Curse

Ensign · Jul 31, 2005, 08:21 PM // 20:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Read the sentence. If they can't kill you, you can set up a dual rend spike.

I don't want to kill you. I want the clock to expire so I can pick up my sigils.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Not only that, this one character, the necro debuffer, wrecks the entire ball build.

This character does very little in a hall hold situation. Why? Because we know that primary Necros, at least back when healing balls were relevant, carried Rends and Wells and Lingering Curses and all that stuff. So we stuck a Mesmer on him and made sure that he never cast a single relevant spell in the entire 10 minutes of the match.

That was back when we actually cared about such things. Towards the end Rends and Lingering Curses weren't really relevant, because you couldn't hit the bonder, you couldn't spike someone out through Fertile Season + Wards + focused heal spam, and the Bond came right back up after two seconds anyway. They'd be nice to shut down but hardly neccessary if there were more dangerous targets.

Rends help break a ball, sure, but they aren't going to do it on their own. Multiples? That'd start to be annoying, sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Please, don't tell me chillblains can't punch through a heal ball

I won't tell you Chilblains can't punch through a healing ball, because it can. But if you're not using several coordinated copies of it you're wasting your time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

All you need to strip is one heal seed.

Guess how many enchantments are sitting on top of that Healing Seed. We did lose Life Bonds on occasion to Chilblains spam, but I can't remember ever losing Healing Seed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

then while the heal monks scramble to put it back on, you drop the chillblains to remove the seed as well as all the unprotected bonds.

That's a nice little theory for first level, naive healing balls with no counters.

In reality, those of us who ran a healing ball for over a month are well aware of what's actually dangerous, and how to counter those threats. Chilblains was a threat, but one that was containable. Most of the time you're going to pull off an Aegis, or an Order, or Dark Fury, or a Healing Breeze, or Vigorous Spirit, or a Divine Boon, or a BiP, or one of the other spammable pieces of chaff that we happened to be running that week.

You might not want to believe it, but we really do not care about a solitary character with Chilblains. He just doesn't do anything but spend 25 energy to pull off chaff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Then again, always a favorite alternative is getting someone to kill themselves while you well, but doing that requires you to have mantra of concentration and a decent amount of body blocking.

Putrid Explosion For The Win. I hadn't seen the suicide Well corpse tactic work in a long time. Now, sending a wave of bodies in at once, say 3 or so, would probably do the trick, if you could coordinate their deaths. Never saw anyone willing to try that, though.

Peace,
-CxE

Jul 31, 2005, 08:24 PM // 20:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

I've been running healing balls for around 2 1/2 months now. Quite frankly, all you've done is whine and complain about how you can't break the ball, and i'm telling you how it can be done fairly easily with skills that aren't regressively situational.

I've been running them from before release. I've done much more than complain-I've offered suggestions and in depth analysis on why the problem is here. You havent done anything but post dumb suggestions to something anyone that has run a healing ball knows doesnt work. If you were reading, not once did I complain that I cant break a healing ball-because I already know how to. So your just trolling the thread making unjust assumptions and using tard logic to try and come off as knowing what your talking about when you dont.

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For example, malaise can be used on every team: it cuts natural regen in half for casters. Always useful. Ether lord is similar. I could have said panic, but ether lord is just more usable (low on energy and want to piss someone off? Chuck a lord their way). Obviously i could have designed the ultimate healball breaker team, resplendant with 4 mes/necros, but that wasn't the point at all. Every team should have enchant removal.

This is why I know you have 0 experience with a healing ball and are a very bad player. First of all, Energy regen denial is only very effective when a person is on low energy. Secondly, we've already covered how Ether Lord is terrible since you dont gain anything from it, and how focus swapping beats out Malaise. No one is going to make a horrible Mes/Nec with Malaise and Ether Lord to break a healing ball-because it wont work. Know how a healing ball works before posting bullshit, because as everyone who plays with good players knows-healing balls have a huge energy engine underneath them. So while you spam Ether Lord and Malaise with your 4 Mes/Necs everyone else just walks around focus swapping and ignoring your low skilled efforts at breaking it. Knowing what a healing ball does and how it works is the first step to beating it, and you clearly DO NOT know how it works. So once again I'll say this: Who will people believe? The guys that actually know how the healing ball works or some tard on a forum trying to say you beat it with Ehter Lord and Malaise when all the evidence points to something else?

