Curse

Lorekeeper · Jan 07, 2008, 11:47 PM // 23:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Legendary Shiz

lulz. If you did that nobody would play that.

Why not just bring glyph energy with shatter hex?

cos shatter hex doesnt remove enchants... granted the half dmg was a little too harsh... HEV was always going to be a tough one to balance. Too much and its useless too little and its still too good.

makosi · Jan 07, 2008, 11:52 PM // 23:52

Nobody uses HEV at the moment because anti-melee hexes have been hit exremely hard with the nerf bat in past patches. The only teams that appear to use anti-melee are spiritway 'tards who get rolled anyway. Besides, Olias forgets to cover Fainheartedness.

Legendary Shiz · Jan 08, 2008, 12:29 AM // 00:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by makosi

Nobody uses HEV at the moment because anti-melee hexes have been hit exremely hard with the nerf bat in past patches. The only teams that appear to use anti-melee are spiritway 'tards who get rolled anyway. Besides, Olias forgets to cover Fainheartedness.

A lot of teams will bring HEV for AT's simply because if you happen to face a team thats trying to catch you off guard with a hex build, or even something on a smaller scale like water hexes you have the obvious upper hand. Combine that with the fact that mesmers don't completely need their elite to be functional and HEV is still a skill to consider putting on your bar almost every AT.

Riotgear · Jan 08, 2008, 01:42 AM // 01:42

HEV --> Recharge to 20 seconds, maybe even 25. Either reduce damage to Shatter levels or increase energy cost to 15.

HEV needs to not be strong enough to win games by itself.

Personally, I'm really, really not a fan of Healer's Boon. Powerhealing being effective makes for seriously dumb gameplay, I shouldn't need to explain why. Partyhealing needs more options, but I'd rather see dumb red-bar-go-up be mostly reserved as a last resort for when more intelligent methods of play fail.

Greedy Gus · Jan 08, 2008, 07:25 AM // 07:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

General comments on current GW skill balance

I think I share your general sentiment, as do many current players, but you have some of the concepts off. KGYU wasn't primarily known for dual ranger disruption, they mostly ran 2 warriors + thumper + cripshot + necro degen smashmouth builds, other than a short time around the open event when they added the mels ranger. This was in fact more pure damage offense than most of what you see now.

Although you're correct that the strength of pure offense + defense available now is greater and shutdown hasn't kept up, don't discount today's disruption. DF has championed massive disruption recently in their pressure build. Mesmers have been interrupt bitches for quite some time (other than the newer dR glyph guy), almost all warriors are packing interrupts, anyone other than rawrspikers bring a ranger whose primary effect is pumping out tons of savages & dshots, and up until the LoD nerf, the popular paragon bars had mes interrupts.

High reward reactive interrupts are often praised as some of the most admirable, player-skill rewarding tools in a build, but heavy focus on them shifts gameplay away from strategy and toward execution. Whereas 1.5 years ago a match may be more about planning and enacting strategies to open & capitalize on windows of opportunity, now it's much more about coordinating and executing some (relatively) difficult disruption which allows your overload (spike or pressure) to succeed.

So while a team like DF can post here telling people how to pressure properly, and vD can cut a mesmer if they can't reliably interrupt a ward or deal with cancel-casting, the fact remains that a significant portion of the playerbase is having trouble just getting the execution down to deal with the state of defense/offense. It's not something to necessarily complain about (perhaps the majority of the playerbase has just failed to reach the level where execution is natural and strategy comes back into heavy importance), but it's certainly something to be taking a hard look at when making balance decisions.

Personally, at the very basic level, I would like to see pure defense & offense come down a bit, reactive interruption to come down significantly, and shutdown to come back up fairly significantly. Rewatching the GWFC videos makes me remember when gvg felt more slow-paced but also more strategic, with (typically) longer gameplay that felt more like momentum-building rather than swingy.

Shuuda · Jan 08, 2008, 10:55 AM // 10:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

but I'd rather see dumb red-bar-go-up be mostly reserved as a last resort for when more intelligent methods of play fail.

Agreed, which is why I think the conditional and unconditional healing numbers on WoH should be swapped around (and maybe lower the unconditional healing, and increace the conditional healling), therefore it would still provide a strong heal when it would be needed most, but isn't as effective if you just spam it, as you can now.

wuzzman · Jan 08, 2008, 03:10 PM // 15:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

I think I share your general sentiment, as do many current players, but you have some of the concepts off. KGYU wasn't primarily known for dual ranger disruption, they mostly ran 2 warriors + thumper + cripshot + necro degen smashmouth builds, other than a short time around the open event when they added the mels ranger. This was in fact more pure damage offense than most of what you see now.

