Curse

Killed u man · Feb 27, 2008, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by xhappy feetx

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

Are U claiming Dshot is balanced now? :s

We all know the Cripshot bar is broken due to the fact it has 2 elites on there... (Ye, Dshot for the few that didn't realize it)

Dshot MB=win, however, it's pretty sad you have to use such an overpowered skill to keep another build in line...

DreamWind · Feb 27, 2008, 06:23 PM // 18:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Are U claiming Dshot is balanced now? :s

We all know the Cripshot bar is broken due to the fact it has 2 elites on there... (Ye, Dshot for the few that didn't realize it)

Dshot MB=win, however, it's pretty sad you have to use such an overpowered skill to keep another build in line...

Dshot was never a problem in past metagames that nobody complained about. It was always just a really good required skill that rangers brought. The only reason anybody thinks its overpowered now is because its damn near required to shut down all the broken crap that came out.

On side note, I'm shocked anybody still thinks these threads do any good.

Kyp Jade · Feb 27, 2008, 06:31 PM // 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

On side note, I'm shocked anybody still thinks these threads do any good.

They make us feel better inside when we snicker and make fun of izzy and anet, other than that its just a bunch of people whining that this game isnt fun anymore

Killed u man · Feb 27, 2008, 06:40 PM // 18:40

This game IS fun, however I'm tired of getting rolled over by cookie cutters... Thumperway in GvG ftw

Riotgear · Feb 27, 2008, 06:40 PM // 18:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaga

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

Unless someone's spouting crap that clearly doesn't belong in the section (i.e. complaining about PvE impact), I choose to not delete it on the grounds that I'm not here to filter things so that the entire forum agrees with my opinion. If you do not agree with someone, feel free to point out why they are wrong.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvndoom

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.

I still think the best thing to do with Ancestor's is make it pulsed similar to Balth Aura.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Killed u man

Are U claiming Dshot is balanced now? :s

D-shot is probably deserving of elite status, which is part of why Magebane is broken. However, it's failed to produce any particularly overpowered bars by itself.

Phe Belladona · Feb 27, 2008, 09:55 PM // 21:55

i would like certain snares to affect shadow stepping, simply if snared for 50% they only teleport 50% of the distance towards target. i find shadow stepping to be vile and not designed to fit in with the game.. they just went "ooo teleporting is cool lets add that!!" without even considering balance. RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it over or tell it to RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO off.

C2K · Feb 27, 2008, 10:41 PM // 22:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaga

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.

Can't compare RTS to Guild Wars. RTS games balance factions and the goal there is to make each faction tournament viable. GW is trying to make 10 classes playable in both PvP/PvE. Its alot harder to do the latter.

Also, in RTS games, if one build exists to destroy all other builds, that build gets nerfed in some way. The only time this wouldn't happen is if they stop patching the game because its no longer current.

And as for top ranked guilds should ALWAYS beat gimmicks, I disagree. Players aren't robots, they are human. Humans can make mistakes and humans don't always win. And most of those top ranked guilds played gimmicks in the last MAT. Being surprised by a gimmick is part of Guild Wars, and if it becomes too powerful with no way to stop it, it gets nerfed 1-3 times over the next skill updates. Killing a gimmick only creates a new gimmick.

If you want balanced play, maybe only res signet should be allowed in bars for high competative play, because then the game is theoretically balanced.

Riotgear · Feb 27, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by C2K

Being surprised by a gimmick is part of Guild Wars, and if it becomes too powerful with no way to stop it, it gets nerfed 1-3 times over the next skill updates. Killing a gimmick only creates a new gimmick.

It's only recently that these gimmicks have been completely dominating high-level play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phe Belladona

i would like certain snares to affect shadow stepping, simply if snared for 50% they only teleport 50% of the distance towards target.

How about if the caster is snared or KDed, the shadow steps just fail, including cancel shadow steps like Recall/Shadow Meld/AoD?

Shendaar · Feb 28, 2008, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

How about if the caster is snared or KDed, the shadow steps just fail, including cancel shadow steps like Recall/Shadow Meld/AoD?

I know I suggested that in some thread somewhere. I still think it makes sense because shadowstepping is not a teleport but rather a super-speed boost, so it shouldn't work if you are snared or KDed.