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As for your holier than thou attitude, that's incredibly close to flamebait, and i'd prefer it if you actually argued your point and brought real builds to the table instead of saying "oh, my healball isn't broken by anything".

Once again proof you arent reading this thread. We've already said NR beats out a healing ball. See, you've been caught not reading again and complain when people point out your stupidity.

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NR has to be nerfed, everyone agrees about that, but we all also agree that if it goes and nothing is done, heal ball will be back. That's why i'm arguing strictly without NR. Obviously NR breaks healballs. Duh. I'm saying that our current enchant removal skills are perfectly able to topple a ball, but they have to be used properly, you on the other hand are saying that the healball can't be broken. At the very least, you can rend a non-bonding/seeding player and spike them to death, interupting the bond when its cast, rendering the healball completely neutered.

And we've already covered that there isnt "using ER properly". It doenst exist. No combination of Chillblains, Ether Lord, Malaise and Rend is going to break a healing ball. Ever. We've explained why multiple times and you still dont get it. While you try and pinpoint when to break through the ball,looking for a point to snap a bon the other team is just loading up enchantments and not caring about ST removal. Why should they play the game by your rules? Oh, they dont have to. Thats the mistake your making-thinking teams will be dumb enough to let you just waltz in with single target removal and bust the whole thing. Once again, you do not know what you're talking about so stop making yourself look stupid.

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In sum, you've basically said nothing, trying to throw your place in iQ around in order to justify your lack of argument.

Read this thread again. The reason iQ gets respect is that we dont type bullshit on forums trying to come off as gods. We get respect because we tell the truth and let people know how it is. I could care less if it appears as a know it all attitude, as long as one jackass is stfu and less nonsense gets spread on the forums I'm happy. Now stop posting bs and actually read the skill descriptions before coming into a discussion you have no place in.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 08:48 PM // 20:48

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No one is going to make a horrible Mes/Nec with Malaise and Ether Lord to break a healing ball-because it wont work

No one said you're making the N/Me or Me/N to break the ball. THAT WAS MY POINT. The skills i listed all ALL multipurposed, with the exception of chillblains itself. Did you not notice how i left out an elite on purpose? how i kept 3 slots on that "horrible Me/N" open for whatever? Showing that E denial can drop bonds is obviously me showing that almost ANY build can deal with the ball. E denial has nothing against enchants: they're maintained, and the bonder can sit there all day doing nothing.

If anything, as a mes, i would probably use something more along the lines of arcane echo/echo/blackout to stop the bonder from replacing bonds (or doing anything)on the healing monks for upwards of 40 seconds, but that wasn't the point. The point was that this seemingly all purpose build could break a ball given proper teamplay, which you totally ignored.

I KNOW you know you can break a ball. So can i. The point is that ball isn't "omfg ovarpowered" to the point where all the enchant stripping abilities have to be buffed post NR nerf.

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The reason iQ gets respect is that we dont type bullshit on forums trying to come off as gods

Actually, that's all you've done this entire thread, with the added feat of not reading any of my posts.

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While you try and pinpoint when to break through the ball,looking for a point to snap a bon the other team is just loading up enchantments and not caring about ST removal. Why should they play the game by your rules? Oh, they dont have to.