Although you're correct that the strength of pure offense + defense available now is greater and shutdown hasn't kept up, don't discount today's disruption. DF has championed massive disruption recently in their pressure build. Mesmers have been interrupt bitches for quite some time (other than the newer dR glyph guy), almost all warriors are packing interrupts, anyone other than rawrspikers bring a ranger whose primary effect is pumping out tons of savages & dshots, and up until the LoD nerf, the popular paragon bars had mes interrupts.

High reward reactive interrupts are often praised as some of the most admirable, player-skill rewarding tools in a build, but heavy focus on them shifts gameplay away from strategy and toward execution. Whereas 1.5 years ago a match may be more about planning and enacting strategies to open & capitalize on windows of opportunity, now it's much more about coordinating and executing some (relatively) difficult disruption which allows your overload (spike or pressure) to succeed.

So while a team like DF can post here telling people how to pressure properly, and vD can cut a mesmer if they can't reliably interrupt a ward or deal with cancel-casting, the fact remains that a significant portion of the playerbase is having trouble just getting the execution down to deal with the state of defense/offense. It's not something to necessarily complain about (perhaps the majority of the playerbase has just failed to reach the level where execution is natural and strategy comes back into heavy importance), but it's certainly something to be taking a hard look at when making balance decisions.

Personally, at the very basic level, I would like to see pure defense & offense come down a bit, reactive interruption to come down significantly, and shutdown to come back up fairly significantly. Rewatching the GWFC videos makes me remember when gvg felt more slow-paced but also more strategic, with (typically) longer gameplay that felt more like momentum-building rather than swingy.

yeah feel the same. It also allowed more players to get into GvG, as the strategy portion of guild wars is far more intuitive to a player who is expecting to play rpg style gameplay, then the interrupt 1 sec cast times or die gameplay we have to counter the defense web. Execution should never be greater then strategy, or you will end up losing your player base even on a seemingly balance game. I mean if the game favors execution why not just play an FPS?

Ec]-[oMaN · Jan 08, 2008, 03:26 PM // 15:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

yeah feel the same. It also allowed more players to get into GvG, as the strategy portion of guild wars is far more intuitive to a player who is expecting to play rpg style gameplay, then the interrupt 1 sec cast times or die gameplay we have to counter the defense web. Execution should never be greater then strategy, or you will end up losing your player base even on a seemingly balance game. I mean if the game favors execution why not just play an FPS?

Maybe because FPS execution is soo one dimensional, aim/shoot faster=good, Gw has more to offer in that respect. There will always be execution, with a strat coming before hand.

wuzzman · Jan 08, 2008, 03:43 PM // 15:43

I have my gun and my reflexes. Its much more intuitive, and there is plenty of strategy once you get someone else on your team who isn't on "rambo" mode. A game like guild wars appeal is the rpg aspect, and rpg gameplay is less execution more strategy. If guild wars is more execution, the strategy and the rpg elements become background noise. Picture an FPS were your bullets miss because "invisible shielding" and shit like that. It would feel horrible, and remove the reliability of the game.

Lorekeeper · Jan 08, 2008, 05:31 PM // 17:31

its not only about mere execution. You cannot draw parallels between the effect of execution in FPS games and GW. In FPS games the effects of execution have a small set of consequences... aim at the head... kill. If you are good at aiming at peoples heads you will kill... (oversimplification i know but you get my point)

In GW its not as simple as that... even if many people are good at interrupting 1 second skills with things like power leak... or aegis... etc etc its more a matter of being aware enough to be in the position to interrupt those skills as opposed to the actual execution of your disruption... Players need to be targetting monks before or as they are casting aegis to interrupt it... you need to be able to judge when a mesmer or ele is going to cast ward melee in order to catch it reliably. It still is mostly about strategy... just because you know how to interrupt doesnt mean you know when.

execution in GW is relatively easy, but match winning execution of disruption type skills is not because only truly good players know when to execute them.

The problem with balance in GW is that in order to maximise the effect of disruption type play your team has to be in control of the fight the whole way through. Miss interrupts of key defensive skills and pressure cannot be applied... so you either have to rely on a moderate amount of disruption being applied almost perfectly throughout a match (which is not likely to happen since noone is perfect) or pack a high amount of disruption that can be spread liberally ie [DF] (with p-spike on paras and d-strike on wars, ranger with interrupts and mesmers with interrupts) so you can be sure that you have people covering all enemy defensive options.

