Curse

Formula97 · Sep 19, 2006, 07:05 PM // 19:05

What I don't understand is why they also nerfed Boon of Creation. Yeah, it is used in the Rit Lord builds, but they nerfed Ritual Lord, so what was the point? The only other semi-popular build I know of that uses Boon of Creation is the Rt/N minion bomber, which is never used in PVP because it is just not practical.

In PVE, the Rt/N mm is not overpowered at all. Basically the only advantage it has over a Necro primary mm is Explosive Growth for some AOE damage. Seeing as how Boon was the only real useable energy management skill for a Rit, I have to completely disagree with the nerf. My Rit is now pretty much useless to me, as I found spirits and restoration extremely boring. When you are running a Rt/N with Boon of Creation, energy was still an issue before the nerf if you were putting nova on all of your minions as they were created(hard to do, but with practice it is possible) and keeping Boon of Creation and Explosive Growth up. Since your minions are constantly dieing and you don't get any bonus from soul reaping, the energy gained from making new minions was the only way to keep going during heavy fighting.

They may have buffed a lot of other skills, but if they buff skill lines that no one wants to use anyway, who cares. I personally, along with some other members of my guild, are really getting tired of all the skill nerfs. If people in PVP are too dumb, lazy, or what ever to come up with better builds, don't ruin things for everyone esle. Why should the whiners and complainers always get what they want? I mean really, they might as well just nerf everything, so the people who play crap builds all the time won't have anything to complain about when they get their rear ends handed to them. Yeah, some builds are pretty annoying to go up against and get owned by all the time in PVP, but you go back, look at your skills, and make adjustments for next time, as there is a counter to just about everything in this game.
If I see a bunch of people using the same build and being sucessful, guess what. I'm going to go look to see what I can do to counter it, not go complain to Anet that its too powerfull or can't be beat. With all of the nerfs, people don't have to think about how to counter something, Anet is doing it for them.

Commander Ryker · Sep 19, 2006, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Geez, everytime Anet makes any kind of changes, out come the cry babies. Well I say, here's a quarter, go dial 1-800-wahwah

Scourgey · Sep 19, 2006, 08:16 PM // 20:16

I thought Ritualists got a much needed buff, whoever hasn't tried out a healing rit or channelling ritualist should try them, they got quite a significant boost in areas like weapon spells, direct damage, healing.

Ritualist lord hasn't got a nerf by the way, the recharge for spirits is similar to before now because all the spirits got a 25% decrease in cooldown.

Jetdoc · Sep 19, 2006, 08:54 PM // 20:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Formula97

What I don't understand is why they also nerfed Boon of Creation. Yeah, it is used in the Rit Lord builds, but they nerfed Ritual Lord, so what was the point? The only other semi-popular build I know of that uses Boon of Creation is the Rt/N minion bomber, which is never used in PVP because it is just not practical.

Actually, they didn't nerf Ritual Lord since they decreased the recharge times of almost all the spirits that Ritual Lord uses.

Boon of Creation was their key target (along with Shelter) - it was this skill alone that allowed a ritualist to chain together an almost endless flow of spirits (hench the name spirit spammer).

Almost every class in GW has energy issues, and the Spirit-Spamming Ritualist was almost immune to this. That was corrected.

dgb · Sep 20, 2006, 02:37 AM // 02:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Formula97

If people in PVP are too dumb, lazy, or what ever to come up with better builds, don't ruin things for everyone esle.

They did come up with a counter, it was hit heavy builds (see thumpers). This didn't change the fact that ritualists played an overy large impact for a single character slot, with very few counters that could be just added to a build. I'd argue a lot more thought and creativity goes into high end PVP than goes into any PVE, it's not the we are dumb or lazy, it's that we recognise a character for being overpowered when it is.

Xenrath · Sep 20, 2006, 10:22 AM // 10:22

Quote:

Geez, everytime Anet makes any kind of changes, out come the cry babies. Well I say, here's a quarter, go dial 1-800-wahwah

And just what kind of post is that supposed to be? Along with a few others like that one? I don't see a shred of constructive criticism in that quoted post or the other "whining about whining" posts, do you? It's just flamebait and you know it.

