Curse

kedde · Jul 12, 2009, 06:08 PM // 18:08

I'll just restate the rather obvious flaw there is with the build.
It doesn't have a single skill where you truly have to make a decision as to even use it or not.
That in itself is a bad thing.

That it yields so good results even if a player is terrible pretty much capitalizes on that same thing and is what makes it retarded.

lutz · Jul 12, 2009, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

There's a serious problem with any game when the ceiling for being good at something is simply not sucking at really basic stuff.

If you managed to actually read posts, you'd notice that the macro-sense of the game is far more important than anything else. You're "good" if you have a good macro-sense of the game. Macro isn't necessarily basic stuff, since a lot of skirmishes come down to how good the players are on each side. It comes down to a TA-style format, except you can disengage whenever you want (provided you don't get snared), and you don't need to "stay alive forever" - instead, you just only need to "stay alive long enough for your monks to arrive". These skirmish-based battles are highly skill-based.

No wait, you're probably going to edit this post to fit exactly how you think the game should be played.

Sun Fired Blank · Jul 12, 2009, 07:02 PM // 19:02

Again, there's a serious problem with any game when the ceiling for being good at something is simply not sucking at really basic stuff. But don't let that stop your "macro-sense is important" tirade.

Krill · Jul 12, 2009, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Don't worry guys, anet gave their crack developer squad another month to study how aura of restoration was a completely idiotic buff. In the past they've always acknowledged failures and corrected them in a timely fashion.

lutz · Jul 12, 2009, 10:20 PM // 22:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

Again, there's a serious problem with any game when the ceiling for being good at something is simply not sucking at really basic stuff. But don't let that stop your "macro-sense is important" tirade.

You're right about one thing: the "ceiling" is always at not sucking at basic things. That's always the ceiling for any game.

This translates to: not making mistakes. The ceiling is always a person who "never makes any mistakes".

However, that's pretty close to impossible. Here's a list of "basic things":

1. Being on the right targets at the right time.
e.g. If a target is below half health, you are trying to bring it lower and draw prot, and if no healing happens, you score a kill.
e.g. NEVER having your warrior call "damn, if you were on that target with me it would have died".

2. Always taking control of opportunities.
e.g. If the Word monk just used Word, and Patient is somehow disabled, and the prot monk is at ~33% health with your warrior running at it, you should Meteor the Word monk and then put damage on the low target.

3. Knowing the game inside out.
e.g. Always performing the perfect cast order to always solo an NPC (Knight, Archer, Bodyguard) in the optimum amount of time. (utilizing Meteor to knock self heals, unless it's mathematically unnecessary - preserving Meteor until you really need it.)
e.g. Performing the perfect cast order to always maximize your damage on targets when you have a limited amount of time, whether it's on a person or on a Guild Lord (leading with Immolate instead of Mind Blast, always keeping burning on the target)

4. Never getting interrupted, unless it's insignificant (e.g. teamwide Res Sig).
e.g. Always knowing when Power Block could be recharged, and whether the mesmer is in range, and cancel casting accordingly.

5. Always making sure your critical enchantments (i.e. Attunements) stay up.
e.g. Watching when the opposing team is trying to rip your enchants, right before the spell lands, cover it with Aura so they waste an enchant rip and you have your enchantment covered.

6. Never dying, unless your team has an incredible advantage because you died.
e.g. Positioning yourself perfectly and always kiting spikes.
e.g. Swinging around to monk range when you are being collapsed on.
e.g. Never getting Pin Downed by Archers, except in extreme circumstances where it will let you avoid death.

7. Never letting anyone around you die on split, unless you would die as well.
e.g. Utilizing your Meteor, tanking ability and possibly touch heals to keep everyone on split alive without monks or ritualists, unless there's just too much fail on your team.

... more.

This is the ceiling. If you've messed up one of the above at least once, then you are not at the ceiling.

Same goes for StarCraft. There's pretty little ingenuity in that game, since every timing is so practiced. It's just about who makes less mistakes. You're basically saying "just don't mess up basic things". In StarCraft, that would mean "don't mess up scouting, defense, expansion timing, push timing, macro, micro, etc."... individually, all of those are basic, but not messing up one of them is pretty hard. This would mean you never have idle Probes, never have more than X/Y minerals/gas where X/Y is the resource cost for the next thing you want to make. Obviously, when you're running on 4 or 5 bases, and even more for Zerg, you're not going to play perfectly, ever. You're going to have a worker or two not mining, 1000-1500 minerals without producing anything... you're going to make mistakes.

