Curse

RhanoctJocosa · Jan 17, 2008, 10:11 AM // 10:11

^ I agree. You should not be able to fake cast Aegis 5 times to get a fast cast under orb.

Vanquisher · Jan 17, 2008, 12:13 PM // 12:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cass

It's a bit of a paradox that this thread is about the 'problematic defensive power of blockwebs', and here it is argued that this one tool (i.e., interrupts)effective enough to break that web should be nerfed.

You shouldn't have wins and losses put down to ping. Instead you should find ways to make other forms of shutting down defenses for periods of time more viable to promote strong coordination. Just because interrupts are the most effective way of breaking down defenses in this game currently doesn't mean they have to be. Alternatives that promote far greater play and aren't dependant on how much you spend on your computer/connection and the servers on which you're playing are much more preferable.

Quote:

Two points here. First. Breaking defenses is not godliness. I've said before that being unable to do that would result in a stale game.
As others have noted, in the past this may have been different. But what would now see play as a disruptive factor instead? Piling of energy denial? Pressure a la Tainted? Several KDs? Signet of Humility? None of these are interesting plays IMO.
Second. Current mesmer and ranger bars these are not so heavily interrupt based as you would make it seem. Magebane (which is pretty lame, but somewhat inherent to the class I guess) may be the one exeception of a truly spammable interrupt. But look at mesmers in particular... power leak, power drain... that's it. There are several other utility skills on various chars that have shutdown roles, and they are not based on interrupts: Diversion, Shame, Gale, Hammer KDs, Enchant removal.

Are you serious? Energy denial was a far more interesting way of shutting down casters than just sitting on them spamming interrupts is. Hiding energy and making sure you hit casters when they weren't hiding it required good timing and awareness, and diverse bars allowed for the big offensive pushes that used to turn games. Chained KD's is one of those things that I absolutely loved; you could definately play against it but it required a good bit of defensive play to stop rolling you over, and because it was such a strong offensive push you could bank on being able to break the defence too. You mention that you like offense oriented builds yet you deny that Tainted is an interesting addition to the heavy physical builds that have been seen. I'm confused as to why, I always liked them in there. It's not like Tainted was the main focus of the build, it was just an extra tool to help the physcals blow stuff up. Finally, Sig Humility never accomplished anything by itself when LoD wasn't so effective.
You've gone on about how you enjoy seeing interrupts because they disrupt defence webs that are around. What the hell do you think window skills like Blackout/Gale do? What do you think chain KD's do? What do you think Energy Denial does? I'd say you want to see really strong pressure builds like the KGYU style build of old, but you said you didn't like Tainted. So what do you like, sitting there trying to interrupt Ward/Aegis and just adrenal spiking when you get them down? Dedicated split? I really don't get where you're coming from.

Leaks recharge buff made the skill retarded, and Magebane is just on crack after the buff it got. D Shot needed to be changed to 12r a while ago. Savage could use going to 7 also. At the same time, skills like Blackout should be buffed so that there is more than 1 way to play midline. Shame is a spike skill, and Diversion is almost a spike skill except for its good recharge. Regardless there's much better stuff you can take than it now.

Quote:

This chance issue has become a bit unrealistic. The scenario you gave was snaring a runner and your fc set determining whether you boost or not. This is a situation heavily primed towards everything depending on that one cast of yours and the whole world looking at you.
On a fair number of occassions casting is not quite that critical and the opponent's interrupted may NOT be sitting on you, and only switch to you when he perceives a need to do so. The implicit assumption that crucial casts will always be interrupted unless FCed is misleading. Not because of failing interrupters, but because it is not possible to keep track of recharges of every crucial skill-- thanks to FR sets in large part.
In sum, although I do not deny the presence of a chance factor here, it is not quite as glaring as you presented it and I think it fits with the general dice rolling of the game.

Dice roll shouldn't play a part in competitive Guild Wars. If it has to, that part should be as limitted as possible.

Quote:

It isn't. Would you rate Power Leak higher than Diversion? Yep, ping is a bitsj as we established but my argument remains: When you get screwed with high ping, interrupts are only weakened. There really is no logic in nerfing them so that they are not taken anymore, so that this in turn makes the ping drawback disappear. Monks suffer from high ping too by the way, but nobody wants to nerf reactive monk skills because of that.

