Time for another skill update/changes thread

[Animate]

Originally Posted by Ensign

You weren't paying attention.

Yea maybe I wasn't. Care to explain why?

[Dominator1370]

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

)
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).

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

...

i dont think i can make it any more clear.

I disagree about the clarity of your point. For starters, you seem to be suggesting that we, in some vague and unspecified way, at least partially unseat physicals as the engines that push kills and shift this responsibility elsewhere. Guild Wars has, since its inception, used physicals to push kills. Why are we changing this again after a few years of working?

For another, you don't want people to run multi-layered defenses, but you want people to be able to protect themselves against physical damage. How does that happen? I suppose we could create one uber-layer, but that hardly seems like a good thing...

Also, for your grand conclusion, you suggest that we keep players alive with "active prot, party-heals, and midline defense". Forgive me if I sound like an idiot, but if, since party healing isn't viable, we replace party heals with, say, WoH, isn't that how the game works right now? It sounds to me, after your pages and pages of various skirmishes of words to support some small point, that you're suggesting a buff to party healing.

Also, I'm kind of curious... I thought you DIDN'T want casters performing a support role. I thought you wanted active prots rather than passive defenses. I thought you understood that physicals are the primary damage dealers. Could you please, please make up your mind? Every time I read a post of yours, I only get more confused in conflicting opinions. The idea is to explain yourself by presenting a strong argument, not arguing for 7 sides of half a dozen conflicting issues until anyone who disagrees is confudled into submission.

[Winstar]

Originally Posted by Ensign

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.


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.

A few things that stood out in your post to me with a common theme: The flexability of particular characters and the ability to act independantly. I'm not convinced that the possiblity of this is ruled out at this time.

In dR over the last month you've run a build that stands out in this regard. While most teams seem to be content to run to the stand and spend 18 minutes bashing heads into defensive walls, you've attempted to take advantage of other teams immobility by using very flexible characters and moving around the map and been very successful at doing so. The E/d mindblast, warriors, mes/e glyph en, cripshot, and rit are all exteremly flexible characters. In fact I'm somewhat surprised that more teams haven't been playing this way. Besides being far more enjoyable to play, its also extremely effective against the kinds of builds you mention. Of course the current map rotation is somewhat favorable to this style of play and playing this build on an open ladder is a little more diffucult if you end up on burning and jade over and over.

So is it really an issue of the current skill pool or is it an issue of teams unwillingness to play differently? Clearly people don't have to play this way to succeed, but most teams fall into the defensive style of play anyway.

[Lorekeeper]

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

I disagree about the clarity of your point. For starters, you seem to be suggesting that we, in some vague and unspecified way, at least partially unseat physicals as the engines that push kills and shift this responsibility elsewhere. Guild Wars has, since its inception, used physicals to push kills. Why are we changing this again after a few years of working?

For another, you don't want people to run multi-layered defenses, but you want people to be able to protect themselves against physical damage. How does that happen? I suppose we could create one uber-layer, but that hardly seems like a good thing...

Also, for your grand conclusion, you suggest that we keep players alive with "active prot, party-heals, and midline defense". Forgive me if I sound like an idiot, but if, since party healing isn't viable, we replace party heals with, say, WoH, isn't that how the game works right now? It sounds to me, after your pages and pages of various skirmishes of words to support some small point, that you're suggesting a buff to party healing.

