Curse

Pyro maniac · Jan 23, 2008, 06:26 PM // 18:26

more NPC's with better skills (so they pose a threat at VoD instead of wiping them in 5 secs with splinter), and gradually increase VoD damage buff (1% for every minute?). Allowing more kills at ~10 minutes instead of waiting for the 18 min mark.

øln · Jan 23, 2008, 07:15 PM // 19:15

What about reducing the amount of npc's, and then make them stronger. This could fix splinterfarming atleast, and would make splitbuilds more interesting.

Dominator1370 · Jan 23, 2008, 08:14 PM // 20:14

As has been mentioned, if VoD remains as a mechanic, then there are going to be ways to exploit the mechanic. The best thing to do from a strict Rocks vs. Paper vs. Scissors type balance is to eliminate VoD and come up with some other fallback for ending the game. It could be something as simple as whoever has the highest morale wins, or it could be a more complicated system, something like a morale penalty every X minutes. That's probably not going to happen, though, and I'm not sure it should: Rocks Paper Scissors is balanced, but it's not always fun.

I think there are plenty of relatively minor changes that could have a large impact on VoD. Mixing up the templates of NPC's could make VoD much more threatening, and splitting much more interesting. If you had to worry about the Rend Necro and the Buff-agon, ganking NPC's would become a lot more important.

I don't think it's a problem for NPC's to be deadly if a team leaves them alone: if you haven't actually tried some kind of split, you've probably been at the stand for 20 minutes. If you've been at the stand for 20 minutes, haven't gotten any kind of advantage, and haven't tried to change up your tactics, you're reaping what you've sown. It should be even less of a problem if there are key threats that are easily identified. Mix in some NPC's with a template that works together. If you can take out a few pieces of it, you won't have as much of a problem come VoD. Again, if you can't, and you're not doing anything else productive, I don't feel bad if it causes a loss.

You could argue that such a change would make splitting overpowered compared to a turtle-at-the-stand type build, but I think most people would agree that that would be far preferable. Besides, effective splits take a hell of a lot more skill than turtling. If anything, splitting should be more effective than turtling, rather than the other way around.

By the same token, it's understandable that the A.I. isn't immaculate. At the very least, though, spread the NPC's out. They have to have some pathing built in already to get to the stand, just tweak it a little.

erk · Jan 23, 2008, 11:07 PM // 23:07

I like the VoD changes in todays update:

Victory or Death

* The Guild Lord will now use his axe when combating other Guild Lords.
* NPCs during Victory or Death will do 30% more damage, and an additional 10% more damage each minute after Victory or Death.

I would be interested to know if it creates any strategy changes.

ensoriki · Jan 24, 2008, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Maybe have the Guild Lord's Use VoD every 40 seconds.
Whenever its used 3 NPC's are spawned?
And give it an interruptible 1 second (maybe 3/4) cost?

(still have damage and/or Life modifiers in play though)

uncooked food for thought.

Iotan · Jan 24, 2008, 12:46 AM // 00:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

Maybe have the Guild Lord's Use VoD every 40 seconds.
Whenever its used 3 NPC's are spawned?
And give it an interruptible 1 second (maybe 3/4) cost?

(still have damage and/or Life modifiers in play though)

uncooked food for thought.

And then the Guild Lords could teleport around the map so that teams that aren't very mobile get hurt by it! Seriously though, what??? How does this help anything at all? I really cannot understand how this would help the current situation.

I think VoD will never be fixed until the archer ball->>ancestors blow up is fixed. Until that happens, there's going to be 1 strategy for VoD: try to blow up the archerball before your warrior or dervish dies. Trying to fix it without getting to the heart of the problem really doesn't change anything.

...Unless you make a new problem that dwarfs the previous one. I am VERY skeptical about the damage increase to NPCs along with their new skills. Knights/warriors running into the archers are going to get old fashioned ranger-spiked. Having more NPCs should be an advantage but 60% buffed archers seems like a bit much. Although a new meta based around buffing your archers with Strength of Honor/Judge's Insight would be hilarious!