See, this is what i find hilarious. Your basic premise is that upon watching the healing ball, my team will be immediately castrated and unable to defend itself. I've left 7 players out of this discussion, and 3 skills on the one i've talked about, yet you're telling me that no matter what i do, i can't break a lifebond, or drop a seed. That's complete bullshit. I know people are covering their enchants, and i know that you'll need multiple chillblains to break the peripheral bonds. What i also know is that all purpose disruption is just as effective on a heal ball as it is on other builds. If i have a R/W running disrupting chop/tiger's quickeness, for example, i can severely damage the ball if i hit a seed. These aren't gimmick builds that no one uses, they're perfectly viable all purpose solutions that do exist.

The problem, however, is that people are too "flavour of the month" regarding this discussion, and fail to see possibilities outside what they've used. Yourself included.

Edit: Ensign actually posted something that gave real points, i'll be talking about them soon, because most of them are valid.

Jul 31, 2005, 09:04 PM // 21:04

Keure · Jul 31, 2005, 09:09 PM // 21:09

In response to the OP, I'd like to fully support a measure for more aggressive balancing of skills/spells.

I'd also like to just pop off a few suggestions that...umm...popped into my head as I was reading this thread.

There was a remark about how NR has a very very low opportunity cost when you're designing a build to fight off NR teams. I think that the issue of having such a powerful effect taking up one skill slot has to be addressed along with the obvious ones (increase requirements and an overall nerf to the ability).

Why not divide the Nature's Renewal effect among several different skills so that the ability to create an environment unfriendly to enchantments requires many more skill slots? I'd personally rather have the "twice as long to cast hexes" chopped off the skill entirely and made into another ritual, and then make the current NR effect (minus hex castration) into a few different skills that are to be used together to create the desired effect (while not using them all would not work all that well).

As for enchantment removal, there are a couple of ideas I'd just like to throw out...numbers are arbitrary.

(some appropriate name): Removes an enchantment. Any other enchants with the same name are also removed.

(some appropriate name): Removes an enchantment. Also removes 0...5 enchants from the same attribute on the enemy team.

(some appropriate name): Removes an enchantment. All copies of that enchantment are disabled for 1...6 seconds.

Corresponding nerf to stuff like Orders or any similar group enchant: If the caster is (insert appropriate effect here), all copies of (group enchant) are removed.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Quote:

This character does very little in a hall hold situation. Why? Because we know that primary Necros, at least back when healing balls were relevant, carried Rends and Wells and Lingering Curses and all that stuff. So we stuck a Mesmer on him and made sure that he never cast a single relevant spell in the entire 10 minutes of the match.

See, this is a great point, but unless your mesmer was using blackout, it wouldn't be able to deal with a cast of spellbreaker. If i see a ball team, the defence on my team should be focused on keeping our most important offensive element free from distractions.

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Now, sending a wave of bodies in at once, say 3 or so, would probably do the trick, if you could coordinate their deaths. Never saw anyone willing to try that, though

I've seen this happen twice, but i don't think it was intentional. The 2 teams trying to attack the ball came in, did very little, then one just got massacred by the other attacking team (they had been running a bunch of E/Mes with AoE, snares, and shatters). All of a sudden we had 8 corpses around us, and a well popped up. That was the end of that hall hold.

Maybe the key would be the 2 opposing teams actually working together?

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Rends help break a ball, sure, but they aren't going to do it on their own. Multiples? That'd start to be annoying, sure.

Yeah, that's specifically why i put arcane echo into that one person, to give him a double rend option. If multiple teams were going for the dias, that would be either 4 rends or 4 chillblains, discounting every other character on their team.

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I won't tell you Chilblains can't punch through a healing ball, because it can. But if you're not using several coordinated copies of it you're wasting your time.

Chillblains alone isn't the best skill for bond breaking, i'd say rend is far better. I just need chillblains to keep SB as an endangered ability.

The problem i see with heal ball isn't so much that it can't be cracked: it can. If your monks are on their backs/taking incidiary arrow spam/whatever focused,organized disruption, they can't be restoring bonds. The problem is that the chance to crack it comes once every 30 seconds or so, since enchant removal has huge recast times. I'd be for keeping the casting costs as they are, but lowering recasts to 10 seconds or so.

