Curse

theraven000 · Sep 22, 2009, 02:51 PM // 14:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

I don't think midlines need to be changed drastically, simply adress Primal Rage and possibly Flail/Enraging Charge a little. Tone down WoH/Patient and Recuperation and buff Aegis, LoD, some alternatives for Patient Spirit (Dwayna's Kiss, Words of Comfort, etc.). I garantee that the game will be much more enjoyable and more finesse based than it is now.

Of course the tiebreaker is still something that's ultimately bad for the game...

Almost completely agree.

Anyone who thinks this game is currently "perfectly fine" needs to take a look at the flawed end-game mechanic, overpowered defensive stances, heavy midline damage, no-brainer hex spams, almost 0 split viability mainly due to strong runners, and the only thing keeping it together is a ridiculously strong heal monk. Winning games has almost nothing to do with outsmarting your opponent or getting shutdown on key skills at key times; it is all about whoever can pump the most damage on the other team until someone scores a kill.

Gift3d · Sep 22, 2009, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

the overpowered stances are necessary to counter the otherwise overpowered physicals.

i play monk (don't mean in pve derp derp) and that's just a lie. a damn lie.

there are so many midline and backline options to counter melee, yet look at how many are actually used. not many, because the use of stances makes it so you don't need them. yes, it makes things that much easier.

necessary you said?

moriz · Sep 22, 2009, 06:03 PM // 18:03

then by all means depend more heavily upon your midline, while your opponents use stances and let their midline contribute more offensively. your call.

Greedy Gus · Sep 22, 2009, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

then by all means depend more heavily upon your midline, while your opponents use stances and let their midline contribute more offensively. your call.

You're failing here and going starting to go in circles. The point is that those self-defense options are overpowered, and if dealt with (through game balancing), then everyone will simultaneously come back to using realistic defensive options from the midline, thereby reducing the offensive threat.

moriz · Sep 22, 2009, 06:50 PM // 18:50

sure, but only if there's a corresponding nerf to offense also. otherwise, we'll end up where we were a few months ago.

Greedy Gus · Sep 22, 2009, 07:32 PM // 19:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

sure, but only if there's a corresponding nerf to offense also. otherwise, we'll end up where we were a few months ago.

If we've seen anything from years of changes, its that people drift to the equilibrium no matter whether balance focuses on changing offense or defense. Subsequently, balance can focus on nerfing less desirable skills/mechanics as long as there are sufficient options of more desirable things to take their place, without caring too much about some absolute balance of offense & defense. Which is what Gifted was saying to counter your original (misguided but popular) point.

urania · Sep 22, 2009, 07:43 PM // 19:43

overpowered defense? is that so.

hf surviving as mo/e or mo/a vs the typical balanced setup:
magebane+d-shot+(sometimes savage shot)+deb shot ranger
prage with d chop, agonizing and bulls or a hammer with 3-4 kds; often both with stance removal
wail necro with defile defenses

i wont even start with the gimmicks one can meet in TA.

GL
also, to make it more interesting, run ZB instead of woh, i give u 20 s before u explode.

derp derp

oh, lemme guess. no one cares about TA!

moriz · Sep 22, 2009, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

If we've seen anything from years of changes, its that people drift to the equilibrium no matter whether balance focuses on changing offense or defense. Subsequently, balance can focus on nerfing less desirable skills/mechanics as long as there are sufficient options of more desirable things to take their place, without caring too much about some absolute balance of offense & defense. Which is what Gifted was saying to counter your original (misguided but popular) point.

gifted took one sentence from my earlier post and decide to take it out of context. if you go back and actually read what i wrote, you'll know that i largely agree with you.

anyways, i'm talking about a point that ensign brought up a long time ago: a (relative) buff to offense won't make the game any more offensively oriented. it will just force people to bring more defenses to withstand the offense, then rely on 321 spikes to get things done.

any significant nerf to defense, without some kind of nerf to offense at the same time, will give the same result as a straight buff to offense.

could defensive stances take a small nerf at the point, without adjusting offense? i think it can. like i said earlier, raising the recharge on lightning reflexes and changing the mechanics of balanced stance is what i think should be done. the emphasis is on SMALL nerf. anything more significant will probably break things.

Kaon · Sep 22, 2009, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

sure, but only if there's a corresponding nerf to offense also. otherwise, we'll end up where we were a few months ago.