Also, I'm kind of curious... I thought you DIDN'T want casters performing a support role. I thought you wanted active prots rather than passive defenses. I thought you understood that physicals are the primary damage dealers. Could you please, please make up your mind? Every time I read a post of yours, I only get more confused in conflicting opinions. The idea is to explain yourself by presenting a strong argument, not arguing for 7 sides of half a dozen conflicting issues until anyone who disagrees is confudled into submission.

i fail to see how ive confused issues here. Physical pushing kills is not what i have the problem with. Its the fact that Anet have forced us into a meta where physicals arent adequately held in check by passive defenses anymore and where its become far too easy for 1 mesmer to open up enemy teams to their damage (interrupt ward melee and aegis and watch them drop to your 4 physicals). But not only that, they have also become as good as if not better at providing some sorts of passive defensive support than midline casters who used to occupy that niche. The ability for physical classes to kill and operate defensively has not been matched by casters abilities to support that killing with offensive support (be it through shutdown or damage) or defensive support. So we see physicals not only doing what they should be doing but doing what casters should be doing too. Is it really any suprise to see people running builds with 4 physicals (not dual ranger dual warrior builds where 1/2 of the physicals were there to cause degen pressure edenial pressure and disruption pressure... but 4 physical builds were 3/4 of the physical classes are high dps machines) in light of the absense of the blockway we used to love to hate and hated to love?

Aegis and a whole host of other anti-physical defenses got nerfed... leaving the meta wide open for physicals to dominate MORE than they normally would do. Caster based support just doesnt get a look in because if you had to choose between the offensive/defensive abilities of a paragon and a bsurge midliner you would probably choose the paragon (the paragon far outshines the eles contribution at VoD)... and looking at the GvG meta now you can see why. Bsurge is not enough to counter 4 physicals but the partywide healing/passive defenses that can be run on a paragon can help... ward melee just gets put onto the mesmer instead, with a 2nd hard rez sometimes being run on the warrior to replace the lost hard rez that used to be on the ele midliner.

Of course i want people to be able to protect themselves vs physicals. But on the other side of the same coin i dont think physical damage should be so powerful that the only viable defense that can protect teams against it is layers of defense like aegis, wards, shields up and defensive anthems. The right balance needs to be found where physical damage still can kill but can be kept in check with more active forms of defense like SoD, guardian, blinds etc they just shouldnt so much damage that the only way you can survive vs them is to run a build full of passive defense. Its a catch 22 situation... if physicals remain as powerful as they are then teams will require layers of passive defense to survive against them. The more passive defense you take the more interdependent your build becomes... the more interdependent your build becomes the less flexible it becomes... the less flexible it becomes the more rooted to the stand it becomes... the more rooted to the stand you become the more you play towards VoD. The more you play towards the VoD game the more you require layers of passive defense... its a vicious circle. Thank goodness teams like [DF] and [dR] show everyone that its possible to run builds with individually strong characters allowing them far more flexibility on open maps like frozen isle... unfortunately there just arent many guilds full of players who are that experienced in skirmish situations since for the past year or more the GvG meta has been firmly rooted to the 8vs8 battle... (i miss the old eurosplit days)

I am supporting a buff to party healing. I think many others do too. Especially if you consider the major hits to defensive options in the last update. Healing power has been boosted to meet this new vacuum but the only way healing can hope to match the effectiveness of prot or party healing is for it to become incredibly powerful eg WoH and Healers boon. Its no suprise that in the face of the nerf to LoD we saw quite significant buffs to WoH glimmer and Healers boon. Unfortunately none of these buffs really made up for the lose of LoD and this has resulted in things like motivation paragon midliners. Pushing the meta towards motivation paragon midlines or party healing flag runners is not a good thing in my opinion.

I do want to see midlines containing more than 1 caster... midline casters that provide offensive and defensive support through a wide range of means... be it interrupts... shutdown effects like diversion... or with defensive skills like bsurge/wards/snares. However its not easy to justify slotting these characters in when you can run something like a DA or SoR paragon especially when you consider the unfortunate fact that tools of caster shutdown have not seen any real significant boosts apart from that done to power leak... caster support builds just got left behind in the power creep that hit GW since nightfall.

i guess if i really had to i could just say that i dont like the paragon class at all. It started off as an interesting class with all its party buffing abilities... but these all got nerfed beyond usefulness and the class got reduced to a glorified ranged warrior... which wouldnt have given it such a vital role in GvG builds if it werent for a few remaining useful party wide support skills like defensive anthem, SoR and shields up/watch yourself.

