Curse

Phe Belladona · Jan 02, 2009, 06:29 AM // 06:29

you're right, lingering is fine cause you can take a ritualist midliner for more party heals and maybe use expel hexes as the elite on another midliner and hey rend is balanced cause you can use it in a build with a ritualist midliner and expel hexes on another defensive midliner to actually kill things..

i do think izzy gets more hate than necessary but the rest is just lol

FoxBat · Jan 02, 2009, 07:06 AM // 07:06

I do agree that buffing pressure turned out to be a better solution to spike builds than trying to nerf every single multi-enchant removal in the game like most were calling for. Things like hundred blades and primal rage were good nudges in that direction, giving us pressure bars that still take half a brain to play. Unfortunately it takes something completely stupid like Lingering Curse to actually make the strategy work. If Lingering were pulled down from completely dominating to reasonable, it would still be a requirement for high-end pressure builds. If it were culled back in line with other pressure elites like Tainted, then pressure would probably vanish again from mATs. I don't know what the best solution is, but it probably isn't banking on a single elite.

ChopChop · Jan 02, 2009, 07:42 AM // 07:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phe Belladona

you're right, lingering is fine cause you can take a ritualist midliner for more party heals and maybe use expel hexes .. and expel hexes on another defensive midliner ..

Hey, hey hold on now, your getting a little ahead of yourself.
Almost every European guild in this game is using Lyssas Aura as an elite skill on the mesmer, why is that do you think?
Yes it is to be able to cast more snares and shutdown on physical damage dealers, the skill has no other purpose than 100% pure defense, taking expel actually reduces the available defense in the build.
So to sum up your argument, yes if you are going to play a build which consists of only defense vs. physical damage, and the other team attempts to get at you with hexes, yes you are going to be in trouble.

This is why using the term 'balanced' to describe the current generation of euro build is actually fairly silly, no they are not balanced, they are weak and fragile, and when up against DPS that actually sticks they crumble.
2 hex removals between 8 characters, and you expect to beat a solid degen hexers? .. I should be laughing at you not the other way around.

Want to beat a team that specs you? Yes then you do have to spec against them too.

la_cabra_de_vida · Jan 02, 2009, 08:26 AM // 08:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChopChop

Hey, hey hold on now, your getting a little ahead of yourself.
Almost every European guild in this game is using Lyssas Aura as an elite skill on the mesmer, why is that do you think?
Yes it is to be able to cast more snares and shutdown on physical damage dealers, the skill has no other purpose than 100% pure defense, taking expel actually reduces the available defense in the build.
So to sum up your argument, yes if you are going to play a build which consists of only defense vs. physical damage, and the other team attempts to get at you with hexes, yes you are going to be in trouble.

This is why using the term 'balanced' to describe the current generation of euro build is actually fairly silly, no they are not balanced, they are weak and fragile, and when up against DPS that actually sticks they crumble.
2 hex removals between 8 characters, and you expect to beat a solid degen hexers? .. I should be laughing at you not the other way around.

Want to beat a team that specs you? Yes then you do have to spec against them too.

A normal person's definition of balance usually has not been of:

A) Very long time ago partygon/ward bsurge/camp dom mesmer
B) A little bit ago 10 copies of weakness and standrit
C) Now, two pure defensive midliners, with 2 spike skills.

Lets not forget the 5 monk final on corrupted vs dR.

...and since when do balanced teams go 3...2...1 all day in vent. Sorry, but your's and rawr's definition of "balance" is incorrect. Its fine with me if you wish to exploit the game, and win most of your matches. But it only leads to boring to watch, boring to play, lets-see-who-spikes-who-out-first games. Frankly I miss dR and DF, and other guilds who had balls to speak of.

Jaden Stone · Jan 02, 2009, 09:26 AM // 09:26

Quote:

...and since when do balanced teams go 3...2...1 all day in vent.

Since the begining of time.

Quote:

A normal person's definition of balance

I'd define it as bringing a build with enough utility to have a chance of winning under as many different circumstances as possible. To not limit your chance of winning by bringing a one sided build. Everyone seems to have thier own defintion, but I think mine is fine.

Quote:

Lets not forget the 5 monk final on corrupted vs dR.

