Curse

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 05, 2009, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

the arena is still inferior to TA in many things though.

Name some.

123

DreamWind · Nov 06, 2009, 07:09 AM // 07:09

I'm honestly almost ready to pronounce Codex dead. For most of primetime tonight there was no more than 1 district, and even that 1 district wasn't completely full. I will reserve judgement of my claims of death until this weekend with the double weekend. Will be interesting to see how many people show up for it.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 06, 2009, 08:00 AM // 08:00

That's GW being dead (or the pvp part of it at least), it still has multiples of the TA/HB population (excluding maybe RR 'HB'ers').

The problem with CA is that people don't take initiative to form groups and generally blame it on other people if they lose by getting outbuilded, instead they stand around and spam 'LFG cX+, rY+, gZ+'.

zwei2stein · Nov 06, 2009, 08:41 AM // 08:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

The problem with CA is that people don't take initiative to form groups and ... instead they stand around and spam 'LFG cX+, rY+, gZ+'.

Sigh...

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

...
Title(s): c8, r9, g4
...
Other Information: If you don't have some form of prior organised pvp experience don't bother.

People just want to play with ~equals. And if they refuse to play with anyone "unworthy", of course they will end up standing in outpost, spamming. I would not see this as CA specific issue. It is just problem that people want to wait half an hour for perfect group and win rather than getting "some" group in few minutes and spend half hour loosing.

I, frankly, have not much issues with this so far: simple "Me LFG" or "N lfg" and displaying R3 is enough to get into pug. It does, however, guarantee that you will likely not have 5 consecutivess, ever, is fun thou. It is getting worse thou as each day there are less and less unranked people in CA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Codex Guru

Sorry immortal is right. The reason is DPS from spells is awful. Yes fighters need to go 12 in a weapon mastery but if a caster doesn't go 12 in his damage attribute or even 16 (lol) the DPS is really bad compared to autoattacking warrior using skills. Even though monks split four attribs (div fav tac heal prot) they still need 12 healing prayer. So in both ways damage and utility casters should *not* be splitting their already inferior damage. If you are you're making your already handicapped DPS into almost nothing.

...

You lose a lot of "raw power" going four skill lines as caster with small exceptions like mesmer. But if we're going to talk about mesmer might as well talk about ranger who goes 9 mark 9 wild 12 ex as someone who doesn't go 12 in a weapon attribute (sometimes rangers even go beast).

Yes, it works this way if you want raw damage, no arguing that. But as you point out, effective caster is not damage dealer.

Effective midline however can do just fine with raw power loss, speaking from playing mesmers/necromancers in CA mostly.

Most degen hexes have good degen breakpoints well under 12 points. Other hexes have important effect that does not scale at all. Duration is non issue if you expect monk to be removing them.

Punishing hexes do not need to be strong either to make player reconsider either: You will usually not attack thought 8 point empathy just like you wont attack thought 16 point empathy. And not even talking about interrupts.

Same goes for ele (blinds, snares). Ritualist is in trouble there, but it has smaller skill pool so he will get two attribute build going easier, and as you point out monk goes for split too (i would not say he has to go for 12 HP, well, especially not if days meta contains stuff like gift of health)

Even after all that midline can throw pure damage skill still even at ~9 spec to push for kill.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 06, 2009, 08:48 AM // 08:48

I generally don't have problems finding groups though, between my flist and my alliance making groups is usually quite easy. I don't stand around in the district spamming for c8+ groups..

The problem is more for people without an active flist/alliance, as long as they value getting an x-ranked group higher than playing and fault people when they lose because of their build they will lose motivation quickly.

urania · Nov 06, 2009, 10:05 AM // 10:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Name some.

123

well, the most obvious thing to point out is definitely the fact that although CA was created (amongst other reasons) to get rid of gimmicky/OP builds (or to be more exact, to avoid balancing out the problematic skills by making their availability random) that pestered TA, it is actually very simple to create builds that become gimmicky mainly because there's often only a handful (if any) counters to skills/elements of play that are (or were, before foul feast buff) generally strong in 4v4 (best example is, ofc, blinds (foremost when EDA is behind it), cripple (cripshot, signet of pious restraint), weakness (Armor of sanctity), then come hexes (given there's virtually no hex removal apart from elites) and crucial skills like humility with maybe 1 interrupt in the whole deck, and even that one an elite). You can't outplay a build involving an overload of those few things I listed - you have to make a mirror build and hope you can (ab)use the build better - so basicaly, it comes down to skill?

