Curse

JR · Feb 12, 2008, 06:11 PM // 18:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Remember EvIL took BL monks over boonprots simply and only cause they could fare much better against tanktrains with their sinskills.

I'm fairly sure they took BL monks so that they could use Return/Dark Escape, not because of prot power.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

- They are very reliant on their energy management, in the oob days this meant saccing health in dangerous situations,

Not really. It was a 10% sac that you would have to be an idiot to use whilst being pressured.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

and in the mo/me days it meant getting a bad edrain of is death.

If you were bad with Edrain, yes.

I think you are failing to remember just how powerful BoonProts were. Strong fast healing with a powerful energy engine. The Prots may have not been as diverse, but they were still strong and you could pretty much spam them.

If I were to be running two old school pre-nerf BoonProts now, the only thing I would really miss is Spirit Bond.

Zuranthium · Feb 12, 2008, 07:20 PM // 19:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

I'm fairly sure they took BL monks so that they could use Return/Dark Escape, not because of prot power.

That's exactly what he said. o_O

~Z

Kaon · Feb 12, 2008, 07:29 PM // 19:29

Arent you forgetting that asides from powerheal and prot they also have 2 aegises? I'm well aware of the power the boonprots had, i played it myself for countless and countless hours, but compared to the defense we have right now... In any case i'd gladly go back to boonprot times and have them nerf all other monk skills. Then put partyhealing back to normal levels again and remove weapon of warding and paragons. Ah well, probably wont happen anyway.

Dominator1370 · Feb 12, 2008, 07:35 PM // 19:35

Pretty epic post Kaon. I wasn't there for a lot of it, so it really was nice to see it all laid out. Now, I may have to extrapolate a little here, and if I'm wrong, kill me, but here's where I get lost:

I see the argument, I see the data, but I just can't place the why. If offensive power was relatively the same but monk power drastically weaker in the "Golden Age", why wasn't there as much off-monk support? I'm going to assume that it was remedied primarily with tactical calls: splits, retreats, collapses and the like. Jumping ahead to the age of the LoD + Prot monk, you've admitted that the LoD monk didn't split particularly well, so why wouldn't people just stick with the tried and true: out-maneuver the enemy monks and capitalize? It would mean your build wouldn't be as strong in an 8v8 fight, but that shouldn't be important, right?

So, what killed the split? Most "balanced" builds post-LoD nerf have a lot of party defense now because you needed it in an 8v8 fight, aimed at replacing the defensive loss with the nerfing of LoD. Again, it strikes me as strange that you'd suddenly need large quantities of party-defense with the same amount of offensive power. The conclusion that presents itself to me is that the importance of 8v8 fighting had to have increased somewhere in the mix.

Is it, as someone else suggested, a product of map exploitation? That may play a part, but I would think that there has to be a more substantial reason. If I, in my naivety, were to appartion blame, it would seem to me that nothing could be more substantial than the way the game ends, which would make VoD a pretty likely candidate.

Think carefully about what VoD does: it forces everyone to suddenly focus their attention much more directly on the Guild Lord, as opposed to gaining an NPC advantage, getting a morale boost, etc. VoD means that the game is going to be decided very shortly, and it's going to be decided where the Guild Lords are. Time permitting, the two Guild Lords are eventually going to be in the same place, meaning that, at that time, anything other than an 8v8 confrontation is pure stupidity.

Now, a last minute gank shouldn't be out of the question, but if your opponent falls back to walk the Lord to the stand, there are certainly going to be some complications with ganking him. If, at the same time, the other team has built to win VoD at the stand, you're screwed. You were built to gank the Guild Lord at VoD, remember?

Now, you're severely more limited in trying to force a split at VoD than you are at forcing a stand confrontation. Until the NPC's arrive at the stand, your opponent has little compelling reason to be there. When they do arrive, you can force your opponent to split between defending their NPC's at the stand and defending their Lord, but time is on their side. All they have to do is prevent you from killing their Lord and from gaining a ridiculously overwhelming NPC advantage until the Lord arrives and the game is theirs. Remember that the other team is a much stronger stand team than you, so they can probably shrug off a minor NPC advantage (NPCfarming aside).