Lets not! One of the better and more exciting dR/rawr games to watch. dR had the "balls" to run instagib dervish spike, we loaded in with a massive disadvantage with 4 monks. Lots of movement and deaths, we managed a win due to splitting and gaining a nice NPC advantage. Thank you for noticing our excellent split play that match, many people missed that.

Quote:

Frankly I miss dR and DF, and other guilds who had balls to speak of.

I miss them too, but not for their balls

urania · Jan 02, 2009, 11:08 AM // 11:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

we loaded in with a massive disadvantage with 4 monks. Lots of movement and deaths, we managed a win due to splitting and gaining a nice NPC advantage. Thank you for noticing our excellent split play that match, many people missed that.

weee smiters boon abuse weee.

shoogi · Jan 02, 2009, 11:33 AM // 11:33

this thread evolved from Izzy flamefest to rawr flamefest.
I bet next stage will be borat flamefest (common post something about rspike).

now srs-

Quote:

Want to beat a team that specs you? Yes then you do have to spec against them too.

100% agree. I never understood why "Build Wars" got such a negative connotation. Lets all be honorable and bring 2 wars, ranger, mesmer, ele, 2 monks and runner with the same bars. How fun will the game be then? Sure, one might argue that this is the perfect balance because the outcome of the match will be based entirely on individual and team-wide skill, but one of the aspects of GW pvp is your build. Don't know about you, but when I observe a gvg and see a build that I haven't seen before, I already enjoy the observe more, even before the gates open.
I also can't understand why [rawr] are getting flamed for learning best how to take the mechanics (vod) and gain profit. What's wrong with that?

Don't get me wrong, this is not a rawr-fanboy post, actually I don't even play gvg so I couldn't care less, but I get the feeling that all this rawr flaming just comes from jealousy. All that "honorable play" business is bullshit, it's just a freaking game. If rawr have playing with 4 monks + rit + sig mesmer then how can you blame them for doing that? and why should they care that it's boring to observe? when a player gets to HoH does he think "Hey, someone might be watching me, lets make it an interesting match"? srsly get a grip

Divinus Stella · Jan 02, 2009, 12:02 PM // 12:02

I'm not sure i agree about balanced just being another form of spike build, it does depend on who is playing it but our warriors rarely call spikes, any death tends to be because the enemy cant keep the party up rather than the activation time on their skills being too long, if pressure doesnt work then a split is used.

Guilds like KMD do center more around spikes with balanced but you can hardly compare the standard balanced build to a rawr style build where you rely on mass defense and just enough damage to make a kill every 20 seconds, theres using a spike as a utility and then theres just having a spike and nothing else.

Im not saying theres anything wrong with people using a heavy spike build i just think the game should be balanced to a point where people cant play 1 build entirely and never need to change bars or tactics.

House Silvermoon · Jan 02, 2009, 05:26 PM // 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

Izzy gets a lot more hate than he deserves for the amount of work he puts into this game. He really does put a ton of free time into trying to make this game better by putting in extra hours, creating discussion, and even speaking on vent after MaT's to see what the major concerns are. He makes himself available pretty much all the time for major concerns or discussion.

The main problem is he has too much to do. They have him dedicated to GW2 now and he has to do GW1 in his free time, Other than that there would be very little support for balance issues at all. He doesnt get the time to play the game and needs the advice of the high end pvp community to better understand how the game is being played.

Ignoring advise seems to be one of the bigger concerns of the high end GvGers. While it does happen sometimes I cannot say it happens consistantly. Tons of our ideas for the new elites were implemented this update and I'd say bar one or two skills it went well. The sad thing is we all knew mark of inscurity was coming and no one said a thing about it. Unfortunatly looks like even we make mistakes.

Izzy is just trying to make a game that is fun, no perfect balance can ever be met. There will always be templates or builds that are "better". From my understanding of what he wants is People to die, less defense, more movement, and Party moral bars that cross occationaly. The problem is the community does not like dying, they want to win. When they start to lose, they get angry. Problem is someone has to lose in PvP. Players keep bringing rock and losing to paper, instead of trying scissors they ask izzy to fix it so rock can win again. Sad thing is players have not been shifting meta's as guildwars initially inteded, it's had to be done by balance patches to prevent complaints and keep customers happy. This has created and inflexable player base that depends on patches to maintain success.

