Time for another skill update/changes thread

[IMMORTAlMITCH]

The game is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up right now, there's about 2-3 different builds that are viable and all of them have bars that are pretty much set in stone.

Party healing needs to be back on monks, if not LoD than at least do something with Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight to make it viable.

Splinter weapon needs to get toned down, I understand that this would probably mean that people would stop running rits (in gvg), but let's be honest, no one gives a shit, it would make the game a lot better.

Right now people have to run PwK on rits (which isnt that big a deal, but the skill is pretty horrible) and Motivation paragons (which is a lot bigger deal since it greatly reduces the flexibility of paragons and team builds period) the other option is to run a mo/e or e/mo flagger with heal party, but this pretty much requires you to run splinter weapon on a midliner because you severely handicap yourself by not bringing it.

Interrupts, Megabane (intended typo) and Power Leak in particular, could use some toning down, right now it is too effective to just spam interrupts on monks at will rather than actually aiming for key skills.

There's basically 2 playstyles atm, pressure (which in this meta equates to shitting all over monks with interrupts, KDs and shame/diversion while your warriors train shit) and spike (which equates to using diversion/shame/KDs on monks on a spike while you use a ton of ench removal.

As much as I hated the blockway meta, it was actually more fun than the current one, because you'd actually have to shut down defense to create windows of opportunity rather than blindly training the shit out of shit and having a team collapse as soon as their fast cast ward gets interrupted once.

[Riotgear]

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Party healing needs to be back on monks, if not LoD than at least do something with Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight to make it viable.

I don't think it needs to go back on Monks as much as the options need to not be a complete pain in the ass to take.

Splinter weapon needs to get toned down, I understand that this would probably mean that people would stop running rits (in gvg), but let's be honest, no one gives a shit, it would make the game a lot better.

AoE has always been overly effective at VoD. There are other ways to resolve this.

[Ensign]

Originally Posted by Riotgear

The problem is a bit more widespread than "prot isn't good enough."

I don't know what you are responding to but it isn't to anything I wrote. I also happen to disagree with virtually everything you said.

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Splinter weapon needs to get toned down

I think that if modern teams knew how to play GvG at VoD, there wouldn't be all that much complaining about Splinter Weapon, especially on the primary runner. If you were winning the match going into VoD but get wiped out by Splinter Weapon at VoD, you're almost certainly doing something very, very wrong.

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Interrupts, Megabane (intended typo) and Power Leak in particular, could use some toning down

Agree with this completely. If not just because they're too powerful, but because of how stupid it is to have the most broken skills in the game depend so highly on which continent the game in question happened to be hosted on.

[Riotgear]

Originally Posted by Ensign

I don't know what you are responding to but it isn't to anything I wrote. I also happen to disagree with virtually everything you said.

My point is that distributed defenses happened for other reasons than hits to monks. If anything, I'd say the hits to monks (aside from LoD getting hammered) have been some of the less-drastic changes.

Of course, I'm also speaking mostly of the pre-LoD nerf situation. The post-LoD-nerf meta is so terrible that I barely feel it's worth discussing, because the reasons for it being terrible are pretty obvious.

[Frantic-Sheep]

Originally Posted by Ensign

I think that if modern teams knew how to play GvG at VoD, there wouldn't be all that much complaining about Splinter Weapon, especially on the primary runner. If you were winning the match going into VoD but get wiped out by Splinter Weapon at VoD, you're almost certainly doing something very, very wrong.

Glyph sac meteor shower?

[Lorekeeper]

Personally splinter weapons effectiveness is a symptom of a much deeper problem. That the game has become so focused on physicals being the primary and arguably the only viable form of killing and that the presence of an entire class in GvG revolves around the very narrow task of boosting the killing powers of those physicals. Splinter weapon and ancestors rage only exasperate a deep seeded problem with GW since the addition of ritualists dervishes and paragons.

i totally agree on the comments about magebane and power leak... that we might need these incredibly overpowered skills to create windows of opportunity speaks volumes about game balance as a whole. I would much prefer a wider range of moderately powerful tools of disruption... that could be used to disrupt the already wide range of powerful tools of offense or defense... rather than a tiny list of ultra powerful tools of disruption that are the only tools capable of disrupting the same range of offensive and defensive tools. And yes... having that tiny list of viable tools rely on latency is also a very bad thing in terms of competition between continents on opposite sides of the world.

comments...