Nerfing something doesn't mean nerfing it to the point at which it is useless. And the comparison to Monks is dumb because they're completely different.

Cass · Jan 17, 2008, 01:49 PM // 13:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

You shouldn't have wins and losses put down to ping. Instead you should find ways to make other forms of shutting down defenses for periods of time more viable to promote strong coordination. Just because interrupts are the most effective way of breaking down defenses in this game currently doesn't mean they have to be. Alternatives that promote far greater play and aren't dependant on how much you spend on your computer/connection and the servers on which you're playing are much more preferable.

...

Are you serious? Energy denial was a far more interesting way of shutting down casters than just sitting on them spamming interrupts is. Hiding energy and making sure you hit casters when they weren't hiding it required good timing and awareness, and diverse bars allowed for the big offensive pushes that used to turn games. Chained KD's is one of those things that I absolutely loved; you could definately play against it but it required a good bit of defensive play to stop rolling you over, and because it was such a strong offensive push you could bank on being able to break the defence too. You mention that you like offense oriented builds yet you deny that Tainted is an interesting addition to the heavy physical builds that have been seen. I'm confused as to why, I always liked them in there. It's not like Tainted was the main focus of the build, it was just an extra tool to help the physcals blow stuff up. Finally, Sig Humility never accomplished anything by itself when LoD wasn't so effective.

This argument keeps coming up: A chain of KDs on the backline is more desirable than a series of punishing interrupts because ping matters to the former and not to the latter.
It's silly (as I argued before, lag is a universal pacifier) and goes on the assumption that when ping is good, the enemy team gets rolled by default. That's untenable IMO.

Energy denial used to be a much more active affair. Several of the direct energy drains have been nerfed though: E Burn, E Surge, Deb Shot, Sig of Weariness, and I may have forgotten about others. They are not played in GvG currently, as far as I have observed. Perhaps you would argue this is because interrupts now reign, but I think the nerfs themselves have rendered this style of direct energy draining ineffective. Restoring this may be interesting, I agree.

Quote:

You've gone on about how you enjoy seeing interrupts because they disrupt defence webs that are around. What the hell do you think window skills like Blackout/Gale do? What do you think chain KD's do? What do you think Energy Denial does? I'd say you want to see really strong pressure builds like the KGYU style build of old, but you said you didn't like Tainted. So what do you like, sitting there trying to interrupt Ward/Aegis and just adrenal spiking when you get them down? Dedicated split? I really don't get where you're coming from.

Yeah, I mentioned all those as examples of shutdown, remember? ^^

Maybe it is down to what sort of gameplay you prefer. You're right, I am not charmed by most pressure-oriented builds. This is because they tend to come down to build wars (Hello RC meet Tainted / oh noes we brought SoD) and passive confrontation. Sure sure there are situations (now and in the past) where active shutdown was/is part of it, and you have to make sure you hit stuff that's not protted and drain energy where there is some to drain. Many aspects of pressure builds simply exploit weaknesses in common builds, much like hex builds did a while back-- a large number hexes resulted in a removal problem, so it worked. Skill required to apply hexes? Very little.
I feel like there is more active play in window-oriented builds, and I consider them to be more interesting as a result.

Quote:

Nerfing something doesn't mean nerfing it to the point at which it is useless. And the comparison to Monks is dumb because they're completely different.

An empty argument. Reducing the power of interrupts to a point where they still work BUT other shutdown is actually more effective will result in... nobody taking them anymore. You don't have to nuke a skill to make it disappear completely.

DutchSmurf · Jan 17, 2008, 03:02 PM // 15:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cass

An empty argument. Reducing the power of interrupts to a point where they still work BUT other shutdown is actually more effective will result in... nobody taking them anymore. You don't have to nuke a skill to make it disappear completely.

