Curse

Robbert Monga · Jul 20, 2008, 05:42 PM // 17:42

I just want to share some thoughts on current state of blocking and blocking counters between physical damage dealers.

Back in the old days when all Tactics based stances got reworked I hated it, but later I came to recognize that it needed to be done, but maybe not in a way it was done.
Lets face it - tactic isn't really a warrior attribute. Tactic is to this day heavily used by secondary warriors and almost never by warriors themselves. Whenever I see a warrior using something like shield stance or riposte I just laugh to myself *poor nub* and move on to next target, because I know his pitty damade output is not worth wasting time on. However very same skills can be quiet useful on say a monk. How so? Well mostly because casters don't care about penalties that come from tactic based stances, while for warrior not being able to use adren skill and having movement speed reduced pretty much means being sitting duck.
Overall I would rate tactic stances as being weak... In fact I would rate whole tactic attribute as weak. Too much energy based. Too penalizing for physical class. Too dependant on someone being stupid enough wasting time on user.

The only good warrior block skill is Shield Bash. Boy, this thing probably makes up for all warrior pain. This thing is just too good. It doesn't just block, it effectively stops melee attacker dead on his track. Shield Bash is an assassin killer. Shield Bash is a piss-off-you-melee-nub button.

As for stance counters - warriors are shafted again.
Wild blow is just... blows. Lose all adrenaline is absolutely unacceptable especially when your target can cycle stances faster than you can gain adrenaline. It pretty much same as Tactics - not a warrior skill. Dervish? or assassin? Maybe... but not warrior.
Warrior's Cunning - good skill, well balanced in terms of duration/recharge, however 10 energy is absolutely killing it. Again - not usable by a warrior (or anyone else being strength based).
Unblockable skills are too few and either conditional or plain weak.

Blocking is a powerful technique that is supposed to make game fair for those that are not into slash&hacking, but I seen it become much more of autowin fire-and-forget kind of thing... especially when it comes to ranger stances. I still don't understand why ranger stances were left unchanged when tactic stances (sorry, i can't call them warrior stances) were reworked. They have either too long duration or too good duration/recharge ratio or both. They have little to no conditions. They have no penalties... in fact they have extra added bonuses like running speed or attack speed or damage back to attacker.
Somebody can say - well, they can't be used by secondary profession, so they can't be abused. Yeah well, except that somebody is wrong. Natural stride can and is used alot by secondaries, because it is just that freaking good. And expertise stances? Well, maybe not, but it doesn't mean they are not out of hand.
Ranger stances are too much of on demand stay-alive button with added bonuses and no extra cost. Combined with arsenal of fire-and-forget conditions with autocovered cripple/daze on top of quiet powerful spike attack skills.... That has to go.
Putting your character into defensive mode should NOT increase its damage capability. It should be quiet opposite… especially for a non-frontline (ironic?) class.

I think by now everyone agrees that Escape should end when user hits something with an attack. Other than that I would throw random limitations like "removes preparations" or "attack/movement speed reduced by X%" on other ranger stances.

Assassin.
Assassins have few blocking skills, and I don't have strong feelings about them one way or another.
Critical defense is pretty good skill, but only works low level PvP. Otherwise easily removed/interrupted, or you can just kite user for 10 seconds until it wears off.
Flashing blades is borderline overpowered. On one hand its an elite skill. On the other hand - too long duration, too good duration/recharge ratio, too easy to meet condition.
Both Smoke Powder Defense and shroud of distress are great skills without being overpowered like shield bash.

Assassins don’t seem to suffer much in anti-blocking department, in fact they are probably a bit too good at that.
Wild Strike is a great skill. Combined with unblockable lead attack - you just can’t fail (other than to shield basher J ). Fox attack skills. Fox’s promise. Way of the fox…

Paragon.
Paragon makes baby jesus cry…
Burning shield is Shield bash’s ugly duckling half brother. Bugged activation. No stopping power. Fails all around.
Wild throw is pathetic. You can’t use it on someone if they never give you chance to build 7 adren in the first place. Sure you could build adren on some other target before using it… if only it was like 3-4 adrenaline, not 7.

I don’t have much thoughts on dervish… They are caster class in my mind. They don’t have effective stance removal, but that is ok when compared to their sheer damage output.

Overall I think have few suggestions:

1) Ranger stances need major nerfage. Reduced duration and recharge. Negative effects. Rangers should be… ranged, not pwning stuff in melee with perma blocking. Don’t know what else to discuss here.

