Curse

Jul 30, 2005, 09:18 PM // 21:18

ok you try stripping 4 bonds with chilblains. The rest of us will continue to play Guild Wars.

Orochim4ru · Jul 30, 2005, 10:35 PM // 22:35

Quote:

The purpose of a healing ball isn't exactly optimal damage output, now is it?

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

N/Me rend, chillblains, arcane echo, malaise, ether lord + whatever you want. Perfectly viable build, and can punch through 16 enchants, as well as rending a target twice in a row, not only that, it can hold monks with 0 energy regen for... as long as it wants. More importantly, you've got another 2 skills + res sig to customize with. Want lingering too? bring it! want to bring energy drain? Why not! i specifically left out the elite slot because there are so many options. Not only that, this one character, the necro debuffer, wrecks the entire ball build. Isn't overpowered in the least.

Please, don't tell me chillblains can't punch through a heal ball, because it does, and it does fairly well. All you need to strip is one heal seed. 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. Not only that, but chillblains is the only Non NR spell that can drop a SB to allow you to rend without needing a corpse.

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.

Silmor · Jul 30, 2005, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Unprotected bonds? What did you use to uncover them then? If they were uncovered in the first place, why the need to remove healing seed first? As noted, we're talking stacked bonds here. To remove the entire setup using Chillblains, you need many successive casts to wear down the layers until you get to the enchantments that matter. Ofcourse Rend is far more suited for this, but noone is disputing that, same with Chillblains being the only viable skill-based answer to Spell Breaker.

About your energy denial setup, do a little math on Ether Lord, and calculate how much energy you're really taking away from your target over that 9 second period after you've successfully depleted your own energy supply (kindly assuming you went with 12 inspiration magic on a N/Me, and that the hex doesn't get removed during that period).
Optimal efficiency can only be attained when your target has 0 energy which makes it a very conditional skill, so why not go with a far less conditional and more potent energy stealing skill such as energy tap that won't shaft your own energy, and since it's not a hex can't simply be removed?

Look at Malaise, and notice how it ends once energy reaches 0. Then imagine someone cycling through focii to artificially lower his energy level for a full second, and Malaise ending right there.

Someone killing himself to provide a corpse for Well of Profane... check the casttime for Well of Profane. Then check the casttime for Putrid Explosion. One of them will finish sooner, removing the corpse, and your team is one man down.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 12:25 AM // 00:25

Quote:

Unprotected bonds? What did you use to uncover them then? If they were uncovered in the first place, why the need to remove healing seed first?

You have 8 people on your team, enchants have a finite period of length, unless more than 1 of your characters is maintaining enchants on everyone using blessed signet. Spamming enchants that cost 5 and last 30 seconds (vig spirit, the best cover, imho) is great, but it means 1 of your healers is running very thin on energy and can't spam heal seed. Since you need constant seed (every 15 seconds or every 20 seconds, normally) so that the seed doesn't become unprotected, this is unfeasible without some form of necro energy buffing.

So, this means 1 or 2 of the bonds drop to a chillblains. A quick tab through the group finds said people, and blam, you start your spike. Being forced to use another bond or lose a player, the prot monk becomes a viable target for any form of interuption. As i said previously, you can drop an easy -4 regen on him (i'll explain why there's -4 and not -5 there), keeping him unable to rebond without using blessed, which adds yet more time of vulnerability. Rending the prot monk, then waiting for the next seed and rending again is almost an assured break in the ball.

Quote:

kindly assuming you went with 12 inspiration magic on a N/Me, and that the hex doesn't get removed during that period

Why would you go for 12 insp for that build? 5 degen doesn't help you. 4 does. You're supposed to echo the ether lord, since it should have around 8-9 seconds of uptime.

More importantly, your entire analysis is flawed: once a prot monk reaches 0 energy, the heal ball is over. 4 bonds drop, if he was smart and kept balth's spirit in his top 4, meaning you have half a team vulnerable now. Not only does the prot monk have 0 energy, but

a) you can keep him there
b) he needs 40 energy worth of bonds up... yesterday
c) he's gaining 12 less energy from blessed.

