Curse

Rebel Zero · Feb 26, 2008, 05:20 PM // 17:20

For the next balance update the focus should really be on the problems seen in the last monthly and nothing else. The last time the game was updated some random skills were buffed/nerfed and it left the meta game in disrepair. Eliminate one problem at a time, don't try to fix the game all at once.

Skills:

Elementalist:
Blinding Flash: increase cast time to 1s, increase recharge to 10s
Mind Blast: increase recharge to 4s
Glyph of Lesser Energy: Change functionality so that a spell counts towards usage even if interupted/canceled
Glyph of Energy: Move to Energy Storage and change energy reduction to 15 at base 0.

~reasoning: The problem in the current split meta game has never been with the sins. The ability of 2 elementalists (last month is was mesmers) to be able to completely shutdown the opposing stand team's offense and split response is ridiculous. The gyph's synergy with aegis is too good, I'd like to see more active defense come back into the game. Glyph of energy's synergy with deep freeze, dragon stomp etc. was just plain stupid.

Assassin:
Shroud of Silence: increase energy cost to 15, increase cast time to 1s

~reasoning: The ability to completely shut down a healer single handedly has never been a good idea. The increase in activation time lends it to be more interruptible, and the cost increase should damage the chains e managnement.

Dervish:
Pious Assault: Only removes an enchantment if it hits

~reasoning: Obviously to shut the grenth's aura synergy down.

Monk:
Guardian: increase recharge to 5s
LoD: Change back to old functionality w/ a 7s recharge
Heal Party: Revert back to 2s cast

~reasoning: Party healing back on a monk's bar will enable runners to pack more offense into their bars to deal with splits. Guardian was just too spammable.

Meta Game:
Remove ViO, but keep all of VoD changes

~reasoning: we've all heard why ViO is bad too many times, so go read a 10 page report on it somewhere else.

After the problems are fixed, then Arena Net should consider buffing new skills into the meta game.

Jaen · Feb 26, 2008, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Unfortunately, most of those "suggestions" are posted by completely idiotic people who Izzy is forced to listen to because they constitute the mass majority of GW. Siphon isn't on the list of assassin skills under discussion at the time of my checking, and people are advocating a buff to iron palm? Crap like magnetic aura and iron mist are being discussed. Someone argued Mending refrain was "too clumsy in a team with only 1 Paragon." This is why I don't even bother going there, because I know it's just filled with shitters who think they know what they're talking about.

qft.

I need to remember not to read that wiki. Everytime I read people's suggestions I get pretty annoyed at the fact that terrible players have any sort of influence in the balancing of this game.

tigros · Feb 26, 2008, 06:03 PM // 18:03

Guys, you can create your own skill suggestions on those wiki pages and they will be free from the general "discussion" clutter. To translate this: it means you can shine with your bright and smart suggestions among all the others and thus have a chance for Izzy to actually take them into account... that is, if you don't feel too elitist to even be seen in such "terrible" company

If you read those pages, you at least get an idea what's in Izzy's mind related to the proposed skill changes... you actually get the feedback you keep asking for...

I think that the initiative is a really good one, I'd just like to see Izzy more active in responding to the issues posted.

JR · Feb 26, 2008, 06:07 PM // 18:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigros

I think that the initiative is a really good one, I'd just like to see Izzy more active in responding to the issues posted.

Fairly sure Izzy has more important things to do than respond to the majority of ignorant whiners on the wiki.

DutchSmurf · Feb 26, 2008, 06:32 PM // 18:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigros

If you read those pages, you at least get an idea what's in Izzy's mind related to the proposed skill changes... you actually get the feedback you keep asking for...

I had some spare time so I went to read those pages. If I had known it would be that much fun, I would have done it earlier tho. It is surprising how stupid 99% of the suggestions are. Even more interesting is people suggesting buffs to already strong skills. Or people not wanting to do a balance change to Ancestors' Rage because all other ritualist skills are bad.

One thing I did notice tho, is that only a couple of people are posting on those suggestions. I would say 10 max. Shouldn't be too hard to find 20 or more good PvP players who just can get the message across just by having more people available.

