Curse

IMMORTAlMITCH · Feb 14, 2008, 07:19 PM // 19:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

The more I think about it, it seems like your change to Blinding Surge brings it more in line with skills like Clumsiness and Ineptitude, except its lower damage is offset by the effects of Blinding Surge being unconditional.

Lol wtf? The recharge is decreased from what it is now and there's no punishment from attacking through blind, the changes were supposed to make blinds more of a spikestopper than a pressure stopper.

I guess BSurge is fine as it is now but I'd like BFlash to be a bit more active.

Ensign · Feb 14, 2008, 08:33 PM // 20:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

You misunderstood me (or maybe I was unclear), I think hard rezzes are awesome, but I think it's a problem when a hard res is better than a res sig.

I can agree with that. To expand upon your point though it has to be worse than a Ressig in the cost of ressing and the state it brings someone back in, not in whether or not you'll be able to res at all. Signet of Return might be an acceptable res for the game, but with a metagame so interrupt dominated it's completely impractical. The most popular resses, DPS, Glyph/Chant, and Flesh are used first and foremost for their ability to resolve. That's necessary for a res to be playable and have any impact on the game at all.

Hence I don't think the issue with DPS is that you can actually get it off - that's required for us to be having this conversation - but the ability for it to bring people back at full energy. It's that distinction that makes DPS so much better than a ressig, and that distinction that should be addressed if the skill were to be changed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

It might not be that much different in flagging speed, but when a flagger can outrun a warrior WHILE he's carrying the flag then I'd say it's a problem.

Every speed boost in the game will make you outrun a Warrior while carrying a flag, if that Warrior is not also using a speed boost. The only skill that you can use to outrun a Warrior while carrying a flag is Dash.

Carrying a flag is roughly a 15% snare, making you move at 85% normal speed. Snares stack multiplicatively with speed boosts in Guild Wars, so the effectiveness of your speed boosts is reduced by 15% as well. The upshot of this is:

A flagger with no speed boost will move *15%* *slower* than a Warrior without one.
A flagger with a 25% speed boost will move *6.25%* faster than a Warrior without one.
A flagger with a 33% speed boost will move *13.1%* faster than a Warrior without one.
A flagger with a 50% speed boost will move *27.5%* faster than a Warrior without one.

A Warrior with a 25% speed boost will move *47.1%* faster than a flagger without one.
A Warrior with a 25% speed boost will move *17.6%* faster than a flagger with a 25% speed boost.
A Warrior with a 25% speed boost will move *10.1%* faster than a flagger with a 33% speed boost.
A Warrior with a 25% speed boost will move *2%* *slower* than a flagger with a 50% speed boost.

A Dervish with a 33% speed boost will move *56.5%* faster than a flagger without one.
A Dervish with a 33% speed boost will move *25.2%* faster than a flagger with a 25% speed boost.
A Dervish with a 33% speed boost will move *17.6%* faster than a flagger with a 33% speed boost.
A Dervish with a 33% speed boost will move *4.3%* faster than a flagger with a 50% speed boost.

Note the symmetries - if the Warrior has a speed boost, he is faster, but if he does not, the flagger is faster - the only exception is Dash. The only differences are in how fast you catch up to the flagger when chasing after him in an open ground speed race. In practice, the way it plays out is that the Warrior is going to catch you and get some hits in, but as soon as you get an unsnared speed boost and a Warrior doesn't, you get away and the encounter is over.

So as far as flagging is concerned, I don't understand what you think is so imbalanced about 33% speed boosts as opposed to 25% speed boosts. The functional difference between the two isn't that large, it only amounts to a couple of seconds total transit time, and when it comes to slipping through encounters the difference in speed is largely irrelevant. The important difference for a flagger is activation time, because you need to get a boost up when they don't have one. That makes long lasting boosts (which can be precast) and stances the best speed boosts, since then you get away as soon as you get an opening.

Understanding that, if there is a problem with the Djinn Hastes, it's not the 33% speed boost, but the uptime (either duration, or duration compared to recharge) that lets you precast them and then outrun anything. The right changes to the skills, then, would be to their durations, their recharges, or both.