And Blackice, seriously, grow up.

Jul 31, 2005, 09:40 PM // 21:40

Maybe you should stop worrying about me and start reading this thread from page 1 again. I dont have much patience for stupidity.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 09:45 PM // 21:45

Ensign is debating, and you are not. If he disproves everything i say, then so be it.

You on the other hand are using ability 2 from pikachu (omg leik i win becuz i'm so cool!). Irony that you posted it. Either way, i'm not replying to anymore of your flamebait, since that's what it clearly is. I'll do us both a favor and let you troll someone else in the meantime.

Jul 31, 2005, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Listen up kids, this is how you not suck at Guild Wars.

Step 1:

Know what you are talking about.

Analysis: Case in point, how to break a healing ball(the non-newb version). All good ones have an energy engine underneath. We also know that Malaise and Ether Lord are shit skills due to: A.)Simple Math and B.)Simple game mechanics. Now that we've gotten that out of the way on to the next step.

Step 2:

Know what you are talking about.

Analysis: Enchantment removal. Knowing how the game has been balancing skills for a while, you would know that most Enchantment Removal options are also shit. Chilblains was used to break Spell Breaker and Obs Flesh builds that protected their enchantments when Well of the Profane became obsolete. This became harder to do as A

Chilblains is a shit skill because of the Energy Cost and B

It removes one enchantment which doesnt become reliable vs a healing ball with massive enchantments. So with Rend Enchantments and Lingering Curse being the best options at stopping enchantments they were used in play the most by the better teams. On to the next point.

Step 3:

Know what you are talking about.

Analysis: Energy Denial. If you dont know how Energy Denial works in this game, now is the best time to learn. Healing Ball builds need a strong energy engine by their nature due to the massive punishment expected to be thrown at it by better teams. To break the ball energy denial is one of the best ways to go about it. However, there are multiple paths to Energy denial and some are clearly better than others. malaise and Ether Lord are not considered Energy Denial by better teams because both skills are utter shit.

Ether Lord is best effective at 5 energy. Their are 2 reasons why this skill goes to the trash bin:

If you are a Mesmer playing energy denial and you're any good, you'll notice that delaying the points at which you dip into low energy pools is going to make life much easier. You dont want to be at 5 energy, you want to be higher than that to press the energy advantage. If you're doing this very well, you dont have time to make Ether Lord "effective"

The second reason is that basic reading tells you why this skill is bad. You lose all energy. So of course the common assumption is to use it at 5 energy. This is where the math comes in. At 0 Energy and 12 Inspiration: (9 seconds)(7 pips )(1/3)=~21 energy - thei ntial 5 energy cost=16 energy. Factor in Nature's Renewal and the fact that these days teams need light hex removal and this skill is even worse than before.

Malaise: Used to be broken. The devs nerfed the wrong aspect of the skill, making it another version of Wither. The recharge time was the problem before, but now making it end on 0 sends it to the Mind Wrack camp. It loses to focus switching, which all good players know how to do. Energy degeneration becomes very effective as current energy is depleted due to the fact that most of the Energy degen skills came at a heavy price. This skill was the one exception in which Energy degen was completely out of whack and its been nerfed the wrong way.

When you want to win at this game, understanding the basics and why things work is the first step. Posting on the forums about shit that has been exhausted in the metagame a while back is meaningless. No one cares how long you've played a damn healing ball if you dont know how the shit works. Now stop responding to my posts if you wish because your stupidity isn't warranted. Like I've said before I have low tolerance for asshats.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 10:24 PM // 22:24

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Like I've said before I have low tolerance for asshats.

Is that why you made a post about 2 skills you don't like when i said i was giving a random build that could deal with the ball? Obviously lingering is a possibility. I specifically said in my first post with that theoretical build "if you want lingering, bam, its in". I even specifically stated that the arcane echo would be well used for a rend then rend again attack. The option of throwing out 2 chillblains is just that: an option. If you can muster 65 energy to do it, then go ahead, but its never been my purpose to state that chillblains in and of itself breaks every healing ball every time. Its a tool, just like rend.