In a nutshell, time permitting, the game is going to come down to an 8v8 fight. This means that if you have a stronger 8v8 team and can ensure that time does permit, you have the advantage.

Why wasn't this a problem before? It wasn't that the possibility didn't exist, it was just that it would have been harder to pull off. VoD took much longer to arrive, so your team would have had to stall the game much longer. One mistake, if bad enough, could prevent it from getting that far, and then you're screwed. The best guild around might have been able to pull it off, but it wasn't for everyone.

Summing it all up: despite fairly consistent offensive power, the need for defensive power has risen drastically because in a game where VoD is eventually going to force an 8v8 confrontation, tactical calls are not an option to deal with that offensive power. This problem (while it likely existed before) was brought to the forefront because of the ease in forcing that 8v8 confrontation with an 18 minute VoD as opposed to a substantially longer one.

Buffs to NPC advantage at the stand is a workaround, not a fix. To truly alleviate this problem, we would need a format by which the game is decided other than a forced 8v8 confrontation.

ChopChop · Feb 12, 2008, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

Now, you're severely more limited in trying to force a split at VoD than you are at forcing a stand confrontation. Until the NPC's arrive at the stand, your opponent has little compelling reason to be there. When they do arrive, you can force your opponent to split between defending their NPC's at the stand and defending their Lord, but time is on their side. All they have to do is prevent you from killing their Lord and from gaining a ridiculously overwhelming NPC advantage until the Lord arrives and the game is theirs. Remember that the other team is a much stronger stand team than you, so they can probably shrug off a minor NPC advantage (NPCfarming aside).

In a nutshell, time permitting, the game is going to come down to an 8v8 fight. This means that if you have a stronger 8v8 team and can ensure that time does permit, you have the advantage.

This is untrue and the entire reason for this thread, the problem is now that you can split all the time, in all your games and come out ahead every time, that is what makes for dragged out 20+ minute games every time, removing active play from the game, forcing everyone to spend the entire game running around while snared. This is why everyone is complaining, this is what killed the fun.

Kaon · Feb 12, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

I see the argument, I see the data, but I just can't place the why. If offensive power was relatively the same but monk power drastically weaker in the "Golden Age", why wasn't there as much off-monk support?

First off, the "idea" of monk support wasn't as known as it is now. Secondly it wasnt as powerful as it is now, and thirdly, because more offense allowed for more versatility and a better chance against spike teams. Builds back then are very comparable to byobs right now, just that split characters back then were more powerful. Also, don't get me wrong, at the start ONLY koreans split, and it took reginal playoffs to make the turnaround for the masses and even at that moment only a small portion truely split.

Quote:

Jumping ahead to the age of the LoD + Prot monk, you've admitted that the LoD monk didn't split particularly well, so why wouldn't people just stick with the tried and true: out-maneuver the enemy monks and capitalize? It would mean your build wouldn't be as strong in an 8v8 fight, but that shouldn't be important, right?

A lot of reasons, ill sum them up:
- People learned how to handle split, or at least the basics of it.
- Nightfal skills made it MUCH harder to achieve stuff in split.
- A lot of builds already had a good split so it was hard to overpowered them.
- The amount of non-split maps is still big, and therefore it wasn't good on ladder.

And people actually did split, ever heard of eurosplit? It owned a lot of teams december, january and february 2007, but people learned to stop it. It also was a dedicated split and not just a "tactical" split as happened much in factions and prophecies.

Quote:

Again, it strikes me as strange that you'd suddenly need large quantities of party-defense with the same amount of offensive power. The conclusion that presents itself to me is that the importance of 8v8 fighting had to have increased somewhere in the mix.

Oh 8v8 got much more important with decreased vod timer, but the increase of defense had a whole different reason. It wasn't because it was necessary but because it was possible. The game is about killing the opponent before they kill you, thus about an amount of offensive power and defensive power. If i have a free character or skillslot, and i can use it for an offensive slot that gives me say 10points (had to make this concrete somehow) of defense but i could also take a defensive skill like aegis that gives me 25 points of extra defense then it's obvious what i'm going to take. It is because defense got overpowered compared to offense. Next to that there's paragons that do both in an astonishing fashion.

