Curse

Robster Lobster · Oct 13, 2007, 03:48 AM // 03:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by pitty_sayonara

any good reason why esurge/eburn was buffed?

Despite it's increased usefulness in PvP, it also kind of struck me as a slight PvE buff, the AoE armor ignoring damage is nice, even if the e-denial isn't too useful. Perhaps the Power Spike buff was in the same vein?

Phades · Oct 13, 2007, 05:13 PM // 17:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robster Lobster

...it also kind of struck me as a slight PvE buff, the AoE armor ignoring damage is nice, even if the e-denial isn't too useful. Perhaps the Power Spike buff was in the same vein?

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. If ANET really wanted to buff the e-denial and increase the damage, all they would have to do is push up the amount of energy burned out with the skill by 1-2 points. All this looks like is a change to give mesmers in pve something better to "nuke" with. Never mind the fact that clumbsy would be the best "nuke" option against most mobs due to the mindless melee factor invovled... Oh wait, enginuity through a disruption skill... never!!! ;_;

Ensign · Oct 14, 2007, 12:39 AM // 00:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by pitty_sayonara

any good reason why esurge/eburn was buffed?

I'm pretty sure the intent was to have midline characters doing more damage. I still don't think Surge and Burn are good though, because there's nothing to edeny in modern builds, and the damage just gets cleaned up by LoD.

I think everyone dying is just a phase since everyone's going nutty over the Surge/Burn buffs. Once people get over that and realize those skills are still bad, we'll get back to the WardSurge / Tacticsgon meta.

Falconer · Oct 14, 2007, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Ensign I'm not sure I agree w/ your premise here. People go for tons of defense and then a strong AOE heal to clean things up because it's currently the most efficient. I'd argue it's the defenses and monks which are overpowered, therefore people feel at a disadvantage if they don't use them. People use as much defense as they can because defense is stronger, only filling in as much offense as they feel they need to get kills (especially come VoD). The NPCs are one dimensional (how many poor archers do we need?) enough that they're a bit of a wash unless one sides managed to kill off a clear majority of the other sides while keeping theirs mostly intact.

To me the biggest item that came out of nightfall was one of the better things to come out of the game. Your second paragraph sums it up nicely in a neutral tone. It finally opened up offensive character options outside of warriors, warriors, and more warriors. Assassins found some purchase w/ factions, but were far more of specialized GvG split harassment chars until nightfall. Your last two sentences highlight what I view as the critical mistake... they then proceeded to inject even more power into melee. Half-second melee strikes w/ no aftercast and so forth.

But you don't mention one of the other biggest changes to the game w/ nightfall. The death of the superior rune. Anymore a char w/o all minors or at most a major is an easy spike target. Characters themselves have shifted to be very defensive and pad their health bars as much as possible. So I'd argue that 150dam spike is still less powerfull than 250 new spike but not as much as the raw numbers would indicate. To me the single biggest offender in the padded health bars is all the bloody armor ignoring damage floating around as well as the deep wound mechanics. This is also a side-effect that people felt they no longer needed superior runes to be effective offensively.

People's answer to knowing that their lifebar could suddenly shrink by 20% is to make sure that it's 20% larger to start with! I think that's clear w/ the 600+ HP chars floating around when you used to see guys w/ 500 commonly. This has had a secondary effect of giving monks even more cushion. I'd far prefer a deep wound which only took off say 10% but reduced healing by 30% for example. It makes the condition far more of value as a healing reduction than an instakill. This is also a function of the number of skills which can now deal over 100 armor ignoring (I strongly feel any armor ignoring sources should be capped at 80-90 range absolutely).

Another trend has been rather than fixing the healing line the prot line has recieved buff after buff after buff. Any healing skill added to Divine Favour, any skill which heals and only heals added to Prot has been another nail in healing's coffin. I blame this on skills like divine boon, blessed light, zealous benediction, and to a lesser degree gift of health (at least it makes the caster spec healing prayers a little!). Even Light of Deliverance hasn't solved this as we just get hybrid prot/heal monks getting extra emanagement from a non-specced skill like GLE.

If I had it to do over again, I'd make sure that prot dealt with prot. Any direct heals it provided were in the form of health regenerative enchantments. Keep DF filled with niche skills, keep the heavy healing hitters in healing prayers. Also I'd seriously consider changing the entire premise of monks... make divine favour very efficient for a monk healing himself (making it hard to spike or kill a single monk short of double teaming him), but making a monk healing another only as effective as one of the best melee damage dealers. A lot of the game balance problems resolve around the fact that the first order of a build is keeping just enough killing power to get kills while keeping your defensive line strong (people value defense so much more than offense because it's so much more potent). VoD builds very clearly highlight this, as the offensive shortcomings are countered by the VoD shouts.

