potential for those tactics to have a chance of blowing it out...basically reducing any team to a glorified heroway.

manitoba1073 · Aug 12, 2007, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Well, there's actually an easy answer to that, though it boils back down to old R/P/S again.

The way you've always dealt with the various defensive spike teams was to put enough damage on them that they had to stop spiking and start healing to avoid taking casualties. Usually once they got onto their back foot, they had trouble turning things back around without the ability to put pressure on a team, and having to stop healing for several seconds to spike again just sped up the meltdown. Traditionally, that meant using a lot of disruption to slow down the spikes until your offense had a chance to break through their defenses, at which point you got to sit on their face. When they're in pure healing mode, they're actually pretty inefficient, since healing and prot doesn't stack terribly well and they end up wasting a ton of energy on redundant tasks.

The big issue with Rit spikes was how hard they were to disrupt. The spikes themselves are composed of 1s casts that are a pain to interrupt; their defenses are unremovable passive prots and the strongest heals in the game. Everything they use costs 5, and they aren't reliant upon some sort of energy engine to function. Add in the massive redundancy in the build, and you couldn't practically slow them down significantly through energy pressure, interrupts, etc.

The only real weakness of the build was that it didn't have any real power prots (relying on Vital Weapon, occasionally replaced by Weapon of Warding) and the heals, while super efficient, aren't super fast. So instead of disrupting it heavily to slow it down while applying pressure, the only really effective way to fight it was to run a build with a massive damage output, one that they couldn't keep up with, and make their lack of mitigation and prot a weakness. The old Searnthump teams did a very good job of ripping through ritspikes traditionally. Trouble being that such builds lost pretty much everywhere else because of their tactical inflexibility, and their vulnerability to traditional prot and disruption.

So you actually needed fewer tactics to effectively fight rit spike, but you had to abandon the potential for those tactics to have a chance of blowing it out...basically reducing any team to a glorified heroway.

Thanxs for clearing part of it up Ensign. Some people forget simple basics like that. Lets not forget tht once they do seperate its makes it far easier to pick that spike team apart.

Age · Aug 12, 2007, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sum Gai

Are you suggesting that GW should be considered a prosport, or that guilds were cheating for using overpowered skills that ANet failed to balance before?

GW.PvP should be treated like a pro sport but considered one as there should be rules of conduct.The skills aren't over powered only in the hands of the player.It is not the skills themselves it is just the way players use and abuse them.There has got to be some responsibly on the players side and guilds especially the leader.That is what guild leaders are for.Skill balances do nothing to prevent the abuse of the skills themselves.It is like when guilds take fall.It is not the skills fault it is the person using it.Yes it should be treated as such like sport.

The only other solution to the problem is to create a duel skill set one for PvE and one for PvP.The PvE ones will be locked when entering a PvP zone like the battle islands.

Riotgear · Aug 13, 2007, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miral

combine any non-exhaustion ele nuke with GoLE and bam, super powerful nuke for little or no energy. plus eles have a lot more energy to begin with. plus, and this is a big one, balance isn't all about direct damage.

Spikes are all about direct damage. Which of these super-powerful nukes does 134 front-loaded damage that isn't mutually-exclusive (i.e. comes from Burning degen that doesn't stack from multiple sources).

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plus, armor bonuses make the final damage number difference even greater. with the right skills and equipment a character can have over 200 armor.

I already gave you numbers for 100AL, spike targets are not typically going to have 100AL, they'll have 70-90.

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Wielder's Strike - 5e, 1c, 5r - Target foe is struck for 15...51 lightning damage. If you are under the effects of a weapon Spell, you deal an additional 15...51 armor-ignoring damage and this Spell causes exhaustion.

similar things can be done for other skills that were changed.

So basically, if you don't have a weapon spell, you cast Flare, and if you do, you get exhausted. This is an improvement?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Ok, so how do casters kill without spiking. The correct answer, in case you were thinking of it, is not fire aoe/sf spam, because that is terribad.

Casters are never going to have strong killing power outside of spikes (which have their own limits) because the tactics needed to fire off a spell are significantly less than what's needed to melee someone.

Casters can still be good for offensive pressure in other ways, Mind Blast is useful but depends on keeping MOR up, AOE abilities depend on exploiting positioning to be worth the lengthy recharges, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GloryFox

You may not like the tactic but its what the class does

Then it's designed poorly. My opinion of ritualists as a concept is markedly more positive than most of the GA-frequenting posters (who hate the idea). Ideally, builds should involve some fuel that is useful in its own right (i.e. a staple item spell, spirit, or weapon spell), and some abilities which utilize that to provide some diverse, interesting ways to do what they do. There are some good concepts to be found: Weapon spells in general are pretty interesting, some spirit effects like Recuperation, Recovery and Life have strategic use, etc.