Quote:

Is it, as someone else suggested, a product of map exploitation? That may play a part, but I would think that there has to be a more substantial reason. If I, in my naivety, were to appartion blame, it would seem to me that nothing could be more substantial than the way the game ends, which would make VoD a pretty likely candidate.

Yes, with good playing it is very hard or even impossible to get an advantage with splitting on a lot of maps. People improved in the game, so splitting to capitalize on mistakes got harder.

Quote:

Think carefully about what VoD does: it forces everyone to suddenly focus their attention much more directly on the Guild Lord, as opposed to gaining an NPC advantage, getting a morale boost, etc. VoD means that the game is going to be decided very shortly, and it's going to be decided where the Guild Lords are. Time permitting, the two Guild Lords are eventually going to be in the same place, meaning that, at that time, anything other than an 8v8 confrontation is pure stupidity.

Remember that there was a time when split builds would also be very strong 8v8 builds. Because they usually had a lot of damage (but lacked shutdown and partywide prot like aegis or even heal party) they could rip you apart in vod. WMs 4w 2r 2mo build would slice you up, that is, if they didnt die instantly.

Quote:

Now, a last minute gank shouldn't be out of the question, but if your opponent falls back to walk the Lord to the stand, there are certainly going to be some complications with ganking him. If, at the same time, the other team has built to win VoD at the stand, you're screwed. You were built to gank the Guild Lord at VoD, remember?

A split is used to gain a tactical advantage on the enemy, this could be a boost, an npc that gives advantage in vod, or just forcing opponent offense or defense to the base so you can collapse. In a vod situation the same rules occur except that there is no thief making split always a possibility.

Quote:

Now, you're severely more limited in trying to force a split at VoD than you are at forcing a stand confrontation. Until the NPC's arrive at the stand, your opponent has little compelling reason to be there. When they do arrive, you can force your opponent to split between defending their NPC's at the stand and defending their Lord, but time is on their side. All they have to do is prevent you from killing their Lord and from gaining a ridiculously overwhelming NPC advantage until the Lord arrives and the game is theirs. Remember that the other team is a much stronger stand team than you, so they can probably shrug off a minor NPC advantage (NPCfarming aside).

I dont get your reasoning at all, you say they can defend their npcs and guild lord at the same time? Seems like a pretty strong split build to me.

Quote:

In a nutshell, time permitting, the game is going to come down to an 8v8 fight. This means that if you have a stronger 8v8 team and can ensure that time does permit, you have the advantage.

And in that time splitting is used to gain an advantage, be it boost or npcs.

Quote:

Why wasn't this a problem before? It wasn't that the possibility didn't exist, it was just that it would have been harder to pull off. VoD took much longer to arrive, so your team would have had to stall the game much longer. One mistake, if bad enough, could prevent it from getting that far, and then you're screwed. The best guild around might have been able to pull it off, but it wasn't for everyone.

Well it never really happened outside the iQ vs EvIL game. Those few npcs made a lot of difference and if your split in vod died you'd lose everything. You don't win if the opponent has all or at least some npcs, this has always been the case. Only iQ, paraway, and FOCspike were an exception. And iQ only because of mistakes on EvILs side.

Quote:

Summing it all up: despite fairly consistent offensive power, the need for defensive power has risen drastically because in a game where VoD is eventually going to force an 8v8 confrontation, tactical calls are not an option to deal with that offensive power. This problem (while it likely existed before) was brought to the forefront because of the ease in forcing that 8v8 confrontation with an 18 minute VoD as opposed to a substantially longer one.

You seem to think that defense is always better in an 8v8 situation. This wasn't always the case. It's just right now that when you have free skill or character slots the choice between a defensive and offensive skill is easily made because the defensive skills are MUCH better.

Quote:

Buffs to NPC advantage at the stand is a workaround, not a fix. To truly alleviate this problem, we would need a format by which the game is decided other than a forced 8v8 confrontation.

Buffs to npcs are irrelevant to the problem. Splinterweapon would never have been a big problem if monks wouldnt have so much ease keeping an overextended warriors up. To be honest, splinterweapon isn't NEARLY as much of a problem as is the relation between offense and defense at the moment.