I'd LOVE for someone to cycle focii to drop themselves to 0, but the fact of the matter is the hub of the ball normally keeps the +15 energy focii in reserve, thus he'd be gaining energy. Then again, dropping to 0 cancels 4 of his maintained enchants, as i stated above.

Silmor · Jul 31, 2005, 01:03 AM // 01:03

So you're counting on a team using a single-monk healing ball with no counter to energy denial, no hex removal?

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 01:12 AM // 01:12

So you're counting on the offensive team having no mesmers or disruption?

Phades · Jul 31, 2005, 01:53 AM // 01:53

The point he made, which you missed, is that you will need to be man to man or better than the monk ratio within the healing ball with your team's mesmers. My earlier point was that it was impractical to impossible to build out a team using anything else other than NR to punch through it effectivly. This is mainly due to the number of sources casting enchantments and the number of targets completely covered by them.

Zeru · Jul 31, 2005, 02:23 AM // 02:23

Ether lord and malaise as energy denial? Are you joking? If you want to reduce one guy to 0 energy fast just debil spam him over and over. Then again I doubt that e-denying one person will break the whole build.

Chilly won't be able to break a healing ball on it's own unless you have multiple copies, good energy regen, and lots of energy denial and you won't get that with a waste of a character using ether lord/malaise.

If I wanted to crack a healing ball I'd go for heavy energy denial with select rends; 2 fear me warriors, qz, and a ranger who is able to constantly debil the warder/bonder/symp visager(s). You wear them down with constant rends and energy denial and sooner or later they won't be able to keep up the chafe and it breaks. How long that would take I don't know but it would have a much better shot at cracking it then using an echoed ether lord.

Grindwarrior · Jul 31, 2005, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Disruption is never going to be the counter to anything, its a strategy in itself. It can counter everything but in limited amounts. Every skill in the game can be "countered" by being interrupted. Some more easily then others of course. You can't argue that something is balanced if interrupting it is the only way to counter it. Say there was a skill that killed everyone on the other team within casting range. You could interrupt it yes, but it's still overpowered.

It's exactly the same with NR as with healing ball, you can interrupt one guy doing it but a whole team doing it isnt going to be easy.

Orochim4ru · Jul 31, 2005, 02:30 AM // 02:30

Quote:

you will need to be man to man or better than the monk ratio within the healing ball with your team's mesmers

no, you don't. you have to have enough disruption to keep seed off once it drops, or be able to drop it multiple times. That's it. Keeping a caster perma kded with multiple warriors using frenzy, backbreaker and for great justice works just as well. Using one maelstrom works just as well. power blocking the seed works as well.

Disruption should be something that EVERY person on the team does. Monks disrupt people's pure dmg by giving people back hp. They disrupt the first level of strategy (kill people). pure dmg dealers do the same. They disrupt the enemies first strategy by getting there first (we kill you faster than you can kill us)

The game gets interesting when people play on 2-4th level strategies.

2nd
I'll stop their dmg before it happens with enchants
I'll stop their dmg before it happens with hexes
I'll stop their healing with hexes

3rd
I'll stop their enchant's effects with strips
I'll stop their hexes with removal

4th
I'll use energy denial to prevent them from lowering our defence.
I'll knockdown their mesmers and keep them occupied.

I can keep listing options, but therein lies my point: there ARE options. healing ball HAS counters. NR on the other hand, does not. There's no anti spirit ability. something that negates spirits in area X. Enchants, however, ARE counterable. Inspired, shatter, rend, chillblains, profane, strip, lingering. Enchants can be proactively stopped by toploading dmg on undefended targets (omg, they're spiking a warrior? idiots! oh, wait, we have no defence on him and he's using frenzy...).

If anything, enchant removal is fine, a toning down on rend's dmg cost, a 20 or 15 cost for chillblains is all that's really required. Spellbreaker, however, should be completely revamped, because there are only 2 skills in the game which can strip enchants when its on, and one of them requires dead people. Maybe 75% of spells fail on a SB enchanted person. Obsidian flesh, however, is fine as is, since it can't be chained, unless you're running an E/Me.