Riotgear · Jan 24, 2008, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Going to rehash my previous suggestion in the other thread: Change Splinter Weapon to Lightning damage, give archers heavy resistance to elemental damage, which should make them significantly hardier against the vast majority of AOE.

Wasteland Squidget · Jan 24, 2008, 09:40 PM // 21:40

If I can't kill archers with Splinter Weapon, I'm going to kill them with some other kind of AoE. The game provides no shortage, and unless you want to nerf all AoE out of the game, you're not going to stop NPC farming that way.

Killing NPCs with AoE has always been a part of Guild Wars. In the Prophecies days, you'd do it with dual E-surge guys. Now you do it with a rit spamming Splinter Weapon. It has never been the game-breaking force that people make it out to be.

Creating more footmen and less archers would be a good way to stop NPC farming. As the team with less NPCs I still won't give a shit, because I can just aggro your lord and ignore the NPCs entirely, but maybe people will stop complaining about it.

Greedy Gus · Jan 24, 2008, 10:04 PM // 22:04

What? People didn't farm archers with a 96 damage esurge. People simply did not farm archer balls with AoE before splinter/ancestors unless they brought some unweildy fire spell for it, and to pretend otherwise just smacks of desperate justification. There barely is any usable high powered AoE in the game already, it wouldn't be hard to 'nerf it all out' if it's deemed too degenerate or game-defining.

Riotgear · Jan 24, 2008, 10:10 PM // 22:10

Dual-esurgers worked well when it was cohesive with the e-denial meta of the time period. Boosting archer elemental resist would make them highly resistant to any currently-usable AOE tricks while having minimal effect on anything else but maybe Mind Blast.

The whole "aggro the Guild Lord" thing is really a separate issue.

Wasteland Squidget · Jan 24, 2008, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

What? People didn't farm archers with a 96 damage esurge. People simply did not farm archer balls with AoE before splinter/ancestors unless they brought some unweildy fire spell for it, and to pretend otherwise just smacks of desperate justification. There barely is any usable high powered AoE in the game already, it wouldn't be hard to 'nerf it all out' if it's deemed too degenerate or game-defining.

Why do you think people brought that skill if it wasn't for the AoE damage effect? With the old VoD-shout active, the damage was significant enough to drop the NPCs to low health, making them easier for a warrior to drop with a few swings.

As for other templates that can be used to farm balled NPCs - traps, fire guys, disease/putrid, and Mel dervishes all come immediately to mind. All of those are templates I'd rather not see come back into serious play, and they would with the lack of splinter.

I guess you could nerf all of those too and just remove AoE entirely, but I really don't think the game needs another reason to rely exclusively on 321spike.

Edit: I guess my biggest problem with this thread (and the VoD trend in recent updates) is that people keep putting such a huge focus on the NPC advantage, when that's only a part of what you're trying to do with a split build. Clearing NPCs makes the fight in their base easier, which allows you to better control their flagrunning and force kills on one side or the other. This, in turn, gives you a major morale advantage, which was very relevant with the old VoD damage bonus. Clearing a base is the most tangible part of a split when watching Obs mode, but it's not necessarily the most important.

In my experience, the better teams get, the more they know how to play around the NPC advantage and force the fight elsewhere post-VoD. You can implement changes to force the fight to the NPCs (tougher NPCs, less guild lord aggroing), but at that point the game becomes more about AI exploitation than killing the other team. I'd rather win a match because we killed your players than because we aggroed your NPCs behind a wall.

Vaga · Jan 24, 2008, 11:31 PM // 23:31

I tend to agree with Squidget in that the rit runner with splinter/ancestors is a pretty nice template that allows balanced teams to get enough AoE for VoD without gimping themselves at all. If it was nerfed so it's no longer viable then you're going to have to bring some other sort of AoE for VoD. You could probably argue to nerf it a bit more so it doesn't dominate NPC's as much, but there isn't really a huge point. I guess you could look at it like if you nerf splinter a team who wants to bring something to farm NPC's has to run some gimp character instead of a great one, but at the end of the day the way VoD is now everyone will probably have to bring that gimp character.

I don't think in prophecies people really brought e-surge to farm npc's, it obviously helped but it's effect on NPC's at vod were really the last thing people were thinking. By factions though especially when a couple guilds ran triple dom mesmers people had noticed it was pretty decent at VoD but it was mostly just an added bonus not the main reason you brought the skill.