What you meant to say was that the Mind Blast has a lower bar for adequacy, not a low ceiling. Then again, the adequate players rarely know how to split, so they still just sit at stand and 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a until they realize their entire lord room is dead. Rarely do you find people who know how to appropriately respond on the bar, and even know what it's capable of, and how to micro the bar correctly so they do the most damage while taking the least.

Then again, not many things you ever say are right, so I'll forgive you on this account.

Regulus X · Jul 13, 2009, 03:40 AM // 03:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krill

Don't worry guys, anet gave their crack developer squad another month to study how aura of restoration was a completely idiotic buff. In the past they've always acknowledged failures and corrected them in a timely fashion.

And now, we're lucky if we even GET a skill update (esp. containing a buff in PvP) at all!

Master Ketsu · Jul 13, 2009, 09:39 AM // 09:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

You're right about one thing: the "ceiling" is always at not sucking at basic things. That's always the ceiling for any game.

This translates to: not making mistakes. The ceiling is always a person who "never makes any mistakes".

However, that's pretty close to impossible. Here's a list of "basic things":

1. Being on the right targets at the right time.
e.g. If a target is below half health, you are trying to bring it lower and draw prot, and if no healing happens, you score a kill and blahbihty BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHBITY BLAH

Or you can play as a spellcaster build that actually takes skill like Mo or Me where you pretty much have to worry about everything you stated in addition to about a dozen or so other things, one of which includes having a bar that doesn't consist of rolling your forehead upon your keyboard.

Derp Derp.

Sun Fired Blank · Jul 13, 2009, 09:52 AM // 09:52

What you meant to say was that the Mind Blast has a lower bar for adequacy, not a low ceiling. Then again, adequate players rarely know how to roll their forehead upon their keyboard, so they just sit slack-jawed at the computer drooling until they realize their entire team is dead. Rarely do you find people who know how to appropriately roll their forehead upon their keyboard, or even know what their forehead is capable of, and how to forehead their bar correctly so they do the most damage while taking the least.

Then again, not many things you ever say are right, so I'll forgive you on this account.

Derp Derp.

tatan · Jul 13, 2009, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Ya this build is tough especially when you're a melee... but been playing mesmer lately and noticed how many new players there are trying this build prolly hearing how it owns and ending up killing themselves from spamming too much with backfire on them...

Kwisatz_Haderach · Jul 13, 2009, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

What you meant to say was that the Mind Blast has a lower bar for adequacy, not a low ceiling. Then again, adequate players rarely know how to roll their forehead upon their keyboard, so they just sit slack-jawed at the computer drooling until they realize their entire team is dead. Rarely do you find people who know how to appropriately roll their forehead upon their keyboard, or even know what their forehead is capable of, and how to forehead their bar correctly so they do the most damage while taking the least.

Then again, not many things you ever say are right, so I'll forgive you on this account.

Derp Derp.

this made me laugh for a good minute.

anyways to highlight his point, once in ta me and 3 friends were messing around with balanced substituting the necro for me playing the overpowered mind blast ele bar (i did not wanna think at the moment) anyways we win 6 and then we run into mind blast way with the wastrels collapse mesmer variant at the D'Alessio Map.

Halfway through the match one of their eles is about to die and so runs halfway across the map to heal and recharge his energy presumebly. Meanwhile, the mesmer and remaining ele actually land some clean spikes on our monk wiping the team but for me and the ranger. Somehow, we manage to kill their monk and procede to destroy their mesmer and ele. The ranger dies as we take out their ele leaving me at half health and no energy.

Now the surviving ele is still halfway across the map biding his time. He lets me recover to full health, half energy, and re apply my attunements. Then he rushes in while i switch to my fire sheild and meteor him the second he is in range. To make the story short, I defeated him despite getting no energy from Mind blast because he had atleast 20-30 energy more than me to start.

Pretty Much this just highlights Sun's point that while the mind blast template rewards mediocracy their are a surprising amount of people who can not even run the template decently. And it hinders them more than anything because they get so stuck in the 1-2-1-2-1-2 mindset that they can not learn things like proper battlefield awareness.

My 2 Cents.

Regulus X · Jul 13, 2009, 10:04 PM // 22:04

Okay. What's the difference between an average player and a 1337 player using E/Me?

