Curse

pygar · Jan 18, 2008, 10:53 PM // 22:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

took longer then expected to boot rangers out of GvG builds.

Yeah, cuz they were so rampant before in GvG. (rolls eyes)

Maybe someday they will actually figure out something that does encourage balance and GvG will see a little bit of everything, for now it is not only stagnant, it's getting worse.....

I got all uptight with people a few weeks ago here on a "nerf magebane" thread because when I observe the big GvG games I see multiples of almost every class, and almost no rangers....am just under the impression now that it doesnt matter what anybody does in PvP to win- as long as it's not rangers getting glory for being good, then everybody will freak out and A-net will promptly unleash the nerf bat.

Oh well, plenty of PvE for me to go play...maybe things will change someday and PvP will sound fun for me.

pygar · Jan 18, 2008, 10:56 PM // 22:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Double Pact

I think the whole suggestion was nerfing passive defense and therefore buffing party heals/direct heals/prot (LoD is included in the first category)

Ahhh, Now that I think of it..... maybe the reason why they Nerfed LoD but don't touch blockway, is LoD makes everybody play monk for defense....with Blockway several classes can join in the fun including monks....Blockway is better for the "team game" than just having LoD spam for defense.

ensoriki · Jan 18, 2008, 11:00 PM // 23:00

Pious Assault may be buffed

But Rendable enchantments haven't

Ensign · Jan 18, 2008, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by pygar

I dont understand why bringing back LoD for the easy party heal is an improvement in ppls minds

Because party healing is an essential mechanic in Guild Wars. The more hoops you have to jump through to get it, the more degenerate the format is going to be.

It's quite simple. There is a certain balance between offensive and defensive potency for any particular format, that is largely independent of the skills being used. Teams fluctuate around that balance with their own builds and tactics. If offensive skills are nerfed, more resources, in terms of character and skill slots, become devoted to offense; if offense is buffed, less are devoted to offense as people shore up their defenses instead - and the same goes for defense. The game is self-correcting in that regard.

Nerfing LoD did not reduce the potency of defenses in GvG. Doing that is impossible if you understand what has been said already; within wide tolerances, you can't affect that as builds will shift to make up the difference. What those nerfs do change is the flavor of the game. If defenses are weakened, more characters, skills, time, and energy are devoted to defense instead of offense. This slows the game down in two ways; first, it slow the game down because people are now playing a more defensively focused game, and second, it slows down from the generally lower power level of the skills being used. As a side effect, the value of disruption shifts as the space devoted to offense and defense shifts. When defense is stronger and more concentrated, disrupting defense is much more valuable and rewarding, as you gain more from individual plays that way. When defense is weak and offense is strong, the opposite is true - disruption on the more concentrated offense is much more valuable.

Bringing back LoD would be an improvement because it would increase the power level of the game, and concentrate defenses more, making them more prone to disruption, while also facilitating a shift towards more aggressive play, as there is more room for offense and the flexibility that comes with it. The same is true of defensive buffs in general, particularly to Monks. As long as changes are within the tolerances of the game, the environment will necessarily shift towards killing and shutting down more powerful Monks if a team wants to be successful.

Sun Fired Blank · Jan 18, 2008, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

However, one thing to say about DA and Aegis is, while party heals will counter damage from melee, casters, degen etc., blocking only prevents melee damage. One could always take casters in a block-heavy meta. I imagine if enough people started blasting people with lighting or fire right through their block-based defense the meta may shift away from such an anti-melee based back line. Although it is early (lawl, ok so its noon and I stayed up too late playing :P) and I may be way off.

Although people have run searway and fire damage to waste newer teams and make for stand advantages, the idea of using copious amounts of lightning and fire in GvG is probably questionable; casters can't honestly pump out damage on par with melee for any consistent amount of time, they can't generate the quick spikes (in terms of chains, adrenal or non-adrenal, or deep wound), there are adequate prot options to simply mitigate most caster methods of doing this, and most teams just split in response.

