Curse

erk · Mar 12, 2008, 09:07 PM // 21:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by horseradish

Well it's barely viable in PvP now. What do you suggest?

It's not viable else you would see it being used.

For PvP it needs to hit a knocked down target, however with the 5 sec delay they are up and moving again. You have to get the total delay down to 3sec to be viable on a spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Are you joking me? Ask all the people that had their party wiped/nearly wiped by that rit boss's spirit rift on Shing Jea island.

Yeah well noob island what do you expect! How in heavens name can you have a party wipe from an AoE skill that only has adjacent range, and you have 5 sec from seeing him start casting to get away! Get one diversion or easy Dshot on that boss and he is yours. I think you will find the boss is too high level for that part of the game, not that the skill is over powered. 25...113 lightning damage without any armor penetration is nothing to get excited about.

valence · Mar 12, 2008, 09:15 PM // 21:15

Togo uses Rift all the time, therefor the skill is good. I also kill 20+ canthan guards when playing BMP in a single hit, that makes me think the skill is imba.

horseradish · Mar 12, 2008, 09:53 PM // 21:53

It's a crap skill. I'd hope to see it buffed, but Seamus is right. AR and Splinter are better AoE skills.

Tyla · Mar 12, 2008, 09:54 PM // 21:54

^Lmao.
Rift is bad unless your enemy is stationary.

dies like fish · Mar 12, 2008, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Are you joking me? Ask all the people that had their party wiped/nearly wiped by that rit boss's spirit rift on Shing Jea island.

We only wiped ONCE, and it wasn't my fault!

Nimble Night · Mar 12, 2008, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Why on earth would you want to buff the ritualist channelling line when you have ancestors rage and splinter weapon?

wuzzman · Mar 12, 2008, 10:05 PM // 22:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

SS is ok in AB/RA/PvE not so good in GvG as there is too much healing available due to popularity of Splinter, which has higher AoE damage than SS, faster cast, less energy cost, and doesn't blow your elite slot! However I still find SS and Insidious Parasite a good combo in RA/TA, but there is a general over supply of interrupt Mesmers and Rangers in 4v4 at the moment so SS 2sec. cast gets interrupted a lot more than Insidious or Reapers. SS is still good in AB on most shrines especially if you have someone with Ancestors in the party to complement it.

I only tend to use Life Transfer in RA because it doubles as a nice self heal when there is often no useful Monk. The bread and butter damage still comes from other Blood Skills, in TA I swap it out and often use Reapers with the Blood Spike for energy and pressure combo. Life Transfer's high but short degen creates useful pressure, but the 12/30sec. duration makes it crappy for an elite, Reapers blows it away for sustainable degen per min. 15sec. recharge would do fine to broaden it's appeal, 10sec would probably be approaching overpowered when you do the energy/degen equation, also you don't really want it to recharge faster than the hex removal tools which seem to be 12sec mostly, I seem to recall that's why they increased the recharge on Reapers to 15sec. I can't see Life Transfer if it's recharge was reduce a lot, ending up across the board in a Blood Spike 8v8 build, they tend to need other functions from their elites, but you never know.

Well for SS, it has to stick, and besides parasitic bond and faintheartness, you have nothing else to run a decent Spiteful Spirits bar in a GvG format. Now with life transfer, reapers mark will always be better in the higher formats because of the energy gain from it. Life transfer only real power comes from the fact that it can be taken on a lone blood necro and power his blood steal, which if life transfer is given a proper buff, would open up a new type of ganker and broaden the threat level, making turrent ranger builds and its like that simply blow up teams at the stand, a lot less powerful. Blood as a whole, considering what it suppose to do is underpowered because it has too many skills like life transfer that force any usage of that line to a mere spike roll.

hurric · Mar 12, 2008, 10:20 PM // 22:20

people do remember spirit rift had a 1 sec cast time right? that made it somewhat viable/usable but now you cast (go for lunch, take the garbage out) and then finally SR goes off. 1 sec cast is the least they can do to make the skill partially usable.

erk · Mar 12, 2008, 11:04 PM // 23:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nimble Night

Why on earth would you want to buff the ritualist channelling line when you have ancestors rage and splinter weapon?

Ancestors and Splinter have to be cast on a team mate, it would be nice to have a moderately useful offensive AoE spell that didn't require that.

Kyp Jade · Mar 12, 2008, 11:07 PM // 23:07

Lions comfort makes me happy

Hyper Cutter · Mar 12, 2008, 11:29 PM // 23:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Are you joking me? Ask all the people that had their party wiped/nearly wiped by that rit boss's spirit rift on Shing Jea island.

But then, a boss can take a skill that says it does 80 damage and 2HKO a full-health character with it...

Riotgear · Mar 12, 2008, 11:49 PM // 23:49

If you want to discuss Spirit Rift vs. Ancestor's Rage/Splinter in PvE, or whether Spirit Rift is effective enough in PvE, then Campfire is that way ------>

That said, its usefulness in PvP was roughly been defined as one of those skills with awful conditionality that is made up by fairly ridiculous payoff when met. We don't really need more gimmick skills for caster spike. It may be able to find use in PvE, but its conditionality in PvP restricts it to gimmick status at best, meaning it's going to need a rework.

Div · Mar 13, 2008, 12:41 AM // 00:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

If you want to discuss Spirit Rift vs. Ancestor's Rage/Splinter in PvE, or whether Spirit Rift is effective enough in PvE, then Campfire is that way ------>

Oh this is PvP?