1) rework the list of disruption style skills... tone down the most powerful ones and tone up the least powerful ones. You dont even have to make the list that powerful... you just need to tweak the meta so that defensive webs arent so layered.
2) improve prot monks abiility to selectively and actively prot (i think SoD needs to be rebuffed and perhaps lifesheath looked at as an alternative option)... at the same time tone down all forms of wide reaching passive defense (Ward melee, aegis, defensive anthem etc)... making sure that the ability for a prot monk to prot can be open to disruption.
3) tone down healer monks ability to make red bars go ALLLL the way up with 1 skill. (eg WoH) making sure that the ability for a heal monk to heal is not as vulnerable to disruption as prot should be.
4) take a long hard look at the ritualist profession.
5) take a long hard look at the 4 physical builds currently domination the meta... figure out why they force teams to rely on wide reaching passive defenses and find a solution to that. (basically the more physicals you face the more passive your defense needs to be since single target anti physical defenses no longer is enough especially if you consider the poor state prot monks are in).
6) if teams are being forced to run wide reaching passive defense to counter multiple physicals... but noone is switching away from physicals in the face of the blockway meta... realise that this is probably because it is mainly physical builds that have the best chance at success in the blockway meta anyway because of splinter weapon at VoD and since casters really have not the offensive AND defensive capabilities to match and do not enjoy the same benefits from things like ancestors rage and splinter weapon...
7) take a look at casters... move them away from support roles... or at least make them attractive alternatives to things like paragons.
8) take a look at VoD... NPC reaction to AoE and clustering... consider more variation in NPC class... perhaps add more casters... perhaps add more defensive NPCs that help mitigate the large amounts of damage at VoD which will help teams not have to pack so much passive defense to survive at VoD. Consider reducing the dmg of NPCs in general... or consider lengthening the time at which the guild lord walks out of the boat to give more opportunity for teams to avoid fighting at the stand.

.... just my personal thoughts on the matter.

[Dominator1370]

As much as I'd like to respond to everything you said, I'm going to have to pick and choose...

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

2) improve prot monks abiility to selectively and actively prot (i think SoD needs to be rebuffed and perhaps lifesheath looked at as an alternative option)... at the same time tone down all forms of wide reaching passive defense (Ward melee, aegis, defensive anthem etc)... making sure that the ability for a prot monk to prot can be open to disruption.

It has been explained by people far more intelligent than I why that doesn't work. Just as a quick recap, though: bottom line, you need to keep your party alive long enough to win. Shielding Hands isn't going to cut it, whether or not you buff it. If you suddenly start nerfing party defense, you still have to find a way to keep your team alive, which means your builds just become more and more restricted. That's not particularly good. If you were to make other (and less annoying) party-wide defenses viable, they might see use.

3) tone down healer monks ability to make red bars go ALLLL the way up with 1 skill. (eg WoH) making sure that the ability for a heal monk to heal is not as vulnerable to disruption as prot should be.

I'm not sure if you're exaggerating or delusional. WoH, with the conditional, heals for 216 at 14 Healing Prayers. I don't know about you, but I run as close to 630 health as I can get. There's only one skill that can bring a bar all the way back up on its own, and that's Infuse. Since Infuse has it's own drawbacks, like, you know, taking half your health each time you use it, I don't think Infuse is too uber.
I really don't understand why so many have a problem with Monks being able to keep people alive, be it through prot or healing. If you want to argue that WoH is too energy efficient, or that Aegis chains are annoying, that's fine. Monks still need to keep their team up, though; otherwise there's no point in bringing them.

6) if teams are being forced to run wide reaching passive defense to counter multiple physicals... but noone is switching away from physicals in the face of the blockway meta... realise that this is probably because it is mainly physical builds that have the best chance at success in the blockway meta anyway because of splinter weapon at VoD and since casters really have not the offensive AND defensive capabilities to match and do not enjoy the same benefits from things like ancestors rage and splinter weapon...
7) take a look at casters... move them away from support roles... or at least make them attractive alternatives to things like paragons.

Look, it's pretty simple. I'm not some sage of Guild Wars knowledge, but even I've figured this out. Physicals are the best way in the game to force kills. Why the hell do you think builds have so much block in the first place? Casters shouldn't be offensive machines. Why? Because they're damn good at the support role. If you didn't want support, you wouldn't take a caster, you'd take another physical. If you slot a caster, their support roles are your team's (as well as the individual player's) primary concern. The trend has been to make support more difficult for casters. Just like with your Monks, that doesn't mean that they aren't going to do it any more, it just means they're going to be more focused on their support roles and have less time to perform an offensive roles.

[Animate]

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

The game is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up right now, there's about 2-3 different builds that are viable and all of them have bars that are pretty much set in stone.

Yea, that's very true.
Watching gvg in observer mode became incredibly boring.

But I think this is also a matter of the gw pvp community.
Everyone runs the same builds, everyone copies.
Hardly any guilds left who dare to be confident in their own build and have some imagination of their own. The pvp community is rather about elitism than fun, people want to win, so people copy builds that work. If they get beaten by something other than mainstream balanced builds, it's imba and lame. Like sins are called "button-mashers" etc. When EvIL played two a/e, they were just the same in mashing buttons... shock, falling spider, etc.. I don't see the difference. People are intolerant of new builds and scream for nerfs all the time. So now that everyone plays the same crap, I suppose all are satisfied with that.

Another example of this is RenO.
They have been around for ages, but when they played their sin split, I read on many forums "they can only play sin split with hex necro blabla", etc. Those people have no clue, but they wanna look leet and skilled, thus saying RenO is bad or whatever.
Of course you play the great balanced build if you don't wanna be a loser.