I think you can best see your counterexample in GvG / HA crap builds like obspikes, bloodspikes, invokespikes, searway and EoE bombs. That sort of nonsense does punch clean through most layers of passive defense, but in the long run, it's really just degenerate, mediocre or questionable crap for many reasons, even if it circumvents the defensive webs that many teams use.

pygar · Jan 18, 2008, 11:40 PM // 23:40

@Ensign

I have heard that logic before here, and it makes a lot of sense..... I made a prior post here questioning whether it is time to stop playing "hokey-pokey" with skill balances and give people new PvP formats/scenarios to change things, maybe even going so far as to have more random factors involved so people too reliant on the tried and true strategies have to change their game some in preparation for not truly knowing what is coming next....

Dwarf Teh Guru · Jan 18, 2008, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Just LOL @ the skill update, seeing they didnt nerf any of the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing retarded meta in ha.....

have been waiting soo long for it.....

Winstar · Jan 19, 2008, 12:31 AM // 00:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

buff party heals, buff active prots, nerf warriors. Yep thats solves....well at least I can get a cup of coffee while gvg'ing.

Huh? How did u get that out of my post?

Thats the problem now that should be addressed. The nerfing of passive defense or blockway or whatever you want to call it would- if passive party defense was the only thing holding back overpowered physicals as Andrew was suggesting - leave us in a state of overpowered physicals. So Obviously its not just a matter of nerf blockway and the game is fixed. A corresponding nerf to physicals would be requied, or an improvment to other defensive options, or something along those lines. Anything that would open open strategic options that are currently less viable in the current metagame as stated.

zling · Jan 19, 2008, 12:44 AM // 00:44

yay, Magebane Shot got into the 10 energy range for Ranger elites
so now they're all equal

other than that unimpressive...
good job at keeping the game boring ANet...

wuzzman · Jan 19, 2008, 01:07 AM // 01:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Because party healing is an essential mechanic in Guild Wars. The more hoops you have to jump through to get it, the more degenerate the format is going to be.

It's quite simple. There is a certain balance between offensive and defensive potency for any particular format, that is largely independent of the skills being used. Teams fluctuate around that balance with their own builds and tactics. If offensive skills are nerfed, more resources, in terms of character and skill slots, become devoted to offense; if offense is buffed, less are devoted to offense as people shore up their defenses instead - and the same goes for defense. The game is self-correcting in that regard.

Nerfing LoD did not reduce the potency of defenses in GvG. Doing that is impossible if you understand what has been said already; within wide tolerances, you can't affect that as builds will shift to make up the difference. What those nerfs do change is the flavor of the game. If defenses are weakened, more characters, skills, time, and energy are devoted to defense instead of offense. This slows the game down in two ways; first, it slow the game down because people are now playing a more defensively focused game, and second, it slows down from the generally lower power level of the skills being used. As a side effect, the value of disruption shifts as the space devoted to offense and defense shifts. When defense is stronger and more concentrated, disrupting defense is much more valuable and rewarding, as you gain more from individual plays that way. When defense is weak and offense is strong, the opposite is true - disruption on the more concentrated offense is much more valuable.

Bringing back LoD would be an improvement because it would increase the power level of the game, and concentrate defenses more, making them more prone to disruption, while also facilitating a shift towards more aggressive play, as there is more room for offense and the flexibility that comes with it. The same is true of defensive buffs in general, particularly to Monks. As long as changes are within the tolerances of the game, the environment will necessarily shift towards killing and shutting down more powerful Monks if a team wants to be successful.

current mesmer bars are more then capable of shutting down a buffed lod monk. By the nature of of the lod build something will be diverted. Even if you buffed lod will that change midline characters or flag runners? Even back when lod was pre-nerfed teams ran just as much defense as today, hell even more. Sure lod creates a single point of fail, but with that in mind will teams really drop their defense when a single mesmer can do the job with little issues?

