Curse

Symbol · Sep 26, 2005, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Lol, those three "sub par skills" also happen to yield some of the highest sustainable dps available to the elementalist class. Namely 60 dps to a single target, 45 dps AOE based around caster. Either address the argument or don't bother, I'm tired of your foolish appeals to authority. It's both boring and intellectually dishonest.

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So your logic is: "when I use subpar skills, I can't abuse the energy engine, so the energy skill is balanced"

Are you being purposely obtuse? The POINT is that with high energy expenditure elemental attunement is easily comparable to renewal. It doesn't matter one whit that you think that the combination of skills I listed is sub par (and they're not, I've used them).
With LOWER energy expenditure both attunement and renewal will suffice to keep you casting indefinitely, so it hardly matters which one is higher on paper.

Must I spell everything out for you?

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No offense intended but this argument has been brought up and countered before.

This argument has NOT been brought up before, which you'd have known had you bothered to actually read and understand my post.

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And for your information, good builds for all professions have been shown to exist already.

How ironic that you should mention strawmen...

Silmor · Sep 26, 2005, 03:22 PM // 15:22

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Originally Posted by Symbol

It's (very) marginally faster. You can do two draw conditions and one reversal of fortune every 3.5 seconds. This gets you one extra cast under renewal, pretty pointless if you ask me.

The discussion of whether or not the 3 enchantments would fill the bar is what is pointless. That extra cast is the one that typically fills your energy bar, which was the entire discrepancy all our bickering back and forth was about. The point, once again, was that maintained enchantments aren't the root of the problem here, so I propose we drop this side-discussion.

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Originally Posted by Symbol

No, this absolutely the wrong way to go about things. This ensures that the people who aren't abusing renewal will get shafted, and for what?

Whether or not the honest people get shafted depends entirely on how they implement the fix, what I was talking about is detecting the aspect of the skill that makes it abuseable, i.e. the aspect that unbalances it. People using it in a way it was supposed to don't reveal anything in that regard, but the people who abuse it for all its worth do. Optimally, nerfing shouldn't affect the honest users, just the loopholes that allow the skill effect to be abused should be closed.

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Originally Posted by Symbol

How does this fix things? Now instead of requiring a certain number of enchants to be effective (which is actually a handicap to most builds), you require none? What's the point?

The point is that if you have a set amount of energy gained at spellcasting, balancing becomes a much easier task. Your suggestion of capping it pretty much does the same - if the cap is 4, people will run 3 other enchantments with it, period. As such the balancing aspect of those enchantments is pretty much lost, so why not just drop the clause entirely and just adjust the energy gain to be on par with the other energy generation options? Also, Elemental Attunement suffers as much or more from enchantment stripping than Ether Renewal, since if they rip it off after you put it on, you're going to be without for the next minute.

I'll skip the other points, mostly because they're unrelated to the discussion. Skill balance doesn't hinge on how you use them in a typical instance, but how you use them in an optimal instance, so any numbers that don't reflect that optimal instance are just redundant.

Symbol · Sep 26, 2005, 03:33 PM // 15:33

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The discussion of whether or not the 3 enchantments would fill the bar is what is pointless. That extra cast is the one that typically fills your energy bar, which was the entire discrepancy all our bickering back and forth was about. The point, once again, was that maintained enchantments aren't the root of the problem here, so I propose we drop this side-discussion.

Okay, fine I agree that the maintained enchantment build is silly and irrelevant.

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Whether or not the honest people get shafted depends entirely on how they implement the fix, what I was talking about is detecting the aspect of the skill that makes it abuseable, i.e. the aspect that unbalances it. People using it in a way it was supposed to don't reveal anything in that regard, but the people who abuse it for all its worth do. Optimally, nerfing shouldn't affect the honest users, just the loopholes that allow the skill effect to be abused should be closed.

Yes I agree, though I think your proposed nerf is far too broad.