Games are meant to be fun, and pvp should be about fun.
If people enjoy playing hex-overs, sin splits, gimmicks or whatever... what's wrong with that, as long as it's not overpowered? People don't adapt to it, they call it naptitude or whatever, whine and demand a nerf.
How often have I read "nerf to oblivion pls"....

When Soul Wedding played a glimmer of light monk, soon afterwards EW also started playing one. WM stops playing, people stop considering that build and run LoD + SoD for ages.
The game is lacking guilds which help the game to keep it interesting.

I sincerely feel no admiration for all those so called "top guilds" out there who all run the same build day in & day out. Yea, it's leet, they win, they are the best... it makes the game boring. Like "oh, look, that guild always wins using the same balanced build. They are so leet. Let's play that too.". Adds nothing but monotony to the game.

This is okay for people who play merely for the sake of winning because they enjoy it the most. But there exist different people as well.
A balanced game should have diversity.

Maybe you can discuss about balance for ages, but I believe the community has a bigger influence on this than certain skills.

This is only my personal feeling about the current "meta", so don't feel offended when I say that I have the impression those top-players are very dull. Their elitism and discrimination of any build other than balanced scares away new players and is not good for the game in any way. It is also not funny.

There's this guild named xxx, playing that build.
And then there's this guild named yyy, which is actually the Xth smurf of that same guild, playing ... almost the same over and over again. And the ladder is full of those smurfs of the same people on many ranks, making it even harder for new pvp/gvg players.

If people post deviant builds, in most cases they are not that good; but often they simply receive criticism until their build ends up as an oh-so-great & mundane balanced build, with slight differences at the most.

On the other hand, top guilds obviously are top guilds because they play to win and don't seem to mind these issues, such as build diversity. This is the mentality of those guilds/players... which have countless smurfs and thus are the .. majority?... making it difficult for new pvp players... the community is not growing, you see the same people, the same smurfs, the same builds everyday... which makes the game unattractive for me.


Players demand balance updates to get something new?
Instead of creating something new themselves.
Create your own balance update, don't wait and whine, even if you lose the game in the end, it can be a fun game.
Why is it that you only see different things when the ladder is frozen... because you can't lose rating. If this is all you want, I don't know why people want balance updates again and again. Players are afraid to lose, afraid not to be elite, or whatever I don't know. People using ineptitude are called naptitude noobs, searing flames are lame even if no one plays it, hexes are always lame because they require no skill, people rage and trashtalk... there you go. Childish pvp elitism is bad for the game, but that's the case in most games.

It's like "I'm a very important person. I am sooo skilled. I can't play a lame hexover, people would call me a noob. Hexes should be nerfed, spirit spam should be nerfed, sins should be nerfed... they require no skill. And I have a lot of skill running one and the same much better build. I don't care about noobs who have no skill and play those builds; everyone who plays those builds are noobs, they won't learn anything from playing those builds anyway.
Only when you play balanced you can learn to become as l33t as me. Blablabla..."

Sadly this is the mentality of many pvp'ers which is maybe why we arrived at the current "meta".

I surmise arena.net/Izzy/whoever might be aware of these community issues, so this is the reason you don't get "fast balance updates" and "buff/nerf 100 skills, not 10!" ... I doubt it would be any good. You certainly don't know what to do.

It's a pity you can't watch "top" 5000 guilds playing gvg.
I bet it would be a lot more entertaining and fun than those "top guilds" you have in observer.

The meta actually was more broken, but also more interesting even when Nightfall was released. ATM I perceive the current meta as the most boring one ever, which is why I stopped playing.

Hope no one feels offended by my personal feelings about the current pvp situation.

"We think if everyone plays the same builds, the game will be boring." -EvIL



Wishing you luck anyway, byebye

[IMMORTAlMITCH]

Originally Posted by Animate

But I think this is also a matter of the gw pvp community.
Everyone runs the same builds, everyone copies. And a lot more stuff essentially saying the same thing 9001 times.

No, there just aren't many options atm.

[Lorekeeper]

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

It has been explained by people far more intelligent than I why that doesn't work. Just as a quick recap, though: bottom line, you need to keep your party alive long enough to win. Shielding Hands isn't going to cut it, whether or not you buff it. If you suddenly start nerfing party defense, you still have to find a way to keep your team alive, which means your builds just become more and more restricted. That's not particularly good. If you were to make other (and less annoying) party-wide defenses viable, they might see use.

you refute my argument that we need better prot by saying that shielding hands isnt enough even if its buffed? Did i mention shielding hands at all?

By treating each of my points separately... and out of context with the others of course a flat out nerf of all passive defense would be a bad thing... but i never spoke about nerfing passive defense without a more comprehensive treatment of why its so necessa,ry in the first place. I suggest you try to understand that before you cry foul.