Back on topic, seems pretty obvious this is just another nerf which has resulted because of PvP. It's been suggested to me that the majority of skill changes are because of some PvP issue, and I can see how that is true.

unmatchedfury · Sep 20, 2006, 11:13 AM // 11:13

Well the main problem is the fact that this shuts down devensive rits for PvE MUCH more than it does for PvP. In PvE shelter isn't even useable (even though you do get it early on) till you get rit lord.

they need to be a little less heavy handed than this with their nerfs. THey don't have to kill a skill to make it balenced. Either Energy increase or duration decrease would have sufficed. HOwver they hads to nerf the e manaegment skill, duration, energy, and cooldown. Deas that dound like a bit much? to me it does...

trankle · Sep 20, 2006, 01:24 PM // 13:24

Shelter was hit pretty hard, but....

Does anyone really believe that the RL build was balanced in PvE? I played it quite a bit in higher level missions (both campaigns), not because it was fun (though it did have a zen quality, after a hard day of work), but because it was so powerful. It was hard to justify not playing it to a party.

RL could stand far enough back that he never aggroed a single mob, and be at full effectiveness. This allowed him to wear multiple superior runes, which almost nobody does. On top of that, at least two spirits (shelter and union, possibly recuperation) could be kept up most of the time, offering blanket damage reduction with no knowledge of what challenges the party was facing. And if things got hairy, one button could heal the enitre party for over 400hp. In my opinion, a build which offers this kind of power with very little threat of danger, and with very little knowledge of the enemy, was not balanced.

So, is it now? Shelter costs 25e, and dies faster. You now have to know when to place it. This means you actually have to know what threats the party will be facing, and plan for them. I don't think that's too much to ask. Monks have to do the same thing.

By the way, spirit spammig rits don't have to use Rit Lord. Certain players are using combinations of Energizing Wind, Attuned was Songkai, and Serpent's Quickness to aid with recharge time and energy. It just takes more skill than before, as timing and spirit placement are less forgiving. I personally have been using Assassin's Promise for recharge and energy management. It's alot trickier, but much more fun and challenging at the same time. And still effective.

Speaking of, does nobody play offensive spirits in PvE? The power offered by offensive spirits and Painful Bond is pretty amazing, and using Assassin's Promise almost guarantees that mobility and energy aren't an issue in PvE. I suggest that those who can't find a role in the Rit class give this (or the other Rit lines) a try before writing off the class.

memnock deathwalker · Sep 20, 2006, 01:46 PM // 13:46

Well with the upcoming release of NightFall I for one will be waiting until the skill Nerf for the new characters before even making one.
Anet needs to understand that there is a big difference between PVP and PVE. In PVP you have equal teams with no pop up oni's or sometime overwilming odds, you have 4v4 8v8 and 12v12. Were as in PVE you have 8 v ? anything from 1 to 30 at a time depending on how well you group handles their arrgo ring.
Now while it seems unfair that Anet caters to the PVP folks and tells the PVE folks tuff . They are the creators of one of the very few free on line games and bottom line that is why most of us are playing it. We can not see handing over 50 bucks for the game then having to pay more money to play it. I have paid to pay and have had the same issues in those games as in this one , But in those I felt like I should have had a lot more say in any changes to skills/spells
due to having to pay those monthly fees. Plus Anet has kept the game PK(player kill) free except in PVP. But even there you do not lose any of your gold or equipment.
I would also be very surprized to see Anet read every post made on every board and make changes back after a nerf. But it is nice to have a place such as this one to rant and rave about things we do not like and things we love about the game.

Glasswalker · Sep 20, 2006, 03:58 PM // 15:58

This was said by several, so I have no specific quote. But they do make the balance changes for PvP almost exclusively, because nobody complains that Kappas or Avicara are overpowered. By the same token, if the Assassin on your team kills too easily or no one in your party ever dies, there is little to complain about. But if you can say that about the other team in PvP, that's when there is a problem.