The line of sight idea is pretty good too imo.

TheOneMephisto · Feb 28, 2008, 12:28 AM // 00:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Dshot was never a problem in past metagames that nobody complained about. It was always just a really good required skill that rangers brought. The only reason anybody thinks its overpowered now is because its damn near required to shut down all the broken crap that came out.

Dshot is and has always been incredibly overpowered. I'd easily put it as one of the most powerful non-elite skills in the game, and it's also probably the one that has stayed on that list for the longest time. That's the main reason why balancing magebane has been so difficult, you can't make it weaker than dshot since it's elite, but having 2 skills of dshot's power on a bar is simply broken.

However, since the archetypal ranger takes so much skill to play effectively along with the fact that rangers tend to scale extremely badly as more are added to a team, it has never been complained about or abused so much.

Seef II · Feb 28, 2008, 12:56 AM // 00:56

One thought:
Ancestor's Rage switching functionality and numbers with Clamor of Souls wouldn't change much, would it? It's something I've been mulling over, but I am not qualified to comment on what this would do to high-level GvG. It'd make your rit less splittable for sure, though. You'd have to choose between an imbalanced "nuke whatever's next to your warrior" skill and self-defense on the split.

Lorekeeper · Feb 28, 2008, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by C2K

And as for top ranked guilds should ALWAYS beat gimmicks, I disagree. Players aren't robots, they are human. Humans can make mistakes and humans don't always win. And most of those top ranked guilds played gimmicks in the last MAT. Being surprised by a gimmick is part of Guild Wars, and if it becomes too powerful with no way to stop it, it gets nerfed 1-3 times over the next skill updates. Killing a gimmick only creates a new gimmick.

most of the guilds that people would generally identify as the truly good top guilds didnt really drop to the level of relying on gimmicks for victories than alot of other 'top' guilds did in the Feb MaT, maybe to a small extent but not stooping as low as exploiting shadowstepping (its been a broken mechanic since day 1). I agree with your point, and i think many others would too, that some guilds made mistakes whilst fighting the sinsplits. In which case that would suggest that we DO in fact expect at least a few of the truly top guilds to be able to beat these gimmicks whenever they turn up in their various forms... which is more a statement of the potential effectiveness of a good balanced build played by 8 highly experienced players.

The increasing popularity of these gimmick builds, or the apparent increase of them is actually a symptom of the AT GvG system more than anything else (some would argue that having a good chunk of the older GvG community now gone is also a factor). Tournament style systems encourage far more build wars type competition of a farming attitude than regular ladder play would, since in ladder play noone knows what maps or what opponent they will be facing (youre generally better off sticking to a more flexible build). Skill balance and new vod mechanics contributed to the success of sinsplit, of course, but ever since the world championships people realised that build wars won gold capes (its not a new concept), the only difference now is that we see build wars everyday in ATs, whereas build wars was not seen as often when we had the seasonal ladders. From what i remember the old ladders were where the truly top guilds dominated and the gimmick guilds resided in the midlevel tiers with very little chance of qualifying for the championships, only the best gimmick guilds were able to sustain wins over long periods of time because back then people had more time to learn how to counter gimmicks, so at the start of a season a new gimmick build might climb the ladder but after a few months they would find themselves being countered by teams who had finally learnt how to beat them... nowadays gimmick guilds can farm QP in ATs with a relatively unseen gimmick build long before most other guilds have had time to practice and develop strategies against them (how many guilds that took part in the old championships were labelled noobs like current gold cape winners sometimes are labelled...) And thanks to highly volatile skill and game updates there seems to be a never ending supply of ammo for people to come up with new gimmicks every month... ViO being the latest culprit in giving dedicated spit builds full of runaround characters the leading edge.

Basically the AT system allows more gimmick guilds to qualify for the MaTs by having both the qualification and championship stages share the same tournament system, a system that is inevitably more conducive towards gimmick builds or build wars (which isnt always a good representation of a guilds true nature). Ladder systems of longer length lessened the successful qualification of gimmick guilds because it was harder for them to achieve the necessary ladder rank and sustain it in order to qualify at the end of the season.