This is an unfortunate consequence of power creep since Nightfall and unless direct damage and direct heal/prot is toned down a little disruption type play will continue to be such a difficult strategy to execute that hardly anyone will play it. Most teams would prefer to follow the spike orientated strategies that score kills by opening smaller windows of opportunity (time killing, gale the off monk, removing enchants on spike etc etc) rather than the pure pressure/disruption type stratgies that aim to open large windows of opportunity because its far easier to open small windows of opportunity than it is to keep open wider windows of opportunity.

elektra_lucia · Jan 08, 2008, 05:48 PM // 17:48

To those who made comments on FPS games. I don't want to flame but let's just say you are lacking a lot of knowledge.

FPS games are highly strategical as is guildwars. Faster isn't always better, aiming with more accuracy isn't always better.

By aiming well you can push off opponent; therefore, you have to be more aggressive which can land you into rockets you could avoid. Remembering skill recharges is like remembering weapon times.

In one game I remember timing main sniper weapon, shock rifle (which is like sniper type weapon how it fires), flak (kind of like a shotgun), 50 armours, 100 armours, and all of the mini healths which were 5.

I'd remember how long it took the average player of the skill I was facing to go from to b, or b to z so to speak. How often I'd hit him, where I hit him, what his health would be and armour would be. How often he peaked around a corner (people have patterns). How many times he recently hit me. If he had not hit much, I'd know he would probably hit a lot in the future.

If his aim went up, he was feeling more comfortable, so I'd make him feel less comfortable, or hide until adrenaline rush went away. Fight close up and aggressive with high armour, then fight far away with low. Completely confuse them with close up aggressive, low armour. Use bad weapon for the situation to confuse, etc.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...49955030867931

Not great video, can't find but one player makes loads of tactical mistakes, one not. Most of the time people don't understand why top players will make the choice they do in an FPS. Or perhaps they won't even see their was a choice. Due to this, they might see FPS was simple. When really it's not.

Quote:

In FPS games the effects of execution have a small set of consequences

Losing map control isn't a small consequence...

I don't think that many people understand FPS games, but that's probably why most players are easy to beat for me xD.

In my opinion, in any game it requires as much complexity as you make. If you just want to go around shooting at things, then sure that's simple. If you just want to IWAY that's not very complicated... If you want to play on par with WM or HeatoN then it becomes complicated.

I kind of think that uber micro is like a good aim.
Strategy is strategy.
Seeing the battle field and red bars too is a similar process to timing all the items.
Morale is like having armour.
Health is health.
And a death can cripple your control of the map.

Thom Bangalter · Jan 08, 2008, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

I think I share your general sentiment, as do many current players, but you have some of the concepts off. KGYU wasn't primarily known for dual ranger disruption, they mostly ran 2 warriors + thumper + cripshot + necro degen smashmouth builds, other than a short time around the open event when they added the mels ranger. This was in fact more pure damage offense than most of what you see now.

Although you're correct that the strength of pure offense + defense available now is greater and shutdown hasn't kept up, don't discount today's disruption. DF has championed massive disruption recently in their pressure build. Mesmers have been interrupt bitches for quite some time (other than the newer dR glyph guy), almost all warriors are packing interrupts, anyone other than rawrspikers bring a ranger whose primary effect is pumping out tons of savages & dshots, and up until the LoD nerf, the popular paragon bars had mes interrupts.

High reward reactive interrupts are often praised as some of the most admirable, player-skill rewarding tools in a build, but heavy focus on them shifts gameplay away from strategy and toward execution. Whereas 1.5 years ago a match may be more about planning and enacting strategies to open & capitalize on windows of opportunity, now it's much more about coordinating and executing some (relatively) difficult disruption which allows your overload (spike or pressure) to succeed.

So while a team like DF can post here telling people how to pressure properly, and vD can cut a mesmer if they can't reliably interrupt a ward or deal with cancel-casting, the fact remains that a significant portion of the playerbase is having trouble just getting the execution down to deal with the state of defense/offense. It's not something to necessarily complain about (perhaps the majority of the playerbase has just failed to reach the level where execution is natural and strategy comes back into heavy importance), but it's certainly something to be taking a hard look at when making balance decisions.