Skill balancing is not so black and white. Let's take a skill like Linguring curse. The communinty at the moment would scoff at this skill stating it's incredibly imbalanced. The general concensus would be that it is broken, and needs to be rebalanced. But is it really? Hex builds have not been viable for the last 6 months, a little extra party healing and you can beat a hex build no problem, even with little removes. It's in a line with no spike potential, and is currently the only skill allowing for pressure based gameplay. So wouldn't we rather have a skill like this in play than continuing spike wars?

Another interesting case is rend enchantments. Again 90% of the guild wars community will say this skill is broken. What would happen if we removed it from play though? Would spikes suddenly stop killing? no. The only thing keeping conjure+soh stacking in check in deep enchant removal. Spikes will simply bring a replacement, such as gaze, or rip, or strip, or another drain. The kills will still come, and damage compression will be increased. Well lets nerf those too you say! then teams start playing for tiebreakers and never dying.

So in summary, Izzy does a fine job at what he needs to do. He RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOs up sometimes but usually fixes it quite quickly. Guildwars is still the most competative PvP RPG on the market today. Izzy does listen, and does ignore bad suggestions but occationaly misses important ones. If you put ensign in izzys shoes and made him work on another game 10 hours a day and do the balancing job of a 5 man team in his freetime while maintaining a real life, the results would most likely be the same.

/winsthread

i actually have more respect for izzy now.

Dronte · Jan 02, 2009, 05:35 PM // 17:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

Skill balancing is not so black and white. Let's take a skill like Linguring curse. The communinty at the moment would scoff at this skill stating it's incredibly imbalanced. The general concensus would be that it is broken, and needs to be rebalanced. But is it really? Hex builds have not been viable for the last 6 months, a little extra party healing and you can beat a hex build no problem, even with little removes. It's in a line with no spike potential, and is currently the only skill allowing for pressure based gameplay.

Hahahahahhahaaahahahaha! Funny guy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

So wouldn't we rather have a skill like this in play than continuing spike wars?

No.

Symbol · Jan 02, 2009, 06:33 PM // 18:33

Say what you will about lingering, but the current Me/N hexer is way less obnoxious than previous templates with over 9000 melee hate skills. What does the current hex build have...faint and enfeeble?

And with lingering things actually die to pressure.

Dmitri3 · Jan 02, 2009, 07:07 PM // 19:07

Well, thanks for clearing it up.

I never blamed Izzy for poor performance (okay, maybe I did but I don't remember), simply because I never had his job and don't know if I could do better. Some skills are overpowered, some are not but are complained about. Personally, I'd be very skeptic about almost every opinion and prefer the numbers to speak.

The most amazing thing I found is that people that had the chance to influence the outcome of skill changes (however small the influence could be, you can't have it all) complained the most on the balance issue. Or it may have just appeared that way... Anyhow, if you blame Izzy, it puts you into "the cool gang" nowadays, which I find quite sad.

Jaden Stone · Jan 04, 2009, 06:37 AM // 06:37

Quote:

Im not saying theres anything wrong with people using a heavy spike build i just think the game should be balanced to a point where people cant play 1 build entirely and never need to change bars or tactics.

The problem is the community is always crying for a balanced build that can beat everything if played well. People don't like to lose to "gimmicks" and want a chance to be able to win when outbuilt. It's been one of the largest complaints since the dawn of Guildwars. The community so desperatly wants the standard W/W/R/Me/E/Mo/Mo/Rt to be this build. The question I pose is how can pressure ever exist if this is seen as the "perfect balanced build" and every time a build comes along that out pressures this, it is nefed out of play? How can pressure ever become mainstream if whenever it wipes the build with the lowest healing available it's scaled down?

Quote:

Hahahahahhahaaahahahaha! Funny guy.

If you could elaborate on what you found so amusing I may be able to give you a decent reply. As I stated Hexes have not been viable for the last 6 months. The last time Hexes won a Mat was 06/2007, I would know I played in that match. I cannot recall the last time I've even seen a hex team in the top 16. Maybe you were refering to a different format, I'm speaking about top tier GvG.