Well, people complained so much about TA having stale meta and that the standard balanced build (w r n mo) was boring, but the only thing that separates it from CA is the fact that TA's meta just changed for more slowly (and some variations of it were, admittedly, broken) - but the point is, it was virtually the best build out there, outside some specific counter builds to it, so many people ran it - that would clearly result in mirror matches and thus skill should still determine the matches in those cases. And exactly that is what CA comes to in 90 % of the cases, because more often than not only 1 build (sometimes 2, perhaps) will be able to generate long streaks and a decent amount of success, which means it will come to mirror matches.
So, I honestly don't think CA is better than TA apart from its daily skill rotation, unless you want to promote mirror matches (which I, by all means, greatly promoted in TA). The big difference was, however, that you were free to play builds and create team setups far beyond what CA will ever be able to generate - and I miss that team synergy, coordination and mutual dependence a lot in CA. I'm not saying it's not there, but it's far less prominent in comparison to its state in TA (speaking mainly from a perspective when there was no foul feast, prage or woh on steroids yet..).

It basically comes down to who has most defensive skills and because the means to deal with that are so limited and the means to heal and redbar so bad, strategies like that (which wouldn't result even in griefing in TA) work wonders, even though they are, by definition, gimmicky (4 copies of AoS, withering aura for melees, spammable deep wound with no real useful cond removal) - applying one of the codex principles (the one allowing only 1 kind of primary profession per team) to secondaries would help greatly with that problem.
So, do I really have to spell it out to you what i mean when i say CA is inferior to TA in that aspect?
Outside the daily skill rotation (which is definitely its main strength), CA is but a gimped version of TA.

Revelations · Nov 06, 2009, 01:22 PM // 13:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

snip

A massive part of the issue there is Anet taking the easy way out and allowing multiple copies of skills. Giving each class an extra few skills, and giving the deck generator the ability to spawn duplicates of nonelites - so you could only use 4x AoS if 4 copies of it were generated for example - would result in generally more 'honorable' builds floating around. It would also ruin a little bit of the fun on dshot and gale days though.

Extra freebies (like a bad hex removal for example) could possibly also go a little way toward cleaning up some of the less fun builds, but too many of these would go against the spirit of the arena.

Of course, we all know that this isn't going to change, so pure speculation on my part.

Just as an aside, imagine how dead the place would be already if Anet had gone with the weekly rotation that they were considering.

Codex Guru · Nov 06, 2009, 01:31 PM // 13:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Yes, it works this way if you want raw damage, no arguing that. But as you point out, effective caster is not damage dealer.

Effective midline however can do just fine with raw power loss, speaking from playing mesmers/necromancers in CA mostly.

Most degen hexes have good degen breakpoints well under 12 points. Other hexes have important effect that does not scale at all. Duration is non issue if you expect monk to be removing them.

Punishing hexes do not need to be strong either to make player reconsider either: You will usually not attack thought 8 point empathy just like you wont attack thought 16 point empathy. And not even talking about interrupts.

Same goes for ele (blinds, snares). Ritualist is in trouble there, but it has smaller skill pool so he will get two attribute build going easier, and as you point out monk goes for split too (i would not say he has to go for 12 HP, well, especially not if days meta contains stuff like gift of health)

Even after all that midline can throw pure damage skill still even at ~9 spec to push for kill.

Well first because I mostly pug I can't say anything about necromancers and mesmers, because playing necromancer or mesmer with pugs is usually a waste of time even when the skills are incredible. Its also very easy to make a good necromancer bar (or a good mesmer bar) and be very bad at it.

However ritualists... the strongest ritualists go 12 spear. That limits your choice to one other line because you want a bit of spawning power for spirits/weapons. 12 spear lets you use shield. 12 spear has been viable all but 2 CA days when there weren't enough spear attacks.