The only issue in PvE that means a nerf or 'balance change' is in order is when a specific class can't get a PUG even when they offer to pay, or if you do get in a group and everyone assumes you are that one build -- you know the one.

For quite some time people have stated flat out that all Assassins just plain suck, and the only Rit worth running is the Rit Lord. I think this change was to encourage players to discover that they added more than 8 skills when they added the two new classes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeupo

...but I dislike how ritualists are looked down upon in pve. This is especially so since we cannot protect the party much more than a monk can.
We are considered sub par healers and sub par damage dealers. Most pve groups do not allow a ritualist to take advantage of the offensive spirits because of rushing.

There is something I can completely agree with. My answer to that is generally to prove them wrong. We ARE considered all those things, this is true. There was a time though, when Mesmers and Rangers couldn't get a party to save their lives. Later there were groups entirely made of Rangers that were snubbbing everyone else, so go figure.

Don't be what they want you to be, be what is most fun, and most effective for the group. They will discover after a Mission or after an Alliance Battle, or whatever that there is more to the Ritualist then was dreamed of in their philosophy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeupo

Signet of Creation is not really that much of a help in my experience. I only ritual lord in extremely high damage areas (read Urgoz Warren and other elite areas) where the signet is not as valuable as another spirit or skill. In my tests after the skill change the signet has as much effect on shelter as it does on displacement which is just about 1 or 2 more seconds of life. The mass minion bombing is very effective however.

What would have happened in those 2 seconds (by my own accounting it's usually far more than that -- 10-14 or so) if you hadn't cast SoC? Probably at least one player death. How much Energy did the enemy team waste in that time? Is it then worth it? It also happens that Rits get my favorite resses in the game, so if someone does die, cast Spirit to Flesh on Restoration, although most don't carry either of those. I would have even recommended Soul Twisting, but there is no way in hell that skill will make a spammer's bar...

Cherno · Sep 20, 2006, 09:24 PM // 21:24

True, rit lord skill getting nerfed wasn't really that big a deal because the charge times did get reduced and rit lord is still usable. The hardest part, even for those of us who don't want to be a spirit spammer, but even just a spirit user, is the hit to boon.

Resto and Channel got a boost? Good for them, I don't always want to be foreced into playing a subpar monk and a subpar ele. Ritualists are very good at spirits. Let's take the primary focus of the class, increase the cost of their spells and nerf the hell out of their energy managment making them barely serviceable at what they are supposed to do best.

You can't really recoup your energy enough to even make it to the next pve group of enemies. I liked boon before not because it let me spam my spirits over and over in a single battle, but because it allowed me to be able to start even a single chain again for the next.

unmatchedfury · Sep 20, 2006, 09:32 PM // 21:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by trankle

Shelter was hit pretty hard, but....

Does anyone really believe that the RL build was balanced in PvE? I played it quite a bit in higher level missions (both campaigns), not because it was fun (though it did have a zen quality, after a hard day of work), but because it was so powerful. It was hard to justify not playing it to a party.

RL could stand far enough back that he never aggroed a single mob, and be at full effectiveness. This allowed him to wear multiple superior runes, which almost nobody does. On top of that, at least two spirits (shelter and union, possibly recuperation) could be kept up most of the time, offering blanket damage reduction with no knowledge of what challenges the party was facing. And if things got hairy, one button could heal the enitre party for over 400hp. In my opinion, a build which offers this kind of power with very little threat of danger, and with very little knowledge of the enemy, was not balanced.

So, is it now? Shelter costs 25e, and dies faster. You now have to know when to place it. This means you actually have to know what threats the party will be facing, and plan for them. I don't think that's too much to ask. Monks have to do the same thing.

By the way, spirit spammig rits don't have to use Rit Lord. Certain players are using combinations of Energizing Wind, Attuned was Songkai, and Serpent's Quickness to aid with recharge time and energy. It just takes more skill than before, as timing and spirit placement are less forgiving. I personally have been using Assassin's Promise for recharge and energy management. It's alot trickier, but much more fun and challenging at the same time. And still effective.