Now a strong argument to nerfing defense is this:

If you nerf monks or defense, it will only make the game more defense because people are forced to run more defense to stay alive

This statement is true in an imbalanced game, which guild wars sadly is right now. If defense would get nerfed to a level of equalness with offense then you don't have to. You could say: okay lets take a fire ele instead of a bsurge because the fire is going to give us 20points of offense, and even 30points in aoe. A bsurge would give is 22points of defense, so if the enemy stacks only a little a fire ele is much better.

Players don't bring defense because their build lacks it, they bring it because they can! War Machine didn't bring defense because an extra warrior simply made the build stronger than say an elementalist. KGYU brought a third warrior over an eprod bitch because the warrior gave 30points of offense and the eprod gave 25points of defense, easy choice!

Hypothetical example: Let's nerf ward against melee
Please keep in mind that this is purely hypothetical, i don't even want this to happen but it's a good way of making my point. Let's say ward against melee got nerfed to a 25 seconds recharge and 20 energy cost. If the game was well balanced we could say: Okay lets drop the ward on our mesmer for eburn and go kill face.
In an imbalanced situation we would say: Okay lets drop our ranger for an elementalist with ward against melee, we need the defense!
The problem in the imbalanced situation is that an ele+me>r+me. But if the game was balanced this isn't a problem. The ranger would allow for more utility and split ability (not to mention interrupt the ward!) and would lead to a different playstyle, both being viable. The r+me team has much more offense and interrupts, the e+me has less offense but much more defense.

If they'd nerf guardian we'd perhaps see more aegis. If they'd nerf aegis too we'd perhaps see more stances, you can buff and nerf until you reach a state where taking an extra warrior would be more beneficial than constantly adding more defensive skills to your list.

Dominator1370 · Feb 12, 2008, 11:31 PM // 23:31

Ok. I went wrong in a few places along the way. I get it. The next 6 posters don't need to explain it again. I still think having the game come down to a specific format and promoting dynamic play are conflicting ideas, even if I didn't argue the point perhaps as well as someone else could have.

That said, I never tried to make the claim that defense wasn't overpowered. I just think the idea of VoD is problematic in itself, regardless of the state of the meta or skill balances.

Just to be clear, that doesn't mean the game can't be fun to play while VoD exists. You could even (theoretically) balance the game with VoD in it, though I think it would be a loftier task than it would be otherwise, and require eliminating otherwise viable options. Then again, there's a question of whether an absolute balance or an approximated balance is preferable...

In my head, it's pretty clear that having a game (potentially) come down to a specific confrontation is a bad thing, because you can maximize your strength for that confrontation and then, rather than having to force an advantageous situation yourself, try to get the game mechanics to force it for you. What do I know though...

Ledah · Feb 13, 2008, 12:05 AM // 00:05

Curious how lot's of those old builds didn't even have a hard rez. Now every team packs 2.

Captain Robo · Feb 13, 2008, 12:30 AM // 00:30

The way I remember it, back when the best monk builds were boon prot variants, their elites were all reserved for energy management skills, be it OoB, Energy Drain, Mantra of Recovery (hell even Drain Enchantment and Inspired Hex were great on monks). Sure, they didn't have the healing/prot elites that power most monks today, but they made up for it by having lots of energy management power and small boon-buffed prots.

Party defense was something that other characters worried about (and caster elites were also pretty much limited to energy management). "Defensive" builds would chain an Aegis between their midline or runner, possibly supporting it with Wards and Blinding Flash, while the runner spammed Heal Party/Extinguish.

There was a lot of strategy involved with build construction back then because of the clunky nature of many mechanics. In a way, you needed to work your defense around (elite) energy management, and spread it across multiple characters.

It's been said many times that our current metagame revolves around Glyph of Lesser Energy, and I'm beginning to agree with that. It enables the monks to carry the skills that were originally hauled along by your midline, in addition to managing their own energy needs.

And as Kaon stated, when you have freed up skill slots, you might as well bring more defense... so those empty slots on your midline casters turn into additional defense.

BLUESHIFT · Feb 13, 2008, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Did the addition of better hard resurrection skills, such as death pact, play a meaningful role in making the flag stand and morale boost less important?