Please explain to me what situation that is. I was under the impression a couple months ago we were either using R/A's, Lingering Curse hexbuilds, or turretrangers.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Sep 22, 2009, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

oh, lemme guess. no one cares about TA!

Considering it will be gone by the time the next balance update comes around I'd say it's pretty low priority to take TA into account for said update.

Also: What Gus said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

anyways, i'm talking about a point that ensign brought up a long time ago: a (relative) buff to offense won't make the game any more offensively oriented. it will just force people to bring more defenses to withstand the offense, then rely on 321 spikes to get things done.

any significant nerf to defense, without some kind of nerf to offense at the same time, will give the same result as a straight buff to offense.

Nerfing stances doesn't equate to nerfing defense, it's one form of defense (an undesirable one as it's too easy and forgiving), midline defense can and would take it's place, I still think that removing Aegis from the game was one of the worst balance decisions in the last few years as well.

infi · Sep 22, 2009, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

A couple of years ago, the game was vastly more aggressive than it is right now, and it was definately considered more fun by most players.

http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=141

lets count

1 double aegis
2 sor
3 ward
4 water hexes
5 bsurge
6 sod

so agressive!

http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=347

1 stances
2 chants
2.5 high armor on all chars? (silly argument)

not agressive too

conclusion: 6>2.5 or i am wrong?

IMMORTAlMITCH · Sep 22, 2009, 11:02 PM // 23:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by infi

http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=141

lets count

1 double aegis
2 sor
3 ward
4 water hexes
5 bsurge
6 sod

so agressive!

http://www.gw-memorial.net/nav/b_mat_i.php?id=347

1 stances
2 chants
2.5 high armor on all chars? (silly argument)

not agressive too

conclusion: 6>2.5 or i am wrong?

The difference is, stances and shouts cant be shut down (well stances can to some extend but it's a very clumsy counter to a counter mechanic).

Also, the 'new' build is devoid of shutdown (rangers using interrupts as a means to spread poison doesn't count neither do hammer KDs used solely for spiking).

ousbique · Sep 22, 2009, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Nerfing stances doesn't equate to nerfing defense, it's one form of defense (an undesirable one as it's too easy and forgiving), midline defense can and would take it's place, I still think that removing Aegis from the game was one of the worst balance decisions in the last few years as well.

That's actually explain why there's so much spike builds with 1/2 paras and MoI ele. This "new" fortress-way relies on unblocked pew pew paras and MoI and keeps so much defense in flagstand.
I think MoI is too powerful also, making water eles more for strong fast spikes (1sec cast), bonuses hitting below Spirit Bond.

The concept of Empathic Removal Para have to be watched too.

lutz · Sep 22, 2009, 11:27 PM // 23:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

The difference is, stances and shouts cant be shut down (well stances can to some extend but it's a very clumsy counter to a counter mechanic).

Also, the 'new' build is devoid of shutdown (rangers using interrupts as a means to spread poison doesn't count neither do hammer KDs used solely for spiking).

So all the people running Mo/E for Aegis were doing it wrong all along. They should have always run Mo/W with stances.

Master Fuhon · Sep 23, 2009, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Healers would probably prefer having anti-spike stances to keep up with the pace of Primal Rage fueled Dismember, Vicious Spear, Savage Shot spiking all coming at the same time. Disciplined Stance is also nice because it can protect a spell cast from a more common physical interrupt but not a caster interrupt or knockdown (shock). Block is a very important aspect of keeping the stand caster niche alive within a game that is commonly overrun by physicals with higher sustainability (adrenaline + expertise) or higher burst combos. It’s a better idea to have impediments to physicals than to buff caster skills (having less counters) to keep pace.

Balanced Stance and Aura Stability both being used has produced a meta dynamic of putting damage knockdowns (bull’s strike, assassin chains, hammer, meteor) closer in line with a fragile Mesmer trying to open kill windows with shutdown. But the use of the two skills has caused Shock and Gale to trail off. The obvious problem is that hammer warriors have 1) spears for building adrenaline, 2) Enraging Charge to be used after Hammer Bash, 3) Flail gives an extra hit here or there, making the Protector’s Strike spike hurt more. Assassins are then being made to match hammer in the solo kill department. These two are probably so far out there right now that it would be difficult to reign them back (likewise Primal Rage keeps pace with hammer). There could be alternatives like adding -5 degen on the durations of Shame, Guilt, Mistrust along with 5 second recharge decreases for pressure synergy.