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

I'm not sure if you're exaggerating or delusional. WoH, with the conditional, heals for 216 at 14 Healing Prayers. I don't know about you, but I run as close to 630 health as I can get. There's only one skill that can bring a bar all the way back up on its own, and that's Infuse. Since Infuse has it's own drawbacks, like, you know, taking half your health each time you use it, I don't think Infuse is too uber.
I really don't understand why so many have a problem with Monks being able to keep people alive, be it through prot or healing. If you want to argue that WoH is too energy efficient, or that Aegis chains are annoying, that's fine. Monks still need to keep their team up, though; otherwise there's no point in bringing them.

Red bars go up skills are the most uninteresting ways of staying alive in GW... and unless theyre buffed to the level they got buffed in the last update they just arent enough to keep people alive (that we need ultra buffed heal skills to stay alive without things like LoD is a huge testimony to the problems highlight in the last page of posts). You cant heal yourself to victory and nor should you expect to be able to... any backline will tell you that. Its the absence of good prot and viable party healing options thats making it necessary to buff healing skills like WoH and HB. But by buffing those 2 skills they ignored the real nature of the problem and made it worse.

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

Look, it's pretty simple. I'm not some sage of Guild Wars knowledge, but even I've figured this out. Physicals are the best way in the game to force kills. Why the hell do you think builds have so much block in the first place? Casters shouldn't be offensive machines. Why? Because they're damn good at the support role. If you didn't want support, you wouldn't take a caster, you'd take another physical. If you slot a caster, their support roles are your team's (as well as the individual player's) primary concern. The trend has been to make support more difficult for casters. Just like with your Monks, that doesn't mean that they aren't going to do it any more, it just means they're going to be more focused on their support roles and have less time to perform an offensive roles.

are you simply repeating what i said and presenting it as something i didnt understand?

as for your comments on the role of casters as support roles... have you not noticed the gradual decline in the number of proper support casters in GvG meta lately? Notice that teams just have 1 caster in the midline whos ''support'' duties include ward melee for defensive support and enchant removals for offensive spike support? And perhaps the odd diversion or shame if it actually gets through the enemy rangers or mesmers attention.

physical classes have always had the upperhand in terms of killing power with caster support in the midlines aiding offense and defense by working its way through enemy defenses keeping frontlines clean from snares blinds etc noone is disputing that basic fact about GW PvP but since nightfall people have moved away from midlines focused on disruptive style tactics (mesmers that actually have skil bars designed to gradually break monks down completely as opposed to the mesmers today who simply aim to open smaller windows of opportunity with power leak and diversion and are glorified enchantment removers to enable spikes to go through) to more blunt methods of achieving the same goals of offense and defense... the paragon and ritualist being the most obvious example of such classes because it is that much harder to successfully run a pressure build using old school disruption. [DF] can because they are full of players who were GvGing at the era of KGYU style pressure builds and they are well experienced at cracking teams wide open with a sustained barrage of disruption. Most guilds in the ladder today are not so well versed in this type of play and so prefer the tactic of overwhelming defense with physical offense and spiking with midlines built around spike assistance duties.

the entire message in the last page or so of posts is to highlight the move away from difficult disruption style plays to builds packed with classes that provide more direct modes of support to frontlines because the returns harvested from these classes are far more wide reaching (eg splinter weapon and ancestors rage rits... paragons with party wide shouts) and are far more suited to a game that is all about the VoD fight and in many ways require far less experience and skill to play effectively.

[Dominator1370]

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

you refute my argument that we need better prot by saying that shielding hands isnt enough even if its buffed? Did i mention shielding hands at all?

By treating each of my points separately... and out of context with the others of course a flat out nerf of all passive defense would be a bad thing... but i never spoke about nerfing passive defense without a more comprehensive treatment of why its so necessa,ry in the first place. I suggest you try to understand that before you cry foul.

Shielding Hands isn't a party-wide defense, hence it isn't going to keep your party alive. If it's buffed to the point where it can, then we have an entirely different problem. And no, you didn't mention Shielding Hands explicitly, but you were talking about buffing non-party prot. I picked one.

Red bars go up skills are the most uninteresting ways of staying alive in GW... and unless theyre buffed to the level they got buffed in the last update they just arent enough to keep people alive (that we need ultra buffed heal skills to stay alive without things like LoD is a huge testimony to the problems highlight in the last page of posts). You cant heal yourself to victory and nor should you expect to be able to... any backline will tell you that. Its the absence of good prot and viable party healing options thats making it necessary to buff healing skills like WoH and HB. But by buffing those 2 skills they ignored the real nature of the problem and made it worse.

Strong party heals and good prot can keep a party alive, but that's the way things were pre-LoD nerf. How interesting was that meta?