Teams seem to not focus on flag pushes and double running strategies as much as they did in the past. Is this partly because people are carrying stronger hard resurrection skills and fewer resurrection signets, or is this only because of the increased importance of NPCs at VoD?

I Angra I · Feb 13, 2008, 01:00 AM // 01:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLUESHIFT

Did the addition of better hard resurrection skills, such as death pact, play a meaningful role in making the flag stand and morale boost less important?

Teams seem to not focus on flag pushes and double running strategies as much as they did in the past. Is this partly because people are carrying stronger hard resurrection skills and fewer resurrection signets, or is this only because of the increased importance of NPCs at VoD?

I do think hard resses like flesh and especially death pact do play a role in making morale less important now. Even when you're out of sigs, it's still incredibly easy to res people with the current hard resses. Back in the day where the only options were things like resurrect on a mesmer or ele, I do think it put a lot more importance on forcing boosts and keeping the other team from getting boosts.

twicky_kid · Feb 13, 2008, 06:27 AM // 06:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

So, what killed the split?

A huge injection of offensive power from NF. Back then you could 3v4 and hold your own. Same with 2v3 ect.... Base defenses were also much better. A team couldn't simply walk into your base like a morning stroll. A team of 4-5 + NPCs could easily fend off an offense of 7. By the time the offensive team broke through your defense your split team would have wiped most of their NPCs. It was never a good trade off to just let the split go and attack the base.

After NF you could no longer do that. If you tried defending your base like that now your team simply blows up after a few seconds with your NPCs soon to follow. The only time splits worked after NF is due to the map your were playing on.

My opinion of the updates:

I think the game is too focused on VoD. Remember it was something added to the game out of necessity. Now its the single focus of everyone's winning strategy. 20+ minutes of boredom for 2 minutes of action is what's been killing this game for a long time. Hell its not hard to build a defensive ball and aoe the shit out of the NPCs at VoD. Who cares if they spread out more now. The only thing you really aim for is the Bodyguard. If anything else dies with him....great.

Until that changes everything else is......meh.

Zabe · Feb 13, 2008, 08:20 AM // 08:20

About what killed split, one of the greatest things isn't the builds. You have had the ability to split for whole game, but, when VoD time got pushed down. Especially to current 18 minutes. Splitting wasn't so viable tactic anymore (now it is made to "musthave" with current VoD setup), because it was just easier to turtle for 18 or 20 minutes, push out with remaining NPC:s, use huge party defenses to survive the first spikes of archers, and then farm them with any AoE damage you have, let it be splinter, ancestors, GoS + MS or SF.

Ofcourse you can try make splits more viable with this kind of ViO etc. But that just doesn't focus in the problem. Arena Net has for too long time, when something is broken, trying to go around the problem. With splinter, with SPsin (HELLO 15 RECHARGE EXPOSE DEFENSES!). And mostly, ANet lacks the balls to step out and say "We screwed things up, and now we fix it with doing this right this time". Good example from this is LoD. And again, they show us how they try go around the problem by buffing Divine healing etc.

Just my $0.02.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Feb 13, 2008, 08:50 AM // 08:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLUESHIFT

double running strategies

superspeedboosts

Kaon · Feb 13, 2008, 09:33 AM // 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by BLUESHIFT

Did the addition of better hard resurrection skills, such as death pact, play a meaningful role in making the flag stand and morale boost less important?

Teams seem to not focus on flag pushes and double running strategies as much as they did in the past. Is this partly because people are carrying stronger hard resurrection skills and fewer resurrection signets, or is this only because of the increased importance of NPCs at VoD?

The buff to hardresses play a big role in making boosts less important, but i think one of the most problematical hardresses right now is deathpact signet. For a long time in this game killing a monk and then the other monk was quite fatal. They'd have no energy and often got rezzed with a diversion or blackout smacked on them, not to mention that they needed their boon and emanagement skills up before being of use. Right now a monk gets deathpacted at full energy effectively stopping or stalling a teamwipe. I think this is a horrible mechanic because it allows games to last longer and teamwiping is simply the best and most interesting thing in the game. Remember that one of the few ways to push the enemy out of your base is a teamwipe. If this becomes so much harder it makes games far less interesting. A game like iQ vs EvIL game 1 on GWWC isn't possible anymore, in that game the upperhandd switched constantly cause both teams teamwiped each other, now the gamve would've been "over" at 4 minutes but EvIL wouldve needed another extra 10minutes to actually finish it. Deathpact signet is yet another defensive skill that heavily favors spiking over pressure.