NONE! 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4

Div · Jul 14, 2009, 12:22 AM // 00:22

I think people are arguing two completely different things.

In an arena setting, the difference between a bad player playing mblast and a good player playing it is going to be smaller than another build like monk or ranger. That's a given. Anyone who can hit 12341212123 on cycle will be able to output decent pressure. There are minor things, like weapon swapping to make sure you get your energy, target selection, or not eating damage on a 40/40 that a mblast can do, but overall it's nothing big.

However, it's still a pretty big difference when talking about GvGs. Granted, the current mblast bar revolves mainly around going to their base and doing damage-overload collapses, but a good mblast will make just as big of a difference as a good ranger. The ability to know when to split, where to split, and how to communicate is the primary factor. In a split build, the ability to use your skillbar is not nearly as important as the ability to split properly. That's where all of protoss's points come up.

Sun Fired Blank · Jul 14, 2009, 04:39 AM // 04:39

In my view, the split is basic, the ability to split is basic, and Mind Blasts simply execute faster and more precisely than most other playable templates. That doesn't mean you couldn't run some other template such as a multi-stance BA ranger and get relatively synonymous results in some cases, but for a mind blast, the decision-making act and subsequent execution are far simpler, even if these decisions are the same.

The most basic reason you do anything is to get something done. In the case of a split, you're trying to net NPCs, which in turn makes it easier to get lord damage, create mismatches and power plays through separation, etc. When you have the mismatch and separation, you collapse, kill stuff, re-split. Every subsequent split should be more dangerous than the split before it, presuming they don't just slaughter you.

E/Me is flat out superior for doing most of these things: You net NPCs faster than most other builds without concern for their damage or line of sight. You can rack up insane amounts of damage on the lord in a ridiculously short period of time for the tiebreaker. You have a fairly exceptional speed boost that enables you to quickly bring copious amounts of direct damage to bear on any part of the map.

Saying that playing a Mind Blast requires greater macro understanding to be successful misrepresents that what has to be done on a macro level remains fairly consistent for any templates, and is not exclusive to Mind Blast. It also largely overstates the complexity of these macro decisions, and it largely understates how exceptional and rounded the template is for its job.

360° · Jul 14, 2009, 07:01 AM // 07:01

lutz thinks fire eles and paragons take skill to play

Sun Fired Blank · Jul 14, 2009, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Paragons are hard to play, like warriors. You clearly don't have any experience on Paragon or you wouldn't make such a statement. If you don't place your damage properly then people never die. If your positioning is bad then you won't be in place to place that damage, and people will dodge your spears. Paragon is an dynamic and enriching profession, and good paragons are hard to find. You don't understand GvG, where macro-sense is important. Paragons have to be in the right place at the right time, like fire eles.

Bobby2 · Jul 14, 2009, 08:45 AM // 08:45

Hi guys! Enjoying the barbecue. Will roll E/Me now, thanks for your input

lutz · Jul 14, 2009, 08:49 AM // 08:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sun Fired Blank

Paragons are hard to play, like warriors. You clearly don't have any experience on Paragon or you wouldn't make such a statement. If you don't place your damage properly then people never die. If your positioning is bad then you won't be in place to place that damage, and people will dodge your spears. Paragon is an dynamic and enriching profession, and good paragons are hard to find. You don't understand GvG, where macro-sense is important. Paragons have to be in the right place at the right time, like fire eles.

You might be mistaken about what type of Paragon I'm talking about. Generally, defensive Paragons in defensive spike builds require much less skill than offensive Paragons, since it's only a matter of maintaing shouts and clicking your buttons on 1. I'm talking about a DF-esque build that included a Paragon with 3 attack skills including Cruel Spear, as well as some kind of minor defensive capability like Power Return.

Paragons have a low entry level of competence, like Fire Eles. Paragons don't need to really worry about splitting since they're generally a stand character, but they do need to worry about dealing damage. They're basically a Fire Ele at stand that does a little bit more damage, but can't split - that's generally why they aren't seen in the current meta (since people would much rather sacrifice some damage for some balance).