Quote:

weee smiters boon abuse weee.

I heard smiters boon was a good counter to derv spike, miright?

mikeydj99 · Jan 04, 2009, 07:07 AM // 07:07

Jaden. You have to be the smartest pvper i have seen in awhile.... Agreeed.

AND everyone knows. Good Pressure Rapes Balanced.

Phe Belladona · Jan 04, 2009, 07:19 AM // 07:19

Lingering is artificial pressure, not caused by good play or skillful shutdown or strong frontline but just by a midliner who cant really be interupted (except on HumSig) spamming his bar on recharge.. this isnt good. <- why dont you recognise this and feel the same way? i've had ppl say to me "our guild is going to fail as soon as lingering gets nerf'd".. see what this points to?

urania · Jan 04, 2009, 07:33 AM // 07:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

I heard smiters boon was a good counter to derv spike, miright?

its still an abuse. get the point?

Jaden Stone · Jan 04, 2009, 09:01 AM // 09:01

Quote:

Lingering is artificial pressure, not caused by good play or skillful shutdown or strong frontline but just by a midliner who cant really be interupted

Good play is a terrible set of standards the PvP community lives by and loses by. It's some form of predefined honor system which allows players to feel better about themselves. Just because a skill can be used on recharge does not make it bad for the game, in fact thats how pressure builds work. It's these preconcieved notions of skillful play that have really hurt pressure, again trying to push guildwars into W/W/R/Me/E/Mo/Mo/Rt, the most skillful build.

There are plenty of other spells that we so seldom complain about that are spam on recharge, but they have become accepted into the circle of honor. Blurred Vision, shame, hunters shot, suffering, visions of regret, caretakers charge, Diversion to some extent. Keep trying to make pressue hard to apply, and people will continue to not run it. Some skills should be easier if thats what style of play you want to promote and actually evolve the metagame.

As for being placed on a mesmer and being uninterruptable well what do you expect. Playing against the "perfect balanced build" would you not do the same. When your enemy is running a powerblock mesmer (3x interrupts), a Ranger (2x), 2 warriors (1x each). Wouldn't you bring something that is immune to interrupts? There is a good reason that players are putting these skills on mesmer primarys, they are evolving to beat the standard. By doing this they are basically removing the dom mesmer from play almost completly. Seems like a smart move to me. Now it's your turn to evolve, and thats how guild wars should be done. Players moving metas, not patches.

Quote:

its still an abuse. get the point?

I guess I'd usually see an abuse as something to our advantage. Though I am sorry, we got poor smiters boon removed from the game.

Greedy Gus · Jan 04, 2009, 09:22 AM // 09:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

Izzy is just trying to make a game that is fun, no perfect balance can ever be met.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaden Stone

There will always be templates or builds that are "better". Players keep bringing rock and losing to paper, instead of trying scissors they ask izzy to fix it so rock can win again. Sad thing is players have not been shifting meta's as guildwars initially inteded, it's had to be done by balance patches to prevent complaints and keep customers happy.

You're missing the point of most players' frustration (those who have stopped playing particularly) if you think this post defends or vindicates izzy.

Ultimately, the biggest difference here is that you are taking as a given that the game can never be perfectly balanced, as well as that GW was intended to have cyclic shifting metagames like rock to paper to scissors. The problem with these two assumptions is that:

Perfect balance has never been attempted
Cycling metas in an RPS fashion just isn't very fun (superficially at best) when compared to a style of linear advancement of player skill where metagame is based around shifting player preference, a variety of viable build types, and a changing environment (current pool of maps & creating new maps)

There have been (sometimes brief) moments throughout the last 3 years of competitive GvG where people have really been able to see greater potential with the game as a fun, skill-intensive format that could contend with other PvP greats. Unfortunately that has never been embraced and explored very well by the development team & management, instead opting to go with your two assumptions and superficially change the metagame to keep things "fresh" but stale to many of us.

This is where a fundamental difference in vision & outlook on the game's goals and possibilities really could have made GW turn out different, rather than just assuming any replacement or addition to Izzy slotted right into his hectic workload would result the same way.

Jeydra · Jan 04, 2009, 09:37 AM // 09:37

@Jaden - some things I strongly agree with you, other things I don't.