But most of the design is poor: A forest of turret spirits that requires no strategy beyond walking around and shitting 'em out is annoying and brainless. Pre-nerf Communing basically made it impossible to kill anything and all you needed was someone standing way out of casting range dropping spirits.

Elementalists "spamming AOE" can be countered fairly easily: Move. Assassin gankers can be countered fairly easily in larger-scale play: Stay with a healer, or bring something to block (well, at least once Expose gets kicked in the crotch again).

Spirit spam can be countered with essentially one thing: Interrupting the binding rituals, which is easier said than done when there's a rather small selection of abilities that interrupt non-spell skills and most of them can't keep up with a whole skillbar of binding rituals anyway, especially when they're usually sitting there already cast when the fighting starts.

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Lets face it not everyone is or should be an Elementalist, Warrior, and Monk.

Every class is viable in PvP right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GloryFox

Please also note there are many spells such as Caretakers Charge that almost require that you have an Item equipped to use them.

If item spells are just used as fuel, they kind of suck.

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Cruel Was Daoshen - fun with timed spikes.
Anguished was Lingwah - fun to use in Aspenwood or Alliance Battles impractical for PvE, fun in some GvG matches. (should be in Channeling IMO)
Defiant Was Xinrae - is not fun anymore, exhaustion plus your energy reduced kinda sucks now. Makes this item spell almost pointless since your energy is reduced for casting it plus exaustion now. Effective energy loss of 20 plus exhaustion problems.
Mighty Was Vorizun - was good for E management as it increases the amount of energy you had to cast communing spells, however ANET has killed the communing line to only a few very narrow builds now. This skill is still a viable option for those builds that can still be used by communing.
Tranquil Was Tanasen - good for restoration Ritualists in PvP as it adds armor and you cannot be interrupted. + Use with Empowerment, Its a very underused skill but I still like it since most don't expect it.

Vengeful Was Khanhei - One of the single best farming skills in the game. Plus I use it in Alliance Battles and some other PvP just to annoy warriors and Sins. Outside of farming I don't bother with it in PvE thats what spirits are (were) for.
Attuned Was Songkai - Just a great energy management skill overall since it reduces the overall cost of spells and binding rituals when held. I also use this with Empowerment. Attuned Restoration Rits have massive amounts of energy to heal and spam weapon spells.

Daoshen = Positioning nightmare and kind of redundant.
Lingwah = Okay for avoiding stop-and-cast in mobile situations, but until you drop it, it's mostly a liability.
Xinrae sucks, and has always sucked. It's an elite which is only useful when you're being targetted by some gimmicky caster-spike team or SF. Outside of those, it's not just a waste of an elite, it's a waste of a skill slot.
Vorizon is OK, but you can get almost the same effect from just using intelligent item swaps, which don't take up a skill slot. Max energy is also not "energy management." Offering of Spirit is energy management. Efficient abilities are energy management. A temporary increase in max energy does not let you chance the pace that you cast spells at.
Tanasen is kind of useless because binding rituals are easy to avoid interruption on just by using range, while other spells are mostly 1-sec casts and not easy to interrupt anyway.
Songkai is worse than Offering of Spirit: If you have 9 Spawning Power, for example, you get a 32% reduction in cost. Over the course of 15 seconds, you'll regenerate 20 energy. If you spend all of that, you save 6 energy AT MOST by having Songkai up, possibly less because of rounding. If you were to cast OOS at 9 Channelling every 15 seconds, then you get 8 energy every 15 seconds. This isn't even taking into consideration the cost of casting Songkai, or the fact that OOS benefits heavily from HSR equipment swaps and Songkai does not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

It is not the skills themselves it is just the way players use and abuse them.There has got to be some responsibly on the players side and guilds especially the leader.That is what guild leaders are for.Skill balances do nothing to prevent the abuse of the skills themselves.It is like when guilds take fall.It is not the skills fault it is the person using it.

This runs completely counter to the very nature of competitive play. The objective is to win, not to win by using strategies that the other team approves of, and not to uphold some "code of honor" until Anet fixes their shit.

-Loki- · Aug 13, 2007, 01:51 AM // 01:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

GW.PvP should be treated like a pro sport but considered one as there should be rules of conduct.The skills aren't over powered only in the hands of the player.It is not the skills themselves it is just the way players use and abuse them.There has got to be some responsibly on the players side and guilds especially the leader.That is what guild leaders are for.Skill balances do nothing to prevent the abuse of the skills themselves.It is like when guilds take fall.It is not the skills fault it is the person using it.Yes it should be treated as such like sport.