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Also, Elemental Attunement suffers as much or more from enchantment stripping than Ether Renewal, since if they rip it off after you put it on, you're going to be without for the next minute.

No, consider the problem more carefully. With attunement you can shield it with other enchantments, you can't do that with ether renewal unless you're willing to lose a lot of its effectiveness. Furthermore EACH enchantment removed reduces renewal's effectiveness, this isn't true for attunement.

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The point is that if you have a set amount of energy gained at spellcasting, balancing becomes a much easier task. Your suggestion of capping it pretty much does the same - if the cap is 4, people will run 3 other enchantments with it, period. As such the balancing aspect of those enchantments is pretty much lost, so why not just drop the clause entirely and just adjust the energy gain to be on par with the other energy generation options?

Because requiring enchantments to be effective is actually a _sacrifice_ (and it also distinguishes the skill from attunement). Just giving a flat gain is, IMO, boring. Also, what do you mean "adjust the energy gain to be on par with other energy generation options"? Which options are you talking about? Prodigy, attunement, and glyph all give back widely varying amounts.

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I'll skip the other points, mostly because they're unrelated to the discussion. Skill balance doesn't hinge on how you use them in a typical instance, but how you use them in an optimal instance, so any numbers that don't reflect that optimal instance are just redundant.

The point of that example was to show in optimal instances for both (high energy expenditure) renewal is comparable to attunement for the elementalist.

Arton · Sep 26, 2005, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Cool screeny

ghostly Priestess · Sep 26, 2005, 03:46 PM // 15:46

well the fact of the matter is that ER does not need to be nerfed at all.

i say leave it be

snepp · Sep 26, 2005, 05:14 PM // 17:14

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Originally Posted by ghostly Priestess

well the fact of the matter is that ER does not need to be nerfed at all.

i say leave it be

My dictionary tells me this is not in fact a fact, but is in fact an opinion.

I believe that ER is easily abused and could use a bit of balancing. It's also my opinion that any variation of the word nerf should be added to the list of banned words.

FrogDevourer · Sep 26, 2005, 08:09 PM // 20:09

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Originally Posted by Symbol

Are you being purposely obtuse? The POINT is that with high energy expenditure elemental attunement is easily comparable to renewal. It doesn't matter one whit that you think that the combination of skills I listed is sub par (and they're not, I've used them).

Ok, I'll try to explain it one more time, and to expand on my previous post. Your point indeed deserve a better answer. This is my probably last post on the subject because I don't want to be dragged into yet another 'balance' thread.

The problem is that - like many people - you're basing your whole argumentation on one build. Granted you're exploiting Elemental Attunement to its full extent, using elementalist spells with the fastest recharge. However this is a one trick poney. And what is this trick? PBAoE pyromancer. Let's assume you're not instakilled when running through the enemy lines, and that your healer is able to keep you alive, and that you're not snared, and that your target doesn't flee as he should. Now, let's also ignore that for this build you need a double attunement to have enough enough base energy to actually use the skills you plan to use. So you're sacrificing as many slots as an E.R user (E.A, second attunement, 3 offensive spells vs. E.R, 2 enchants, 1spammable), and you are basically restricted to spamming skills from one attribute. 7 pips of energy regeneration. This is the optimal setup for Elemental Attunement.

Now if you want to compare that to one build, compare it to the best E.R build. What do we get? Mobile AoE always focussed on a target, more sustainable damage, more energy generated, no need to enter the enemy area, no need to run after your target, no need to target the enemy, ability to use skills from multiple attributes, and near invulnerability 40% of the time. Was this demontration relevant? No, because E.R is not overpowered due to the prevalent smiters. That's also why considering the Elementalist Attunement build wasn't relevant in the first place.