I'm in favor of reducing the importance of NPC's especially by reducing the number of them in the base.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jan 24, 2008, 11:36 PM // 23:36

Reduce the amount of NPCs to what it was before.

Keep the NPC 'waves'.

Move VoD back to 20/25 min.

Get rid of the increasing NPC damage (initial 25-30% can stay don't make it increase afterwards).

Keep the 'no health reduction part'.

Nerf Splinter Weapon.

JR · Jan 25, 2008, 12:36 AM // 00:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

As for other templates that can be used to farm balled NPCs - traps, fire guys, disease/putrid, and Mel dervishes all come immediately to mind. All of those are templates I'd rather not see come back into serious play, and they would with the lack of splinter.

When has anyone complained about any of those characters?

'Fire guys' still see a lot of play with Mind Blast. I frankly miss trappers and their positional play. Disease? I haven't seen that used by a competitive guild in a long time. I think you might just be smoking crack with Putrid. I wouldn't consider the return of Dervishes a bad thing, compared to them barely being used at all.

You also keep using the 'if it wasn't Splinter it would be something else' arguement. Surely that alone implies that the 'something else' wouldn't be as strong? Not to mention that Splinter and Ancestors pretty much justify the whole class on their own, which is ridiculous. Ritualists need a major rebalance, that has been obvious for a long time.

Wasteland Squidget · Jan 25, 2008, 12:47 AM // 00:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

When has anyone complained about any of those characters?

'Fire guys' still see a lot of play with Mind Blast. I frankly miss trappers and their positional play. Disease? I haven't seen that used by a competitive guild in a long time. I think you might just be smoking crack with Putrid. I wouldn't consider the return of Dervishes a bad thing, compared to them barely being used at all.

I'd say that modern rits provide a lot more freedom than any of those templates. The Rit has a choice between playing offensively with Splinter/ancestors spam, playing defensively and pre-protting with weapons, and providing strong split support.

Basically, all those other templates are fairly one-dimensional characters that just do their job, without a huge amount of choice in how they do it. While I like some of the templates on that list and dislike others, I'd stress that none of them have anything close to the flexibility a Rit provides.

Teams want to run AoE, because AoE is good for killing players and great for blowing up archers. Given the choice, teams are going to run run a flexible AoE template rather than an inflexible one - hence, teams run Rits over the other options.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jan 25, 2008, 12:54 AM // 00:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Basically, all those other templates are fairly one-dimensional characters that just do their job, without a huge amount of choice in how they do it. While I like some of the templates on that list and dislike others, I'd stress that none of them have anything close to the flexibility a Rit provides.

However they can achieve stuff by themselves whereas a rit is only really useful in scrimmages of 3 or more people.

The rit is only a good template because splinter weapon, ancestors and to a lesser extent warmongers are RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing broken.

Riotgear · Jan 25, 2008, 01:26 AM // 01:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

'Fire guys' still see a lot of play with Mind Blast.

.... which would get hurt by elemental resist as well, part of why this is a rather convenient solution.

Vaga · Jan 25, 2008, 03:39 AM // 03:39

If splinter/ancestors are made unplayable what do you guys think will replace them that will be better?

I can just imagine something more stupid taking over like bsurge with glyph sac/met shower + monk runner or something like that. (May or may not be dumb but you get the point)

Greedy Gus · Jan 25, 2008, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Naturally if good aoe options are hit, you'd want to simultaneously drop NPC importance by going back to the old # of archers and adjusting the damage boost.

Wasteland Squidget · Jan 25, 2008, 04:37 AM // 04:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Naturally if good aoe options are hit, you'd want to simultaneously drop NPC importance by going back to the old # of archers and adjusting the damage boost.

Wait...I thought the whole point of nerfing Splinter was to ensure that the team who's killed NPCs dominates VoD, because their archers don't get Splinter-bombed.

What are you trying to nerf about Splinter, if it's not how good it is against NPCs? And if you're in favor of NPC advantages becoming more meaningful, why would you not want to keep the higher number of NPCs?