Anyway, in Guild Wars, you can do spike damage. If you can't spike heal to deal with it, then there exists an imbalance. Sure, you can prot spikes, but the last thing we want to do is encourage lame prot-ignoring-spike gimmick builds, which is what you'd be doing if you nerf red-bar-go-ups in favor of buffing prots.

are you simply repeating what i said and presenting it as something i didnt understand?

as for your comments on the role of casters as support roles... have you not noticed the gradual decline in the number of proper support casters in GvG meta lately? Notice that teams just have 1 caster in the midline whos ''support'' duties include ward melee for defensive support and enchant removals for offensive spike support? And perhaps the odd diversion or shame if it actually gets through the enemy rangers or mesmers attention.

physical classes have always had the upperhand in terms of killing power with caster support in the midlines aiding offense and defense by working its way through enemy defenses keeping frontlines clean from snares blinds etc noone is disputing that basic fact about GW PvP but since nightfall people have moved away from midlines focused on disruptive style tactics (mesmers that actually have skil bars designed to gradually break monks down completely as opposed to the mesmers today who simply aim to open smaller windows of opportunity with power leak and diversion and are glorified enchantment removers to enable spikes to go through) to more blunt methods of achieving the same goals of offense and defense... the paragon and ritualist being the most obvious example of such classes because it is that much harder to successfully run a pressure build using old school disruption. [DF] can because they are full of players who were GvGing at the era of KGYU style pressure builds and they are well experienced at cracking teams wide open with a sustained barrage of disruption. Most guilds in the ladder today are not so well versed in this type of play and so prefer the tactic of overwhelming defense with physical offense and spiking with midlines built around spike assistance duties.

the entire message in the last page or so of posts is to highlight the move away from difficult disruption style plays to builds packed with classes that provide more direct modes of support to frontlines because the returns harvested from these classes are far more wide reaching (eg splinter weapon and ancestors rage rits... paragons with party wide shouts) and are far more suited to a game that is all about the VoD fight and in many ways require far less experience and skill to play effectively.

As to that, I guess I misunderstood the point you were making in some horrendous way... I'm still not clear on what you want casters to do, though... Obviously, you don't want them to just be another Paragon or Ritualist, so what do we do to them?

[IMMORTAlMITCH]

Prots are fine, the problem is that even if you prot people will still take (some) damage and atm there are no good party healing options to mob up that damage so people run dumb shit like Song Of Restoration/Mending Refrain/Protective Was Kaolai.

Dragons Lifekeeper, you might want to start writing smaller posts or summarize them at the end, because I (and I assume the same goes for a lot of people) am not gonna waste my time reading a 3 page long essay on what's wrong with the game by a mediocre player that doesn't even play GvG.

[Lorekeeper]

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Prots are fine, the problem is that even if you prot people will still take (some) damage and atm there are no good party healing options to mob up that damage so people run dumb shit like Song Of Restoration/Mending Refrain/Protective Was Kaolai.

Dragons Lifekeeper, you might want to start writing smaller posts or summarize them at the end, because I (and I assume the same goes for a lot of people) am not gonna waste my time reading a 3 page long essay on what's wrong with the game by a mediocre player that doesn't even play GvG.

you need glasses if you think my posts are 3 page long... some people are bothering to respond to my posts because they see merit in doing so. If you do not want to participate in the discussion then dont... i wont stop posting just because i dont play 20 GvGs a day. This is an open forum for open discussion... if you see errors in the content of my posts then feel free to join the discussion. I think ive contributed well to most recent skill balance threads... where more often than not alot of the things i include in my balance wishlists closely mirror changes that actually get implemented... if people take issue to things i suggest then being the open forum this is... they have the opportunity to either ignore them or to point out the errors... at the end of the day i dont give a damn whether you are in a top guild or not... if you have a good argument to make that is all that matters...

Discussion about competitive games arent E-peen arenas where you spout BS like im in the number 1 guild therefore anything i say goes... or your opinion isnt valid because you dont play in competitive GvG. You have no idea about my abilities as a player and i have none of yours... like you said... i dont play much GvG at present but that doesnt mean you can summarise that i am a mediocre player NOR does it automatically mean i dont understand the GvG meta.

Would you tell a sports commentator that they had no valid opinion about sports because they werent in a first division team? How about everyday discussion by everyday people about politics or sports or anything in life... opinion is valid whereever and from whoever it comes from as long as it makes a valid point... you would do well to deflate that falsely overblown ego that has leaked into the majority of your posts in these forums...

talk about gimped attitude to the community...

[Vinnyman]

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

you refute my argument that we need better prot by saying that shielding hands isnt enough even if its buffed? Did i mention shielding hands at all?

By treating each of my points separately... and out of context with the others of course a flat out nerf of all passive defense would be a bad thing... but i never spoke about nerfing passive defense without a more comprehensive treatment of why its so necessa,ry in the first place. I suggest you try to understand that before you cry foul.