The problem with Pious Haste in my mind has nothing to do with flagging - in that capacity, the skill is worse than Dash straight up. The issue with Pious has to do with its place on a character that's splitting aggressively, and how it makes any character uncatchable by giving him matching speed or better against anything but Dash instantaneously, and making him faster than everything over time. If any changes are needed, it's in that capacity - but that's a very different set of circumstances framed in a different argument than the ones made.

Any issues are non-obvious and I remain somewhat skeptical, so it's important to frame the issue properly and pinpoint the problems so that the arguments for change are convincing.

wuzzman · Feb 14, 2008, 09:55 PM // 21:55

aww I thought you guys love staleness. well "active" staleness should be the correct term.

Lorekeeper · Feb 14, 2008, 09:58 PM // 21:58

i think the problem we have here is that you dont agree on what is causing the flag running game to lose its influence like it used to do. That is a product of many things including many of the ones you are already discussing. Although speed boosts have improved with the addition of more viable 33% faster speed buffs i think the +8% you gain while running pious haste as opposed to a 25% running stance is quite an insignificant factor compared to the others... and perhaps the reason why it is important to realise that is that if the other major factors contributing to the lack of impact of morale are resolved then having GvG flag runners with 33% faster speed boosts will probably become a moot point. Even the old eprod runners had 33% faster speed boosts but back then the flagging game had far more impact on the game because

1) games were longer so people had more time to gain higher levels of DP.
2) people didnt have access to super hard rez like death pact signet so chain kills on monks were more viable and team wipes and turns in matches happened more often (like if a invading team pushed too long and too hard into an enemy base and had to rez monks on low energy).
3) flag running templates were more fragile.

Death pact signet and gole are two massive factors in this whole debate. It doesnt matter how fast your flagger is running, if you are no longer able to rez monks with full energy while under high pressure, chances are if your opponent wants to push you back and prevent you from capping the stand they are going to be able to. Nerfing deathpact signet in line with other hard rezzes and nerfing the energy return on Gole will have a strong impact on 8vs8 play which might bring back the vital importance of morale boosts and piling DP onto key characters.

Pushing VoD back to 20min will also help.

How much DP can you get on someone facing a team of equal skill and experience in 18min?

You rarely see people DPed out nowadays and even moderate amounts of DP dont matter when you can rez people with full energy with DPS (DP was a huge problem when rezzing because a DPed monk rezzing with 25% energy could be a dead monk very quickly) until you do, morale will no longer be the resource it used to be.

Legally · Feb 14, 2008, 10:01 PM // 22:01

I agree with lorekeeper here.

i would like to see vod at atleast 20 mins aswell, plus a nice skill balance ofcourse. (fire izzy plox)

Ensign · Feb 14, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Back in the day teams would push on the enemy's flagger to delay him and double run flags to create a favorable situation to make a strong 8v7 push or force boosts

I kinda glossed over this the first time I read it but I think it's worth talking about in more depth because everyone seems to be missing the mark by a mile.

Back in the day you used to be able to build up energy and use it to make a hard push on the other team. Teams ran Mesmers with a lot more energy on their bars than they could handle, and exhaustion was a bigger part of the game. The classic EvIL push involved getting up on flags, slowly working your energy and exhaustion back up to full, then when you were up pushing really hard, Monks going into cleaning mode while the casters exhausted themselves and dumped all their energy into proactive nukes and shutdown to make a team break.

That simply doesn't work anymore. Casters don't do damage and teams have enough defense that an extra guy for 20-30 seconds doesn't mean very much. Pushes don't come off of an extra guy now, they come off of 'DShotted Ward', 'Diverted Word', 'PLeaked on high set'. The game isn't nearly as even now, it's based upon a few key skills and some very swingy plays involving those. When you Divert Word you push, when you don't have anything shut down you just keep staring until you make a game swinging play.

You can't pinpoint this on any particular skill or slight mechanical change, and you're being naive if you think that a change to 1-2 skills will swing everything around. The nature of the game is radically different now, the sum of years of tweaks, and strategies that worked on an even skillset simply do not apply in today's specialized metagame.

wuzzman · Feb 14, 2008, 11:48 PM // 23:48

midline defense got chucked into the neither lands, and god forbid you actually manage to shut someone down with a hex or a skill like blackout. This has been consistent, and nerfing your personal wish lists won't bring back the prophercies meta, it left and it ain't coming back, even if factions and nightfalls were reduced to pve only.