In any competitive environment, why would you gimp yourself by not using the most effective tactics? Running a broken build is what happens, because it's a competitive environment with prizes. Competitive people play to win, competitive people play what will win.

moriz · Aug 13, 2007, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by -Loki-

In any competitive environment, why would you gimp yourself by not using the most effective tactics? Running a broken build is what happens, because it's a competitive environment with prizes. Competitive people play to win, competitive people play what will win.

which is why so much emphasis must be put into pvp balance, or else the end product will be no fun to everyone.

Quantum Duck · Aug 13, 2007, 09:01 PM // 21:01

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Originally Posted by Chthon

Most of the buffs seem to improve skills that certainly need it, but not to the degree that they really become alternatives worth looking at.

Hmm. I'll have to play with more of them, but Most of the buffed skills are looking very usable to me now.

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Originally Posted by Chthon

Pretty much ALL of the melee shutdown took a big hit at the same time - blurred vision, aegis, spirit of failure, price of failure, meekness, faintheartedness, reckless haste, shadow of fear. From a PvP standpoint, I have a bad feeling that we're going to see a lot of unchecked warriors rampaging through helpless backlines. The bigger problem, in my eyes, is what it does to Hard Mode in PvE; there's a ton of HM zones that absolutely require very strong melee shutdown to stay alive, and I'm not sure this nerf leaves enough viable options for that task.

Pretty much all of the mass and/or extremely long duration anti melee effects took a hit. The more specific stuff actually stayed the same or got boosted. And the most of the anti melee hexes that got hit look to me like they will still be sufficiently effective against enemies that don't remove hexes or don't have particularly efficient or prioritized hex removal, which is true in most of PvE. They generally lost some duration or gained cooldown rather than losing effectiveness while they are up. You may end up being right on this one, but I suspect that most of the effected skills will still do their job in Hard Mode.

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Originally Posted by Chthon

The exhaustion on channeling. OK, newsflash: ritualists aren't elementalists; they don't have a very deep energy pool; exhaustion basically tacks a minimum recharge of 30sec on a skill for them. It's fine on the spirits, since they don't get cast very often. But it just completely destroys the channeling direct damage skills it got stuck on. They just aren't usable in this state.

I had the same reaction on this one. Adding exhaustion to any skill that isn't in the profession that has the energy storage buffer and the exhaustion handling skills really doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I'd prefer that they deal with whatever Rit skills are causing problems by other methods. It may not end up being as bad as I think it will, but just based on basic mechanics I don't like this set of changes.

Overall I'm still happy with the update, but it does feel like my Ritualist has a lot less options I can really be justified with her equipment being +armor rather than +energy. Exhaustion really hurts at barely over base energy.

Age · Aug 13, 2007, 09:13 PM // 21:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by -Loki-

In any competitive environment, why would you gimp yourself by not using the most effective tactics? Running a broken build is what happens, because it's a competitive environment with prizes. Competitive people play to win, competitive people play what will win.

It is easy as sports are more competitive than GW is as they get payed to beat the other teams and even at the amateur level.They have a set of guide lines and rules to follow or to this day a certian figure skater got banned by the the United States Figure Skating Assn. and runner of Canada was banned for using steroids well winning a gold in the Commonwealth Games as he was given a second chance after the Seoul Olympics.There are several sports leagues in Canada and the USA that enforce these rules very strictly.In GW there should be no more than one shock/frenzy warrior in competive play as a rule if there are more the guild is penalized.

The same goes for you Moriz.

Relambrien · Aug 14, 2007, 12:05 AM // 00:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Age

It is easy as sports are more competitive than GW is as they get payed to beat the other teams and even at the amateur level.They have a set of guide lines and rules to follow or to this day a certian figure skater got banned by the the United States Figure Skating Assn. and runner of Canada was banned for using steroids well winning a gold in the Commonwealth Games as he was given a second chance after the Seoul Olympics.There are several sports leagues in Canada and the USA that enforce these rules very strictly.In GW there should be no more than one shock/frenzy warrior in competive play as a rule if there are more the guild is penalized.

The same goes for you Moriz.

The difference is that in figure skating and running, steroids aren't given to the competitors for their use. In Guild Wars, all skills are given to players for them to use BY THE DEVELOPERS. You can't just give them the ability to run two W/E's and then say "Oh sorry but if you do that then you get penalized, even though that's specifically what we designed this to do."