Non-damaging elementalists usually aren't even viable in CA. And when they are, like yesterday, it is a massive pain in the behind. Sure yesterday only had empathic removal and that's why water snares worked so well, but even with 2-3 more hex removal it wouldn't have been enough to rip blind, conditions and hexes all covered (yes, elementalist with barbed spear to cover blind o.o). Good thing non-damaging elementalists are even less viable than damaging elementalists.

Guild groups are good enough to go one offclass and max out their hex removal. Literally if there is one offclass hex removal like inspired hex/remove hex/smite hex the type of spread and play you're talking about isn't viable.

So, in sum my friend:

1. Any caster will have to think of the useful of his spells compared to specing 12 spear.

1. a) Most days hexes are useless due to lack of effective cover hex or presence of one decent offclass hex removal.

2. Making good necromancers/mesmers requires quite a bit of luck, and quite a bit of skill. With most players/skill sets it simply isn't viable.

This is a rather important topic in CA my friend because the two damage dealers are usually obvious and the healer is obvious too. So the caster is the biggest pain to figure out, and spreading four is IMO a very bad idea with most skill sets and most players.

Vazze · Nov 06, 2009, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

I'm honestly almost ready to pronounce Codex dead. For most of primetime tonight there was no more than 1 district, and even that 1 district wasn't completely full. I will reserve judgement of my claims of death until this weekend with the double weekend. Will be interesting to see how many people show up for it.

A bit after primetime even that one district was nearly empty, I saw no lfg for long periods (!). It was obvious on day one that CA has problems. They probably worked hard and put a lot of time into this arena so I don't get it why implement it with obviously flawed mechanics? And after they saw the reception why wait until it is completely dead before fixing it?

With that said, GW does not have a whole lot of pvpers left anyway, the ones already left won't come back to play CA (well, only few of us did), the ones playing other formats generally like it but they may not like it more than their old favorite and finally the format is not appealing to casual pvpers (and pveers) because of the matchmaking system/reward.

FoxBat · Nov 06, 2009, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Casual players also have the more enticing option of alliance battles, where you can basically run whatever build you want anyway. There isn't the playerbase to even support two 4v4 modes anymore.

The Arching Healer · Nov 08, 2009, 11:25 PM // 23:25

1.New Arena
2.Double title points weekend
=
1-2 districts

Based on those two points, you might think that they better can remove it again and bring HB/TA back. Because this is just ridiculously dead.

FoxBat · Nov 08, 2009, 11:40 PM // 23:40

This kind of thing can really only exist as special ATs, where the deck only exists an hour before, or there is a special building time after tourney start or something. It doesn't work as a "drop in anytime" format because it's simply "copy the lame TA meta of the day." It also goes to show that there was more wrong with TA than a handful of skill balances (much as there was obviously vastly more wrong with HB.)

HB Fails Now · Nov 09, 2009, 02:42 AM // 02:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Arching Healer

1.New Arena
2.Double title points weekend
=
1-2 districts

Based on those two points, you might think that they better can remove it again and bring HB/TA back. Because this is just ridiculously dead.

Uh I am sure that anet knew this would happen or doesn't care that it did happen and either way will not bring back hb or ta. Even if sealed deck remains dead and it is clear to anet and everyone that the players want hb and/or ta back, they will not bring it back. Anet wants profit regardless of what the players think, and with sealed deck (especially dead) that saves money on servers because it is one pvp format as opposed to two and it made a lot of players quit. Since they aren't going to bother updating it, they will have more time to work on guild wars 2 for more money since they may not get much more money from guild wars 1.

Codex Guru · Nov 09, 2009, 03:04 AM // 03:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by HB Fails Now

Uh I am sure that anet knew this would happen or doesn't care that it did happen and either way will not bring back hb or ta. Even if sealed deck remains dead and it is clear to anet and everyone that the players want hb and/or ta back, they will not bring it back. Anet wants profit regardless of what the players think, and with sealed deck (especially dead) that saves money on servers because it is one pvp format as opposed to two and it made a lot of players quit. Since they aren't going to bother updating it, they will have more time to work on guild wars 2 for more money since they may not get much more money from guild wars 1.