Will leave it to other people to react to the rest, but this point is interesting. Interesting in a way that you don't have to nerf a skill at all to get it out of the metagame. Just making it look like you did is often enough. Just adding 1 second to a recharge hardly makes any difference, but still you will see lots of people dropping the skill. Savage Shot on 7 seconds is still a great skill, same for Distracting Shot on 12 seconds. Yet people might drop them just because a couple seconds are added.
What Vanquisher is suggesting (I think) is that other forms of shutdown are improved to make them worth using. At the same time interrupting, a luck/ping depending part of the game, can use some toning down. That combined can either result in overload teams, or in teams using different kinds of shutdown, depending on their playing style.

Lorekeeper · Jan 17, 2008, 03:10 PM // 15:10

i think the dominance of interrupts as the major form of disruption is explained by how monks are more and more relying on their elites or 1-2 second casts. Aswell as a huge reliance on key defensive skills like wards/aegis. In the past interrupts were not as effective against boon prots because their most effective heals were impossible to catch with regularity by even the most psychic of rangers. Thats why edenial/KD lock was more popular back then.

Its the combination of the buff to interrupts like power leak and magebane shot and monk's increased vulnerability to interrupts that has caused the domination of interrupts.

This is part of the reason why mesmers have been carrying ward of melee in recent metas... starting with the MoR+ward meta and the current Gole+ward meta we have today.

Its a boring meta, because too much hinges on the successful interrupts of things like aegis/ward/guardian. In the past monks had means to cope with their vulnerabilities... by hiding energy. Gale got a nerf because they had no adequate defense against being KD locked (and KD lock on frozen isle was just ridiculous!) and in some ways... it was too easy to do.

Gole allows monks a means to avoid interrupts on their most important skills like aegis... however it is far from a reliable method of doing so and neither should it be so. Compare this game of cat and mouse (the continual cancelling and recasting of aegis and wards to shake off interrupts) versus the older one involving edenial and hiding energy. I personally think that sitting in low sets to hide energy... and switching back up to cast takes a great deal more experience and awareness than fake casting. And at the end of the day, even if your opponent succeeds in catching you with your energy set on, it doesnt convert to kills straight away.

Its a little different today, interrupts of key defensive tools like aegis or a ward can more often than not result in a retreat or a backline wipe. When the game relies on the interrupting of key skills it becomes far more volatile and knife edge. Lose concentration for a fraction of a second and you miss the chance to interrupt a ward or aegis cast right in your face which might have allowed you to score some kills... a lucky diversion or interrupt may catch RC or WoH at the most unfortunate of times... which might result in a full wipe. Its far too topsy turvy. It requires human players to behave like robots in a game which would do better to celebrate what makes us so superior to robots in the first place... our adaptability.

GvG matches should involve much more emphasis on tactical play instead of being focused around execution. In the past execution had less impact on the game which gave centre stage to tactical plays... today execution has a huge impact on the game and its far easier to sit tight and wait for the constant thrust and riposte of execution related plays to open up opportunities instead of opening up opportunities through tactical plays based on movement/redirection/confusion...

its all well and good for a tiny portion of the GvG community to have the strat callers and players experienced enough to play within the GvG battle field to its full potential but i think something could be done to encourage the vast majority of players to shift towards tactical play too.

endless monthly skill balancing, shifting us from one 8vs8 meta to another is not a way to achieve this.

They need to work on VoD/split play and stop drawing everyones attention to the flag stand by continually forcing an interdependence between the backline and the rest of the team.

Medion · Jan 17, 2008, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Quote:

They need to work on VoD/split play and stop drawing everyones attention to the flag stand by continually forcing an interdependence between the backline and the rest of the team.

That's actually quite an interesting idea I think. I'm not sure if you meant it this way but perhaps a good solution would be to lower the importance of the flagstand compared to the base instead of making the base as important as the flagstand.

Possibly instead of a moral bonus of 10% make it 5% without recharge of skills? Thing is, right now if you let the enemy get a morale boost it's almost impossible to take the down as their health is upped by another 48 HP (I think?) and they get a recharge of skills (res sig, e-management skills etc).

I suppose this is a bit off-topic however, you guys just continue with looking back on how it used to be

EDIT:
Or instead of lowering it to 5% make the flagstand something you control while having the flag in the stand (instead of every 2 minutes). Say...while you have the flagstand the whole team gains +5 armor and +25 health. Not much so it's actually an option to just ignore the flagstand but certainly a nice addition if you do control the flagstand.