Personally, at the very basic level, I would like to see pure defense & offense come down a bit, reactive interruption to come down significantly, and shutdown to come back up fairly significantly. Rewatching the GWFC videos makes me remember when gvg felt more slow-paced but also more strategic, with (typically) longer gameplay that felt more like momentum-building rather than swingy.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Ensign · Jan 08, 2008, 10:06 PM // 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Personally, at the very basic level, I would like to see pure defense & offense come down a bit, reactive interruption to come down significantly, and shutdown to come back up fairly significantly.

You'd actually want offense to go down a bit with defense going *up* slightly, with disruption going up to match. Essentially the lethality of a gametype is relatively fixed, and the resources a team will put into offense and defense varies. The progression in Guild Wars has been nerfs to disruption, which forced nerfs to robust defenses, which pushed teams from more compact defenses to wider reaching distributed defenses, which forced offense and disruption off of bars. Teams aren't winning with 321spike and 5 defensive characters because defense is oh-so-good, it's because defense is flimsy, you need that much to shore it up - a team with significantly less tends to just die.

The other issue, at least in GvG, continues to be VoD and how game-changing it is. VoD has always favored defense heavily, and as defense gets flimsier and more NPCs are added that's only more stark. If the only way to get a robust defense is to run defenseway, defenseway wins at VoD, and defenseway can force VoD, isn't your game inevitably going to be dragged into that?

Legendary Shiz · Jan 08, 2008, 11:27 PM // 23:27

Why tone down disruption? That's one of the few things that take skill to do in GW.

wuzzman · Jan 09, 2008, 12:01 AM // 00:01

I think when he means disruption I sure he isn't talking about interrupts but shutdown skills like anti-melee hexes, shame, diversion, blackout, ect. all of those nerfs were under player suggestions I might add.

Lorekeeper · Jan 09, 2008, 12:24 AM // 00:24

neither Gus, Ensign nor I proposed a reduction in the strength of disruption.

Ensign was commenting on the unfortunate fact that over time disruption has been nerfed. Whether he meant directly or indirectly i dont know. I would say it has seen its effectiveness reduced indirectly by powercreep.

There have been a few notable nerfs to disruption orientated skilled like blackout and gale. Other mesmer skills have seen slight nerfs over the years too. Buffs to mesmers skills have been few and far between, with even the very strong buff to power leak not really making up for the fact that mesmers have predominantly become spike assist characters for quite a while now (as opposed to times when mesmers were given more freedom to save their enchant removals for more shutdown purposes rather than spiking purposes).

Magebane shot has only just recently shifted the power of disruption up a notch but itself is in need of balancing because of its spammability (even on a bad ranger it can still be quite effective through sheer volume of interrupts it can produce). Its quite a testimony to the state of disruption play that in order to make disruption play more viable to more teams they need access to questionably balanced skills like magebane shot.

But it is true that the direct or indirect nerfing of disruption has made it necessary to nerf more powerful active defenses like SoD. In place of more active style plays (disruption being an example of active play) teams have been forced to run wider reaching lesser defensive tools in order to form defensive webs that become more than the sum of their parts. The recent buffs to WoH and HB only help to reinforce these defenses, but were also necessary buffs because the moderately nerfed passive defenses also couldnt keep up with the amount of raw damage thats flying around.

By taking more intelligence requiring active plays out of GW PvP Anet have presented themselves with a catch 22 situation. Buffing raw damage numbers and attempting to push the game away from powerful active and passive defenses has necessitated the buff to raw healing power. Theyve committed the highest crime of game balance.

Its textbook powercreep.

Riotgear · Jan 09, 2008, 02:05 AM // 02:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shuuda

Agreed, which is why I think the conditional and unconditional healing numbers on WoH should be swapped around (and maybe lower the unconditional healing, and increace the conditional healling), therefore it would still provide a strong heal when it would be needed most, but isn't as effective if you just spam it, as you can now.

I would much rather see something like SoD/RC, with healing mostly being devoted to recharge-limited semi-efficient heals like GoH and slow-acting but widespread party healing.

WoH is a skill that fell out of favor due to GoH offering a way to slot a heal on a much more interesting bar, nevermind Dismiss. Number-tweaking it upwards may have made it more viable, but has not made it any less dumb.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ec]-[oMaN

Maybe because FPS execution is soo one dimensional, aim/shoot faster=good, Gw has more to offer in that respect. There will always be execution, with a strat coming before hand.