Red bars go up skills are the most uninteresting ways of staying alive in GW... and unless theyre buffed to the level they got buffed in the last update they just arent enough to keep people alive (that we need ultra buffed heal skills to stay alive without things like LoD is a huge testimony to the problems highlight in the last page of posts). You cant heal yourself to victory and nor should you expect to be able to... any backline will tell you that. Its the absence of good prot and viable party healing options thats making it necessary to buff healing skills like WoH and HB. But by buffing those 2 skills they ignored the real nature of the problem and made it worse.



are you simply repeating what i said and presenting it as something i didnt understand?

as for your comments on the role of casters as support roles... have you not noticed the gradual decline in the number of proper support casters in GvG meta lately? Notice that teams just have 1 caster in the midline whos ''support'' duties include ward melee for defensive support and enchant removals for offensive spike support? And perhaps the odd diversion or shame if it actually gets through the enemy rangers or mesmers attention.

physical classes have always had the upperhand in terms of killing power with caster support in the midlines aiding offense and defense by working its way through enemy defenses keeping frontlines clean from snares blinds etc noone is disputing that basic fact about GW PvP but since nightfall people have moved away from midlines focused on disruptive style tactics (mesmers that actually have skil bars designed to gradually break monks down completely as opposed to the mesmers today who simply aim to open smaller windows of opportunity with power leak and diversion and are glorified enchantment removers to enable spikes to go through) to more blunt methods of achieving the same goals of offense and defense... the paragon and ritualist being the most obvious example of such classes because it is that much harder to successfully run a pressure build using old school disruption. [DF] can because they are full of players who were GvGing at the era of KGYU style pressure builds and they are well experienced at cracking teams wide open with a sustained barrage of disruption. Most guilds in the ladder today are not so well versed in this type of play and so prefer the tactic of overwhelming defense with physical offense and spiking with midlines built around spike assistance duties.

the entire message in the last page or so of posts is to highlight the move away from difficult disruption style plays to builds packed with classes that provide more direct modes of support to frontlines because the returns harvested from these classes are far more wide reaching (eg splinter weapon and ancestors rage rits... paragons with party wide shouts) and are far more suited to a game that is all about the VoD fight and in many ways require far less experience and skill to play effectively.

Soooo basically, you want the meta to go back to the days where two prot monks can support an entire time just about and run a one dimensional caster lineup?

You do realize that the meta has evolved to something else entirely right? You do realize that there are four additional professions added since prophecies right? You do realize that the state of the game is different right? You do realize that any game this wide scale, there are and always will be changes right? You do realize that there is no need to get your panties up in a bunch about right? I agree with IMMORTAIMITCH.

Talk about being nostalgic.

[Lorekeeper]

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Soooo basically, you want the meta to go back to the days where two prot monks can support an entire time just about and run a one dimensional caster lineup?

You do realize that the meta has evolved to something else entirely right? You do realize that there are four additional professions added since prophecies right? You do realize that the state of the game is different right? You do realize that any game this wide scale, there are and always will be changes right? You do realize that there is no need to get your panties up in a bunch about right? I agree with IMMORTAIMITCH.

Talk about being nostalgic.

since when does any of this suggest going back to the boon prot days? You completely misunderstand the suggestions being made here... not only by me but by Ensign too... and Greedy Gus...

the whole point is... the addition of 4 physical classes was the problem in the first place.

my ever so polite fellow poster immortalmitch even voiced his own criticisms of the meta... and even says he prefers to go back to old blockway meta... what harm is there for people to come here and post their views about what is wrong with the game and how they think it should be fixed...

none whatsoever...

but there is something wrong with people coming into discussions and not bothering to voice their own ideas on the topic thats being discussed and instead just trolling peoples posts and just making the whole thread a heaping pile of flames. What contribution other than to totally misrepresent my own ideas have you made? NONE

dont come in to a thread spouting nonsense about my understanding of the game when its clear that you dont bother to read my posts... of course i realise what the meta has shifted to... ive clearly made observations to that effect... just because game metas shift it doesnt mean the shifts are good ones nor necessary ones. GW has enjoyed one too many bad shifts forced on players by skill balance... shifts in the meta caused by players is one thing... artificially induced shifts in meta caused by nerfs and buffs is another.

[Vinnyman]

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

since when does any of this suggest going back to the boon prot days? You completely misunderstand the suggestions being made here... not only by me but by Ensign too... and Greedy Gus....

Oh, so you don't think that prot monks are in terrible state? Why prot monks specifically?

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

the whole point is... the addition of 4 physical classes was the problem in the first place..

Ok, I agree..but don't tell me you actually believed that the meta would remain relatively the same....

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

my ever so polite fellow poster immortalmitch even voiced his own criticisms of the meta... and even says he prefers to go back to old blockway meta... what harm is there for people to come here and post their views about what is wrong with the game and how they think it should be fixed...

none whatsoever...
.

I never said there was any harm in posting criticisms and view about builds. Don't misconscew my post.

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

but there is something wrong with people coming into discussions and not bothering to voice their own ideas on the topic thats being discussed and instead just trolling peoples posts and just making the whole thread a heaping pile of flames. What contribution other than to totally misrepresent my own ideas have you made? NONE.

Wow, you seriously can't read. Last I checked, a troll is someone who comes into any thread posting garbage and insults randomly. Last I checked, I had 6 post with this post making it 7.

