Curse

Bankai · Oct 21, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

How to fix rits:

-Balance rits about big skill costs, rather than recharge, much like Rodgort's invocation and Conjure nightmare
-Move all gay e-management to spawning powah
-Have splinter weapon only deal damage to surrounding target, instead of also to the one you're targetting (like mark of pain)

moriz · Oct 21, 2007, 09:32 PM // 21:32

i'm quite sure splinter does NOT deal additional damage to the target.

TheOneMephisto · Oct 21, 2007, 09:33 PM // 21:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

-Have splinter weapon only deal damage to surrounding target, instead of also to the one you're targetting (like mark of pain)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how splinter weapon already functions?

Captain Robo · Oct 21, 2007, 10:32 PM // 22:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bankai

How to fix rits:

-Balance rits about big skill costs, rather than recharge, much like Rodgort's invocation and Conjure nightmare
-Move all gay e-management to spawning powah
-Have splinter weapon only deal damage to surrounding target, instead of also to the one you're targetting (like mark of pain)

That's really dumb. All of it.

Quote:

Sorry I was speaking more to your quote about a rangers usefulness resting solely on his ability to interrupt. I can pretty much agree with the other stuff.

Ah, what I meant was that the BA/CS/BHA builds, though essentially clones, still took a good degree of skill to play (as opposed to say, 1234567 Shadow Prison Assassins) which depended on the player's ability to interrupt. In that sense, a BA/CS/BHA ranger is much deadlier in the hands of someone who can shut down their opponent, as opposed to Johnny Arrowspam who just plays the build because its popular. A good interrupter makes that particular breed of ranger work.

Ensign · Oct 21, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40

You can Splinter / Ancestor's on recharge, and it's not awful to, but it's not really optimal to either; pulling Splinter on a Warrior when he's not near multiple targets just wastes triggers, throwing Ancestor's on a Warrior when he's switching targets misses fairly often. If you aim each of them the energy burden goes down. Sure there are situations where you want to spam them both, but that's only for short stretches usually.

Zaelen · Oct 22, 2007, 03:43 AM // 03:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wasteland Squidget

Comments like this make me think the community is just used to bitching about rits, and haven't actually looked at the metagame or templates that are seeing competitive play.

Hey, I love my Weapons Rit!

Perhaps my mid-tier guild experience just isn't favorable to such a dynamic build

Elrodien · Oct 22, 2007, 11:29 AM // 11:29

In my opinion, the Rit has probably become the most accepted 'new' profession regarding PvP. They certainly seem more balanced than the 'sin, dervish and paragon.

If spirits were re-worked so that one or two strategically placed spirits provided more benefit than mindless spirit spam, the class as a whole would definitely see more varied play in gvg.

Having more powerful spirt effects or making them harder to kill, but not allowing more than two spirits in radar range would be my suggestion (if more than two appeared, the spirits get pissed off with each other and remove their effects

).

off topic ftw!

Lorekeeper · Oct 22, 2007, 01:03 PM // 13:03

correct me if im wrong but the otherwise agreed on or not completely agreed on solutions suggested by this thread are

1) encourage warriors builds with more versality in mind by...

2) encouraging more offensively minded flagger builds by reverting nerfs to weapon of warding and perhaps buffing other utility skills used on splits to reduce the need for a overly defensive runner to survive.

3) perhaps do something to tackle the over-reliance on LoD, which might put more party healing responsibility on the flagger, which in turn will help dilute the overly defensive flagger builds we see today and put demands on split characters with more of their own split utility. Not easy to achieve as LoD does not synergise well with other party wide heals like heal party...

4) ritualists might be a good class to be promoted as split characters either as rit/ele or ele/rit variations... in order to give the class more depth other than a class to buff frontliners at the stand.