I would conclude that the dominance of gimmick builds/guilds is directly related to the way in which guilds qualify for championships. If you ask what is the difference between a gimmick guild and other 'top' guilds its that the gimmick guild will rely on a gimmick build to qualify and to win a championship. Other guilds will only see fit to participate in ''build wars'' for the championship because thats where prizes are at stake (and you cant really fault them for that in all honesty)... during ladder period these guilds would more than likely opt to run more player skill intensive builds because they are the kind of players who wish to compete properly in a balanced environment, running gimmick builds is a means to an ends whereas running balanced is seen as an end in itself... of course, during ladder lock the gloves are off and everyone just goes haywire because nothing really matters apart from goofing around for fun.

TheOneMephisto · Feb 28, 2008, 02:21 AM // 02:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

lots of stuff

What about when everyone grinded the ladder with triple smite? When DeeR was right near the top with rangerspike?

The ladder is where gimmicks dominate the most. It's extremely easy to farm most teams with a gimmick build that quickly and efficiently exploits and overloads a singly point of failure in opponent's builds, especially when they aren't able to counter it fast enough due to a lack of skill. The amount of skilled players on the ladder is and always has been low enough to allow even the top teams to simply farm rating out of lower teams with quick gimmicks.

Tournament settings are really the place where gimmicks are the least effective, or at least one-build wonder guilds (like the ones that have been winning recent mATs). When you know exactly who your opponent will be, what map it will be one, and what they have been running constantly for a long period of time, theoretically it should be extremely easy to outbuild and beat them, even with relatively minor changes to a balanced build template.

The pure strength of gimmicks recently has made it possible for even one-gimmick guilds to dominate tournaments. When a gimmick is so strong that counter builds are almost entirely non-viable, when the only viable way to beat it without entirely gimping yourself against any other form of build is to run a mirror build, that's when you know the true problem is with the build and skills themselves, not with the system.

Even if it's easier for gimmick builds to qualify for the tournaments, they should not be winning the tournaments with any regularity unless something is extremely wrong.

wuzzman · Feb 28, 2008, 03:15 AM // 03:15

1. If your gvg'ing and losing to ranger spike or triple smite you should NOT be calling yourself a good player
2. The only reason why you play a gimmick in ladder is if your counting on 1/3 not bothering to know what do against a gimmick build that has decent players running it. 90% of anyone serious with gvg sticks to the tried and true balance builds.
3.Who the hell is countering sinsplit? i see alot of QQ, but no strategies being thought up or even the less popular build tweaks. The only response this meta regurgitated was parapsike. which all it really did, was do what everyone else was doing with their crapshit blockways,("no pressure just press your 'spike' buttons on my call") but better.
4.Say its overpowered sure, I never cared for sins anyway, and 1 less shadow step + lag + death spike will please my RA runner build(griefing purposes only) a whole lot. Also makes HB a lot less annoying then it already is, granted if from a scale of 1-10 playing a HB match against a nonsin is a 12, playing a match with an assassin make it somewhere near 30. But don't act like you bothered thinking of ways to beat the build. Your insulting anyone who played the game back when people actually cared about strategy.

Lorekeeper · Feb 28, 2008, 03:24 AM // 03:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

What about when everyone grinded the ladder with triple smite? When DeeR was right near the top with rangerspike?

The ladder is where gimmicks dominate the most. It's extremely easy to farm most teams with a gimmick build that quickly and efficiently exploits and overloads a singly point of failure in opponent's builds, especially when they aren't able to counter it fast enough due to a lack of skill. The amount of skilled players on the ladder is and always has been low enough to allow even the top teams to simply farm rating out of lower teams with quick gimmicks.

Tournament settings are really the place where gimmicks are the least effective, or at least one-build wonder guilds (like the ones that have been winning recent mATs). When you know exactly who your opponent will be, what map it will be one, and what they have been running constantly for a long period of time, theoretically it should be extremely easy to outbuild and beat them, even with relatively minor changes to a balanced build template.

The pure strength of gimmicks recently has made it possible for even one-gimmick guilds to dominate tournaments. When a gimmick is so strong that counter builds are almost entirely non-viable, when the only viable way to beat it without entirely gimping yourself against any other form of build is to run a mirror build, that's when you know the true problem is with the build and skills themselves, not with the system.