Jul 31, 2005, 07:29 AM // 07:29

Ok Orochim4ru, who are people going to believe? The guys who actually played with and pushed the new healing ball to the level it is now, and know that Chilblains cant break it-or some guy on a forum trying to break it with terrible skills like Malaise and Ether Lord?

ratatass · Jul 31, 2005, 12:15 PM // 12:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nash

Bring back DP for spirits?

That might be it....for part of the problem...

ratatass

coleslawdressin · Jul 31, 2005, 01:57 PM // 13:57

These are my ideas for possible changes to NR - some have been listen before:

1. Make it elite.

2. Remove the enchantment stripping altogether.

3. Modify it to Enchantments and Hexes take 60% to 120%(lvl 12 nature skill) longer to cast.

3. Make it easily interrupted like traps.

4. Modify the insanely overpowered, global enchantment removal portion to read:

"After X..Y seconds Nature's Renewal destroys X..Y enchantments in its range."

Suggested table based on skill level:

1 - After 90 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment
2 - After 85 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment
3 - After 80 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment
4 - After 75 seconds, destroy 1 enchantment
5 - After 70 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments
6 - After 65 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments
7 - After 60 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments
8 - After 55 seconds, destroy 2 enchantments
9 - After 50 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments
10 - After 45 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments
11 - After 40 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments
12 - After 35 seconds, destroy 3 enchantments
13 - After 30 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments
14 - After 25 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments
15 - After 20 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments
16 - After 15 seconds, destroy 4 enchantments
17 - After 10 seconds, destroy 5 enchantments

NR should be more like most skills, situational. It will slow down enchant/hex heavy teams, reward points in nature, and maybe still be the best enchant debuff... but not at level 1 skill. Knowing that there is such inbalance with skills like NR really make me disinterested trying to join a GvG and HoH guild.

Think this will just go back to making healing balls overpowered? Change Healing Seed to have a max total healing or something (I am not totally sure how this strategy works). This thread is supposed to be about aggressive balancing not counters to things like NR in its current form. Having an elite skill system is fine, but maybe ArenaNet can consider, like Magic Cards (this game always reminded me of Magic), having some skills banned from GvG, HoH, and maybe 4v4's. They could allow players with X rank or with X fame access to a select forum on their website where they give/get feedback from the game designers on the PvP balance. A healthy PvP system will be one of the important factors to Guild Wars' longevity. A lot less people will buy an expansion if there are not new skills added, so things will (hopefully) become a lot more complex and also balanced.

Phades · Jul 31, 2005, 02:14 PM // 14:14

Making it eliete wont solve anything, it will just make it come back every 25 seconds instead of every 10-15 seconds from a single user with no copies of it or oath shot.

Removing the enchantment stripping would also require enchantment rebalnacing, which is what really needs to occur.

Just making the enchantments cast longer solves nothing and would be something to use in conjunction with other proposed changes.

Easy or hard to interupt, there are still ways around not being hit, just like how rangers can avoid being hit now. This would also be something to add to all spirits, but this alone wouldnt balance them.

Its base time duration is still 30s, so your table is a bit backwards when it comes to when it would actually strip the enchantment. Should it follow the delayed strip method, it wouldnt accomplish much against the healing balls without multiple copies expiring while multiple copies were up at the same time. 1 skill should never slow down a team build. That is the main problem with the skill and spirits in general, due to their overarching effect.

The devs still need to adress any instance of multiple copies in effect at the same time while examining the perma duration or easily refreshed skill options within the game. There is no nearly no point in having a duration on something with a refresh time vastly smaller than it. Imagine if other skills followed that path, like chaos storm or meteor shower having multiple copies of it from the same user littering the battlefield in an unending fashion.

coleslawdressin · Jul 31, 2005, 03:12 PM // 15:12

If limiting NR's spammability is part of the solution, then make it elite. The only way to use Oath Shot with it then would be to use a R/Me or Me/R and use Arcane Mimicry. NR's recharge is 60 seconds or 30 seconds with Quickening Zephyr. Off the top of my head I don't see how it is coming back every 25sec.