I could go further to call for a nerf to paragon dps or to its ability to provide party wide support (one of these was the concept aim of the class one probably wasnt)... so that it did not provide such a powerful midline offensive option... which might make other midline options more attractive and shift the meta away from a complete dominance of physical dmg classes (i know physicals have always been the killers in the game... at least in the past their killing potential relied more on the support of their midlines rather than what it is now where they frenzy into backlines and simply wait for key skills like ward melee or aegis to get knocked out) and your ability to manage physicals. The game pace would slow down and allow for disruption style plays to become more important rather than powerplays that seek to outdamage rather than outsmart.

and all this without me saying a thing about VoD.

Dont you see... its not easy to pin down whats wrong with the meta since so many factors combine to create it.

[Riotgear]

Originally Posted by Ensign

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

Biggest change I've seen lately is the displacement of the SoR/Hydro runner with boring Rt/D runners. Again, this is aside from LoD. Defense webs were sinking in before that.

Ward and aegis are significantly less of a burden than they were once due to Glyph, combined with tacticsgons providing party defense while still having some offensive push, defense saturation has been becoming easier for quite some time.

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

Wasn't this largely due to the displacement of the red-bar-go-up role on to monks? Again, maybe I'm not seeing it, but the monk toolbox aside from the LoD hammering seems to have only improved (if slightly).

[Farin]

lod back pls

[Vanquisher]

Originally Posted by Animate

Yea maybe I wasn't. Care to explain why?

They were clever with their use of shadow stepping. That used to be what made the difference between good and bad Assassins.

[erk]

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

I disagree about the clarity of your point. For starters, you seem to be suggesting that we, in some vague and unspecified way, at least partially unseat physicals as the engines that push kills and shift this responsibility elsewhere. Guild Wars has, since its inception, used physicals to push kills. Why are we changing this again after a few years of working?

There are 5 other classes that can do damage than the physicals, but for one reason or another they can't get a good enough bar happening to put them on par with the sustained pressure of the physical auto attacks. That's a problem which is bigger than a bi-monthly skill update.

For another, you don't want people to run multi-layered defenses, but you want people to be able to protect themselves against physical damage. How does that happen? I suppose we could create one uber-layer, but that hardly seems like a good thing...

Specialization in any sport is common, prot Monks are the most pro-active "uber-layer" way yet in GW.

Also, for your grand conclusion, you suggest that we keep players alive with "active prot, party-heals, and midline defense". Forgive me if I sound like an idiot, but if, since party healing isn't viable, we replace party heals with, say, WoH, isn't that how the game works right now? It sounds to me, after your pages and pages of various skirmishes of words to support some small point, that you're suggesting a buff to party healing.

Party heals were not replaced with WoH, LoD was replaced because overnight it became a crappy elite with it's 2 sec cast and we needed to put another useful Monk elite on the bar. Mind you, I don't for a second miss LoD on the bar, it's was the pretty much most talentless Monk elite of them all. Elites should promote skillful play in all classes, keep the talentless skills as non-elites.

[dies like fish]

Originally Posted by RaZoO

lod back pls

Yes. Or at least back in some form that will see play.

[ensoriki]

Originally Posted by Riotgear

The same reason Decapitate doesn't instantly kill someone, because balance > concept.

Imbalance of making distracting blow unblockable?

As both share the word Distracting lets compare
Distracting Blow and distracting shot

D-shot is obviously much better.
It deals damage, interruption and disable, at the same energy cost and recharge as well as activation.

While D-blow does no Damage, interrupts and has no disable
Making Distracting blow like D-shot would not be fun IMO
But making it unblockable just allows a warrior to do more.

The idea of balance>concept is fine
>.> but you shouldn't overlook something because someone uses concept as reasoning.

[Symbol]

Quick fix for the party healing problem: revert LoD to its former stats but reduce the range to "earshot" or "in the area". At least that way monks will have to pay more attention to positioning when they use it, not just in terms of exposure to disruption, but in getting their money's worth in terms of healing.