I don't buy a lot of the screeds against poison or even disease. 4 pips spread out is so trivial to heal it's not funny. Even failing that it's what a characters self-heal should be able to pick up. I remember doing the math not too far back and demonstrating that spam casting heal party was what 6 or 7 pips health regen in it's own right (and since it's directheal not capped at +10 pips like a true regenerative effect).

Another critical design decision going back to the early days is the way that hexes operate vs. conditions. More ways to inflict a condition does not equal more conditions flying about typically. More different hexes w/ each new expansion clearly leads to a lot of new hexes flying around. Because hexes are self reinforcing, the more you bring the harder it is to remove the ones you cast before.

Conditions by their very nature are limited, theres a list of them, inflicting one of them has no effect outside of starting or refreshing a duration, and all of them have a fixed effect. Two condition inflicters of the same type don't stack. Conditions which deal damage are completely limited to the degen mechanism, degen doesn't compete well against direct heals (and especially restore condition/mending touch or the like which have a power heal built in).

Hexes are completely open ended. You get one hex which does X, you get another which does Y. If both of them A, great you get multiple chances for A to occur, and if it does, both B and C happen. (EG: 25% chance of miss... cumulative). While hexes themselves are also limited by the degen limits, you have quite a few which even inflict direct armor ignoring damage (that problem again). And many of the more powerfull are usefull because they're as good or better than interupting a skill as it's used (diversion for example). it wouldn't be so bad if a single 25% chance to miss was rolled once then all their bad stuff happened... but those cumulative rolls add up quickly as each individual hex stacked gets a crack.

So for which class to we see efficient bulk removers w/ built-in power heals for? Conditions, the ones which are inherently already limited in their construction and implementation! Each new expansion has made conditions less and less relevant, while making hexes more and more preferred.

Oh well, I know that's not a well constructed post, but that roughly mirrors some of my thoughts on the state of the game and how it got from here to now.

Phades · Oct 14, 2007, 07:03 PM // 19:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

But you don't mention one of the other biggest changes to the game w/ nightfall. The death of the superior rune. Anymore a char w/o all minors or at most a major is an easy spike target. Characters themselves have shifted to be very defensive and pad their health bars as much as possible. So I'd argue that 150dam spike is still less powerfull than 250 new spike but not as much as the raw numbers would indicate. To me the single biggest offender in the padded health bars is all the bloody armor ignoring damage floating around as well as the deep wound mechanics. This is also a side-effect that people felt they no longer needed superior runes to be effective offensively.

Outside of light of deliverance the amount potentially heald did not go up though. Taking out bigger chunks of health in trade for a larger pool, but with no real means to mend it, is essentially the same problem that elementalists face being saddled with Energy Storage as a primary trait. Sure, the percentages stay relativly the same of total versus loss, but they are still fixed into a set total amount of recovery and arguably lower due to less attribute investment. It could really be the realization for the need to have a better chance to survive the spike by including the extra health instead of needing the spike damage to go up in order to meet higher health counts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

I don't buy a lot of the screeds against poison or even disease. 4 pips spread out is so trivial to heal it's not funny. Even failing that it's what a characters self-heal should be able to pick up. I remember doing the math not too far back and demonstrating that spam casting heal party was what 6 or 7 pips health regen in it's own right (and since it's directheal not capped at +10 pips like a true regenerative effect).

Well if the game only had apply posion, or if it only had disease, you would have a point. Look at the progression for removal that occured with things like extinguish and mending touch that go directly after stacked and widely spread conditions like that and moved away from targeted heals despite how potent restore condition is. The side effect was that conditions like blind and crippled because less meaningful, even if you could bury them under a stack similar to a all hex strategy. This is also completely ignoring one of the "final" solutions to pushing through an offensive character being the melandru dervish entirely removing that aspect of the game altogether.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

Another critical design decision going back to the early days is the way that hexes operate vs. conditions. More ways to inflict a condition does not equal more conditions flying about typically. More different hexes w/ each new expansion clearly leads to a lot of new hexes flying around. Because hexes are self reinforcing, the more you bring the harder it is to remove the ones you cast before.

Yeah, there is a lot of truth here. When i was first learning the game, i kept wondering to myself why the game never had stacking limits or type specifications keeping some form of sanity in the realm of both hexes and enchantments. Initially both hex removal and enchantment removal were pathetic individually, even though some enchantment removal had rather nice side effects like drain enchantmemt that ecouraged many members to carry it.