What point didn't you get? I haven't been even close to saying that ether lord/malaise is the best way to deny energy (I'd much rather be using energy drain/power leak/energy tap then malaise. Even panic can work here), nor have i said that chillblains is the only way to go. You confirmed pretty much my only point about chillblains: its needed to stop spellbreaker.

My entire point, and you KEEP missing it is that intelligent use of enchantment removal and a decent team build can allow you to break a healing ball, even if you aren't set up to specifically counter it. This means that huge buffs to enchantment removal are unnecessary and thus smaller tweaks are appropriate. Remember, this was all said in the context of people clamouring for huge buffs of enchant removal following the general agreement that NR has to be toned down.

As for you hating ether lord, your analysis forgets to mention that it isn't 16 net energy. Its a swing of 37 for a 5 energy skill. That's the highest swing in the entire game, save for energy drain. The skill isn't used to regen energy (at 5 energy, you can energy tap for immediate energy), its used to deny them theirs. Not only that, but it makes a decent cover to better hexes, since convert hex and contemplation of purity aren't the best skills on the block. To add to that, its rather difficult to remove a hex when you have no energy. Ether lord is a solid skill for energy denial.

Odd Sock · Jul 31, 2005, 10:38 PM // 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Yeah, that's specifically why i put arcane echo into that one person, to give him a double rend option. If multiple teams were going for the dias, that would be either 4 rends or 4 chillblains, discounting every other character on their team.

Ummm could you please look at cast times, energy costs and recycle times ?

First off Arcane Echoing Rend. Hmmm 15 energy, 10 energy, 10 energy. 45 energy and a grand 8 second cast time, that's without after cast. Now to reapply the bonds that you destroyed, 4 seconds without aftercast times. Removing enchantments in a heal ball is also a good way to yell out ''hey ! we're spiking this guy !''. Then you have 3 monks casting Orison right when that orb/arrow/weapon hits. Now to Arcane Echo Chillblains. Hmmm 15 energy, 25 energy, 25 energy. 65 energy to remove 2 enchantments on multiple targets. GG impossible combo that would require a focus swap and leave with a trashed energy pool.

For the love of god, please stop saying Chillblains is good and if NR gets fixed enchant removal is going to be ok. It's not, 25 energy to remove an unrelaible amount of enchantments is not good. Plus the fact that no one really cares as the bonds will simply come back up. If you say interruption then you'll be looking at Spellbreaker, Obs Flesh, Guardian, Aegis and/or a combination of all the skills mentioned above. When we'd face Chillblains is was an annoyance since it removed all the scum that we'd put over our important enchants. Then we'd have to reapply for a cost far cheaper than 25 energy (potentially 30 cause you have to remove that poison with a Mend). Please stop talking about this skill like it was a monster, it sucks.

Back on topic though, fix NR and rebalance enchant removal as well as hex management options.

EDIT: I was typing while he put up his post

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Not only that, but it makes a decent cover to better hexes, since convert hex and contemplation of purity aren't the best skills on the block. To add to that, its rather difficult to remove a hex when you have no energy. Ether lord is a solid skill for energy denial.

It's bad since you lost ALL your energy and the monk you targeted will just click on Remove Hex or Inspired Hex. No one ever said Contemplation of Purity was even usable. And you just said use Ether Lord as a cover enchantment. What ? If it's a cover hex then it'll get removed while you don't have anymore energy. Cover hex=hex you don't care about being removed. Ether Lord has become your ''Energy Swinger''... isn't that what's most important when you've hit 0 energy after using it ? Flawed logic is the special of the day or what ? Finally good teams have energy creation engines. Teams that think they're the shizzle for bringing 2 mesmers with Drain/Tap and think that'll win the match are cute. Guess what ? we thought ahead of that and are creating artificial energy on top of our regen. Seriously Ether Lord for the lose.