No they will care. They only care about certain things though like bums. They didn't care about TA balance or skills or AT or anything except for the sole fact that TA population was way too low to justify a server. They also care when people openly give them the finger like top players in hero battle resigning.

So if its true CA is dying and or dead the numbers will support that and they'll be a move very soon because anet will see the numbers plummet. What kind of move that'll be, probably not bring back TA or HB but they'll be some kind of move. Personally I'm hoping for 2x per day skill rotation, or even hourly skill rotation.

I Jonas I · Nov 09, 2009, 05:50 AM // 05:50

I want to hear directly from an Anet staff member how much money Anet is saving each month by the deletion of TA and HB. Because if it is DEAD (and because matches are instanced) then it cannot take up that much server space. I'd bet that the holiday events cost Anet more money then removing TA and HB saved them.

zwei2stein · Nov 09, 2009, 08:50 AM // 08:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Codex Guru

1. Any caster will have to think of the useful of his spells compared to specing 12 spear.

1. a) Most days hexes are useless due to lack of effective cover hex or presence of one decent offclass hex removal.

2. Making good necromancers/mesmers requires quite a bit of luck, and quite a bit of skill. With most players/skill sets it simply isn't viable.

This is a rather important topic in CA my friend because the two damage dealers are usually obvious and the healer is obvious too. So the caster is the biggest pain to figure out, and spreading four is IMO a very bad idea with most skill sets and most players.

1) Means that that you chose subpar option: Game has 5 physical primaries, each being better at spear chucking than caster primary. So there is always option of using more spear-friendly primary. It still boils down to using physical vs caster. If you would spec 12 to spear mastery and chuck spears, why not go for R/A/D/W/P primary?

1 a) Decent hex removal is rarer that decent hex options, IMO.

2) Being bad at making it or playing it does not mean it is not going to be viable.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 09, 2009, 09:43 AM // 09:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

well, the most obvious thing to point out is definitely the fact that although CA was created (amongst other reasons) to get rid of gimmicky/OP builds (or to be more exact, to avoid balancing out the problematic skills by making their availability random) that pestered TA, it is actually very simple to create builds that become gimmicky

This only applies to some decks and the beauty of the whole thing is that the meta changes every day, that's not to say that some skills don't show up too foten though and that certain professions are favored because of small skillpools.

Quote:

So, I honestly don't think CA is better than TA apart from its daily skill rotation, unless you want to promote mirror matches (which I, by all means, greatly promoted in TA). The big difference was, however, that you were free to play builds and create team setups far beyond what CA will ever be able to generate

You're not stuck for months in boring meta's and you don't run into stupid gimmicks like shoveway because the skill pool is too limited for such specific gimmicks, there's a few skills that I think hurt the format when they are in the deck but some slight modifications to skillpools might help a lot there.

Quote:

It basically comes down to who has most defensive skills and because the means to deal with that are so limited and the means to heal and redbar so bad, strategies like that (which wouldn't result even in griefing in TA) work wonders, even though they are, by definition, gimmicky (4 copies of AoS, withering aura for melees, spammable deep wound with no real useful cond removal) - applying one of the codex principles (the one allowing only 1 kind of primary profession per team) to secondaries would help greatly with that problem.
So, do I really have to spell it out to you what i mean when i say CA is inferior to TA in that aspect?
Outside the daily skill rotation (which is definitely its main strength), CA is but a gimped version of TA.

That really depends on the deck, some decks have a lot of defensive skills and not much to deal with them, other decks are the complete opposite or a decent balance.

I think the profession restriction is fine, some skills like Protector's Defense, AoS and Bonetti's can be problematic but that's more a problem with those skills than with CA's restrictions.

In TA there were plenty of 2 monk teams, teams with 2-3 copies of dstance and similar skills.

Codex Guru · Nov 09, 2009, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

1) Means that that you chose subpar option: Game has 5 physical primaries, each being better at spear chucking than caster primary. So there is always option of using more spear-friendly primary. It still boils down to using physical vs caster. If you would spec 12 to spear mastery and chuck spears, why not go for R/A/D/W/P primary?