If hexes, enchantements and shouts were more like conditions, stances, and weapon spells, i doubt the game would have progressed in the direction it has over the years.

bhavv · Oct 14, 2007, 08:21 PM // 20:21

About healing, Wouldnt a Rt/Mo with PwK/LoD/Life be more effective at keeping a parties HP up then a Lod monk?

I always have thought so but never tried it.

ockhams · Oct 14, 2007, 08:58 PM // 20:58

i saw a very creative team (never forget anna [anna], or something like that) a few days back fighting that japanese guild [one], rank 20-something. they had a very innovative backline with a very obvious emphasis on pressure, [anna] did. basically the build was 5 rangers with pets and 3 necros, iirc; 2 n/rt healers and 1 n/me with expel and hexes i think. the n/rt's had PwK, life, recuperation, spirit light, spirit transfer, mend body and soul, and various other restoration skills. i also saw anguish and restoration and warmongers. i dont recall the exact build, but they definitely held their own against [one]. the only thing i didnt like was they were pretty much a zerg build pressing right into the opposing NPCs with little deviation.

they eventually lost at VoD despite having a heavy NPC advantage (which they could have exploited with things such as life and recuperation which effect all allies including NPCs) because [one] split against their Lord and [anna] responded hyper-defensively and sent the whole team back and [one] wiped their NPCs at the stand somehow (i didnt really watch the flagstand so idk).

anyway, despite what i have seen some ppl say about protective was kaolai, i've seen it used effectively. and i could see life and other "ally" effecting spirits/spirit manipulating spells (e.g. feast of souls, consume soul, gaze of fury) used to great advantage at NPC defense, especially at VoD when they are clumped up.

but as far as specifically party-wide healing, i think LoD has it on lock. if it ever takes a recharge hit, though, i could see PwK stepping in. PwK is flexible enough that you can use it back to back but there will inevitably be a gap in recast eventually, where LoD will never see more than 5 seconds regardless (except for shut downs, of course).

tricolorsp · Oct 14, 2007, 09:54 PM // 21:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by ockhams

i saw a very creative team basically the build was 5 rangers with pets and 3 necros, iirc; 2 n/rt healers and 1 n/me with expel and hexes i think.

thats not creative..ha is full of thumperways and its not hard to see that build in gvgs...

protective was kaolai has 20secs recharge.... it only works with this build cause they have 3-4 spirits helping with the healing.

grammar is ftl

Yue · Oct 15, 2007, 07:39 AM // 07:39

I like how that buff to keystone signet made it pretty broken by simultaneously buffing humility.

DarkNecrid · Oct 15, 2007, 07:53 AM // 07:53

im just going to throw some David Sirlin into the mix:

Quote:

A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable--especially, but not limited to, during high-level play by expert players.

Quote:

That was quite a mouthful. It basically means that game doesn't degenerate down to a very small number of real options. This is a pretty broad definition since it encompasses the concept of "brokenness" as well. If, in chess, only pawns were used in tournament play (if pawns were so good as to be "broken"), I would say the game lacks balance, even though both players start with the same pieces.

Amazing how this applies to Guild Wars. And I fully agree with him! To me its not that there is overpowered stuff, there is always gonna be overpowered stuff. To me its that there is a lack of options. I'm pretty sure if I gave you the classes of the 8 people on the enemy team (assuming they are a top team), Ensign right now could name 80-90% of the skills on their bars.

-Pluto- · Oct 15, 2007, 08:16 AM // 08:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

I like how that buff to keystone signet made it pretty broken by simultaneously buffing humility.

Quit reminding me. That skill makes me want to punt my cat off my roof.

Aethon · Oct 15, 2007, 08:24 AM // 08:24

Someone mentioned Sirlin! I have something that may interest you all: http://www.sirlin.net/archive/my-int...-critical-hit/

Div · Oct 15, 2007, 08:43 AM // 08:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by -Pluto-

Quit reminding me. That skill makes me want to punt my cat off my roof.

It makes me glad I didn't have to monk against it...

glountz · Oct 15, 2007, 09:18 AM // 09:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yue

I like how that buff to keystone signet made it pretty broken by simultaneously buffing humility.