I'll agree at once that some of the community's buff and nerf desires make no sense. Nerfing anything that does not fall into the W/W/R/E/Me/Mo/Mo/Rt idea of balanced leads quickly to stale play. Sometimes a build really is degenerate and needs to be removed (eg. Zergway, playing six Wammos with Healing Hands and bodyblocking the doors to the base on Wurms, etc). Other times the so-called degenerate build are interesting to watch if nothing else. Another one of the things I really dislike is asking for a skill to be changed because it 'takes no skill to use'. There isn't a build that takes no skill to use. There're easy builds and there're hard builds, but regardless of how easy a build gets you can't win a mAT with random players from RA.

The skill changes implemented in the last balance update brought a desperately needed breath of new life into the meta. Two months ago almost everyone played W/W/R/E/Me/Mo/Mo/Rt. I could almost predict before every game what each team will be running: they will always have two Warriors, they will always have a Ranger, they will always have two Monks, and so on. I can scarcely call that good for the game, even though it is 'balanced' and 'skillful'. Today we have a lot more different builds. We see Sins (although Palm Strike is still overpowered imo), hex pressure builds based on Lingering Curse, dedicated split builds once again, but the old builds like rawrspike and omegaspike still work. The meta has shifted and changed and become considerably more varied. I fully agree as well that barring one or two skills that went too strong, most of the changes turned out good. Now hopefully other changes will bring even more options into play - these days pretty much the only viable Sin build is the Palm Strike version, while Dervishes and Paragons are still very rare.

However ... one of my beefs with Izzy and game balance has been that they are always geared towards GvG. I'm guessing that about 95% of balance changes were formulated with GvG in mind, and the rest of the PvP world just goes along with it. The Lingering Curse change is one such example, as are nerfs to Defensive Anthem, Vampiric Spirit, etc. There are skills balanced for other gameplay like Backbreaker and Signet of Midnight, but those are few and far between. My problem is that sometimes these changes leave negative effects on other kinds of PvP that nobody seems to care about. Take Lingering Curse as an example. In GvG it's a vicious pressure tool, but you can split it, maneuver it, give your Monk some time to regenerate energy while running around. What if you're in TA? You'd be unable to split and unable to retreat and have to fight through the pressure, hoping the other team wipes before you do. Another example is Wounding Strike. It's capable of inflicting a covered Deep Wound that is very dangerous, but in GvG / HA you will have RC or Life Sheath, while in TA you will have Foul Feast. What about RA? Unless (and sometimes even despite) a Monk carries Draw Conditions + Mending Touch, a good Dervish spamming Wounding Strike will quickly leave Deep Wounds that stick.

Here's another thing. You say Izzy gets way too much hate because he has barely any time to put into balancing the game. I don't know just how the balancing works - I'm not privy to such information, not being a top-end PvP'er myself. But this basically begs the question: why doesn't Izzy get more time?? If he's putting in 10 hours a day working on GW2, balancing GW1 in his spare time and doing the work of five people, sure his less-than-perfect performance could be excused. But why does this have to happen in the first place? Why doesn't ANet grant Izzy more time and more manpower to keep GW1 balanced? Has ANet stopped caring? If ANet does not have the financial resources to spare the time and effort, why not ask good and reasonable players like you and Ensign to do the balancing for them? I'm sure out there among the masses of high-end PvP players will be some who don't mind helping balance the game for a token fee (say a mini Polar Bear for everyone) or even for free. Why leave Izzy - and by extension the whole of Guild Wars - to suffer instead of tapping this potential?

Please tell me, because I don't know.

ChopChop · Jan 04, 2009, 09:49 AM // 09:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Please tell me, because I don't know.

ANet unlike other companies does not charge its players money each month to play, so it makes no financial sense for them to pour massive amounts of money into just 1 small part of GW1.

And secondly this is the greater reason, whatever you think izzy does, an actual change involves many more people, balance group discussions making sure changes do not affect other parts of the game in negative ways, programmer time to do skill function changes, QA testing, translator time (GW is in 8? languages).
All this adds up, and all the people involved needs to be payed wages, and taken off other projects, it is a larger commitment to make a 'simple' change than people give it credit for, and anet does not make money from its players every month.