E.R is able to generate more energy than any other skill in this game. This can be used to spam the best skills from any secondary profession. The only requirement are a couple of enchantments and one spammable skill. You don't even have to use the enchantment yourself. A prevalent skill like aegis kicks your E.R. And I'm not taking into account the resilience to enchantment removal, nor the ability to kickstart the engine in 40s if you're stripped/energy drained to 0, nor the bonus you can get from your enchantments.

E.R is a generic energy skill which can be exploited easily. E.A is a specialized energy skill which -at best- is struggling to reach half the raw power of E.R. Even if your numbers were accurate, it doesn't prove that E.R is balanced. You just proved that the best specialized elementalist build - based on the fastest elementalist skills with the fastest recharge - cannot match the power you can get with the best E.R build. This is why your argument can be considered as a straw man, even if an unwilling one. Because, it doesn't address the main features which make E.R an unbalanced skill.

I'll end this post with Ensign's most relevant comment on this skill:

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Originally Posted by CxE

So the design of Elementalists is based upon having some of the best energy management, but horrendously overcosted skills? So why wouldn't you, instead, use the Elementalist primary for its outstanding energy management, and use that to cast spells from a secondary that *aren't* horribly overcosted? If you're powergaming there's no reason why you wouldn't. All that energy from Ether Renewal and Energy Storage is going to do a whole lot more casting Monk, Mesmer, or even Necromancer skills than Elementalist skills, so that's exactly what people do with it.

In sum: giving a class good energy management with which to cast bad spells is a weak balancing strategy, because players will use that good energy management to cast good spells instead.

Red Locust · Sep 27, 2005, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Symbol, if you're gonna come out guns blazing towards a mod, at least make sure you're not spewing out shit for facts. Let's take a closer look:

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Originally Posted by Symbol

Let's compare:

Divine boon: 9 casts, first cast ups the number of enchants to 4. Total energy gained 7 + 8 * (16-7) - 10 - (11.75 * .33) = 53.37 gained (counting the pip of degen)

Draw Conditions: 53 energy, as I calculated before

Only God know what all those numbers mean, because the correct calculations are a lot simpler.

4 enchantments = 20 energy per cast.
boon = 5 energy cost per cast.

9 casts of boon with 4 enchantments = 15 * 9 = 135(!!!) energy over 12s.
9 casts of boon with 3 enchantments = 10 * 9 = 90 energy over 12s.
9 casts of boon with 4 enchantments at 4e per enchantment = 99 energy over 12s.

you can add the 4e cost of boon over 12s, but it is insignificant.

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It's (very) marginally faster. You can do two draw conditions and one reversal of fortune every 3.5 seconds. This gets you one extra cast under renewal, pretty pointless if you ask me.

RoF is used as a backup if/when you get diverted andlose your spammable spell.

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This assumes that you use a superior energy storage rune , but consider the problem here. Normally you'd have to use runes to increase your damage, but since the Smiter's damage is already so good with base attributes you can use it to power up ER. I can't think of a single other build that can do this.

ER turns into 5e per enchant at 14 storage. What does that mean? You can use a minor storage rune and storage hat to get storage up to 14, and use a superior to get your damage attribute up to 15. Sacrifice a minute amount of damage for an energy powerhouse.

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No, this absolutely the wrong way to go about things. This ensures that the people who aren't abusing renewal will get shafted, and for what?

This is terrible logic. Skills are balanced according to their full potential and what expert players can do with them, not according to what Joe Shmoe can accomplish with them.

Cleave got nerfed in adrenaline cost a long time ago because of its incredible damage when spammed. If some noobie somewhere was using cleave once every 7 or 8 hits for a half-decent warrior build, does that mean it was a wrong decision to nerf the skill?

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Full energy by itself does nothing, this is a truism. Using your full energy pool to cast ineffective spells is pointless.

No s*** Sherlock! That's quite possibly the most blatantly obvious statement I've ever heard in this game. Which brings me to the next one:

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Stop waving your hands vaguely and show me another build that doesn't involve smiting which when combined with renewal is so broken and that more importantly wouldn't be fixed by my proposed enchantment cap.