To encourage centralized defense...centralized defense has to be good. There are pretty much no alternatives to what we have now. Blinding surge ele? He fails in every way compared to a Sop/Watch yourself/shields up/spear of lighnting para. Inpetitude mesmer? need 2 of those to consider yourself relatively safe, but i don't think your going to be able to keep up for 20+ minutes. Hex necro? Too clumsy, too expensive, and way too easy to shutdown your better of trying to run 2 blinding surge eles then attempt to put your defense in the hands of a curse necro.

buffing lod just means that Woh will be dropped for LoD. The defense the meta will bring will not change because more red bars can go up.

deya · Jan 19, 2008, 01:12 AM // 01:12

My point was that GoLE would be well balanced if it gave you 2 free spells for 5 energy no problems with that. The point is that you can basicly make anything uniterruptable with GoLE is insanely broken.

GW backlines would require A LOT more skill without this. Wards and Aegis could be interrupted so there would be no free 50% blockrate up at all times.

GoLE Aegis and Ward has effected metagame alone a lot. Magebane is like only viable elite for ranger, people run crap skills like mirror of disenchant etc.

wuzzman · Jan 19, 2008, 01:13 AM // 01:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winstar

Huh? How did u get that out of my post?

Thats the problem now that should be addressed. The nerfing of passive defense or blockway or whatever you want to call it would- if passive party defense was the only thing holding back overpowered physicals as Andrew was suggesting - leave us in a state of overpowered physicals. So Obviously its not just a matter of nerf blockway and the game is fixed. A corresponding nerf to physicals would be requied, or an improvment to other defensive options, or something along those lines. Anything that would open open strategic options that are currently less viable in the current metagame as stated.

thats irrational. Nerfing warriors cause midline ability to negate the damage (something that midline has been able to do just fine till I don't know till everything went nerf-bat-swing) falls epically behind? How are warriors overpowered, when their bars haven't changed at all since Prophecies. where is this nightfall power creep concerning warrior damage? how will you go about toning down warriors? -10 damage? -5 damage? maybe -20 damage? You really, really, really have to think really hard about what your suggesting their. God forbid this game gets more unplayable even more.

Winstar · Jan 19, 2008, 01:27 AM // 01:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

thats irrational. Nerfing warriors cause midline ability to negate the damage (something that midline has been able to do just fine till I don't know till everything went nerf-bat-swing) falls epically behind? How are warriors overpowered, when their bars haven't changed at all since Prophecies. where is this nightfall power creep concerning warrior damage? how will you go about toning down warriors? -10 damage? -5 damage? maybe -20 damage? You really, really, really have to think really hard about what your suggesting their. God forbid this game gets more unplayable even more.

Nothing at all irrational about what I said. I was responding to Andrew Patrick's post in which he suggested that the only thing holding back overpowered physicals at this point is the ease of massive party defense. So though everyone agrees that massive party defense is a bad thing if you nerf it then you are just left with a situation where physicals need adjustment or other forms of active defense need an adjustment for game balance - under the assumption that they are overpowered as was made clear in every post. Also Warriors of course aren't the only physicals in the game and their bars are pretty much the same, I agree.

langola · Jan 19, 2008, 02:44 AM // 02:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

No, I am simply entertaining the thought that if your playing rock paper scissors, you can either keep throwing rock against opponents that keep throwing paper, or you can say "everyone is using paper, maybe I should use scissors." I understand it is not that simple and that there are dozens of complications that make that analogy less than perfect. But I have also been around for quite a while, and have seen how people are quicker to suggest changes to their opponents build (via nerfs) than they are to adjust what they use. The old "I play rock, nerf paper, scissors is fine" phenomenon.

Is it impossible to beat blockway in general, or is it just difficult to beat with your build? Please understand I am just being the devils advocate here. As I said above, I hate blocking skills too!

I just don't know if it's overpowered, or if the meta is simply refusing to shift to deal with it properly. Just throwing that idea out there is all.

The problem is the "blockways" have the tools to deal with caster damage. All they have to do is camp a mesmer on your casters and pleak them over and over. You cant keep going forever with pleaks and diversions on you. Secondly, casters don't do enough pressure to matter, especially if they are being interupted by rangers + mesmer. Warriors do more damage and deep wound even considering the blocks a team has. Thirdly, by having a lot of casters in your build, you are at the same time reducing your defense. You will have a lot of soft targets in your build, so you will take significantly more damage. Also, don't forget most teams bring watch yourself a lot too, which also reduces caster damage not just melee. Saying bring casters sounds nice in theory, but the tools are not there to win with a pure caster build unless your running a mindless 3-2-1 spike.