Vanquisher · Jan 17, 2008, 03:39 PM // 15:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cass

This argument keeps coming up: A chain of KDs on the backline is more desirable than a series of punishing interrupts because ping matters to the former and not to the latter.
It's silly (as I argued before, lag is a universal pacifier) and goes on the assumption that when ping is good, the enemy team gets rolled by default. That's untenable IMO.

No. It goes on whoever has the better ping has the advantage, which is true. Basically, people are looking at this from a single minded view of nerfing interrupts. What really needs to happen is;
Tone down interrupts slightly.
Buff other forms of disruption slighty.
Implement something to make layers of defence suffer some sort of loss in effectiveness (various block caps have been proposed for one hell of a long time).
Improve Monks (directly or indirectly) so they are better able to cope with damage output to a decent degree (ideally something similar to how they coped as Boon Prots).

Quote:

Energy denial used to be a much more active affair. Several of the direct energy drains have been nerfed though: E Burn, E Surge, Deb Shot, Sig of Weariness, and I may have forgotten about others. They are not played in GvG currently, as far as I have observed. Perhaps you would argue this is because interrupts now reign, but I think the nerfs themselves have rendered this style of direct energy draining ineffective. Restoring this may be interesting, I agree.

Proper skill balance is required/should be assumed when considering any proposed change. When poor balance is evident, you can try and change how things work a million ways but the game will still be fundamentally flawed from a balance perspective.

Quote:

Yeah, I mentioned all those as examples of shutdown, remember? ^^

You implied they were a worse way to stop defenses then interrupts.

Quote:

Maybe it is down to what sort of gameplay you prefer. You're right, I am not charmed by most pressure-oriented builds. This is because they tend to come down to build wars (Hello RC meet Tainted / oh noes we brought SoD) and passive confrontation. Sure sure there are situations (now and in the past) where active shutdown was/is part of it, and you have to make sure you hit stuff that's not protted and drain energy where there is some to drain. Many aspects of pressure builds simply exploit weaknesses in common builds, much like hex builds did a while back-- a large number hexes resulted in a removal problem, so it worked. Skill required to apply hexes? Very little.
I feel like there is more active play in window-oriented builds, and I consider them to be more interesting as a result.

The entire game is down to build wars to an extent. That's why when playing a build with Tainted you'll obviously need some way of stopping high amounts of party healing or other such problems, and is the goal you try to accomplish when designing the build in the first place. No point in making a build and knowing that if you fight skill x you are going to lose, and not trying to do anything about that skill. Besides, RC doesn't completely destroy builds with Tainted because generally those builds tend to be heavy physical ones and those physicals will usually go balls deep on anyone with a problem elite because that's how they beat it. High physical builds always have and always will rely on strong amounts of forcing the other team to play so defensively that their threat is neutered, simply because they aren't able to play in any other way by design.

Exploitation in build design is what results in meta changes. For example, the factions meta.
Adrenal spike meets heavy 8 vs. 8 pressure. Pressure wins.
Adrenal spike modifies build or playstyle to incorporate better split strategies. Adrenal spike wins.
Heavy 8 vs. 8 pressure drops Tainted for a second Ranger. Starts going either way but pressure is quicker for winning generally.

The better teams wouldn't need to change builds or playstyle much, but still would occasionally. Likewise you can look at the meta further developed, where smite started coming into the game more and more. Smite, Blackout/Push, Blackout/Spike (based generally on playstyle was often the same build in essence), condition pressure, QQ dual sin.

Quote:

An empty argument. Reducing the power of interrupts to a point where they still work BUT other shutdown is actually more effective will result in... nobody taking them anymore. You don't have to nuke a skill to make it disappear completely.

Who's saying anything about making them work but to a worse level than other forms of shutdown? Mesmer bars, when skills are well balanced in terms of shutdown, would always have a couple of options. It's not like dual interrupts is a completely new thing, it happened before. Now though, the bar revolves around them a lot of the time. A HEV bar is a pretty good example, though that skills so retarded that it just shows simple problems in terms of game balance anyway. That and the fact other Mesmer elites are generally poor when you can be pumping out Gales under GlyphE, Diversions/Shames under GlyphR, or whatever.