2) Tactic stances could use a little tweaks, making them less attractive to casters and more attractive to melee.
For example Disciplined Stance:
Current: (1...5...6 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block and +24 armor. Ends if you use an adrenal skill.
New: (1...7...9 seconds.) You have 50% chance to block and attack 25% faster. Ends if you use an adrenal skill.
Or Bonetti’s Defence:
Current: Stance. ( 5...10...11 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block. Gain 5 Energy for each melee attack blocked. Ends if you use a skill.
New: Stance. ( 5...10...11 seconds.) You have 50% chance to block. Gain 1 strike of adrenaline for each melee attack skill blocked. Disables all non-attack skills for 5 seconds.
Reasoning: I think Tactics should be less defensive and synergize more with Strength and adrenaline gain.

3) Warrior’s Cunning. Change to be adren based (8 strikes? Maybe 10?). Scale down duration.
New description: Skill. (2...6...7 seconds.) Your melee attacks are unblockable.
Reasoning: Make it usable. Yet make it hard enough to activate so it doesn’t become ultimate anti-blocking skill of pwnage rendering blocking stances and enchantments useless.

4) Wild Blow. Make adren based (4 strikes?). Lose the “lose all adrenaline” condition. Keep recharge time.
Reasoning: In its current state it doesn’t matter if you use it or not - your attack chain is screwed, which makes it ultimately useless. Make it usable without being have to rebuild all the adrenaline from the scratch, but not easily reusable (thus recharge time on adren skill).

5) Shield Bash. Slight nerf. I love this skills so much, that I can’t ask for it’s effect be reduced, however one thing that definitely needs to be done is reduced duration at 0 strength. 5 seconds is just way too long. 1 second is enough for good player (monk?) to react to being jumped.

6) Wild Throw. See (4).

7) Burning shield. Rework the whole thing.
New description: Shout. For 3...8...9 seconds each affected party member with shield blocks next attack skill used against them. Inflict blindness condition (0...2...3) seconds and Burning condition (1...7...9) seconds if it was melee attack.
Reasoning: It needs to be more paragonish skill (read: affect other people) and have more stopping power. With added blindness it will effectively block two (or even 3) attacks if they made in rapid succession, without being overpowered like Shield Bash, which completely takes attacker out of equation for duration of the spike.

7) Flashing Blades. Make condition a bit harder to meet. Namely simply attacking shouldn’t be enough. User should be dealing damage, so that it can be countered by regular anti-melee means. Maybe make it work same way as critical defenses, I.e. short duration + renew on crit.

8) Wild Strike. Damage bonus it too juicy for utility skill. 10...20...24 should be good.

Ok I’m done. *straps on anti-flame suit*

kvndoom · Jul 20, 2008, 07:21 PM // 19:21

[wild strike], in my opinion, needs to be the point of failure in the [shattering assault] chain. Let it keep its damage and effect, but not be unblockable. Or hit the recharge, but I think the recharge is fine. There's always [fox fangs], but it has longer recharge and doesn't help your teammates the way Wild does since it won't leave your target totally naked.

[wild blow] definitely needs to lose the critical hit aspect and adrenaline loss at the same time. Put it in Strength and make it fail at 4 or less. It just kills warriors but doesn't punish anyone else who uses it. No skill should be usable by any class but its own primary. [shield bash] is another. Warriors don't run it in any form of organized PVP (bars are already too tight) but those monks are a pain if you're an assassin. It definitely makes an assassin useless if they hit part of your L-O-D.

Make [natural stride] fail if you are enchanted or hexed when you use it and I think it would be balanced enough. With that in place I wouldn't even have a problem with it returned to its original duration. I won't even cite the brokenness of [escape].

For the most part, though, I think the block/counter-block situation is rather balanced right now. Melee is very strong due to power creep and has to be kept in check because there is no faster, stronger source of damage. The balance right now is broken by the damn [signet of midnight] spammers (speaking on a 4v4 mentality here). I'll take getting blocked 50-75% of the time over being blind 100% of the time. At least blocking promotes tactical play (switching targets). Blind just sucks.

uzumaki · Jul 20, 2008, 08:06 PM // 20:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

Ranger stances need major nerfage. Reduced duration and recharge. Negative effects. Rangers should be… ranged, not pwning stuff in melee with perma blocking. Don’t know what else to discuss here.

I can't agree more. Escape (ironic name?) should be used as a kite/block not a constant speed buff to chase down targets with a melee weapon ~ i agree it should end once you attack.

I think warriors cunning could be abused if it were adren based by warriors using an ias with double adren spears and enrage charge/for great justice etc i think reducing the energy cost to 5 energy would work.

Wildblow needs to be made usuable to primary warriors, definelty needs to lose the adren drawback ~ not sure how this should be changed but it should be changed.