Speaking of, does nobody play offensive spirits in PvE? The power offered by offensive spirits and Painful Bond is pretty amazing, and using Assassin's Promise almost guarantees that mobility and energy aren't an issue in PvE. I suggest that those who can't find a role in the Rit class give this (or the other Rit lines) a try before writing off the class.

communing and channeling sync very well. there are quite a fwe spells in channeling that require spirits to e usefull.

i use

1 painful bond
2 gaze from beyond
3 spirit burn
4 esscense strike
5 pain
6 bloodsong
7 wanderlust
8 optional

115 dps with painful bond from spirits + whatever you chose to add with skills 2-4

ubermancer · Sep 20, 2006, 10:25 PM // 22:25

I wish I was as leet and had as firm of a grip on game mechanics as the OP.

Xeupo · Sep 20, 2006, 10:37 PM // 22:37

I agree, Glasswalker, that one should not be pigeon holed into playing just certain builds. I greatly enjoy out healing a monk as a ritualist in certain situations for instance or out damaging a warrior with the offensive spirits. Weapon spells on a pet is also entertaining. The only problem is pugs and other groups do not allow you to show what your class can do.

I overall dislike the principle of this nerf. It caters to the pvp crowd without regard to pve. Now in many pve areas I would agree the Ritual Lord was overpowered. At the same time, however, the Ritual Lord was extremely important for the survival of the party in other areas. Without a Ritual Lord some areas become all but impossible in a pug (such as Urgoz's Warren wolves). A pair of monks could not deal with such damage. When I played as a Ritual Lord in that mission (the elite areas was about the only place I would Ritual Lord outside of Thunderhead keep) I did often have problems with keeping the spirits up because of the large amounts of damage occuring. Of course bad aggro is the blame in those situations as well.

Overall the argument about the Ritualist having better energy than other classes seems weak. The Ritualist is supposed to be different from all other classes. A good mesmer, for instance, does not have energy problems either. This does not require a lot of skill either to achieve (My mesmer is far from being the best around). In a way, nerfing boon of creation would be like nerfing a minion master's Soul Reaping ability with a similar result.

I usually did not pack SoC in favor of shadowsong, dissonance, earthbind, or a host of other choices.

I have noticed that Shelter is unusable in pve even with SoC, however.

Terra Xin · Sep 20, 2006, 10:52 PM // 22:52

sorry, this was the first thing I noticed...

Quote:

but there is an enormous drawback... the rit doesnt have a HEAL PARTY...

Then goes on to say that monks have the divine favour bonus, but it doesnt work with HP my darling...

Anyway:

Life + Feast of Souls = +200 life healed for all party members

Not good enough? or is that too much healing?

unmatchedfury · Sep 21, 2006, 01:47 AM // 01:47

indeed, feast of souls + spirit spam = ultamate heal aparty.

UncleTimmy · Sep 22, 2006, 01:10 AM // 01:10

Wow, def a lot of insightful thoughts here

good points on both sides. I do think some things are a given we all know, but may not know how to simplify:

1. Guild Wars MAIN competetion is WoW. Wow was recognized by everyone as the best PvP game recently released the past few years. GW aimed at them, to steal their/curry new customers. Now, the best way to do that, when WoW ppl are paying and your ppl are not is.... Cater the game to them. So, when GvG or PvP says something, you best believe Anet is gonna jump, and jump fast. Its not cowering, its good business sense. Thats how they got 2 million boxes sold.

2. The Rit Lord (profession) DID get a nerf. Let's not split hairs and say the skill didnt, or this or that. There is no other way to say it when the character simply cannot perform as it normally did, no matter what changes you make to it, and slightly prop something else up that goes with it. If you have a 8 cylinder car with a throaty growl when you press on the pedal, and then take out two cylinders making it a 6, and THEN add a suped-up muffler to make it SOUND fast and say its basically the same car, well. That's a nerf. If they had added a supercharger to this "car" it would have been ok, then we could drop something else to add that, rez, poison removal; something. This job/profession got a nerf. Doesnt matter if the skill didnt.