Zuranthium · Feb 15, 2008, 12:30 AM // 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

*stuff about speed boosts*

Yes, I was going to say that.

Complaining about speed boosts in terms of Warrior vs. Flagger doesn't make sense to me because a standard Warrior has never been able to do much against any standard flagger. An old school E/Mo with a crappy speed boost still had the ability to Deep Freeze + Blind and then be on their way.

~Z

Medion · Feb 15, 2008, 06:01 PM // 18:01

I have in no way as much high-rank experience as most of you do, but what about changing the time it takes for morale boosts to go to say 1:30 instead of 2 minutes. Or put the flags further back in the hall to make running take longer.
It would make it worthwhile to double-run or try stalling a flagger I think?
Also, the more frequent morale boosts would make the flagstand more important I think.

Owh, and I do agree with a 20 minute VoD at least. Ever since I came back to GW, 18 minutes seemed such a short time.

wuzzman · Feb 15, 2008, 07:06 PM // 19:06

30 minute VoD, now thats for the win.

Oink The Pig · Feb 15, 2008, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

30 minute VoD, now thats for the win.

Yeah, but 30-minute turtle is ftl.

shoogi · Feb 15, 2008, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Main problem- NPCs are the most important aspect of GvG atm, and they shouldn't be.

/signed

Ensign · Feb 15, 2008, 10:18 PM // 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Medion

I have in no way as much high-rank experience as most of you do, but what about changing the time it takes for morale boosts to go to say 1:30 instead of 2 minutes. Or put the flags further back in the hall to make running take longer.

The question you have to ask yourself there is how much gameplay should be dedicated to ferrying flags back and forth. Yes you could make boosts come more quickly and frequently, but what sort of effect does that have? Well, for starters it would make teams devote more time and resources to simply running back and forth. With a 2 minute timer and <1 minute needed to run a flag on most maps, you can make some significant time cushions to push hard or shore up a team's defense if needed. Shortening the time to boost directly cuts into that discretionary time and makes flagging even more of a 'pick up a flag and take it to the stand' position than it already is. I don't think that would be a good thing at all.

Not considering the value of a boost for a moment, there are a couple main reasons why pushing for a boost is less effective. First is that most builds have sufficient defenses that their runner can function purely as a flag ferry. Back in the EProd days, this was not the case; an EProd runner had to stop and cast Heal Party to shore up the team, which chewed time off the clock. This was functionally equivalent to staying at the stand to spike or using other skills to assist 8v8; teams relied on the contributions of that 8th character. You can still make use of your 8th guy but it's less necessary now. Most teams are built to be sufficient with 7 characters with an 8th that can go into pure ferry mode. That brings in flags much earlier than they used to come, requiring you to hold longer for boosts.

Second is that it's much harder to hold someone for boosts. Up until the last couple updates it was nigh-impossible to keep someone snared for any length of time - your Cripshot eats Diversions in an environment where most teams have Restore Condition to pull the cripple, hex snares tended to eat monstrous Power Leaks at best and blew your team up to HEV at worst (to a point where they dropped out of the meta for some time), and your shocks and bull's strikes simply ended up whiffing on Aura of Stability. Moreso than ever flaggers were able to run right through a team without being touched. This latter issue has been reversed somewhat though; Aura of Stability, while still strong, is not nearly the unstoppable tool it used to be, and nerfs to HEV and Power Leak have let hex snares slowly creep back into the environment.

Changing the time to boost in GvG strikes me as the sort of symptomatic treatment that's given us mechanics like ViO. While it would directly address some of the mechanics devalued by the current metagame, it would do it in a way that doesn't address the problem at all, and may very well deepen that problem - and even worse, symptomatic changes could make putting a real solution into place even more difficult. It's not an idea I'd want to encourage.

erk · Feb 15, 2008, 10:57 PM // 22:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The question you have to ask yourself there is how much gameplay should be dedicated to ferrying flags back and forth. Yes you could make boosts come more quickly and frequently, but what sort of effect does that have? Well, for starters it would make teams devote more time and resources to simply running back and forth. With a 2 minute timer and <1 minute needed to run a flag on most maps, you can make some significant time cushions to push hard or shore up a team's defense if needed. Shortening the time to boost directly cuts into that discretionary time and makes flagging even more of a 'pick up a flag and take it to the stand' position than it already is. I don't think that would be a good thing at all.