Shield bash <3 as much as i love this skill i do thinks its op i agree 5 sec is too long for 0 attribute and should be reduced to maybe 2 sec the same way boa was nerfed

I think wild strike is fine. Afterall you have to successully land your lead before you can use so it's conditional.

Tbh i'm not sure if changing tactics stances to suit a pvp primary warrior is a good idea, tactics stances are aimed at pve warriors the same way "adjacent to" bonuses on skills are aimed at pve players so in a way it is already a "warrior attribute" just a pve warrior one

in other words strength attribute compliments a melee warrior so i dont think the tactics attribute should too, strength and tactics would be too similar. Tactics is for tanking.

Robbert Monga · Jul 20, 2008, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by uzumaki

I think wild strike is fine. Afterall you have to successully land your lead before you can use so it's conditional.

well ya, except unbloackable lead attack eliminates that problem... But unlike above poster I see problem with shattering assault combo being the amount of damage it outputs on top of utility, not the fact that it strips bunch of defenses.

Quote:

Tbh i'm not sure if changing tactics stances to suit a pvp primary warrior is a good idea, tactics stances are aimed at pve warriors the same way "adjacent to" bonuses on skills are aimed at pve players so in a way it is already a "warrior attribute" just a pve warrior one

in other words strength attribute compliments a melee warrior so i dont think the tactics attribute should too, strength and tactics would be too similar. Tactics is for tanking.

I would agree with you back in good old days of book trick, but not now... Tactics is weak. No warrior uses it except for lame paladins in AB/RA.

furyow · Jul 20, 2008, 09:25 PM // 21:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

1) Ranger stances need major nerfage. Reduced duration and recharge. Negative effects. Rangers should be… ranged, not pwning stuff in melee with perma blocking. Don’t know what else to discuss here.*

Not sure about ranger stances, I’ve mainly Played Cripshot/BA/GlassArrow and I have to say only one defence skill I take in all “Natural Stride”. I’m not sure it’s overpowered but in my opinion it gives a 50/50 chance of escape which should be viable for rangers considering hex and ench are so much used these days. But I would stay it need some change to stop secondary class using it.

Something should definitely be done to stop R/D and A/D going melee in all PvP form areas and over powering main melee classes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

2) Tactic stances could use a little tweaks, making them less attractive to casters and more attractive to melee.
For example Disciplined Stance:
Current: (1...5...6 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block and +24 armor. Ends if you use an adrenal skill.
New: (1...7...9 seconds.) You have 50% chance to block and attack 25% faster. Ends if you use an adrenal skill.
Or Bonetti’s Defence:
Current: Stance. ( 5...10...11 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block. Gain 5 Energy for each melee attack blocked. Ends if you use a skill.
New: Stance. ( 5...10...11 seconds.) You have 50% chance to block. Gain 1 strike of adrenaline for each melee attack skill blocked. Disables all non-attack skills for 5 seconds.
Reasoning: I think Tactics should be less defensive and synergize more with Strength and adrenaline gain. *

I agree with tactics being pretty useless for primary warrior classes (pvp in mind).
Most skills you pointed are just too harsh and unviable in damage builds, skills like Disciplined Stance, Defensive stance, and Bonnets defences have too harsh penalty for using them.
I wouldn’t waste attributes in Tactics simply because as warriors you want to deal the highest amount of damage and using Tactics is likely to lower your dps and damage output. That in mind Axe/Strength, Sword/Stench or Hammer/Stench is only way to go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

3) Warrior’s Cunning. Change to be adren based (8 strikes? Maybe 10?). Scale down duration. *

I've alsways considerd Warrior’s Cunning im pvp builds but left due to its energy requirment and duration. I think it could do with 45sec recharge, 5 energy cost and perhapns have lower duration (3...5...6 seconds.) maybe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

7) Flashing Blades. Make condition a bit harder to meet. Namely simply attacking shouldn’t be enough. User should be dealing damage, so that it can be countered by regular anti-melee means. Maybe make it work same way as critical defenses, I.e. short duration + renew on crit. *

In regards to this, I hate Critical defence, Flashing blades. They are just nuisance skills for spammers, so many times you’d com across assassins in RA/TA/AB with these skills trying to kill you and upon faluire continue to follow you for minutes just spamming like complete idiots. Definite change for these.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

Wild Blow. Make adren based (4 strikes?). Lose the “lose all adrenaline” condition. Keep recharge time. *

This skill definatly need to lose the andrenalince loss, its the one reason I haven't touched since the beginning of Nightfall.
Move to strenth imo or instead of adrenaline loss make it disable attack/defensive or adrenaline skills for (1...3 seconds.)

kvndoom · Jul 20, 2008, 09:49 PM // 21:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by furyow

Move to strenth imo or instead of adrenaline loss make it disable attack/defensive or adrenaline skills for (1...3 seconds.)