Even the most basic types of play in FPS games manifest deeper strategy, such as powerup control and giving yourself an advantage in firefights. GW has its twitch elements too, ask any ranger.

However, the two are still apples and oranges. It is not even remotely fair to compare the two. GW's gameplay roots lie more in RTS games than anything, even more so than most MMOs (which tend to be button-mashing tug of war over somebody's health bar).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

The other issue, at least in GvG, continues to be VoD and how game-changing it is.

VoD is an environment where spikey damage thrives, which is easy to pack in defenseway builds. VoD needs an overhaul, it always has. I'd rather see an overhaul that involves defenses and healing being harder to maintain so people start getting punched in the face. The problem is that it's a very delicate balance, ideally games shouldn't be lasting until VoD, but it's hard to get things to that point unless steamroll builds are punting the other team off the stand 5 minutes in with resign spike at 10, if not half that time.

Things need to be taken back a few steps. Party healing is a mess right now, and their "fixes" to it are promoting even dumber templates like HB. Pervasive mass-defense abilities are just as obnoxious and easier to pack. Hexes have to deal with nerfs and Shatter Enchantment Vortex. VoD, which should be acting as an accelerant, is continuing to act as the turning point of the game, or even the entire focus of it.

Would it perhaps be a good idea to pack NPCs with various shout buffs to provide an advantage that can't be reduced with block stacking?

Ensign · Jan 09, 2008, 03:34 AM // 03:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Ensign was commenting on the unfortunate fact that over time disruption has been nerfed. Whether he meant directly or indirectly i dont know. I would say it has seen its effectiveness reduced indirectly by powercreep.

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.

Animate · Jan 09, 2008, 07:27 AM // 07:27

If anyone cares, I would change these things.

Glyph of lesser energy:
Only affects the next 1 spell at zero energy storage; next two at something like 4 or so, doesn't matter.
-> Because it is too strong and skills are being balanced around it; depending on it (curses, aegis, ...). This is very bad imo.

Mending touch:
Change like Plague touch; only remove 2 conditions at 8 prot or higher.
-> It makes different flag runners possible again and rewards covering conditions. Too strong when compared to plague touch etc.

Aegis:
Revert to its original behavior. 15 energy, affects all party members.
-> To put one on a flaggy for a crucial moment instead of having chains of it all the time. The flag runner can drop some defense against rangers if mending touch gets nerfed and take more utilities perhaps.

Distortion:
Revert to its earlier behavior.
-> In order to add more active defense alternatives to aegis and wards.
It makes no sense to use distortion when already using aegis, wards, etc;
most things would be blocked anyway and it would simply drain energy, whereas it makes sense to use it alone on soft targets.
Distortion is more active than aegis and wards (5e,5sec, 5recharge), and it rewards the attacker at least a little when his attacks are blocked because it drains some energy.
It might also be changed to drain more energy if attacks are blocked (like 5 at 0 illusion). Seems like more fun to me for both the attacker and the target than nowadays blockway.

Inspiration magic:
Buff drain enchantment, reveal hex, etc...
They actually need put in spec points to gain some energy and shouldn't be that weak, especially the elites. I don't think this will bring boon prots back, since it was nerfed as well, but it would add options to GoLE which require more skill and actual skill points.

Blessed light:
Simply because I like this skill a lot and it is depending too much on removing a hex and a condition to be worth the 10e, so it isn't worth the price in most situations. The slight buff in health gain was ridiculous, esp. when compared to the buffs to glimmer and woh. There were a lot better suggestions on guildwiki, like 5e + losing 5 additional energy when a hex is removed or such.
Buffing recharge to 3 didn't address the problem anywhere.

Gale:
Something like 3 sec knockdown, 10, 12 or 15 recharge.

Byebye

Edit: And the vod mechanics of course.
There could be different npcs than only archers and knights, or they could be given different/more/better skills. Moreover they could mind their positioning more or run out of aoe.

Riotgear · Jan 09, 2008, 09:34 AM // 09:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

there was a huge indirect nerf to hard shutdown when A.Net started hammering Monks and forcing teams to run more distributed defenses.

GoLE got buffed, which made it easier to pack uber party prot, Paragons provided a midliner capable of providing a moderate offensive threat in addition to saturating defenses. Meanwhile, party healing responsibility has shifted responsibility towards monks, creating attribute pressure and boring heal bars.

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

Quote:

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.

The problem is VoD lets you get away with not having a terrific offense.