Edit:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Gole allows monks a means to avoid interrupts on their most important skills like aegis... however it is far from a reliable method of doing so and neither should it be so. Compare this game of cat and mouse (the continual cancelling and recasting of aegis and wards to shake off interrupts) versus the older one involving edenial and hiding energy. I personally think that sitting in low sets to hide energy... and switching back up to cast takes a great deal more experience and awareness than fake casting. And at the end of the day, even if your opponent succeeds in catching you with your energy set on, it doesnt convert to kills straight away.

Its a little different today, interrupts of key defensive tools like aegis or a ward can more often than not result in a retreat or a backline wipe. When the game relies on the interrupting of key skills it becomes far more volatile and knife edge. Lose concentration for a fraction of a second and you miss the chance to interrupt a ward or aegis cast right in your face which might have allowed you to score some kills... a lucky diversion or interrupt may catch RC or WoH at the most unfortunate of times... which might result in a full wipe. Its far too topsy turvy. It requires human players to behave like robots in a game which would do better to celebrate what makes us so superior to robots in the first place... our adaptability.

GvG matches should involve much more emphasis on tactical play instead of being focused around execution. In the past execution had less impact on the game which gave centre stage to tactical plays... today execution has a huge impact on the game and its far easier to sit tight and wait for the constant thrust and riposte of execution related plays to open up opportunities instead of opening up opportunities through tactical plays based on movement/redirection/confusion...

The really serious teams have needed superb execution throughout. Just look at how woonori's interrupts on iQ's gale chain made it almost useless, and how perplexed's ability to hold up LuLu in the finals of the American GWWC qualifier finals turned the game. Overextending Flaggers were another thing that got punished immensely, and Warriors with a high usage of Frenzy. You're completely on the money with your comment about how 1 interrupt can turn a match now though. The defensive webs you see are crucial for survival in any build outside of those which just go in with the intention of using a supercharged frontline as its defence.

Dominator1370 · Jan 17, 2008, 06:44 PM // 18:44

The reason interrupts are so effective isn't strictly based on the power of their utility effects (energy loss from PLeak, disable from Magebane, etc.) in comparison to direct shutdown, or even (exclusively, at least) their recharge. In many cases, interrupting a skill can be preferential to preventing a player from casting it in the first place.

For example, if you interrupt a Ward, it's down for 20 seconds (10 if they got HSR) and they lose the energy for casting the Ward (if not under GoLE). That's regardless of the secondary effect of the interrupt.

On the other hand, if you drop a Diversion or a Shame on someone to prevent them from using Ward, Ward is only down for 6 seconds, they don't lose the energy (unless they had to cancel cast), and there aren't any skill disables or loss of energy or such, with the exception of immaculate timing.

Obviously I'm not ignorant of the fact that if you're shut down, be it from Shame, Gale, Blackout, or anything else, it's not just the one skill you can't use. However, in many cases, and especially in a meta where we're slotting defense on midliners with other priorities, you don't care as much about the other skills on the bar. You'd rather prevent (and prevent strongly) the Ward or DA or off-monk Ageis from going off than disable the bar entirely with a weaker effect.

Now, this isn't to say that universal shutdown skills don't have their uses. If a monk can't do anything at all for 6-12 seconds, there's obviously going to be some problems, but that's because in terms of defensive disruption, you want to take every skill on the Monk's bar off-line, whereas there are probably more than a few skills on an Ele or Mesmer bar you're willing to leave up.

The point I'm trying to make is that interrupts and blanket-shutdown are used for different things. Similar, sure, but both have optimal uses, and neither are exactly the same. A touch-up to skills like Blackout doesn't have to be accompanied by a nerf to interrupts, because you shouldn't be using Blackout to prevent the Ward from going up, you should interrupt the Ward, Blackout the Monk, and then spike.