Even if it's easier for gimmick builds to qualify for the tournaments, they should not be winning the tournaments with any regularity unless something is extremely wrong.

i think the point i was trying to make was that the range of competition in the past was smaller during the ladder era. Only the best guilds could sustain high ladder rank, whether they were running gimmicks or not. It was very rare for a totally unknown guild to suddenly ride up to the top AND stay there AND win the gold cape in the championship.

Compare that to today... my argument is that with the AT system its far easier for 'unknown' guilds to farm QP with the latest gimmicks ie sinsplit and secure their place in the MaTs. It takes a couple of weeks for people to realise what the newest gimmick is... a situation only exasperated by all these continual changes to skills and vod mechanics... for the past year or so we have had to adapt to countless such updates with each one spawning its own new set of overpowered gimmick. The Dec and Jan MaT were populated by the newly buffed illusion mesmers with the sineptitude build... which some top guilds had some success in defeating but only after practicing counter strategies over those 2 months. Then it got nerfed... and the newest sinsplit build came out, i believe it was the jap guilds who started running it with the eles... either Spnv or Me i believe. If things are changing so much so often... the only people who seem in the best position to come out on top are the people who are the first to identify the newest gimmicks and practice them the most. Who wants a game where it becomes a race to be the best at exploiting new imbalances?

Not only does this environment of continual change favour gimmicks like sinsplit it gives them far greater chance at winning gold capes than they would normally. Reason being that people simply dont have the time to develop tried and tested strategies against them. Paraspike has been proven to be a good solution to the dedicated split... with StS showing its success during the month of february. Dervish spike too showed some success in beating the sinsplits throughout the month leading up to the finals. But i dont think teams had enough time to really get to grips with how to properly run these builds against the sinsplitters... and that is the important thing to note about championship cycles revolving around monthly skill balance cycles. If every monthly skill update introduces groundbreaking changes to GvG, theres no doubt at all that there will follow some broken builds that exploit new imbalances. Unfortunately, success in ATs seems to come far easier for guilds who take part in this constant discovery of newly overpowered gimmick... the rest of the guilds do their best with the small amount of time on their hands to come up with the right counters to them. And thats assuming there are reasonable counters to be found in the first place. Not everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon for easy victories, champ points and capes and i dont see why that sort of environment should be encouraged...

i disagree that ladder allows high skilled guilds to dominate lower skilled with gimmick. I think high skilled guilds dominate by running proper builds and lower skilled guilds do their best to punch above their weight by running the latest gimmick. Citing [deer] isnt a good counter argument because i would never (no disrespect intended) regard them as 'top' guilds when you got the likes of EW, iQ, iB, WM etc etc on the list. Most of the time, the guilds that relied on running overpowered gimmick builds soon lost their ladder rank once the builds got nerfed after the championships. Sure, in the old ladder system we had to endure months on end of unbalanced skills and gimmicks i wont disagree with that, but that was a fault of skill balance policy not allowing skill balances to occur mid season. The argument still stands that back then teams had far more time to develop counter strategies to broken gimmick builds than they do today and so we usually saw the same top guilds dominated the higher end of the ladder with the same top guilds appearing in the championships.

i agree that the success of these gimmick builds does point to the need for balancing... i just think that a big contributing factor to their success is the limited amount of time people get to get to grips with them. Each month there is something new to deal with... theres just not enough time to do so comprehensively enough and people are reaping the benefits of a broken system.

The best solution would be to reintroduce the old GvG system, but maintain a monthly skill balance cycle to prevent gimmick builds from dominating for too long. With a persistent ladder and regular updates guilds will achieve their true positions on the ladder, with far less opportunity for random guilds to ride their way to the top on broken builds. Continual updates will be integrated into the meta without causing massive shifts... meaning people cannot simply exploit a new imbalance to win a gold cape. Of course a ladder reset would be necessary to give newer guilds a chance and to prevent too much dominance at the top.

Master Ketsu · Feb 28, 2008, 05:57 AM // 05:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Dshot was never a problem in past metagames that nobody complained about. It was always just a really good required skill that rangers brought. The only reason anybody thinks its overpowered now is because its damn near required to shut down all the broken crap that came out.

Dshot's meta-state in a nutshell.