GvG isn't like TA in the sense that, in TA, you only have 4 targets to choose from, 1 of which usually has a long block stance, and the other with a lot of armor. Your choice of target and positioning is quite limited. Even if everything is available to hit, you really only have 4 targets to choose from, and the field is incredibly easy to watch, since there aren't that many people. In GvG, there are a lot more mechanics to look at - flag pushing, monk pushing, midline disruption/pressure, DP'd targets, etc. It takes a much stronger game sense to play paragon well in GvG, since you need to be able to pressure with your warriors. This means dealing damage at the right time to the right people, with 8 possibilities to choose from. And no, you're not just following the warriors around, or being microed by the warriors (in fact, following warriors around on a Paragon is generally a bad idea if the monks are just following warriors). Every couple seconds you need to make a decision on where you need to put your damage. As the game goes on and more decisions need to be made, it's pretty clear who the better Paragon is. Your general game sense needs to be like a warrior's game sense. Sure, your micro isn't necessarily the same (no quarterstepping involved) but you still need to place damage effectively as a warrior would do.

But no, you're always right. You never advocate/lead discussions off-topic at all. I mean, shit, you're the forum moderator! You moderate the forum for strategies and tactics. This basically could be your thing! Like, you know, like, you could be really good!

Greedy Gus · Jul 14, 2009, 09:19 AM // 09:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by lutz

Why is it that all the people who actually play GvG agree on one decision, and all the people who don't are advocating the exact opposite?
Is there something to be deduced from this observation?

You have very little credibility as a source of pvp insight, based on all of your posts here. You consistently have skewed ideas on skillful play and game balance, out of the gvg mainstream. I mean aren't you the guy in GeAr who always has petty penis measuring fights with vK when they do better than you?

Neo already crushed this topic, showing an admirable patience in dealing with you, jeydra, fuhon, etc when most of us couldn't be bothered. Eden just crushed your recent bent in post #354, again reiterating the ideas already posted in this thread.

Everyone can push their own opinions, but trying to characterize the entire credible gvg community as backing you here is just wrong.

lutz · Jul 14, 2009, 09:48 AM // 09:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

You have very little credibility as a source of pvp insight, based on all of your posts here. You consistently have skewed ideas on skillful play and game balance, out of the gvg mainstream. I mean aren't you the guy in GeAr who always has petty penis measuring fights with vK when they do better than you?

Neo already crushed this topic, showing an admirable patience in dealing with you, jeydra, fuhon, etc when most of us couldn't be bothered. Eden just crushed your recent bent in post #354, again reiterating the ideas already posted in this thread.

Everyone can push their own opinions, but trying to characterize the entire credible gvg community as backing you here is just wrong.

I know, 2-4 is an incredible record for an mAT. I'd kill to have that kind of record. Motoko just decides to talk shit in game, and completely deny it out of game to get "forum e-cred", so I call him out when I see it. That also happens to be basically every post he makes in this forum.

The metagame has already evolved. E/Me Distortion eles aren't really considered optimal split characters most of the time. There are other options that are favored in split templates. Distortion isn't really that big of the issue right now. After all, it's a skill slot saying: I'm devoting a huge portion of my energy pool and a significant attribute spec to counter melee only on myself, and I have a really shitty self heal.

"Eden" (or whoever you're talking about) makes the following points:

Quote:

You net NPCs faster than most other builds without concern for their damage or line of sight. You can rack up insane amounts of damage on the lord in a ridiculously short period of time for the tiebreaker. You have a fairly exceptional speed boost that enables you to quickly bring copious amounts of direct damage to bear on any part of the map.

This makes a really shitty argument. My VoR bar applies:

VoR, Backfire, Wastrel's, Cry of Frustration, Power Drain, Empathy, Distortion, [free slot] (perhaps a speed boost)

1. NPCs faster than most other builds without concern for their damage or line of sight. Check. The VoR bar solos NPCs faster than almost any build in the game (Mind Blast included)
2. You can rack up insane amounts of damage on the lord in a ridiculously short period of time for the tiebreaker. The VoR bar actually does more damage to the lord.
3. You have a fairly exceptional speed boost that enables you to quickly bring copious amounts of direct damage to bear on any part of the map. I could add it in, in the free slot with an 8-9 attribute spec.

There are points in the Mind Blast that need fixing (e.g. the 10 attribute spec) but it's not Distortion, and it's not completely imbalanced. It could use a little bit of toning down (1s added to recharge, etc.) but for the most part it's pretty good. You are all blowing this entirely out of proportion.

Jeydra · Jul 14, 2009, 11:04 AM // 11:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

You have very little credibility as a source of pvp insight, based on all of your posts here. You consistently have skewed ideas on skillful play and game balance, out of the gvg mainstream. I mean aren't you the guy in GeAr who always has petty penis measuring fights with vK when they do better than you?