Syntonic · Feb 26, 2008, 06:48 PM // 18:48

Personally, I kinda avoid posting on those wiki pages since I r scrub that loses to bspike and I'm afraid that I'll just be adding noise that would have to be filtered but I do hope some of the other parts of the community gets active there. Having just a handful of players dictating what they think is necessary for Guild Wars can't be healthy. Having too many people posting and there is too much background noise as well but that is probably better than having just a handful of people who has a direct drive-through. When it comes down to skill balancing, Izzy might just casually browse over what users are saying about a particular skill he's deciding to change before actually going into that secret "which skill should we nerf/buff" meeting room so it could influence the outcome. Hopefully.

Div · Feb 26, 2008, 07:22 PM // 19:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by tigros

Guys, you can create your own skill suggestions on those wiki pages and they will be free from the general "discussion" clutter. To translate this: it means you can shine with your bright and smart suggestions among all the others and thus have a chance for Izzy to actually take them into account... that is, if you don't feel too elitist to even be seen in such "terrible" company

If you read those pages, you at least get an idea what's in Izzy's mind related to the proposed skill changes... you actually get the feedback you keep asking for...

I think that the initiative is a really good one, I'd just like to see Izzy more active in responding to the issues posted.

It really doesn't matter. You can talk to Izzy in game to find out what he's thinking about for changes, and you'll still find it's filled with stupidity.

urania · Feb 26, 2008, 09:07 PM // 21:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

I can't say I've played a Healer's Covenant Monk recently, no.

nor have I =D

however, i played a lot against it =oD

also, i think it was even (ab)used in gvg by sup here and there.

LifesRestorer · Feb 26, 2008, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

It is surprising how stupid 99% of the suggestions are. Even more interesting is people suggesting buffs to already strong skills. Or people not wanting to do a balance change to Ancestors' Rage because all other ritualist skills are bad.

nothing beats the suggestion of pets needing a nerf because they deal too much damage and they are like 'passive offense'

Zuranthium · Feb 27, 2008, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaeharys targaryen

Quote:

Originally Posted by zuranthium

Shadow stepping just needs to be changed so that you can't teleport spike with a non-Dagger weapon.

So i can still:
rape the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO out of AB with an aod shocker?

destroy dunkoro in hb?

and still just insta-switch to my scythe for a 5 energy 300 damage combo that takes <4 seconds and recharges in 12?

I don't care about balance issues in HB and nobody should care about balance issues in AB.

For the second part, my actual idea about shadow steps is that all non-dagger attacks should become disabled for 4 seconds when you teleport. That keeps the tele-spikes in the realm of the Assassin (physical tele-spikes anyway...I don't begrudge caster tele-spikes, they are pretty frail). If using a Dual attack disabled other Duals for 4 seconds (in addition to a functionality change to Signet of Toxic Shock and a nerf to the damage on Impale at the higher ranks), that would also remove Assassin solo-spikes from the game. Things would be happier.

~Z

Greedy Gus · Feb 27, 2008, 01:28 AM // 01:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by red orc

So I guess you just want the warrior to be the only viable damage dealing character.

It's obviously a personal issue for you, you're like tons of other scrubs who are obsessed with seeing diversity. But here is the important point to understand: it's not a personal or selfish opinion about wanting warriors to be what kills things. That's simply how the game works best.

Div · Feb 27, 2008, 07:50 AM // 07:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

you heard it folks. the big talking heads of the community want stalewars, they don't want to call it stalewars, but it is what it is. Eventually the game hits the stalewars state and has to be "reworked" again, once the talking heads realize that most people are leaving. If the meta does somehow comes up with a counter to stalewars, that must be nerfed too because obviously stalewars has more skill then nonstalewars. The argument is simple, balance = fair, a fair win = if all variables are equal who comes out on top, only way to make all circumstances equal is to make sure that everyone is running the exact same build and that build must focus on execution, rather then big strategies. So that new tactics aren't played and everyone pretty much knows what the other is doing. The game becomes dependent on timing rather then thinking and evaluating.

No you're wrong. People just don't want shitty gimmicks.

C2K · Feb 27, 2008, 08:08 AM // 08:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

No you're wrong. People just don't want shitty gimmicks.

There will always be a gimmick, but it just might not be the one you hate atm nor the one you expect. There are just too many skills and combinations that when you play the balance game new combinations are formed.

Akaraxle · Feb 27, 2008, 09:13 AM // 09:13

Please, give the Blind condition a break. It's the only condition that really keeps physical attackers in check, it's ACTIVE shutdown (-> good), it can be dealt with w/ interrupts/shutdown, it's heavy on energy (in the BFlash case), and there's Mending Touch and anti-condi runes around.