Not considering the value of a boost for a moment, there are a couple main reasons why pushing for a boost is less effective. First is that most builds have sufficient defenses that their runner can function purely as a flag ferry. Back in the EProd days, this was not the case; an EProd runner had to stop and cast Heal Party to shore up the team, which chewed time off the clock. This was functionally equivalent to staying at the stand to spike or using other skills to assist 8v8; teams relied on the contributions of that 8th character. You can still make use of your 8th guy but it's less necessary now. Most teams are built to be sufficient with 7 characters with an 8th that can go into pure ferry mode. That brings in flags much earlier than they used to come, requiring you to hold longer for boosts.

Second is that it's much harder to hold someone for boosts. Up until the last couple updates it was nigh-impossible to keep someone snared for any length of time - your Cripshot eats Diversions in an environment where most teams have Restore Condition to pull the cripple, hex snares tended to eat monstrous Power Leaks at best and blew your team up to HEV at worst (to a point where they dropped out of the meta for some time), and your shocks and bull's strikes simply ended up whiffing on Aura of Stability. Moreso than ever flaggers were able to run right through a team without being touched. This latter issue has been reversed somewhat though; Aura of Stability, while still strong, is not nearly the unstoppable tool it used to be, and nerfs to HEV and Power Leak have let hex snares slowly creep back into the environment.

Changing the time to boost in GvG strikes me as the sort of symptomatic treatment that's given us mechanics like ViO. While it would directly address some of the mechanics devalued by the current metagame, it would do it in a way that doesn't address the problem at all, and may very well deepen that problem - and even worse, symptomatic changes could make putting a real solution into place even more difficult. It's not an idea I'd want to encourage.

What about if speed reduction for carrying the flag was a lot more severe, so carrying the flag acted more like a snare? Say a 50% speed reduction rather than the 20% or whatever it is atm.

Lordhelmos · Feb 15, 2008, 11:20 PM // 23:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by erk

What about if speed reduction for carrying the flag was a lot more severe, so carrying the flag acted more like a snare? Say a 50% speed reduction rather than the 20% or whatever it is atm.

with a 50% snare off the flag you would never make it to the stand...

lutz · Feb 15, 2008, 11:29 PM // 23:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

Why does everyone feel the need to justify themselves about playing against this build? Yes, thank you, we know it's cheap and 100% gay, but it works. It's a game and we play to win, and believe me, we get a lot of shit for running that build. Sure, it sucks to lose to spike builds, but people wouldn't run them if they didn't have a good chance to win. This build tends to beat inexperienced players, or builds ill-suited for the spike matchup, and once we're high enough on the ladder, we'll play balanced. If you have a problem with that, its too damn bad. Learn to beat the build, and it won't be a problem; but for chrissakes, quit the whining.

People make generalizations about us in attempt to rationalize why they lose to a build like this. I'll be the first to tell you that I don't like this build, and I really would like to see us play more balanced. I'm sorry if you don't like this build, but we're not going to stop playing it.

I will tell you right now, this is exactly how to beat that build. I don't get an opportunity to play too much with the guild these days, but this is exactly what they've done in every match I've seen. Listen well to Problem if you think Gothspike is just that brokenly awful.

The point is, the spike is too easy to play, and it takes more skill to defend against it than it takes to play it. It encourages gimmick play, which should never be the case.

If it's nerfed, people will stop playing it. Not only that, it drags games on in TA like nothing else. Players spike once and start Dash-ing all over the map for 8-minute TA games. Yay.

erk · Feb 15, 2008, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lordhelmos

with a 50% snare off the flag you would never make it to the stand...

Then 33% or whatever proves a good compromise.

-Pluto- · Feb 16, 2008, 12:15 AM // 00:15

erk, did you even read ensign's post? I think you're missing the point.

mrmango · Feb 16, 2008, 12:31 AM // 00:31

Well speed boosts got nerfed. Pleak got semi fixed, the recharge should be 15 imo (unless that was the case before the last nerf). And was enchanter's corundum that widely used?

erk · Feb 16, 2008, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by -Pluto-

erk, did you even read ensign's post? I think you're missing the point.

Instead of just trolling you might want to elaborate. The point I was referring to in Ensign's post, in the context of flag running, was Up until the last couple updates it was nigh-impossible to keep someone snared for any length of time..