OK.

E/Mo
14 energy
12 prot
8 smite/heal/earth/whatever

ER {e}
Draw cond
RoF
guardian
convert hex
aegis
prot spirit
ward against melee/shielding hands/whatever

infinite energy, counters hex stacking, and the ability to cast all those skills whenever you want and as often as their recharge allows. Try accomplishing that with a prot monk.

Also, for the more imaginative:

EMo with ER, Boon, protective bond (yes I've managed to keep it on 2 monks and survive the energy hit), life bond, strength of honor, or whatever buffs you want. ER allows you to keep them up.

ER, boon and fire/air/earth attunement will allow you to spam nukes, particularly ones that cost less than 15e (i.e. the good ones) as often as the recharge timer permits. Obviously vulnerable to enchantment strips, but Elemental Attunement is far more vulnerable, and this setup beats it in energy management. Boon will even cover your attunement from spot removal if you choose to keep it on.

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It also appears that you have reading comprehension issues, since I clearly stated that ER is overpowered in certain circumstances

It's good that you made this clear. I was starting to think that ER belongs on every single build in the game.

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Are you being purposely obtuse? The POINT is that with high energy expenditure elemental attunement is easily comparable to renewal. It doesn't matter one whit that you think that the combination of skills I listed is sub par (and they're not, I've used them).
With LOWER energy expenditure both attunement and renewal will suffice to keep you casting indefinitely, so it hardly matters which one is higher on paper.

Your high energy expenditure PbAoE ele is about the only case where elemental attunement actually competes with ER in terms of energy management. And PbAoE nukers are, in general, crap. They can be made to work in certain builds, but overall, they're just not that good. 1.75s aftercast? No thanks. Needing to surround myself with enemies? As soon as people recognize what you're doing, they spread out and cut your damage down, making you less effective than a single target nuker.

How about looking at the better ele nukes? Meteor, Fireball, Immolate, Lightning orb, chain, strike, obsidian flame, stoning, enervating. With a couple of exceptions, they're all relatively low cost spells that don't benefit much from ele attunement. Although I think there are better energy management options, ER will beat out Ele attunement in these cases.

The whole point of this discussion is to compare the energy returns of different energy management options. Saying something like, "it doesn't matter which one's better" is just silly

KuTeBaka · Sep 27, 2005, 01:39 AM // 01:39

degen maxes out at 10 so the degen of 10000000000 enchants would be the same as 10 enchants. I'm talking about maintained enchants.

Symbol · Sep 27, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Red Locust:

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Symbol, if you're gonna come out guns blazing towards a mod, at least make sure you're not spewing out shit for facts. Let's take a closer look:

Nope, my numbers are (except for the calculations for boon) correct. Your problem is that you either couldn't or wouldn't read the assumptions those calculations were based on.

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Only God know what all those numbers mean, because the correct calculations are a lot simpler.

4 enchantments = 20 energy per cast.
boon = 5 energy cost per cast.

9 casts of boon with 4 enchantments = 15 * 9 = 135(!!!) energy over 12s.
9 casts of boon with 3 enchantments = 10 * 9 = 90 energy over 12s.
9 casts of boon with 4 enchantments at 4e per enchantment = 99 energy over 12s.

you can add the 4e cost of boon over 12s, but it is insignificant.

1) The numbers assumed 4E per enchant, which you'd have known if you'd bothered to read
2) I'm assuming 3 enchants with draw conditions. Those numbers are correct
3) The boon numbers are incorrect because I made a few typos in the line. Mea culpa. It should be (12-5) + 8*(16-5) - 10 - 12 * .33 = 81E

Let's parse it slowly since it's clear that you aren't actually understanding it. The first term represents the net energy gain from from the first cast of boon. You gain 7 energy because at this point you only have 3 enchants going. The second term represents the net energy gain for the remaining 8 casts. That's 11 energy gained times 8. The third term represents the cost of renewal. The fourth represents the cost of the one pip of degen that boon imposes (it's a maintained enchant) over the 12 second duration. In reality the cost is a lot higher because boon lasts until it gets taken down. Get it now?