Think outside the box ("why is that E/D strong?"), instead of pointing your finger to the thing that annoys you the most.

C2K · Feb 27, 2008, 11:44 AM // 11:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akaraxle

Please, give the Blind condition a break. It's the only condition that really keeps physical attackers in check, it's ACTIVE shutdown (-> good), it can be dealt with w/ interrupts/shutdown, it's heavy on energy (in the BFlash case), and there's Mending Touch and anti-condi runes around.

Think outside the box ("why is that E/D strong?"), instead of pointing your finger to the thing that annoys you the most.

Blinding Flash is not energy intensive when you have Mind Blast on your bar, but if you hit Mind Blast I am pretty sure this won't be the case.

Sinful Doom · Feb 27, 2008, 12:26 PM // 12:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

you heard it folks...blah, blah, blah

Seriously please stop posting if for no other reason than to save me some sanity.

On a lighter note, the majority of the GvG player base left long ago not because of "stalewars" but among things, absolute piss poor skill balancing.

The game would be 100% better minus the "diversity" Factions and Nightfall’s brought us...

Vaga · Feb 27, 2008, 03:04 PM // 15:04

GW basically needs a 'balanced' build that can beat everything else but takes skill to play and is fun to play. So if the best guild in the game plays balanced and plays well they should be able to beat anything. You can still have diversity, games like SC and WC3 have loads of gimmicks however they only work up until a certain rank where you start playing people who know how to beat them. So if GW had that 'balanced' build, you could still have gimmicks like sin split but or iway provided they aren't so broken that they can beat the very top guilds, you want them to be around the strength that the rank 100 balanced guild beats them most of the time or something like that.

I know there are some people who like the whole 'skill' it takes to make builds in tournament situations and what not but to me I could care less about it. I want how my team plays during the match to decide the outcome not what skills I did or didn't bring.

That said I imagine this game is pretty much broken beyond repair. Over the past year or two we've been dealing with pretty poor balance both in terms of speed as well as pretty bad policy (i.e random buffs, not even considering if a skill takes skill to use or not before buffing it, introducing completely imbalanced stuff, testing stuff on live servers the list goes on...) and now Izzy is actually managing to break the only decent format GW had with these VoD additions like ViO, more npcs, more npc skills, 18min vod... For the game to be good he actually has to fix the game format, then try and balance it so it's an actual fun game, and after that try and make it take skill to play. I really doubt Izzy could even do this, but I'd say there's pretty much no chance of doing it before GW2.

Also does this forum not ban people who spam it? That's all erk and wuzzman do, spam misinformation and they should be banned.

kvndoom · Feb 27, 2008, 04:11 PM // 16:11

The "learn to counter" crowd has to understand that it isn't about countering or learning to beat certain builds. The theme from the last tourney was "if you can't beat 'em join 'em." It was gimmick vs. gimmick, and may the best gimmick win. The same top players here asking for balances were playing the builds they hate, because that was the only chance to win. They don't want to play degenerate stuff, but if they didn't, then it was a quick trip home. That's not fun. People who don't have fun stop playing (which is why I'm never in TA anymore), GW2 better have damn good PVE, because I seriously doubt PVP will bring it a lot of sales, not with the taste GW1 has left in a lot of mouths.

Guild Wars: skill > time

Build Wars: skills > skill

When your skillbar allows you to consistently beat better players than you, then it goes against this game's original premise.

The only skill balance I'm gonna propose is for Ancestor's: 5e 1/4c 10r, and it does its current damage if target ally is within earshot of a spirit, and half damage if not. The slight recharge nerf, plus the liability of spirits in high-end play should balance it out for PVP and not cause a lot of PVE whining.

Zamochit · Feb 27, 2008, 04:38 PM // 16:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

Fairly sure Izzy has more important things to do than respond to the majority of ignorant whiners on the wiki.

xhappy feetx · Feb 27, 2008, 06:02 PM // 18:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akaraxle

Please, give the Blind condition a break. It's the only condition that really keeps physical attackers in check, it's ACTIVE shutdown (-> good), it can be dealt with w/ interrupts/shutdown, it's heavy on energy (in the BFlash case), and there's Mending Touch and anti-condi runes around.

Think outside the box ("why is that E/D strong?"), instead of pointing your finger to the thing that annoys you the most.

A cripshot will beast any E/D, dshot and savage are your friend