If people have problems hitting interrupts because of ping or chance or whatever they're blaming it on, there are certainly other solutions besides nerfing them so their use doesn't matter as much. That seems like kind of a backasswards way to solve the problem. Now, obviously we can't eliminate lag, and Anet probably isn't going to eliminate HSC/HSR sets or 50/50 blocking (if it was 10% or 90%, you couldn't really blame chance, but at an even split...), but how about this:

There are skills out there that make cast times longer: Migrane, Frustration, Arcane Conundrum, anything that causes Dazed, etc. If it takes you 3x longer to cast your Aegis, I don't care what the Ranger's ping is, he shouldn't miss it, and if you miss it on a Mesmer...

If people are this concerned about interrupts, I think we should start looking at what it would take to get skills like this into the meta. Obviously, HEV has to go, but it had to go before. I mean, Curses got blown to hell, Sineptitude is dead three ways from Sunday, and the only hexes still making a strong presence are Water hexes... I think it's safe to let HEV go. I'm not sure if the skills themselves would need a buff, possibly not, and I don't think cover hexes would be much of a problem: just slot a Water Ele.

Maybe I'm just dumb, but if things like lag are that much of a problem, it seems that being able to bring a way to widen the window makes more sense than the theory of nerfing interrupts so their use doesn't matter.

Divinus Stella · Jan 17, 2008, 06:51 PM // 18:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

For example, if you interrupt a Ward, it's down for 20 seconds (10 if they got HSR) and they lose the energy for casting the Ward (if not under GoLE). That's regardless of the secondary effect of the interrupt.

You dont get a faster recharge unless the cast completes and you still lose your glyph if you get interrupted while casting.

Farin · Jan 17, 2008, 06:56 PM // 18:56

buff monks to the point where heavily defensive builds can't break a defenseless 2 monk build, that'll get more offense into the game

make aura of stability 1s cast or something, that skill is ridiculous just like SoA to certain extent

bring back lod

Dominator1370 · Jan 17, 2008, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinus Stella

You dont get a faster recharge unless the cast completes and you still lose your glyph if you get interrupted while casting.

Thought you might not be able to get HSR, figured I'd play it safe. And maybe it's splitting hairs, but you don't lose actual energy for getting interrupted under Glyph, you just lose the potential to save some energy.

assassin of the god · Jan 18, 2008, 03:10 AM // 03:10

I didn't actually read all of the wall of text in this thread, so what I'm saying might of already been said. Theres really nothing wrong with "blockway" in its current form. Bad guilds will still get rolled by better ones, and evenly matched teams will go to VoD. The matches are intense at the micro level, and just because it's boring to watch on obs doesn't mean it's always boring to play, you Euros should know that, since you love soccer. Also, defense lets bad people like me seem decent at the game once in a while.

Cass · Jan 18, 2008, 09:49 AM // 09:49

We're almost there I think. =)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

You implied they were a worse way to stop defenses then interrupts.

No, not worse, just less interesting.

In this context I'll also react to your laughable statement, Dragons: You claimed that "knife-edge" interrupt play requires you to play "like a robot". There is nothing robot-like about interrupting. Not even reaction time to skill activation is a static factor. It relies heavily on presence of mind and tactical preparation (what skill is to come, what target am I looking for etc.). Twitching interrupts is only a fall-back method where no thought is required. it should not be used unless you're desperate.

In my view GW should not move more toward tactical play like in chess where you move pawns around and those pawns themselves have a clear role with no internal variance nor active imput. Yet, this is what you seem to long for: to execute a given strategy, sloppily perhaps (as you loathe the fact that losing concentration momentarily should cost you anything), and see if it works. I argue that's like playing a stupid cog in a bigger machine. I'd rather play your robot than that cog then.

Quote:

The entire game is down to build wars to an extent. That's why when playing a build with Tainted you'll obviously need some way of stopping high amounts of party healing or other such problems, and is the goal you try to accomplish when designing the build in the first place. No point in making a build and knowing that if you fight skill x you are going to lose, and not trying to do anything about that skill. Besides, RC doesn't completely destroy builds with Tainted because generally those builds tend to be heavy physical ones and those physicals will usually go balls deep on anyone with a problem elite because that's how they beat it. High physical builds always have and always will rely on strong amounts of forcing the other team to play so defensively that their threat is neutered, simply because they aren't able to play in any other way by design.