Quote:

That said, its usefulness in PvP was roughly been defined as one of those skills with awful conditionality that is made up by fairly ridiculous payoff when met. We don't really need more gimmick skills for caster spike. It may be able to find use in PvE, but its conditionality in PvP restricts it to gimmick status at best, meaning it's going to need a rework.

It means the skill should remain dead in PvP, because unless Izzy does a major rework like he did with the necro skills, it's going to either remain underpowered or completely overpowered/gimmicky. I don't think it's worth the effort to improve a skill like spirit rift.

Riotgear · Mar 13, 2008, 01:45 AM // 01:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

It means the skill should remain dead in PvP, because unless Izzy does a major rework like he did with the necro skills, it's going to either remain underpowered or completely overpowered/gimmicky. I don't think it's worth the effort to improve a skill like spirit rift.

Hopefully the recent reworks represent a change in direction and a willingness to abort failed skill ideas and replace them with something interesting. Ironically, I don't think Spirit Rift is a candidate for a rework simply because the animation wouldn't really fit with any other functionality. :P

Killed u man · Mar 13, 2008, 04:20 AM // 04:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Hopefully the recent reworks represent a change in direction and a willingness to abort failed skill ideas and replace them with something interesting. Ironically, I don't think Spirit Rift is a candidate for a rework simply because the animation wouldn't really fit with any other functionality. :P

Well the general idea behind the skill is "punish" someone for standing still too long. That itself is a pretty good concept, and I'm not sure if there many other skills that do such thing. (Obv. Kiting > Warrior; but you get the point)

The skill wouldn't need that much rework really, it simply needs to get improved that it would take "skill" to get out of the rift in time. In other words, bad play = take massive dmg, whilst good play = no dmg.

Mayby add a snare function to it (90% slower) that ends if foe uses a skill? (Mayby mod Dmg/cast time a bit?) I'm just throwing idea's around here.... Just don't say the skill isn't interesting, because it surely is...

Riotgear · Mar 13, 2008, 04:53 AM // 04:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Well the general idea behind the skill is "punish" someone for standing still too long.

The only real targetted nukes that see use are nearby AOE ones, and getting mileage out of that usually means 2+ fire eles spamming the shit out of it on HA maps where the objectives force people to huddle.

Quote:

The skill wouldn't need that much rework really, it simply needs to get improved that it would take "skill" to get out of the rift in time. In other words, bad play = take massive dmg, whilst good play = no dmg.

It doesn't really take skill to move out of adjacent radius of a big glowing ball, it just means that if the result is worth it, you get bullshit like the old N/A callers to force the condition to work.

Quote:

Just don't say the skill isn't interesting, because it surely is...

It's an adjacent-range nuke with a 2-second delay, it takes a tremendously bad player to get hit by it unless something is forcing them to stand in it. Elementalists get a lot more nuke power and the only way it really sees use in PvP is with two of them spamming 3 nearby storm nukes on maps that force you to huddle together to complete objectives.

Saider maul · Mar 13, 2008, 08:15 AM // 08:15

my only complaint is why totally destroy watch yourself? I can see the 4 sec recharge, but this is a skill that never saw use until the paragon was introduced and was just barely maintainable with the 4 sec recharge. But now 1-3 attacks makes this skill useless. I'd rather have seen the armor reduced or if its left as is take the recharge away. afterall its always severed more as energy managment skill with a positive team effect for paragons more then a necessary skill to be brought to support the team.

Aside from that great update.

JR · Mar 13, 2008, 09:23 AM // 09:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saider maul

my only complaint is why totally destroy watch yourself? I can see the 4 sec recharge, but this is a skill that never saw use until the paragon was introduced and was just barely maintainable with the 4 sec recharge. But now 1-3 attacks makes this skill useless. I'd rather have seen the armor reduced or if its left as is take the recharge away. afterall its always severed more as energy managment skill with a positive team effect for paragons more then a necessary skill to be brought to support the team.

Aside from that great update.

It single handedly destroyed the ability of Rangers or Paragons to do anything useful.

That's pretty messed up brah.

Riotgear · Mar 13, 2008, 11:02 AM // 11:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

It single handedly destroyed the ability of Rangers or Paragons to do anything useful.

Actually he was talking about WY!, not Shields Up. Then again the circular logic of Shields Up being overpowered because it destroys the ability of the class that uses it to do anything useful makes my brain hurt.

The real reason for the repeated WY! nerfs is that it was basically designed for a class where carrying it outside of PvE was a major burden and dropped on a class where it isn't a burden at all, but in fact very helpful. This is pretty close to the reason Shields Up got nerfed. The saga of Paragons being a rotten abortion of game design that looks like it was never refined past the brainstorming stage continues.

JR · Mar 13, 2008, 11:14 AM // 11:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

So a skill only really used by Paragons was overpowered partially because it single-handedly destroyed the ability of Paragons to do anything useful.

....... ok.

Yes?

Examples:

You are playing a dual Paragon build, and you face someone with old "Shields Up!" - you are almost certainly going to lose unless there is a significant skill disparity.

You are running a Ranger and you face someone with old "Shields Up!" - your Ranger is now limited almost entirely to splitting in order to be usefull.

No single skill should ever have had this capability, and it's not even elite.