If you want you can assume that boon is up all the time, and add 4E to that figure. Not that it matters.

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RoF is used as a backup if/when you get diverted andlose your spammable spell.

The poster I responded to mentioned using it in a combo with draw conditions. If you don't think that's accurate, take it up with him

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ER turns into 5e per enchant at 14 storage. What does that mean? You can use a minor storage rune and storage hat to get storage up to 14, and use a superior to get your damage attribute up to 15. Sacrifice a minute amount of damage for an energy powerhouse.

Which is complete overkill for almost any elementalist build. A 12/12 attr/ES build is almost always suboptimal.

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This is terrible logic. Skills are balanced according to their full potential and what expert players can do with them, not according to what Joe Shmoe can accomplish with them.

But basing the magnitude of the nerf on the magnitude of the abuse is the WRONG WAY TO FIX IT. The best fix is a narrowly targetted one that addresses the problem and nothing more.

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No s*** Sherlock! That's quite possibly the most blatantly obvious statement I've ever heard in this game. Which brings me to the next one:

Lol, look up the word "truism". I'll wait while you wipe the egg off your face.

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infinite energy, counters hex stacking, and the ability to cast all those skills whenever you want and as often as their recharge allows. Try accomplishing that with a prot monk.

I count 4 enchants in that build (guardian, aegis, prot spirit, RoF). Of those only two have durations of 10 secs or longer. It seems rather dubious that one could get "infinite" energy from ER by using them, though the build itself doesn't seem that high in energy expenditure either (and choosing a elementalist means sacrificing prot runes and divine favor, though one could argue that the tradeoff is worth it).

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EMo with ER, Boon, protective bond (yes I've managed to keep it on 2 monks and survive the energy hit), life bond, strength of honor, or whatever buffs you want. ER allows you to keep them up.

Ok, this is a bit overpowered, but nothing as bad as smiting.

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ER, boon and fire/air/earth attunement will allow you to spam nukes, particularly ones that cost less than 15e (i.e. the good ones) as often as the recharge timer permits. Obviously vulnerable to enchantment strips, but Elemental Attunement is far more vulnerable, and this setup beats it in energy management. Boon will even cover your attunement from spot removal if you choose to keep it on.

Again with this "attunement is more vulnerable to stripping" bullshit. Do you not understand that if you want to get full benefit from renewal you CANNOT bury it under other enchants? Meanwhile I can put up at least two enchants on top of attunement (ex: fire/air/earth/water attunement, one defensive) which ensures that it won't get taken down for a while (barring something like lingering curse or rend or some such)

Furthermore EVERY enchantment stripped reduces renewal's effectiveness. It doesn't look so rosy now when you're trying to regain energy with only one or two enchants up does it?

That you state renewal is _less_ vulnerable to enchant stripping boggles the mind, have you thought about this at ALL?

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Your high energy expenditure PbAoE ele is about the only case where elemental attunement actually competes with ER in terms of energy management. And PbAoE nukers are, in general, crap. They can be made to work in certain builds, but overall, they're just not that good. 1.75s aftercast? No thanks. Needing to surround myself with enemies? As soon as people recognize what you're doing, they spread out and cut your damage down, making you less effective than a single target nuker.

...
Could you please _READ_ and _UNDERSTAND_ what I wrote.
1) I specifically mentioned the air spiker build, where attunement is also competitive. This could equally hold for any build that makes heavy use of the elementalist's spammable skills.

2) You obviously didn't read the DPS numbers. 60 dps single target, 45 dps AoE. Even if I'm burning ONE target I'm getting excellent damage, in fact that was the point of the exercise to begin with. Does the build have limitations? Of course. Are they relevant to the matter at hand? Not really.