We ran successfully a midliner Domination/Inspiration With Keystone signet.
The bar was :
Resurrection signet
Keystone signet
Signet of humility
Unnatural signet
Signet of Distraction
Signet of Weariness
Purge Signet
Succor (on every caster in flagstand)

This gimmick worked really well.

jaeharys targaryen · Oct 15, 2007, 12:37 PM // 12:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

Well Ensign comes out of hiding to tell us(well since the rant against hexway), Nerf big damage and nerf some defense while you at it. The meta has finally come full circle. Back in the days of propherices when melee pressure was the only way to kill anything and teams double up on the defense (3 wards on 1 ele....) to keep the steamrolling from being hot and heavy. It could be debatable whether or not teams really needed all that defense, but there was no punishment (just like now) for bringing all that defense, since 2 shock warriors has been and always will be all you need to kill anything really(meaning a very defensive build could still score kills at VoD). Just like in those days players had very few defensive options(blinding flash being the only skill able to keep up with an adreline spiking warrior) and even fewer offensive options, making matches 90% predictable and made over staking on one particular defense a very good build making strategy. The power may have scaled but the defense keeps up. Even if you were to remove ALL added skills players will quickly find how useful bring 3 ultitlty ele's are again...

The pvp community has lost its importance and I don't see anet pulling a 180 degree turn toward a pvp community that probably will never return to its hayday.

you dont know what your talking about.

once again good post ensign. what i mainly agree with is making healing a respectable line again. i'm thinking of making a thread with some proposed changes to the line to make it not suck. i cant speak for the game b4 nightfall(well, even i know wuzz has no idea), considering i got my first bday present...a week ago!

)

Yichi · Oct 15, 2007, 06:10 PM // 18:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkNecrid

To me its that there is a lack of options.

This is the whole problem that ANET failed to address with this balance update as well as past updates.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkNecrid

I'm pretty sure if I gave you the classes of the 8 people on the enemy team (assuming they are a top team), Ensign right now could name 80-90% of the skills on their bars.

Not to take anything away from Ensign, but good players have been doing this back since the Proph days of GW PvP. Most decent teams will do a fast tab over an enemy team and have a good idea of what they would be running based off the skillbars and builds seen in the PvP metagame at the time. You'll always have the odd 1-2 builds come across that end up just being randonway.

Thomas.knbk · Oct 15, 2007, 07:38 PM // 19:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

at this point, anyone could. Even twicky kid.

OHBURN
but yea, anyone could

jaeharys targaryen · Oct 16, 2007, 01:04 PM // 13:04

Quote:

Not to take anything away from Ensign, but good players have been doing this back since the Proph days of GW PvP. Most decent teams will do a fast tab over an enemy team and have a good idea of what they would be running based off the skillbars and builds seen in the PvP metagame at the time. You'll always have the odd 1-2 builds come across that end up just being randonway.

indeed, its not a terribly hard thing to do. i've come across guys who've never heard of HA and have spent all their pvp time in RA. they can spot nearly any build(and not just bad builds, but meta as wel) just by the proffessions+plus at most 2 skills(cept monks, unless /r.)

Master Ketsu · Oct 16, 2007, 03:05 PM // 15:05

Damn keystone is OP now, didnt even notice it was buffed until my guild leader had me run a mesmer with the signet build and Im looking at the 10 second recharge...

. It needed a buff, but it didnt need to be buffed all the way down to spammable mode. seriously, 10 seconds...what were they smoking ? Just look at all the other signets !! The signet builds Im seeing out their allow a mesmer to shutdown, interrupt, damage, and disenchant just as good ( If not better ) then before....except they have infinite energy.

Patccmoi · Oct 16, 2007, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Keystone is likely a phase though.

It's a solid skill now for sure, but it's still a gimmicky build. As long as there's no signet counters, your build works great (seriously great, especially with that RIDICULOUS Signet of Distraction with 7 signets... it's like an elite DShot).

There's at least 1 very viable skill that's very harsh on the build, and that's Complicate. A Dom Mesmer with Complicate can easily nail any of those 2s cast sigs and that's like a 15s Blackout on the Keystone Mesmer. And Complicate is not a 'specific' counter to signets since it's also a general interrupt.

Icy Prism has some potential too. You could do a few viable builds with Sig of Illusions Mesmers before, and now at 3 spells it's even better. Icy Prism on a Sig of Illusions Me/E can pretty much destroy a Keystone Signet Mesmer with its 2s recharge mass disabling signets. And it can be useful for nailing Rez Sigs or a weak spike assist too so it's not entirely 'anti-keystone'. If a stand Water Ele comes back again at some point, it could work there too although you'd be more limited in which signets you can nail with a full 1s cast time (can still easily hit Humility, and with 2s recharge you can also try to anticipate casts).

I won't mention skills like Ignorance cause although that's an obvious counter it's like saying run Vocal Minority to shutdown Paragons, it just fails.

The main thing is really Complicate though. That's easy to fit on a Dom Mesmer bar, and it totally destroys the Keystone build, so it might keep it in check. The main problem after that though is that you're left with a build that's either owned by 1 skill or owning if that skill isn't in place, which is bad.