Also, you cant meta the blockway with caster hexes for two reasons. One, hexes have been nerfed almost out of existence except for a few ineptitude builds, and secondly, you risk running into HEV. HEV + blockway vs hexes = lose.

I would also like to point out that the VOD changes actually help blockway teams even more. The damage of the npc's becomes LAUGHABLE. It gets soaked up in blocks + party heals. Also, one of the only balanced block skills, guardian, took a hit in this update. Now the person taking npc aggro wont be really helped by guardian due to precision shot and guardian is a good skill.

I read your post earlier on heals vs prot; remember that prots are a GOOD thing. They take player skill to use properly, unlike red bar go up heals, where you you see a bar low and just make it go up. Prots have a risk/reward to them that make them awesome in the hands of a good player and worthless to a bad player. That being said, party wide buffs/prots are a BAD thing. It takes no skill to put down a ward and stand in it, and the only skill it takes to put up aegis is to cancel it a few times with glyph. There needs to be an emphasis on single target prots, not party wide mindless ones. So if any change is made, in particular to block, single target prots need to be unaffected. Also, if healing is buffed it inherently needs to be slightly inferior to prot. Since prot takes more skill to use, it needs to be stronger in the hands of a great player, than healing which takes less skill to use. If you really want to make healing equal to prot, you need to give healing more risk/reward so it takes more skill to use.

Lastly, I would like to reiterate what Ensign put quiet eloquently. You need condensed defense and/or party heals to run offensive builds. Otherwise, you have to start reducing your offense to make up for the lack of defense. Being able to condense defense into just a few characters (that can be disrupted/shudown) allows for a more offensive metagame. To the person who said people would run just as much defense with LOD. The point of having a centralized defense, is so teams have the OPTION of running offensive builds. Obviously , some teams will still choose to run lots of defense if that is their style.

before i go my suggested changes, I BOLDED the important ones, I mostly did monk spells. Some of this might be a bit over the top, but these are just ideas:
buff entire healing line (excluding woh) by about 5-10%
Divine Healing: 1c,30s,~125 heal or longer recharge more healing
2s cast is to long w/o glyph, and with glyph + divine healing your bar will be real tight to fit all the needed utility.
LOD: 1s cast, slightly larger than earshot,10s, some condition to be met for heal. Balance healing power according to recharge + condition to be met. It MUST be 1s cast or less, especially since its a skill that needs to be used a lot.
Ethereal light – 3/4s cast time, add 20..10s extra recharge to ethereal light if hit while casting
Dwayna's Sorrow: change affect to if that ally takes physical damage while under the affect dwayna's sorrow ends and he is healed for about 30-40, 15s recharge
Healer's Covenant: Add affect: When this enchantments ends, if you are below 75% health all party members in the area are healed for ~40-50
Healing Ribbon: change to in the area. make the 2 additional allies if the target healed was below 60% health
Healing Light: Reduce energy gain, give conditional extra heal if target is enchanted.
Supportive Spirit: Next time target ally would be knocked down he is healed for X amount of health. 10s duration.
Spotless mind and soul: remove condition or hex right away, keep total amount of hexes and condi's removed the same.
Amity: Remove the if takes damage its removed affect. Add affect this hex cannot be covered. (this was someone else's idea, i thought it was cool)
Pensive Guardian:change affect to: target ally has 40% chance to block melee attacks.
Shield Guardian: change to in the area.
Shielding Hands: Decrease recharge to 12s
Make Heal Party a 1s cast, make Healer's Boon not affect spells cast time with no target ally.
Gift of Health: best healing spell in the line and cant be used heal monks. Give it a risk/reward such as blacks out yr heal spells for X seconds if target is over 50% health.
Healing Burst – needs to be some kind of replacement to lod, currently costs 6.3 energy if at 5 energy on cast up to 10 energy. Change range to in the area,1s cast, 15s recharge,reduce healing, affect to: if more than 4..3 allies are affected you don't lose energy the 5 energy, make it reward not punish.
Divine Intervention: 1/4s cast, 5s duration, if target ally recieve more than 300...200 dmg in one second, half that dmg is healed and party is healed for 25% of the dmg
Spell Shield : 10e ->5e reduce blackout duration by 1-2 seconds
Aura of Stability: 1/4s cast. reduce duration to 3...12 (at 14), that way u cannot maintain on multiple targets and is less likely to "linger" on targets.
Aegis: Reduce block to 25% at vod. After 1..4 blocks on a target, aegis ends. warriors swing at ~8 times to one guy under aegis with no frenzy, so would half its duration on a single target.