Then it would be useless to everyone and not just warriors. In fact, for warriors it would be worse, because any charged up adrenaline skill has to be built up all over again after the disable ended.

Warrior's Cunning is one of those skills that just shouldn't exist (face it, GW has tons of them). If it gets buffed enough, it'll get abused. If it stays as is or is only buffed slightly, still no one will use it. So it's there to fill a "we made x number of skills" quota and not much else. [Guided Weapon] [guiding hands] [fox's promise] all got nerfed because of abuse potential. It's a very fine line. I'd rather see viable ways for any melee class to remove stances than just give them a way to be unblockable for any duration of time.

Robbert Monga · Jul 20, 2008, 09:56 PM // 21:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by furyow

This skill definatly need to lose the andrenalince loss, its the one reason I haven't touched since the beginning of Nightfall.
Move to strenth imo or instead of adrenaline loss make it disable attack/defensive or adrenaline skills for (1...3 seconds.)

kvndoom beat me to it, but yes - disabling adren skill flushes all adren on it, which by far worse than it is now

-Pluto- · Jul 20, 2008, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Especially after the pve/pvp skill separation, there is simply no reason skills like critical defenses should even exist in pvp. The pvp version of critical defenses needs to be outright killed.

Robbert Monga · Jul 20, 2008, 11:25 PM // 23:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by furyow

I’m not sure it’s overpowered but in my opinion it gives a 50/50 chance of escape which should be viable for rangers considering hex and ench are so much used these days.

ok, im not sure if you aware of this or not, but let me clear certain misconception around blocking.

50% chance of blocking is NOT the same as 50% less physical damage.
Its a simple math that many people just fail to understand. 50% chance to block is actually 50% chance to block every attack.

Lets consider simple example of a melee skillbar with 4 attack skills that generally result in [near] lethal damage:
- Lead attack - 50% chance to succeed.
- Second attack - 50% chance to succeed... on top of 50% chance for lead attack. Chance of both succeeding is not 50%, it is 50% * 50% = 25%
- Third attack - 50% chance... on top of 25% chance from previous two. Which is 50% * 50% * 50% = 12.5%
- Fourth attack - using above math - 6.25% of succeeding.
In other words given a target that blocks 50% of your attacks, you have only 6% chance of succeeding to deal damage that would've been lethal.
Not only that, but in any good attack skill chain (not only assassin ones) those attacks rely on previous one succeeding. I.e. if first one fails - there is no second one or third or fourth... your whole combo is down. Congrats - you've just dealt zero damage in total.

On top of all that 50% chance to block also means 50% less adrenaline (yay for warriors being screwed most again

) for someone attacking you.

50% chance to block is also 50% chance to block attacks that inflict conditions that supposed to drain your health over time.

Basically 50% chance to block is definately not 50% less damage.... it is ALOT more than it seems.

Ec]-[oMaN · Jul 20, 2008, 11:40 PM // 23:40

%'s like block and such are still decided upon probabilities, you have a 50% chance to block for the whole duration that 50% could be trigged every time, get it?

Robbert Monga · Jul 20, 2008, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ec]-[oMaN

%'s like block and such are still decided upon probabilities, you have a 50% chance to block for the whole duration that 50% could be trigged every time, get it?

I'm not sure where you going with this... Are you trying to say that "true randomness is random"?
Well yes - 6% chance is still a valid chance. Given a random target from my example I still may throw all 4 of my attack skills, and kill him without getting blocked once. However repeating same example 1000 times will still yeild me only 60 kills.

la_cabra_de_vida · Jul 21, 2008, 02:13 AM // 02:13

Its really not ranger block stances that are the problem, it goes back to expertise really. With the R/D build, expertise lets you spam high cost scythe attacks for almost nothing. As for thumpers, Rao needs to die, and bash needs to be 50% chance to fail with less than 4 strength.

Riotgear · Jul 21, 2008, 02:52 AM // 02:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by la_cabra_de_vida

Its really not ranger block stances that are the problem, it goes back to expertise really. With the R/D build, expertise lets you spam high cost scythe attacks for almost nothing. As for thumpers, Rao needs to die, and bash needs to be 50% chance to fail with less than 4 strength.

RaO needs to go away because it does nothing but promote button-mashing. Too bad Izzy likes RaO because I guess having dumb melee builds is better than only having smart ones. The problem with R/D is Expertise, but hitting Escape will have no collateral damage so it's a much better target.