3. People do NOT want a Offensive Rit in their group for PvE. Won't happen. Unless you are in the big giant guilds where ppl tend to go to Urgoz or something to try a build out WITH help, you arent gonna perfect it. And no one is going to invite a Rit who is "testing" a new build, esp if its offensive. Maybe a Rit can do one Beeeeeelion dps, but no one is gonna give you that chance. The min you head out and they DONT see Shelter in the top left corner of the screen, /resign. Hes a noob Rit. Laf and chuckles. Anet knows this, so they didnt boost the Channeling atts for PvE; guess what the Channeling atts got added for? You got it. PvP, GvG. Dress as a channeler, and youll be treated just like an Assassin or a Warrior is at Urgoz.

4. This game has limited play content. Although the replayability factor is high, the content is low. Once you finish the missions, which most you can do with henchies in less than 30 days, what do you do now? Well, lets see....

a) Do Elite missions. Oh wait, I have to hope someone will take me from an owning guild inside. Oh darn, no one is willing. So I guess Ill go...

b) Do all the missions over/over/over till I get Masters. Wait, Im a Assassin looking for Masters in an Assassin unfriendly zone... darn, guess Ill go...

c) Chest Run. Oh, ok. I did 50 chest runs and now I know this zone like the back of my hand and Im just getting loot for.. what? Meh, Ill go and....

d) oh. PvP is all thats left. And theres a LOT of that. Everywhere. Good thing I like games with short story dialogue, now I can go straight to killing ppl.

Now I did have some fun with that, but in reality, I dont pay Anet a monthly fee so I dont feel I have the right to actually complain about anything they do. Even if I did pay, I agreed to the all powerful EULA and they can choose not to listen. I came from FFXI where I played for 4 years. That game was a grind, but it didnt seem like it cause there was so much to do after awhile. Stuff that took awhile. When the PvP came to FFXI and asked "Hey wheres the PVP?" We pointed them to Ballista and laughed when they came out saying "Thats it????" FFXI was a content heavy, PvE environment and they made no bones about it. If you were PvP, take this gruel and like it or leave. I guess this is just karma for us who prefer PvE but are between great MMOs atm.

And btw, there is nothing wrong with a "cookie cutter" build. Some ppl just like to put a character on, set some skills and get to it, it being the event. I DO believe Anet should have made the jobs THEY feel to be overpowered in one way or another in PvP weaker in THAT environment; not the whole game because the AI just doesnt think/act like ppl, so why have a, yes nerf, that is intended to counter humans no longer effectively countering AI actions? If they do this just to PvP Rits, then the PvP ppl get what they want, easier times to defeat Guild B, and the PvE ppl still get to do what they want, do Urgoz or w/e. That seemed probably so simple that they probably discounted it the minute someone said it at the table. And as far as cookie-cutter builds are concerned, I dont hear anyone~ PvP or PvE saying "Why are you playing a cookie cutter monk? You should experiment and get creative." So cookies do have their place on the table and Rit Lord was a good one in PvE, not overpowering, but necessary.

5. With the release of Nightfall, you'd have two potentially competing classes of support.. Paragon and Rit. If Rit is as strong as it was, no matter how nice looking Paragon armor is (and it IS beautiful) who would still pick a Paragon over a Rit Lord build? After the novelty wore off, it would have been business as usual just like it was for the Red headed Assassin ( love to point out how badly played that character was/is) ^^ Paragon looks to be a half protector, half attack half buff. I still see nothing wrong with having a Rit as a Prot character base. Ppl dont HAVE to play it that way, but if they choose to, they should have the choice.

Overall, again I wouldnt complain too loudly to Anet personally. Its free till Vanguard comes along and the Urgoz/Deep runs are the most fun a PvE person can have in the game, provided he/she gets a good crew. I would appeal to Anet to consider a "inside the GvG hall" nerf only. It would be a win-win anyway you slice it.