Div · Feb 28, 2008, 06:20 AM // 06:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

3.Who the hell is countering sinsplit? i see alot of QQ, but no strategies being thought up or even the less popular build tweaks. The only response this meta regurgitated was parapsike. which all it really did, was do what everyone else was doing with their crapshit blockways,("no pressure just press your 'spike' buttons on my call") but better.

I don't think you ever press "b" do you? All you do is QQ here about people QQing about sinsplit. Things have been created to deal with sinsplit such as StS's team build and even entire characters were thought of (namely, the dervish runner that cE and dR ran). This was by no means a meta, and paraspike was in no shape or form the response to it. You don't seem to know very much, so don't post as if you do. You pretty much just watched the finals and concluded that people can only run paraspike against it. The matter of the fact is that, there simply isn't an easy counter to the various forms of sinsplit in a meta where an NPC means more than a team member.

Zuranthium · Feb 28, 2008, 07:50 AM // 07:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seef II

One thought:
Ancestor's Rage switching functionality and numbers with Clamor of Souls wouldn't change much, would it? It's something I've been mulling over, but I am not qualified to comment on what this would do to high-level GvG. It'd make your rit less splittable for sure, though. You'd have to choose between an imbalanced "nuke whatever's next to your warrior" skill and self-defense on the split.

Ancestor's Rage being Elite might be a good idea. Not sure if that would be better than just nerfing the damage and leaving it as a standard Rit skill, though. Mending Grip certainly needs to be buffed to have a viable non-Elite variant to Weapon of Remedy in any case.

~Z

DreamWind · Feb 28, 2008, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Dshot is and has always been incredibly overpowered. I'd easily put it as one of the most powerful non-elite skills in the game, and it's also probably the one that has stayed on that list for the longest time.

However, since the archetypal ranger takes so much skill to play effectively along with the fact that rangers tend to scale extremely badly as more are added to a team, it has never been complained about or abused so much.

I agree with your points. I think there is good overpowered and bad overpowered skills though.

Bad overpowered= Dominates and degenerates the game, takes little skill to play

Good overpowered= Counters the bad overpowered stuff, takes good amount of skill to play

I would put Dshot in the 2nd category. I think the game needs more skill oriented power skills. That is, the skill is better depending on the player using it. There are a ton of terrible interrupters out there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

1. If your gvg'ing and losing to ranger spike or triple smite you should NOT be calling yourself a good player

I have to disagree with you. The original triple smite was broken as hell. I remember the first time my guild played it we farmed our way up to rank 5 in one SESSION of play rolling every top guild we played in about 5 minutes. And that was our first time playing the build...

Degenerate builds are bad for the game. Thats why I don't play this game seriously anymore.

-Pluto- · Feb 28, 2008, 09:16 AM // 09:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by red orc

[/sarcasm] Hey Anet, we finaly got a dervish that can play GVG. He even have a utility skill open (bull strike, snare, hex remove, or what have you). What is worse, we have to think, shell we take a dervish or a warrior.
Please nerf it, we want to play only warriors ! [/end sarcasm]

The buff to pious assult and belt avatar was a great move to enable dervish GVG characters. We still would like to see necro becoming viable again.

Well, since it worked so well for dervish, let's give the necro some amazingly broken skill that takes far more skill to successfully counter than it does to successfully use. Let's change virulence to not need another condition, put it in soul reaping, make it do 70 or so damage, and cause a deep wound (covered by all those other conditions of course). That would be so awesome. I bet people would play necro then!

Seriously, I like the idea behind Pious Assault. Making other avatars viable was a great move, in concept. The original buff, before Izzy decided to give it the bullshit activation buff, had my full support. I mean, i thought Izzy had already decided that quick activation deep wounds were pretty retarded when he nerfed impale. Then again, inconsistency is one of Izzy's few consistencies, as shown by Critical Chop's recharge being destroyed, since having that 1/2 activation spike skill on axe was pretty retarded, only to have a buff to agonizing chop making it better than critical chop ever had been in the first place.

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.

When something is as broken as these balth dervs everyone (note this word, everyone) is running, it's going to become just as "stale" as the meta was before. The only difference is, this derv-spike meta game is one of the most epically un-fun metas in the history of the game.