The problem with Shattering Assault is the two unblockable openers.

Flashing Blades is fine, kite them when they're attacking you and lineback them when they're not.

The thing is, block is mostly attached to things that require some skill to use properly and really discourage button-mashing physical builds from shitting all over a target. This is fine. Nobody was complaining about not having enough ways to deal with Guardian or Disciplined Stance. It's only when overboard shit like mass party-wide block, Escape, and Critical Defenses come out that people start to say "we need more anti-block."

The reason nobody runs block stances on warriors in PvP is because they don't need them or want them. Warriors are already hard targets, they're willing to go into "take double damage" mode regularly because of it.

C2K · Jul 21, 2008, 03:43 AM // 03:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by la_cabra_de_vida

Its really not ranger block stances that are the problem, it goes back to expertise really. With the R/D build, expertise lets you spam high cost scythe attacks for almost nothing. As for thumpers, Rao needs to die, and bash needs to be 50% chance to fail with less than 4 strength.

I agree. Escape rangers would still be annoying and lame if expertise was nerfed without touching Escape, but they would be useless.

Robbert Monga · Jul 21, 2008, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

The reason nobody runs block stances on warriors in PvP is because they don't need them or want them. Warriors are already hard targets, they're willing to go into "take double damage" mode regularly because of it.

You probably forgetting that there is PvP outside GvG/HA and warrior that is not being healed is an easy prey for for various assasins, dervishes and rangers... and i'm not talking about specific anti-melee builds, that supposed to win over melee.
Why? Because they can't block for shit without killing they damage completely. And without block warriors getting their faces owned up, down and sideways. Because permablock and conditions is the name of the game in low end PvP, and warriors fail at both using and countering them.
And on the high end? Do dervs run defensive skills on their bar? Or maybe assassins? Yeah, right... Thats because they are being healed and protted, at which point AL doesnt mean much, and all that matters is pure damage.

As such I stand on my point: Tactics needs major fixing to stop being attribute for secondaries.

FoxBat · Jul 21, 2008, 11:46 PM // 23:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

You probably forgetting that there is PvP outside GvG/HA and warrior that is not being healed is an easy prey for for various assasins, dervishes and rangers

Most here wouldn't call AB PvP.

Div · Jul 22, 2008, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Escape/lightning/whirling might need a fix, but if you're referring to R/D or R/W, then that's a problem with how expertise works. Rangers should be near melee range anyways to be a good interrupter, so stuff like natty stride is necessary.

Moral55 · Jul 22, 2008, 12:55 AM // 00:55

I would, but even if you don't it also includes RA/TA/GvG/HeroA all good modes of PvP, regardless of what you think.

bungusmaximus · Jul 22, 2008, 05:48 AM // 05:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robbert Monga

You probably forgetting that there is PvP outside GvG/HA and warrior that is not being healed is an easy prey for for various assasins, dervishes and rangers... and i'm not talking about specific anti-melee builds, that supposed to win over melee.

I play mine in AB on monkless teams, I't doesn't feel like I'm getting owned all the time, it just requires smart play. Warriors shouldn't have too much blocking stuffm there's enough block flying around as it is. Imagine this TA team:
Warrior
Ranger
Monk (with either shield bash or GOREDENGINE stances)
antimelee necro

have fun killing anything when warriors look like you imagine it.

Riotgear · Jul 22, 2008, 06:21 AM // 06:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Most here wouldn't call AB PvP.

AB gives you points for killing enemy players. GvG only gives you any sort of progress for using a catapult, having an NPC use a monster skill, capturing a flagpost, and killing an NPC. I guess that makes AB more PvP than GvG.

.... or maybe the entire "AB isn't PvP" argument is retarded and depends on broken logic and is really just a veiled insult of the people who play it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Escape/lightning/whirling might need a fix, but if you're referring to R/D or R/W, then that's a problem with how expertise works.

R/W isn't even overly dependent on Expertise synergizing with the warrior skills, and it wasn't a problem with the original pre-RaO thumper build either. R/P is less about expertise abuse and more about spear damage and condition spam, Heal as One, and Lightning Reflexes.

The R/D one is indeed primarily about using Expertise to power the secondary, but the fact that you can run Escape on it is a major part of its effectiveness. Otherwise it would basically just be a gimped Mel's or A/D.

In both cases, it's simply a matter of power creep. The problem with warriors in casual formats is, ironically, a case of that too. You used to be able to run YAA W/A warriors in most casual formats with great success, but the continuous skill ratcheting since Nightfall's release has caused that to fall far behind the curve.