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How about looking at the better ele nukes? Meteor, Fireball, Immolate, Lightning orb, chain, strike, obsidian flame, stoning, enervating. With a couple of exceptions, they're all relatively low cost spells that don't benefit much from ele attunement. Although I think there are better energy management options, ER will beat out Ele attunement in these cases.

AGAIN, in cases with moderate energy expenditure both ele attunement and renewal will give you effectively unlimited energy. Once you reach that point it DOESN'T MATTER that one gives you more, on paper. It's completely academic.

Put it this way, renewal beats the crap out of attunement (in terms of net energy gained) if I base my build on spamming flare. But with attunement I can STILL spam flare till the cows come home, so who really cares that one gives more energy? No one, that's who. At this point you care about utility (i.e self heal of renewal vs the reliability of attunement) which no one has really addressed.

The ONLY time when the comparison is relevant to internal class balance is when energy expenditure is high enough to be non-sustainable for one or the other and differences become _meaningful_.

I'm going to stop here because I really can't be any clearer than this.

FrogDevourer:

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E.R is a generic energy skill which can be exploited easily. E.A is a specialized energy skill which -at best- is struggling to reach half the raw power of E.R. Even if your numbers were accurate, it doesn't prove that E.R is balanced. You just proved that the best specialized elementalist build - based on the fastest elementalist skills with the fastest recharge - cannot match the power you can get with the best E.R build. This is why your argument can be considered as a straw man, even if an unwilling one. Because, it doesn't address the main features which make E.R an unbalanced skill.

I don't know which numbers you're looking at, but mine show that for high expenditures ele attunement is very comparable, and that for lower expenditures both are overkill.

What I'm trying to get at is that, FOR THE ELEMENTALIST, ether renewal is not grossly unbalanced compared to other energy management elites. There are a fair number of situations where either attunement or glyph would be a better choice.

I also haven't seen much evidence that making ER available to secondary classes is a problem, apart from a few E/Mo builds. The normal balancing mechanisms of not having the runes available to boost your damage output/utility is _normally_ sufficient.

That suggests to me that whatever the problem is, it doesn't lie solely (or even primarily) with ER. That's why I don't want fixes that, say, make ER work only with elementalist spells, because it cripples a lot of interesting options. For example, if someone wants to play an E/Me that uses renewal to spam constant degen and slows on everyone why should we stop them? It's certainly not an overpowering build, though it is both useful and highly annoying to those on the other end.

I want a change that fixes the problem and that doesn't rend renewal completely useless for builds that aren't E/Mo smiters.

Red Locust · Sep 27, 2005, 06:43 AM // 06:43

Symbol, all I see you doing is arguing over semantics and referring back to your Elemental Attunement example, which is quite irrelevant and really isn't comparable to a skill such as ER that can generate huge amounts of energy and power various builds (elementalist or otherwise) to levels they could never hope to achieve without the skill. Go play the game for yourself, play around with ER and get a grasp of what the skill is capable of.

If you don't see the problem with having a skill that allows you to generate obscene amounts of energy and health in a ~10s timeframe, then there isn't really much point in me writing up another long post refuting all those "points" you made.

Xue Yi Liang · Sep 27, 2005, 07:05 AM // 07:05

If, for whatever reason, this needed to be nerfed - the easiest way would be to make the icons just a tad larger - so they quickly obscure the entire middle of the screen if stacked too high

FrogDevourer · Sep 27, 2005, 08:40 AM // 08:40

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Originally Posted by http://www.guildwars.com/

Prior to the October 1 ladder reset, we will be updating Guild Wars with a comprehensive set of skill balance changes to refresh the competitive landscape.

This thread is now closed as pointless. We will see in a few days if ANet thinks this potential issue deserve a balance change. Thanks to all those who provided constructive and relevant material (either way), and thanks to the OP, for this funny screenshot.