Power Leak: increase recharge to 15s
Chaos Storm: change to nearby, why not, you make other useless buffs also.
Buff Inspiration Line, its sad that an unspecc'd glyph is better than this entire line of spells. Also, change the spells that just give energy to have more risk/reward, like power drain.
Ward against Melee: Block to 60%, For every ally in the ward its block percentage is reduced by 10% (is this possible with guild wars engine?), prevents teams from full camping ward, encourages smart kiting to and from ward, and reduces its effectiveness to just drop it on npc's at vod. If this is not possible reduce its block to 25% at vod or some other nerf.

Shields Up: Make it not block archer? Possibly make it only block attack skills or only non-attack skills.

Nerf Motigons...Again: There healing is mindless, takes no skill to play, and is near impossible to shutdown.
Defensive Anthem: reduce block to 25% at vod

Dervishes: buff/change some of the useless elites, i wont get into dervishes in this post. The new deep wound was a great idea, cause now if some of the other elits are made better people might consider running dervish's that are not Mel derv's if they can still deep wound.

Splinter Weapon:Honestly the best change for this is dont make npc's ball up....but seeing as that hasnt been done in the past year.....
Ancestors Rage: If you want to know how good this skill is, i ran it on my monk once and it did 96 dmg at vod at 7 spec...just wow. The damage needs to come in 2-4 packets far enough apart that you cant spike with it (this could have the negative affect though of going under prot) or maybe give it a cast time so it can be interupted.

Div · Jan 19, 2008, 03:52 AM // 03:52

I award Langola with the "Ensign award," for the longest, most detailed explanation and critique of the issue at hand. Saves me the effort of typing up a massive essay.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jan 19, 2008, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

As a player I have always preferred party healing to party defense on both sides of the spectrum. Against it, it is less frustrating for me to do damage and have it countered with a prompt heal than it is seeing "blocked" after every swing. And the same can be said when I am a defensive profession...I would rather see the bars drop and raise them back up than just prevent them from dropping.

But hey...that's probably why I prefer healer to protter.

However, one thing to say about DA and Aegis is, while party heals will counter damage from melee, casters, degen etc., blocking only prevents melee damage. One could always take casters in a block-heavy meta. I imagine if enough people started blasting people with lighting or fire right through their block-based defense the meta may shift away from such an anti-melee based back line. Although it is early (lawl, ok so its noon and I stayed up too late playing :P) and I may be way off.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

ensoriki · Jan 19, 2008, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

I award Langola with the "Ensign award," for the longest, most detailed explanation and critique of the issue at hand. Saves me the effort of typing up a massive essay.

What essay are you talking about? The post on this page?
is skill wishes.

Chilly Ress · Jan 19, 2008, 04:37 AM // 04:37

this skill update was bad. wait. all of them are bad.

Riotgear · Jan 19, 2008, 04:47 AM // 04:47

Since Anet seems to be too lazy to fix NPCs balling up, I'll propose the same lazy fix I did before: Simply make NPCs resistant to AOE damage. Not sure if this is entirely possible, but may as well throw it out there.

Make echos maintained the same way as maintained enchantments are: -1 pip energy, cancel whenever. Get rid of this pay-for-once-ever unremovable uncounterable permanent buff trash.

Glyph should return cost, not lower it.

LoD should probably get buffed back, but let's face it, it shouldn't be a must-take. There need to be viable alternatives that are easy to slot.

RhanoctJocosa · Jan 19, 2008, 04:59 AM // 04:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guillaume De Sonoma

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=113319

Best thread ever.