Neo already crushed this topic, showing an admirable patience in dealing with you, jeydra, fuhon, etc when most of us couldn't be bothered. Eden just crushed your recent bent in post #354, again reiterating the ideas already posted in this thread.

Everyone can push their own opinions, but trying to characterize the entire credible gvg community as backing you here is just wrong.

I was musing this response to Neo's argument that he wants to win games because he is more skillful, better at Diverting BSurge, better at pre-protting Warrior spikes, better at keeping down Aegis, etc etc etc. I never posted it though since it's been so long. Still since you brought it up, why not?

Once, slightly less than a year ago, I played this game. They had two Warriors, one Ranger, one Dom Mes, one BSurge, 2 Monks and a Rit flagger. We had largely the same build, but we swapped out the Axe War for a Wounding Strike Dervish and the BSurge for another Ranger (= one with Apply, one with Barbed Arrows). The Apply Ranger was standard Cripshot but the Barbed Arrows Ranger had "Watch Yourself!" (<-- !?). I played Prot Monk for my guild, and the map was Solitude.

Now. We not only had essentially no midline defense we had an AL 70 Derv frontline. So we are obviously at a build disadvantage right? Still we happily went into an 8v8 with the other team. And we won. We were better at Diverting BSurge, better at pre-protting Warrior spikes, better at keeping down Aegis, etc etc etc. Awesome!

So they fell back into base and turtled. We pushed in. All their damage ran out the portal. I saw that, everyone saw that, but nobody said anything and nobody did anything. We just kept pushing. Then suddenly we saw our Bodyguard dying and we were like "wtf!?" and all ran for home base and before we knew it our Guild Lord was dead.

So tell me. We were better at Diverting BSurge, better at pre-protting Warrior spikes, better at keeping down Aegis, etc etc etc. We lost because the other team split us and we didn't respond. Since we want a game in which the more highly-skilled team wins, and since skill is Diverting BSurge, better at pre-protting Warrior spikes, better at keeping down Aegis, etc etc etc, do you think ANet should remove splitting from the game?

Think about it. Neo wrote on post #200:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-LD

You clearly don't have a clue what desirability is, and given its centrality to my arguments that would make it impossible for you to start arguing with me, so I'm a bit surprised you've tried. Here it is again: A mechanic is desirable if it is conducive to a skill-rewarding metagame wherein talented players and teams can distinguish themselves from rif-raff using elements of player skill. Some such elements are reflex, anticipation, yomi, multi-tasking, timing, etc. Some examples of specific skills that exemplify those elements would be Distracting Shot (reflex, anticipation, yomi), Bulls Strike (yomi, timing), and Guardian (anticipation, yomi). Some examples of specific character templates that in large part satisfy those elements would be traditional warriors, apply rangers, and prot monks. In any case, the overriding obsession of game balance needs to be to reward player skill to create an environment where the player who played better wins. Consequently the maximum potential of simple tactics such as button mash should be inherently designed to be weak in comparison to what can be achieved by more difficult tactics that require the aforementioned elements of player skill. As should be obvious, Mind Blast eles stand in blatant defiance of this principle.

Our Rangers hit more DShots, our Warrior landed more Bull's Strikes, our Monks cast more effective Guardians, we were better. We deserved to win, yet we lost.

Maybe ANet should make it harder to split when you have DP, like maybe 30% DP = 30% movespeed penalty or something? Or maybe ANet should give the bodyguard 10k HP so you can't assassinate the Guild Lord so simply? Or perhaps give everyone in a team a "teleport" ability to teleport right beside the Guild Lord on demand? Anything so that my superior guild triumphs over these baddies instead of vice versa!!1!

I hope you agree with me that the above statement is utterly ridiculous. I can also predict what your response will be: you'll simply include "splitting" into the net of "skills" that Neo mentioned above. But splitting isn't a skill. It can't be, because if it were a skill you would have to agree that - God forbid - the E/Me Mind Blast template actually takes skill!! Next it'll be "but splitting is a skill everyone should know! I want skills that actually take SKILL to use on my bar!". But that can't be either, because using the E/Me bar still takes skill. Just look at lutz's post (#345). And then it'll be "but those are not REAL skill, REAL skill is Distracting Shot (reflex, anticipation, yomi), Bulls Strike (yomi, timing), and Guardian (anticipation, yomi)".

Yeah right. Small wonder why there are so few viable builds in the game.