5) somehow divert attention away from the VoD battle at the stand, which might also encourage more versatile and dedicated plays away from the stand. Perhaps pushing VoD to 20min or more (but keep in mind the length of ATs as a result)... reducing number of NPCs in the base... or perhaps introducing more variety in the type of NPCs found in the base (because vast majority of NPCs are physical dmg NPCs which may or may not encourage teams to rely on more passive anti physical defense than usual), including small scale elementalists with limited aoe or single target spike ability. Example bar could be, aura restoration, freezing gust, whirlwind, glyph lesser, vaporblade, glyph restoration - self heal, snare, anti-physical and single target dmg spell.

basically the solution to encouraging more versatile warrior builds is to encourage a more versatile GvG by encouraging split play. The lack of need to cater towards the split game has in my opinion paved way for more hack and slash warrior builds with frenzy+rush+conjures.

But split play is influenced by such a large variety of factors including skill changes and GvG mechanics that its pretty hard to nail it down to one or two things that need changing.

frojack · Oct 22, 2007, 02:23 PM // 14:23

Question:
In regard to party-wide healing, would Kaolai be over-powered on a 10 second recharge? How about 15?

Shmanka · Oct 22, 2007, 02:34 PM // 14:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Question:
In regard to party-wide healing, would Kaolai be over-powered on a 10 second recharge? How about 15?

From a warriors perspective I actually do not mind party wide healing.

It can answer pressure dealt to multiple targets. Warriors constantly switch targets when they are protted or in unconvinient placements for full team spikes. So why is this important? If warriors go off and deal damage to multiple people the monk may have a hard time protting and investing energy into multiple targets.

The absolute largest problem about this though is the obvious skill required.
I think there is an obvious solution to it though, if you attack the recharge of most global effects harshly, thus healers, and midliners must use them justifyably with very good judgement and not "chain" the effects. Which I think is the actual problem.

Also, for the love of god have an orange triangle or something to show that a target is under the influence of a shout. I absolutely hate Bull's Striking targets with nothing on them and get a "BLOCK" shoved in my face.

So the lower the recharge the more broken it is... to answer your question.

Byron · Oct 22, 2007, 02:58 PM // 14:58

Remove shadow stepping and nerf splinter weapon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Perhaps pushing VoD to 20min or more (but keep in mind the length of ATs as a result)... reducing number of NPCs in the base

VoD was once a tiebreaker; now, its a foregone conclusion. If Anet is so intent on keeping VoD at 18 minutes, then they need to rethink the NPC situation, for sure.

frojack · Oct 22, 2007, 03:01 PM // 15:01

I can appreciate that. I certainly understand how Kaolai can easily approach the point where it becomes over-powered. However it currently sits at 20 seconds and nobody considers it broken, or extremely viable (as in, I don't see it much). So the question remains: Would this be too strong on 10-15 seconds? Or rather would it push itself into viability on those or similar numbers?

It's interesting as it could slot quite painlessly onto a rit runner, and somewhat echo's the old school Heal Party elementalists.

So what do you think of that? Beyond the fact that it's somewhat off-topic of course...

Bankai · Oct 22, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that how splinter weapon already functions?

Whoops, my bad.

Let me give an explanation of why to base spirits on energy, rather than recharge.

Basing it on energy instead of recharge adds a lot of strategy to playing the ritualist class. Instead of using stuff on recharge, you have to think- are your monks taking pressure? Is the enemy taking pressure? Is it better to use your energy to break the enemy team or to use it to save your own team? Would it be better to save your energy, and use it when you really need the spirits, rather than being at 0 energy constantly?

There are 3 ways to gain energy for this. Either you just wait until you have enough energy. Or you take an emanagement elite. Or you go Necro primary. Necro primary suffers from the loss of spawning power, which means that while you can poop spirits, they can be killed quite easily. To make sure you can't go both Necro primary, and take an emanagement elite (that's not OoB), the emanagement elites need to be moved to Spawning power.

Yes, it is probably possible to make some sort of energy machine that can gain a lot of energy to keep those shelters up. However, if you use such a character, you're basically wasting a character slot on a character that's not versatile at all, and can only do one thing: Poop spirits. And probably only 2.