Look kid, I did read through your post. Red bars going up is a boring way of staying alive in pvp? Wow, how else is a team suppose to stay alive? Then you complain about "Omg, they need to debuff wide spread defenses blah blah blah." Then you say that we need to buff the prot monks and make them more viable as team defenses. Well then, maybe we should just run without monks and have physical damage run rampant without being attended too. Good point! Gather your thoughts and post again before you spit out uncollected, unorganized garbage.

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

dont come in to a thread spouting nonsense about my understanding of the game when its clear that you dont bother to read my posts... of course i realise what the meta has shifted to... ive clearly made observations to that effect... just because game metas shift it doesnt mean the shifts are good ones nor necessary ones. GW has enjoyed one too many bad shifts forced on players by skill balance... shifts in the meta caused by players is one thing... artificially induced shifts in meta caused by nerfs and buffs is another.

Well, it appears that you are asking for the meta to return to the one dimensional state. Single job casters, Self centered monks? You do realize that this is a Team Oriented game right? Also, most updates have been made due to that fact that most players complain about skills that they simply refuse to take initiative to find ways around it.

[Animate]

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

No, there just aren't many options atm.

That's a convenient way of putting it imo.
Izzy fails at game balance, we don't.
Izzy make a balance update, give us some new toys pls.
Aren't the players responsible for what is being played?
Btw this whole threat is about essentially saying the same things 9001 times.
Anyway, never mind.

[Ensign]

Originally Posted by Riotgear

My point is that distributed defenses happened for other reasons than hits to monks.

Bits and pieces of distributed defense has been a part of the game ever since people started learning how to play, between BFlash/Heal Party Eles, Wards on everything, midline Aegis, smiters, Mesmers with lots of removal, trappers, defensive cripshots, you name it.

We've seen two real shifts since Nightfall in regards to defense:

1) The nature of off-Monk defense has shifted away from spot disruption towards more passive area defense.

2) The defensive foundation of a team has shifted off the Monks and onto the midline.

The former is boring, but the latter is the bigger problem in a lot of ways. Pre-Nightfall, Monks were self-sufficient defensive templates; now, in order to keep up with the offensive creep, they've had to sacrifice a lot of that, and to compensate they need much more support from the midline. While breaking a Monk used to be the biggest blow you can deal to a team, now it's stopping the BSurge/Ward or tacticsgon or whatever. Without a midline a Warrior can simply Frenzy on a modern Monk and kill it, which was unheard of in the old days.

Essentially, there is much, much more interdependence on defense now than there used to be, and while that's somewhat interesting from a build perspective it's a disaster from a gameplay perspective. The more pieces that need to move in unison to make things work, the less flexibility you have to play Guild Wars.

Originally Posted by Frantic-Sheep

Glyph sac meteor shower?

Same deal. AoE-VoD plans do not turn around games that you are losing. They are, however, often needed to seal a win from a strong position, or can be used to gain an advantage from a roughly neutral position. They don't turn a lost game around with any frequency.

The only strategy that really turned bad positions around in my memory was the blockway defenses that let you tank NPC balls for a long period of time, which have fortunately been nerfed.

Originally Posted by Animate

When EvIL played two a/e, they were just the same in mashing buttons... shock, falling spider, etc.. I don't see the difference.

You weren't paying attention.

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Prots are fine, the problem is that even if you prot people will still take (some) damage and atm there are no good party healing options to mob up that damage so people run dumb shit like Song Of Restoration/Mending Refrain/Protective Was Kaolai.

Agree. Party healing is an essential mechanic in Guild Wars. Only having shitty options for party heals has put a lot of really unfun restrictions on the types of builds you can play.

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

the whole point is... the addition of 4 physical classes was the problem in the first place.

4 physical builds aren't new nor are they really a problem; one of EvIL's builds from Germany was 2 sins 1 hammer 1 ranger, and iB ran 2 War/2 Ranger pretty heavily. The big differences are that you get much, much less damage and disruption out of your midline now, particularly Mesmers; your physicals are much more defensive; and the whole mess is a bunch of interdependant garbage instead of strong independent characters playing Guild Wars.

[Lorekeeper]

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Oh, so you don't think that prot monks are in terrible state? Why prot monks specifically?

i do think prot monks are in a terrible state... seriously i dont think i could have made that point any more clearer in any of my most recent posts.

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Ok, I agree..but don't tell me you actually believed that the meta would remain relative the same....

no i never did... i never liked the addition of 3 physical classes and a caster class whos basically a glorified physical class buffer.

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Look kid, I did read through your post. Red bars going up is a boring way of staying alive in pvp? Wow, how else is a team suppose to stay alive? Then you complain about "Omg, they need to debuff wide spread defenses blah blah blah." Then you say that we need to buff the prot monks and make them more viable to team defenses. Well then, maybe we should just run without monks and have physical damage run rampant without being attended too. Good point! Gather your thoughts and post again before you spit out uncollected, unorganized garbage.

listen sonny,
take a good 5-10min to read my previous posts in the last page or so and then you will have your answer. Theres a reason why Anet had to buff healing prayers in reaction to the nerfs they did to prot monks and to dominant forms of passive defense because without buffing healing prayers teams were dropping like flies. Go look at the updates... nerf to passive and active prots... buffs to healing. I prefer having more powerful active prots and less powerful healing. Do you prefer less powerful active prot and more powerful heals?