Making it easy to interrupt is part of making it less overpowered.. It would be weird to have only 1 spirit be that way though. Yes there are ways to avoid being hit, but there are also warriors who use Wild Blow and Distracting Blow. Anyhow, any one skill should not be so powerful that it demands several characters dedicated to stopping it.. or that any good team has to give in and use it themselves.

"Just making the enchantments cast longer solves nothing and would be something to use in conjunction with other proposed changes."

I really strongly disagree with this and what other proposed changes you suggest is not clear. One skill should not be a solution to a whole team's strategy. In most cases, having more points in an attribute is rewarded with benefits. If a level 16 NR made all enchantments and hexes take 130% longer for 145 seconds, that would be quite powerful. If a team is enchant/hex heavy, it is both slowing down their actions and making them easier to interrupt.

My table is not backwards, but I did forget to take into account spirits' current duration setup. Maybe all Spirits of Nature's Renewal could last 90-142 seconds, but a level 1 spirit would only slow ench. and hexs by 60% for 30 seconds. After that the spirit doesn't die but the global effect would disappear, then at 90sec the spirit would die and remove 1 enchant from all players in range. NR is powerful for its immediacy and high levels in Wilderness should be rewarded with more debuff and that debuff coming sooner.

Phades · Jul 31, 2005, 03:43 PM // 15:43

Looks at Serpents quickness then add cast time.

There are many ways to counter a warrior, stances are only one of thoe methods.

Review the entire thread. Enchantments, like other skills, need appropriate refresh times associated with them in order to begin to have some form of balance.

Having effects that are permenant, for all intensive purposes, defeats the purpose of having a recast time on them. This is especially important on things with exsessivly long durations that have global effects or no definable duration.

The problem has many layers to it and doesnt just start and stop with nature's renewal.

Ollj · Jul 31, 2005, 03:48 PM // 15:48

request for more use your stupid brains to run more than 3 different build and do something creative without looking for max damage and acting like sissys all the time!

Odd Sock · Jul 31, 2005, 05:10 PM // 17:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ollj

request for more use your stupid brains to run more than 3 different build and do something creative without looking for max damage and acting like sissys all the time!

This is why I'm in pseudo-retirement from posting.

Ollj, you've just insulted so many people with that sentence. I've been warned not to flame anymore (even towards retarded people) so I'll keep my post as tactful as I can. The people you're telling to be creative are the very same people that started abusing the heal ball, made putrid popular since it avoided Well of Profane and ultimately got NR to be so damned abusive. There are also people that got spike damage that relied on enchant stacking and some people that used buff stacking to get 5 hit kills. Lots of the people that you've insulted are the ones that affected Flavour of the Month builds and that you've mimicked or lost to.

See everyone here runs more than 3 builds but in the end they all come down to being the same thing; you can't run enchant/buff stacking since it gets demolished insanely fast by NR and you lose. Your team can't refrain from using NR or else you might face a team that will enchant stack and destroy you. You basically HAVE to run NR or you'll be the gimped team. Now look at what you can do under an NR environment. It's not that we're not using our brains, it's that there isn't anything there to use. Maybe you think stacking preperations is ingenious but it doesn't work. There are maybe 100 of the 450 skills that can be decent under NR and only a few combo properly together.

Oh and by the way the difference between a good build and a bad one is that the good one will have the max damage and in the long run beat the non-max damage one. You think the top teams run 9 weapon-attribute axe warriors cause they just want to be able to use the weapon and not care about the damage ? Get real please.

coleslawdressin · Jul 31, 2005, 07:49 PM // 19:49

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.

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

Quote:

Ok Orochim4ru, who are people going to believe? The guys who actually played with and pushed the new healing ball to the level it is now, and know that Chilblains cant break it-or some guy on a forum trying to break it with terrible skills like Malaise and Ether Lord?

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.

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.

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".

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.

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