I don't believe you can fully prepare for most builds anymore. There are now too many skills in the game and even though you can take *some* defense against most if not all type of threats, it has a high chance of being inadequate when an opposing build goes all-out on it. This is putting you at a severe disadvantage due to build wars. I detest build wars by the way.
If you want to talk about chance events determining the outcome of matches: It can't get worse than this. When utter noobs running bloodspike can go relatively high on the ladder just because most balanced teams cannot spec monks to address life-stealing spikes better (i.e. they carry a lot of melee block), then that sucks.
Build design has its moments but what quality is there in observing a bunch of games, checking the meta and then simply exploiting it ("hey teams have so little hex removal... lets hex" -amazing brilliance?)

Quote:

Who's saying anything about making them work but to a worse level than other forms of shutdown? Mesmer bars, when skills are well balanced in terms of shutdown, would always have a couple of options. It's not like dual interrupts is a completely new thing, it happened before. Now though, the bar revolves around them a lot of the time. A HEV bar is a pretty good example, though that skills so retarded that it just shows simple problems in terms of game balance anyway. That and the fact other Mesmer elites are generally poor when you can be pumping out Gales under GlyphE, Diversions/Shames under GlyphR, or whatever.

HEV got nerfed now, and yeah GlyphR is a pretty sweet elite. I predict it will be MoR'ed later. Twice the power leaks? Oh no!

TheOneMephisto · Jan 18, 2008, 01:48 PM // 13:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cass

In this context I'll also react to your laughable statement, Dragons: You claimed that "knife-edge" interrupt play requires you to play "like a robot". There is nothing robot-like about interrupting. Not even reaction time to skill activation is a static factor. It relies heavily on presence of mind and tactical preparation (what skill is to come, what target am I looking for etc.). Twitching interrupts is only a fall-back method where no thought is required. it should not be used unless you're desperate.

It also relies heavily on twitch and ping, as, especially at high levels, people aren't going to let you predict-interrupt them very much, and twitching is actually much more effective.

Vanquisher · Jan 18, 2008, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by assassin of the god

I didn't actually read all of the wall of text in this thread, so what I'm saying might of already been said. Theres really nothing wrong with "blockway" in its current form. Bad guilds will still get rolled by better ones, and evenly matched teams will go to VoD. The matches are intense at the micro level, and just because it's boring to watch on obs doesn't mean it's always boring to play, you Euros should know that, since you love soccer. Also, defense lets bad people like me seem decent at the game once in a while.

Played 321 adrenal spike for about half a year at high level before the majority of good players improved enough to incorporate different strats into their play. Spike is far more boring. Blockway is heavily spike.

Will address rest later when I have the time.

Yue · Jan 18, 2008, 02:30 PM // 14:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

Played 321 adrenal spike for about half a year at high level before the majority of good players improved enough to incorporate different strats into their play. Spike is far more boring. Blockway is heavily spike.

Will address rest later when I have the time.

Agree. Playing against blockway is boring as shit.

Captain Robo · Jan 18, 2008, 03:08 PM // 15:08

If you tone down the offense in order to make blockway an unnecessary measure, I assure you that people are still going to play it. Less-powerful offense just makes defensive webs more appealing, because when warriors actually get to hit you, they'll be hitting you with a pillow.

Conversely, if the countermeasures to blockway are too strong, we'll end up with overpowered offensive builds, and even more defense will be needed in order to cope.

At any rate, I'm thoroughly convinced now that the Guildwars balance team is ignorant to all sensibility and reason. Guildwars is not an impossible game to balance, and this forum is chock full of good ideas and many of the best players in the game sound off on these issues; and yet they continue to be ignored. I don't know why this happens, and I can only assume it is because the balance team has a sense of pride in that they work for Anet, and they don't have to listen to the community.

It's a baseless assumption, but all I have to go on is what gets posted on the wiki chat page for update notes; and judging by the latest batch, those update notes prove that nobody responsible for skill balance has a damn idea what they're doing.