The biggest thing missing since the Aegis nerf is the secondary enchant protection and a higher baseline defense on low armored characters. Vigorous Spirit is comparable to having regen/mending as enchant protection, but is too inefficient to keep on everyone. 50% block on everyone is too drastic of a meta influence in that it makes 1-2-3 physical spikes replace melee target switching and pressure; and it also provides a defensive web to support caster spike (elementalists, monks).

If they bring back Aegis, it should be anti-midline spike tailored (Example: +24 armor when not moving and -1..3..3 damage from foes suffering from conditions; effective at WoH guardian spec), since it is something the midline is supposed to either remove or prevent. I am also adverse to making this design of skill the type of thing that two players are required to maintain. The meta often has too many symmetric redundancies: dual warriors, paragons, monks, fire elementalists. Based on historical playstyles, healing monk is better suited for hanging back and using party skills while protection monk takes an aggressive stance for supporting pushes with removals. Dual Aegis forces both monks into too far a rear position and that weakens the forward push.

scruffy · Sep 23, 2009, 04:42 AM // 04:42

When looking at stances in terms of balance, you have to consider what they were made to do.

Let me explain: If I'm on a ranger, I'm rarely going to be the target of choice for the other team. Unless I get up to no good being a nuisance to their flagger or their base, they will rarely attack me. Because the frequency of them having to put a kill threat on me is so low, I don't need a stance that recharges every 15 seconds when I can use a 45 second recharge stance with a longer duration to a better effect. I call this the theoretical recharge vs the practical recharge, theoretically the stance is only up 33% of the time, but effectively it is up 100% of the time since I'm only being attacked once every 45 seconds or more anyways. Now that we have that understood, we can look at how the skills are balanced. Although the ratio of time in which the stances are up are both the same, their applications in the game have significant differences. Stances basically work like this: the longer duration becomes increasingly overpowered the longer it lasts until it reaches the critical point where if the recharge increases proportionally any more it will be inefficient no matter how long the duration is. The critical point changes from character to character, e.g mesmers and monks have shorter critical points than rangers and warriors simply because a kill threat is put on them at higher frequencies.

Case Study: Balanced Stance.

duration: ~15 seconds
recharge: 30 seconds

This isn't a block stance so the normal "kill threat" is replaced by "KD threat".

Lets go back to the theory vs practise principle. In theory it is available to me 50% of the time, however because their hammer warrior has to spend time gaining adrenaline and he may have to shift his priority target, it is effectively available much more than 50% of the time, especially if you imagine the scenario in which a split is collapsing on a monk, balanced stance will always be recharged in that situation. The distinction to be made is that in theory it's 50% of real time, while in practise its a varying % of the time that there is no KD threat present(which I would guess is around 80-90% but changes depending on what the warrior is doing), which is significantly greater.

The problem that have arisen with stances are a result of the balance team working under the assumption that low duration/low recharge = long duration/long recharge as long as they keep the same ratio, when in practise their applications differ tremendously. I suggest arenanet consider this simple principle when balancing stances in the future.

Stances that violate this principle

Dark escape
Balanced stance
Lightning Reflexes
Whirling Defense
Gladiators Defense
Conviction
etc.

I haven't played the game to see the distortion nerf play out but I would guess that it is fixed now since there are holes in its protection long enough to kill.

I would also like to say that the best meta would be one that incorporates passive defenses and stances to demand warriors to have a good understanding of both and how they interact rather than one or the other. Buffing ward melee would be fun because it gives variations in strategies, I think something else that could be interesting would be to nerf bsurge to 15 energy and buff air attunement at the same time.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Sep 23, 2009, 08:42 AM // 08:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

So all the people running Mo/E for Aegis were doing it wrong all along. They should have always run Mo/W with stances.

Aegis is better if it doesn't get shut down and even if it doesn't, when it gets rended on spikes you're stuck with a monk with less armor than a Mo/W.

urania · Sep 23, 2009, 10:14 AM // 10:14

in best case itll only be 8 armor less (unless you count in armor gained from disciplined stance too)

IMMORTAlMITCH · Sep 23, 2009, 12:17 PM // 12:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

in best case itll only be 8 armor less (unless you count in armor gained from disciplined stance too)

8 armor less and no immunity to KDs and crits, that's quite significant.

Kaon · Sep 23, 2009, 02:59 PM // 14:59

Scruffy just nailed it. Balanced stance isn't up 50% of the time, it's up 80% of the time, and in it's short downtime all the monk has to do is preguardian himself. This is precisely what's wrong.