Tigris Of Gaul · Jul 31, 2005, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Haven't had the time to look through the last couple pages because I've been out of town, but glancing and seeing the suggestion of making Nature's Renewal elite...

I'd prefer that ArenaNet goes through actual balancing with this skill and avoid the easy way of slapping the elite tag on it. Some R/Mes could still get around it and consistently put it out, and that's not solving anything. As mentioned, even as an elite it's still worth taking because it's just plain dominant. I'd like ArenaNet to actually modify the skill in its abilities, because that's going to go much farther then, "Hmm... elite? Ok, done."

EDIT: Absolutely agree with the above poster; fixing NR and leaving it at that does nothing to solve the problem. Chilblains needs to have multiple copies to really be effective, and at 25 energy that's pretty damn expensive. You fix NR and you need to look at Rend Enchantments, Chilblains, etc.

Nash · Jul 31, 2005, 11:02 PM // 23:02

Ether Lord is total trash.
At 3 pips, 9 sec it's 9 energy less for your target.
You, however, lose about 6.8 energy (at a reasonable level of FC), gaining 9 back. That is, of course, assuming you use it at 5 energy, and it doesn't get removed.

Jul 31, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

Oddsock dont argue with him. His arguments are starting to break down into Scooby Biscuits and right now he's fishing for help. It's bad to get caught looking like a dumbass, it's even worse to be caught looking like a dumbass spouting Ether Lord as true Energy denial.

Also to add for the 1 millionth time. There isnt a such thing as "intelligent enchantment removal". You have a very small window to break the ball, and you dont have time to think of complex formations to break it. The whole reason the ball works is because as the match goes on your energy engine withers away an the ball just keeps going. You keep throwing ER into the mix continuosly hitting the wrong stuff. The other team doesn't care that your trying to be intelligent about it-they have room for mistakes where you dont, and they know you have few options. So instead of being a tard and trying to tell people who have used a healing ball how to break it, do something useful with your time and READ SKILL DESCRIPTIONS AND TEST THEM IN GAME.

Odd Sock · Jul 31, 2005, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Breaking the heal ball is quite simple. Oftentimes when we'd run it inside the hall, our losses were due to a) Nature's Renewal coming up b) elemental damage rocking us c) intelligent double teaming. Heal balls aren't invincible, all you need is to brute yourself through it. Like for example, Maelstrom+Meteor Shower+Orb Spikes.

Regardless, the topic of this thread is where the game should be balanced. We don't care if Balls will get popular again, we want a balance. Now quit your back and forth bitching and get to the point: NR screws everyhting up because over than half the useful skills are enchants and hexes and that increase in cast time makes most of them crap. I think that's a nice summary of the situation.

Also nerf Zealot's Fire or at least make it something that doesn't spell out ''ABUSE ME''. Seriously I farmed 1.2 million XP in under a week and without an insane time investment. If that's not an inbalance then I don't know what is.

Other skills to review: Fertile affecting itself, Elemental Attunements stacking when NR gets fixed, enchantment removal and a proper counter to hex stacking other than a 15 energy skill or Contemplation of Purity. Also check out skills like Rust, Searing Heat, Ice Spear, Dwarven Battle Stance, I Will Avenge You, I Will Survive and the list goes on and on and on and on. 450 skills in the game and over 200 are just bad without NR. GG, now let's get back on topic

coleslawdressin · Jul 31, 2005, 11:51 PM // 23:51

Now that that is over with, what do you think about my new and improved Nature's Renewal? Keep in mind other skills need changes and you are free to add your own new and improved version of them. Bantering about what works under the current system gets us nowhere. It has been discussed many times and what is best is proven by who is winning the HOH.