Thomas.knbk · Oct 22, 2007, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Question:
In regard to party-wide healing, would Kaolai be over-powered on a 10 second recharge? How about 15?

10? yes. 15? I don't think so. The fact that it can be double cast makes this a whole lot harder better faster stronger, but 15 would be OK I think. It's nice because it could double as an armor buff, helping your runner in a skirmish, and because rits can already spec high in restoration.

Lorekeeper · Oct 22, 2007, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

10? yes. 15? I don't think so. The fact that it can be double cast makes this a whole lot harder better faster stronger, but 15 would be OK I think. It's nice because it could double as an armor buff, helping your runner in a skirmish, and because rits can already spec high in restoration.

depending on how good it is when buffed with a lower duration it could have the following added to the its mechanics.

''heals party members under X% health''

similir to LoD... which would prevent them from overlapping and being too powerful together but allow it to be used when it is most needed, that is, either when LoD is knocked out or if pressure is too much for LoD to cope with, since the latter happens rarely without some of the former happening i think an off monk partywide heal is exactly one of the things we are missing.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Oct 22, 2007, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Except you can't hold a flag while using it or vice versa, plus you lose whatever HCT/HSR from equipment which is quite a big deal.

Byron · Oct 22, 2007, 05:01 PM // 17:01

I think rits tried to address the problem with spirit play. But we know that ended up being another bad game mechanic that got nerfed to almost unusable levels.

Though, having a second off-backline party heal pretty much negates pressure. I remember seeing healer's boon runners back in the days of NR/tranq and searing flames, used in tandem with LoD. It was impossible to do anything against that except clean spike; and that didn't often work because their prot monk was usually at full energy.

Of course, flagger templates aren't as flexible as they were before the VoD move. Teams are forced to split early, often, and hard to create VoD advantages. That then renders the highly defensive flagger templates used today.

Is it then a midliner duty to have secondary (perhaps even primary) party heals? A buff rit with Kaolai doesn't seem too bad.

frojack · Oct 22, 2007, 07:04 PM // 19:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Except you can't hold a flag while using it or vice versa, plus you lose whatever HCT/HSR from equipment which is quite a big deal.

This is essentially what I was thinking of when I thought '10 seconds'. Sure it begins to approach LoD in terms of power but it's also counter-intuitive to the purpose of that template.

The rit can't just run in and drop it for a fast heal (unless you start baton-flagging, which isn't necessarily a bad idea). Multi-cast would only really be viable if your runner hangs around for a bit after making a deposit. Still counter-intuitive but it opens up some tactical choices.

10 seconds wouldn't seem too much in a vacuum, but in a world where LoD exists, it's probably too much, and I don't think the game is ready for a 'weakened' LoD just yet.

Seamus Finn · Oct 22, 2007, 07:39 PM // 19:39

A lot of this stuff seems pretty off base. Kaolai is already a pretty strong skill, but won't make much sense on a flagger since one of its greatest assets(being able to be double cast) wont really be an option. Rits are in a decent spot right now, to be honest.

Also, splitting is mostly just discouraged by players not wanting to split. Guilds that put strong emphasis on splitting and work at it still do quite well. Monk runners will always be around(since you can't really destroy the foundation of the game because people want an easier time splitting) and good splitting teams can usually deal with it.

Lastly, the current meta in American times(and it may jsut be due to champ weekend but even before the weekend) hasn't really reverted back to blockway and plently of games reach VoD. Maybe I am being too optimistic, but the game isn't looking too terrible to me at this moment.

Thomas.knbk · Oct 22, 2007, 08:41 PM // 20:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Except you can't hold a flag while using it or vice versa, plus you lose whatever HCT/HSR from equipment which is quite a big deal.

Damn, didn't think of that. That pretty much rules it out for flaggers. Sure, you could use it while not flagging but it's kinda lame to use a skill slot for something you can only use when you're already at an advantage or away from your main party where not everyone might be affected by the heal.