Vanquisher · Jan 18, 2008, 06:27 PM // 18:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain Robo

If you tone down the offense in order to make blockway an unnecessary measure, I assure you that people are still going to play it. Less-powerful offense just makes defensive webs more appealing, because when warriors actually get to hit you, they'll be hitting you with a pillow.

Conversely, if the countermeasures to blockway are too strong, we'll end up with overpowered offensive builds, and even more defense will be needed in order to cope.

It needs good balancing, but it can be done. The game doesn't necessarily to be brilliantly balanced, it just needs to allow playing to be fun (both when playing builds and playing against them - winning is fun so people who win will be having fun a lot of the time even if they're running the most boring build to play against ever). I still honestly think that the Factions meta was the best game type. Heavy condition pressure, adrenal spike, hexes, blackout/push, heavy split, strong e-denial... It was a lot of fun to play in. The best thing about it was that the "balanced build" (I don't like the term because a build is only as balanced as the playstyle it recieves) was one that could be played in ways which would beat most of those other ones. It was, with a few alterations in terms of elites, the spike build. Likewise, it was the blackout/push build, and the heavy e-denial build (when subbing the Ranger for a second Mesmer). Teams all played it differently though, and that's what made it so much fun to play.

Quote:

At any rate, I'm thoroughly convinced now that the Guildwars balance team is ignorant to all sensibility and reason. Guildwars is not an impossible game to balance, and this forum is chock full of good ideas and many of the best players in the game sound off on these issues; and yet they continue to be ignored. I don't know why this happens, and I can only assume it is because the balance team has a sense of pride in that they work for Anet, and they don't have to listen to the community.

It's a baseless assumption, but all I have to go on is what gets posted on the wiki chat page for update notes; and judging by the latest batch, those update notes prove that nobody responsible for skill balance has a damn idea what they're doing.

The skill balances required would need to be good, which hasn't really happened that much to be honest. While some have seen decent changes, the majority of balances have either forced them completely out of the game, or tried to, or overbuffed something. There is no real middle point that has been hit with any degree of consistency.

Well thought out balances would be required to make the correct changes, as well as seeing a discussion between players who actually bring up good points rather than those who just want personal gain. Although there is often motivation in suggesting changes, either unfavourable or favourable, when enough quality players who can bring their views go over it together they'll all get brought out. No forum offers any such discussions, and even if one did there would be a lot of complaints about those in charge of game balance only recognising balance in terms of PvP (there already is), and in that form only listening to those who play at the higher levels.

Greedy Gus · Jan 18, 2008, 07:40 PM // 19:40

Great post vanq, I completely agree with your sentiments here. I had been planning on offering a suggested skill balance to change things up for 2008 GvG, but since it requires removing a lot of NF power creep and going back to various matured post-proph and post-factions meta setups, I'm just not very motivated because it's clear that isn't the direction a-net is interested in going in.

Kaon · Jan 18, 2008, 08:12 PM // 20:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cass

In my view GW should not move more toward tactical play like in chess where you move pawns around and those pawns themselves have a clear role with no internal variance nor active imput. Yet, this is what you seem to long for: to execute a given strategy, sloppily perhaps (as you loathe the fact that losing concentration momentarily should cost you anything), and see if it works. I argue that's like playing a stupid cog in a bigger machine. I'd rather play your robot than that cog then.

It should be a mix, the game should be a battle of wits where someone with quick correct strategical responses to the situation wins.

Look at LuM vs WM on druids isle, there was a moment when one of the WM warriors got caught by a cripranger, now the long strategic decisions he has to make are:

- What way am i going? West or East?
- Can anyone back me up from either way?

Next to that he needs to actually survive. He galed opponent warriors running for him, faked his healing sig a million times and actually got it off, and slowly but surely survived. It was a mix of execution and swift tactical decisions, just like guild wars should be.

To me, Gw is a highpaced strategy game, where "execution" (such as reaction time) should play only a little role (of course it is vital on roles like monks, but it shouldnt be key on all roles). And skill should be key role.

Bars of old simply allowed much more different playstyles and possibilities. Which allowed good players to show themself more outside of their team. Again, because as i said before the game was very unforgiving.