------

Nature's Renewal: Elite Nature Ritual - Create a level 1-8 Spirit. For creatures within range, all "Enchantments" and "Hexes" are removed after 90-35 seconds. For 30-126 seconds, Enchantments and Hexes take 60-120% longer to cast. This Spirit dies after 90 -126 seconds.

5 mana - 5 cast time - 90 second recharge

And the table for all possible skill levels:

01 - After 90 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment - cast time slowed by 60%
02 - After 85 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment - cast time slowed by 65%
03 - After 80 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment - cast time slowed by 70%
04 - After 75 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment - cast time slowed by 75%
05 - After 70 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments - cast time slowed by 80%
06 - After 65 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments - cast time slowed by 85%
07 - After 60 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments - cast time slowed by 90%
08 - After 55 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments - cast time slowed by 95%
09 - After 50 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments - cast time slowed by 100%
10 - After 45 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments - cast time slowed by 105%
11 - After 40 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments - cast time slowed by 110%
12 - After 35 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments - cast time slowed by 120%
13 - After 30 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments - cast time slowed by 122%
14 - After 25 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments - cast time slowed by 125%
15 - After 20 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments - cast time slowed by 127%
16 - After 15 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments - cast time slowed by 130%
17 - After 10 seconds, destroy 5 enchantments - cast time slowed by 132%

Phades · Aug 01, 2005, 12:15 AM // 00:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by coleslawdressin

Phades, I guess you mean something with the skill recharging as son as the 5 second cast time starts? I haven't used spirits in quite some time so I haven't paid attention. I was talking about using those 2 warrior skills to counter the spirit spammer, or would just need Wild Blow if it was made easily interruptable. If the developers want to balance all skills better they will need to review a lot of skills, underpowered ones too. I read most of the thread since it was started.. I guess I can read it again.. I guess by refresh times you mean times for skills to recharge? What specific changes do you suggest though?

I wonder if someone could get Gaile or one of the designers to comment on this thread.

Im of the opinion that if NR is changed that alot of the enchantments refresh times will have to be given a value or given a higher value in order to allow the other forms of enchantment removal to catch up in their current form, assuming they are balanced to begin with. Beyond that i also suggested that perhaps 1 other form of enchantment removal be given to another class following a similar pattern as chillblains, for general purpose work. In addition, in order to avoid further enchantment and other problems associated with the skillbar manipulation, i forsee that ways to copy and reduce the amount of time, need to have some form of nerf in power and stacking ability, so that the enchantment removal will remain capable without being forced to resort to the same build to counter effectivly.

I also anticipate that damage would probably become too difficult to counter with the lack of readily renewable defenses from a single class source, so that there would most likely require some skills, similar to stances wards and shouts, to filter down through the other classes to help make up the difference and give more variety. The problem with creating more similar skills to stances and shouts, is that they create more of an individual centered team scheme, instead of building on each other in the current format through synergy and redundancy.

I have mentioned such thoughts earlier in the thread as general commentary.

*Your chart needs to follow the natural progression of the duration of the skill. Also, most of the nature rituals could stand to be toned back in duration so they dont exceede the innate refresh time allowing for redundancy by default.

Orochim4ru · Aug 01, 2005, 01:44 AM // 01:44

Quote:

It's bad since you lost ALL your energy and the monk you targeted will just click on Remove Hex or Inspired Hex.

the monk you just targetted has 0 energy, since you just finished tapping or draining them. It requires someone else to remove their hex, and since a standard E denial is going offtarget, the other person is probably knocked down, or needs to help himself. I don't care if i lost all my energy: i'm down to 0 because i just dropped shame/guilt/diversion on someone else to lower my energy to 5. After getting back up to 5 energy (7 pips=2 1/3 seconds of downtime.. which is less than the unaltered cast time of energy tap), i'm going to be energy draining your friend while you stay at 1 pip of regen anyways. hey look, i'm back at 20, regen is at 7 for another ~7 seconds, and you've still got... what? like... 2 energy?