[IMMORTAlMITCH]

Originally Posted by erk

There are 5 other classes that can do damage than the physicals, but for one reason or another they can't get a good enough bar happening to put them on par with the sustained pressure of the physical auto attacks. That's a problem which is bigger than a bi-monthly skill update.

Different professions have different roles, if all professions could do the same damage then why have different professions to begin with?

[ensoriki]

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Different professions have different roles, if all professions could do the same damage then why have different professions to begin with?

To increase sales

[Riotgear]

Originally Posted by erk

There are 5 other classes that can do damage than the physicals, but for one reason or another they can't get a good enough bar happening to put them on par with the sustained pressure of the physical auto attacks. That's a problem which is bigger than a bi-monthly skill update.

Managing a physical is an order of magnitude harder than "select someone within earshot, push a button, hurt them." It is also capable of being predicted and dealt with, which gives defending teams an opportunity to respond. In other words, physicals require intelligence to play, and allow intelligent responses against them. Caster damage does no such thing, because the damage is unpredictable and largely guaranteed.

If casters get the kind of damage compression needed to make them competitive with physicals, you get caster spike. And nobody likes caster spike.

Mind you, I don't for a second miss LoD on the bar, it's was the pretty much most talentless Monk elite of them all.

No, that would be Healer's Boon.

[Symbol]

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Managing a physical is an order of magnitude harder than "select someone within earshot, push a button, hurt them." If risk/reward is to be maintained, then physicals are always going to do more than casters.

Replace 'physical' with 'melee'.

[Riotgear]

Originally Posted by Symbol

Replace 'physical' with 'melee'.

Yes. Of course, the original post isn't quite accurate anyway since bow autoattacks are LOL material and Assassins attack chains suffer from the "I'm brainless which is why I deserve to suck" syndrome too.

Paragons, Rangers, and shadowstepping Assassins are all more or less subject to the same situation. Dervishes and Warriors are significantly harder to manage, though I can't say I like the kind of gameplay Mel's promotes at all.

[Wasteland Squidget]

EviL's assassins didn't take more skill than anyone else's assassins. The game just wasn't as well understood when they played, which made their use of teleports seem more impressive.

[Animate]

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

EviL's assassins didn't take more skill than anyone else's assassins. The game just wasn't as well understood when they played, which made their use of teleports seem more impressive.

Thanks :]
That was just what I wanted to point out...

Back in those days it seemed impressive, now many call it lame. The game changed, but the sins didn't change all that much. It's a legitimate way of playing, I don't know why guilds who've played them now seem to get discredit rather and the impression EvIL or other guilds got with them earlier. In fact this attitude discourages build diversity.

Maybe the people now playing are somewhat rigid since the game is old and the VoD mechanics could be better. I think this has a greater impact than a few adjusted skills.

[Ensign]

Originally Posted by Animate

Yea maybe I wasn't. Care to explain why?

Aura of Displacement, Shock, Falling Spider, Twisting Fangs, Disrupting Stab, Death's Charge, Dark Escape, Shadow Refuge

vs.

Shadow Prison, Tiger Stance, Black Lotus Strike, Horns of the Ox, Black Spider Strike, Blades of Steel, Impale, Recall

The former being an extremely mobile, high utility character that timed its combo for a lot of degen + deep wound to set up a target and win a duel; the latter, a 7 skill, 1234567 combo Sin with Recall to teleport across the map. The former is a harassment character, the latter is an instagib lolsin. The former played Guild Wars. The latter instagibs or fails.

[wuzzman]

Lets see, we had deterrents for this type of meta, where now physical damage is barely held at check and 5 characters are caring some sort of party defense to pick up the slack. However those deterrents were nerfed, inspiration nerfed nearly beyond recognition, boon/prots not even playable, and a whole host of other midline "skrew you's" that have appeared on players wish list and finally got acted upon.