After all, there are things you CAN use/do in PvP you CANT use outside in PvE yet, right?^^

Minus Sign · Sep 22, 2006, 01:48 AM // 01:48

Alright. Lets see if we can hash out what all has happened here.

Basically, the entire meta-game for the Ritualist--Pve and PvP--revolved around a single build for the character to be effective. It didn't matter what game you wanted to play if you weren't a communing-skill-spammer-rit-lord, you sucked. So, what do they do? They buff the snot out of the Rits other skills and nerf the Rit Lord prot builds core skills to cut down some of its flexibility.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Formula97

They may have buffed a lot of other skills, but if they buff skill lines that no one wants to use anyway, who cares?

Sums up the argument pretty nicely, yes? Why did no one want to play these other skills? Lets be honest: because there were--in all too many cases with the Rit--things out there in the other proffesions that could do the job much better.

And lets be honest here: Rit lord needed a nerf. As has been stated, Rit Lord was one of a very few builds that had no major energy issues in combat; the only prot build that could run non-stop without a battery. heck; for Bspike, Rit Lord prot WAS a battery. Every couple seconds something died either from Rit Lord cycles or its own prot conditions and Soul reaping kicked in.

Revolving around Boon of Creation and Ritual lord the way we did, we were basicall running two elites in game. Alone, these skills were quite powerful in game. Together, they were (are still in a big way) uber.

They haven't nerfed the Ritualist guys. They nerfed one build. If they nerf Boon Prot, will monks die out? Try /ranger with Energizing Wind before you complain about Shelters cost. Go offensive Rit Lord and watch your DPS explode. Try CHANNELING! You can now. And the reason why you can, is because these skills work.

Nerfed the Rit? Hardly. try playing with some of the skills you know 'suck". You might be surprised what ELSE your Rit can do now.

Just my 2g (from another Rit Lord).

dgb · Sep 22, 2006, 02:24 AM // 02:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by UncleTimmy

d) oh. PvP is all thats left. And theres a LOT of that. Everywhere. Good thing I like games with short story dialogue, now I can go straight to killing ppl.

If you honestly think PVP has a lot of content, go compare it to PVE. From memory this is what PVP has.

12 Guild Halls (Hunters, Wizards, Warriors, Frozen, Druids, Dead, Nomads, Burning, Meditation, Jade, Stone, Imperial)
11 Arenas (Fire Map, Fort Koga, Ascalon, Shiverpeaks, Shiverpeaks2, Desert, Kryta map, Jade, Stone, Shing Jea, Kaineng)
2 Bastardised hybrids that nobody likes (FA and JQ)
5 AB maps
10 HA maps (Underworld, Burial Mounds, Broken Tower, Scarred Earth, Unholy Temples, Dark Chamber, Courtyard, Sacred Temples, The Vault, The Hall of Heroes)

40 Maps total. Most of which are about a tenth of the size of the average PVE map. PVP gets the balances, this is true (although there are some notable exceptions), but to complain that PVP takes content development away from PVE is false. PVP is as content defficient as PVE is.

unmatchedfury · Sep 22, 2006, 03:15 AM // 03:15

I'd like very much to ask what can the rit now do better than another class?
because mass prot was the only thing. It is the very definition of rit. Nerfing rit lord took away the ability of a rit to do its job. NOw it does nothing. The rit is NOT a jack-of-all-trades class. it is a ward/spirit/ enviroment controler
now it doesn't do it as well as it used too.

the ritulist is now useless in higher lvl PvP. sure you can go channeling in RA and maybe TA and get a few wins. but who needs rits for dmg when you've got warriors? who needs rits for healing when you've got monks? and how needs rits for protection when you've got "gasp" monks...

rits can't do it better, its why they are the least used class in PvP, and its why their plight won't get any better with two new classes on the scene.

Don't get me wrong i love rits. Its my favorite class. but it doesnt have anything unique to offer a GvG team anymore. The PvP rit at high levels is dead. All you can do now is channel in RA...