Ether lord is, once again, not a skill used to recharge energy. Its used to stop a character from doing his job. You can say "i'll remove hex on your shame" but it doesn't change the fact that while you're doing that you aren't doing your job. More to the point, remove hex has a cast time of 2 seconds, which screams "power leak me!". I'll admit, however, that inspired hex is very powerful, even at low inspiration. Having a cost of 5 and a cast time of 1 makes it very useful in an environment wherein NR doesn't have so much clout.

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it's even worse to be caught looking like a dumbass spouting Ether Lord as true Energy denial

You'll note i said that echoed energy drains are far stronger. Honestly, what are you talking about?

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First off Arcane Echoing Rend. Hmmm 15 energy, 10 energy, 10 energy. 45 energy and a grand 8 second cast time

35, nice math, and arcane echo can be applied 20 seconds in advance, leaving you time to regen around 20+ additional energy. also, the cast time is reduced if you use a mes primary, leaving around 2 seconds for rend casts.

Same flaw with chillblains math, although the offhand would be needed, and it would wreck your energy, as i said here

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If you can muster 65 energy to do it...

now, more to the point, you said

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For the love of god, please stop saying Chillblains is good and if NR gets fixed enchant removal is going to be ok. It's not, 25 energy to remove an unrelaible amount of enchantments is not good.

I said we should lower the energy cost to 15. So we agree, and yet you're going hostile over nothing. I wouldn't mind seeing the energy cost drop to 15, the recharge going up to 20, and the damage/poison removed. The skill tries to do too much, and accomplishes nothing in the meanwhile. Strip Enchant would be nice if it could strip more than one enchant at a time too, since as it stands, a character cannot effectively take down an enchant based team without lingering and rend

I think we should lower rend's health hit. Its.. just a wee bit much for its ability. maybe if it was a sacrifice 20% ability, it would work out better, since it would have better synergy with other necro skills. The progression for amount of enchants rended and level is fine as is.

Shatter enchant is fine as is as well, as in inspired enchant.

The entire purpose to my arguments, which i've stated multiple times isn't to say that ether lord+malaise is the "omfg best evar skills woot". Its that healing ball, the ultimate enchant stacking build, can be dealt with under our current environment sans NR by a fairly random build. Obviously post nerf NR is still going to hurt enchants, but I don't want rend or other enchant removal options becoming 5 energy to cast 5 second recharge abilities.

As for the suggested NR changes, i don't think that making NR or spirits easy to interupt would help much. Making them spells, however, might be an option worth looking into. They're obviously magical, and it would open the door to mes interuption, skull cracking. This, of course, isn't the only change that would have to be implemented, but it might be something worth considering that would make spirit spamming in general a bit easier to stop.

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Im of the opinion that if NR is changed that alot of the enchantments refresh times will have to be given a value or given a higher value in order to allow the other forms of enchantment removal to catch up in their current form

i think the change should take place in the removal skills themselves, since a change to the enchants as they are might have unseen consequences. being a pve prot monk, for example, might become incredibly hard.

Keure · Aug 01, 2005, 03:49 AM // 03:49

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Originally Posted by Orochim4ru

Ether lord is, once again, not a skill used to recharge energy. Its used to stop a character from doing his job.

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Originally Posted by Odd Sock

Guess what ? we thought ahead of that and are creating artificial energy on top of our regen.

If I understand the heal ball used it relies on Bonds regenerating energy passively through taking damage. Because they have an additional means of regenerating energy in their heal ball Ether Lord doesn't "stop a character from doing his job".

Orochim4ru · Aug 01, 2005, 03:53 AM // 03:53

Wailing on a bond group for no reason isn't a great idea. Also, shutting down the bonder is much more effective with blackout/echo as stated earlier. Tossing out a lord to slow someone down after you've spammed hexes, however, does force the opponents to react, or effectively lose 20 energy. They cast remove hex after 4 seconds? that's still 10 energy out of their pocket for the cost of 5 of mine.