I think alot of people would prefer the former rather than the later... preventative over curative measures to stay alive. I would rather immunise against problems than forever play catch up the instant they occur...

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Well then, maybe we should just run without monks and have physical damage run rampant without being attended too. Good point!

this is getting beyond ridiculous and another total misinterpretation of my opinions... yet you feel the need to include as part of your evaluation of the ideas found in my posts... go read... understand and then respond. Its primary school english. Its not hard.

Originally Posted by Vinnyman

Well, it appears that you are asking for the meta to return to the one dimensional state. Single job casters, Self centered monks? You do realize that this is a Team Oriented game right? Also, most updates have been made due to that fact that most players complain about skills that they simply refuse to take initiative to find ways around it.

no im not.

here let me summarise my suggestions as simply as possible.

1) bring back effective active prot that rewards active play... eg following frontliners and predicting high dmg packets with SoD. Yet make it so that active prot that is open to being worked around by a smart frontline eg... watch for the SoD to be cast then spike another target. Or rewarding mesmers who know how to remove the important enchants instead of removing on 2 or 1. SoD with a 5 second recharge was too good in the blockway meta... it wasnt the fault of SoD but more a fault of the blockway meta. Anet took a heavy hand to blockway and prot monks and made it necessary to buff healers to counteract the sudden loss in ability for teams to stay alive vs all these physicals. Notice how ever since that update we have moved away from the ele/rit+mes/rit midline to the current para+mes/ele midline? Could it be because there are few ways to mitigate their dmg outside aegis and wards? Notice how teams are relying more on monk flag runners or motivation paragons with party heals? Cos we dont have access to good enough active or passive defenses to prevent dmg so people are opting to take things that heal it all instead.

2) bring back moderately powerful yet reliable party heals... LoD with 1 second cast but with a longer recharge at current healing power. So that people dont have to spec things like motivation paragons... (gg creating a physical dmg class that provides viable party healing support that requires little to no skill to play well).

3) take a long hard look at Vod - to solve issues with splinter weapon and arage. To solve a meta thats become far too focused on the flag stand battle at vod.

4) take a long hard look at splitting... make mend touch remove conditions in the same vein as plague touch... open up play a bit more rather than focusing it at the flag stand. Allow skirmish play that isnt resolved in a matter of 30seconds...

5)

Originally Posted by Ensign

Power creep has incidental effects on disruption when it makes it harder to use. Otherwise disruption gains in value with power creep since you're interrupting more valuable skills, the energy you destroy is preventing more of an effect, etc.

Besides some hard nerfs to critical skills (Blackout and Gale spring immediately to mind) there was a huge indirect nerf to hard shutdown when A.Net started hammering Monks and forcing teams to run more distributed defenses. When people could rely on 2-3 defensive characters, blacking out, knocking down, edenying, or otherwise shutting one of them down made a huge difference; when people run 5 defensive characters, shutting one down accomplishes much less.

The inverse is true on offense; with more defensive characters teams play with less offense, and and disruption you can throw onto their offense goes further.

basically make it so that people dont have to build a multilayered defensive web made up of moderately powerful defenses and still be able to pack a powerful offense (eg paragons)... and instead can rely on a defensive trinity between powerful active prot (thats vulnerable to timely removals or intelligent target switching)... reliable party heals (that can be interrupted by good players but can be kept safe by good monks and doesnt cancel out huge chunks of pressure)... and active/passive defenses provided by a caster midline that helps protect from offensive power if done correctly (that is vulnerable to shutdown from enemy midlines).

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

As much as I hated the blockway meta, it was actually more fun than the current one, because you'd actually have to shut down defense to create windows of opportunity rather than blindly training the shit out of shit and having a team collapse as soon as their fast cast ward gets interrupted once.

move the game away from physical dmg pressure or at least give teams more ways of protecting themselves against it...

you cant nerf both passive defense AND active defense.

But thats basically what Anet did.

The only reason why blockway meta was so boring was the the tools of disruption at our disposal werent numerous nor effective enough at unravelling the multiple layers of passive and active defenses.

However, i think the tools of disruption we have would be capable of dealing with powerful active prot... OR layers of passive defense.

we just dont have much of either now. And as a result we see the meta turn towards 4 physical builds... if you like that... so be it... i dont.

i dont think i can make it any more clear.

[jayce]

now that some have mentioned it, i really do miss the days of the boon prot monks. to me, they were just exciting to watch. i wouldn't mind seeing them make some kind of a return. perhaps buff divine boon to where you only lose energy if you are maintaining two or more enchantments.



Jayce Of Underworld