Morale is less important because of superhardresses, because npcs are much more important now, and because of speedboosts that allow you to go faster than roadrunner (WHY??!?!!!!!!!).

JR · Feb 13, 2008, 10:20 AM // 10:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

The buff to hardresses play a big role in making boosts less important, but i think one of the most problematical hardresses right now is deathpact signet. For a long time in this game killing a monk and then the other monk was quite fatal. They'd have no energy and often got rezzed with a diversion or blackout smacked on them, not to mention that they needed their boon and emanagement skills up before being of use. Right now a monk gets deathpacted at full energy effectively stopping or stalling a teamwipe. I think this is a horrible mechanic because it allows games to last longer and teamwiping is simply the best and most interesting thing in the game. Remember that one of the few ways to push the enemy out of your base is a teamwipe. If this becomes so much harder it makes games far less interesting. A game like iQ vs EvIL game 1 on GWWC isn't possible anymore, in that game the upperhandd switched constantly cause both teams teamwiped each other, now the gamve would've been "over" at 4 minutes but EvIL wouldve needed another extra 10minutes to actually finish it. Deathpact signet is yet another defensive skill that heavily favors spiking over pressure.

Morale is less important because of superhardresses, because npcs are much more important now, and because of speedboosts that allow you to go faster than roadrunner (WHY??!?!!!!!!!).

As much as myself and others made a fuss in Alpha about how gimped hard resses were, I agree entirely.

Monk chaining and having to push for boosts to get sigs back was a great aspect of gvg gameplay in the past, and is now almost non-existant. When people could take a fast cast Res Chant it was ok, but Glyph Sac Res Chant was where things really started going wrong. Deathpact is even further in that direction, and I really don't like it at all. The downside is far too conditional.

Then tactics like double running or flagger stalling that have also indeed been made redundant by speed boosts that let you run a flag ridiculously quickly. All of these things have contributed heavily to morale being less important.

In terms of hard resses, the arguement was that lack of a decent alternative to burning a sig meant people played very defensively - as the cost of death was so high. I think it has been proven now that the defensive play appears regardless of this, and the focus should now be on making the stand more important again.

I would like to see Deathpact hit hard, possibly a 3 second cast time. Then I would evaluate the impact of that, and maybe make tweaks to other hardresses as neccesary (Res Chant a longer recharge perhaps).

I would also like to see the impact of changes to ViO/VoD discussed in this thread on making Morale more of a factor.

I think in an environment where you could actually beat a team by burning their sigs and interrupting their hardresses you would see a lot more offensive play. Pre-VoD play would become more important, instead of just being a fight to survive and get an NPC advantage. I think an offensive bonus at VoD is also a good measure to reward flag play, and being conditional means people can't rely on building around it to get kills.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Feb 13, 2008, 11:01 AM // 11:01

It's funny that this thread goes into this direction, I just wrote an entire essay that includes this (and other stuff).

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...05#post3649705

Shmanka · Feb 14, 2008, 05:12 AM // 05:12

I say if you nerf powerleak this hard... at least make it cost 5 energy and make the opponent lose maybe 1-3 more points of energy.

Kaon · Feb 14, 2008, 10:33 AM // 10:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shmanka

I say if you nerf powerleak this hard... at least make it cost 5 energy and make the opponent lose maybe 1-3 more points of energy.

I say if you don't see izzy just wants to see the skill gone, you're dumb.

Mystiq · Feb 14, 2008, 07:56 PM // 19:56

You said you will advance with updates during the week and I don't see any skill\vod updates. PLeak being broken is not helping the game... Go obs mode and check the new gale spam mesmers meta ~~ I think its more skilled than make a gd pleak at right time. So Andrew, where are those updates?