1 a) Decent hex removal is rarer that decent hex options, IMO.

2) Being bad at making it or playing it does not mean it is not going to be viable.

1. No, because you cannot choose offclass elites and there's a good chance at least one caster elite one day will be incredible and not a very good chance three physical elites will be so incredible you don't even want to consider any of the caster elites. Spear is not a subpar option but rather the main option (if available) casters have to consider. Its not just spears: rts with spirit strength have to consider assassin and so do eles (E/A rtl types), necros should consider a pet (remember Koreanway in TA), etc.

1. a) Hexes by definition are difficult to remove. But remove hex, smite hex, revealed hex, inspired hex or even the wrong sorts of hexes (anti-caster, anti-melee) for the wrong type of people can happen. Meanwhile damage can hurt everyone. The entire point of PvP is to kill so utility crap that doesn't directly kill or relies on the other team making a mistake (even the most powerful hexes like VoR can be stopped by the other team simply stopping using skills until its ripped) has an uphill battle to prove its as useful as direct killing. The exception is things that stop other people from killing you such as healing or blind. It is insufficient to slap an empathy on someone: he still has a choice to attack or not and maybe he'll sac 200 health to finish off your monk with his combo. Hexes, punish in particular but degeneration also, are simply inferior in a 4 man format (they're inferior in general but in four man the problems are tremendous).

2. Yes it does matter, because there's always someone better than you. The only way to beat better people is to run builds that are easier to play than theirs so the skill disparity doesn't manifest. In theory maybe you're right everyone should just ignore skill and ignore how hard builds are to play but in practice everyone wants to win as many as possible and that includes making builds that easily defeat the other team with as little experience/fuss as possible. Of course you could always get better but again there's always somebody better and we're talking about builds here so how easy builds are to win matters.

CrypticFear · Nov 09, 2009, 04:02 PM // 16:02

I'm gonna ask Linsey in a month whether CA has a bigger community than the ascalon arena and look forward to spamming "FAIL!" in her forum when its population is worse than the one of HB used to be.

urania · Nov 09, 2009, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

This only applies to some decks and the beauty of the whole thing is that the meta changes every day, that's not to say that some skills don't show up too foten though and that certain professions are favored because of small skillpools.

as said, that is its greatest (and possibly, the only) stregth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

You're not stuck for months in boring meta's and you don't run into stupid gimmicks like shoveway because the skill pool is too limited for such specific gimmicks, there's a few skills that I think hurt the format when they are in the deck but some slight modifications to skillpools might help a lot there.

again, as said, the daily rotation is its greatest strength.

there's less gayways (but if a gimmick can be made and ran effectively, then >everyone< will run it and there's often little/nothing u can do about it) but no one was stopping them from applying the codex rules to TA _ages_ago. Goodbye shove and other multiple monk teams, or multi anything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

That really depends on the deck, some decks have a lot of defensive skills and not much to deal with them, other decks are the complete opposite or a decent balance.

I think the profession restriction is fine, some skills like Protector's Defense, AoS and Bonetti's can be problematic but that's more a problem with those skills than with CA's restrictions.

In TA there were plenty of 2 monk teams, teams with 2-3 copies of dstance and similar skills.

true, the level of "defensiveness" varies each day, but more often than not one has to bring backup heal/monk support simply because monk bars are very often utter crap.

let's put it this way - if there are defensive skills (foremost these few: withering aura, blind was mingson, protectors defenses, warrior stances such as disci, balanced, shield and defensive stance, along with the great bonnetis defense) they will definately be (ab)used on multiple characters, because more often than not, monks have virtually 0 e management, so strategies like that actually work because ure burning ur energy on cond removal (given u even have that in the deck) that can go on forever.
its also partially a problem with restrictions - with ff, all cond based defense (and offense) would be nullified - or at least, with decent monk cond removal like draw(mend touch or mend cond.

as said, if the codex rules had been applied to TA instead, some of the most annoying builds (foremost, multiple monk builds) would - literally - have disappeared in the blink of an eye. But that'd leave us with loads of EDA+daze, hexways and insta gib prage+wail+turret "balanced" teams.