Curse

Melody Cross · Oct 17, 2007, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

Yes, midline factors in to the equation as well. There are a lot of ways to prevent damage, almost all are less expensive and more tactically-interesting than trying to repair it after it's done.

please define tactically interesting for me. Awaiting for reply.

TheOneMephisto · Oct 17, 2007, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melody Cross

please define tactically interesting for me. Awaiting for reply.

Having people actively following enemy warriors and other damage and predicting where it will land through positioning, following skills, counting hits, etc. along with selecting the appropriate prots for each damage type/amount is all more interesting than waiting for a warrior to hit someone then clicking that person's red bar and hitting 1.

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melody Cross

please define tactically interesting for me. Awaiting for reply.

I detailed this in a previous post last post.

Tactically interesting means making decisions that don't universally have the same effect or conditions. The various types of prot, kiting, disruption, etc. all vary in effectiveness based on when and how they are used. There is no universal solution, and you need to constantly make decisions of what to use and when. Bad players accomplish almost nothing using the same tools that skilled players can work miracles with, and it promotes gameplay where both the offense and defense need to make intelligent decisions.

Healing does no such thing: Health bar is down, therefore, health bar needs to go back up. You only need to make one decision: Do you want to do it fast, or do you want to do it cheaply? And that's a pretty easy decision to make anyway.

WoW is an example of what happens when mitigation factors suck. You can just pound on someone and their health bar goes down, and there's little you can do about it. In that case, efficiency takes a back seat because you need to spam them with health fast. If healing is powerful enough to keep up with that, then it can obviously keep up with more gradual damage-dealing, and it is impossible to overload their healing capacity. If it is possible to overload it, you just train the healer until they die and then you kill the rest of their team. This is how WoW works. If it isn't possible, then you just spike people.

Melody Cross · Oct 17, 2007, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheOneMephisto

Having people actively following enemy warriors and other damage and predicting where it will land through positioning, following skills, counting hits, etc. along with selecting the appropriate prots for each damage type/amount is all more interesting than waiting for a warrior to hit someone then clicking that person's red bar and hitting 1.

Alright. Yeah, Pre-prot=more fun than just heal spams. Condi-removal; team cleaning requires more awareness of whats going on, more communication to use to optimum effect.

But I hate the idea that one attribute has been killed--or stays dead--because of pre-prot. Surely the two can exist together?

From what I've heard--and the little I know--of WoW PvP, I'm very glad I never got really sucked into it.

But we seem to have reached an impasse where prot is concerned. Over-prot has the same disadvantage as overheal, but in a different way. GWs prot situation was--is--the red bars will go down, so bring every skill you can cram in to keep them up...and a very little bit of heal to top off the ones who get smacked.

TBH, I'm just not happy with either outcome atm. I'd rather HPrayers saw some love from Anet so we could get the best of both worlds. But h3 idea of buffing monks seems repugnant to Izzy. Prolly why he runs frontline and hates smite (yes; that was a shot. A shameless, evil little shot).

GGs

Riotgear · Oct 17, 2007, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Melody Cross

But I hate the idea that one attribute has been killed--or stays dead--because of pre-prot. Surely the two can exist together?

Healing abilities being useful depends on one of three things: Having additional utility, being fast, or being efficient. By fast I mean able to get a target's health bar up to a safe level fast, which has to do with the heal quantity as well as cast time.

Everything in HP that is run tends to be best-in-class in one of those fields, because there isn't much value in stuff like Orison of Healing that is consistently not fast and not efficient. You can only have a few leaders in a skill line that is evaluated on such simple criteria.

Quote:

I'd rather HPrayers saw some love from Anet so we could get the best of both worlds.

I don't think there is a best of both worlds because systems that rely on powerhealing suck. Prot is the smart way of keeping health bars up, repairing stuff after you've failed to keep them up through any other method is obviously the dumb way. I don't want the best of the smart and dumb way, I want the smart way to dominate with the dumb way being a minimized last resort. The only thing I really want to see is HP get its utility and situational abilities buffed a bit, the Spotless abilities have potential for example but they are too slow.

Quote:

Prolly why he runs frontline and hates smite

I don't think any of the devs particularly "hate smite," it's just that smiting was designed to protect targets via deterrence, and hitting frontliners with sporadic magic DDs is just not a very good way to deter them. It's problematic for the same reason that people don't run Empathy.

Melody Cross · Oct 18, 2007, 01:34 AM // 01:34

Nah. He hates it. Admitted he hates smite on WoC. Even named a toon after the comment. But that was just a cheap shot at Izzy. I'm feeling frisky this evening; must be the caffeine.

I'm...I'm not sure I agree with you Riotgear. before you get too, "must convert Melody to PROT!" I want you to know, I do use it. And I've been told I pre-prot well and read the field well (used to anyway; I'm very rusty by now).

Ultimately, I like the ability to pre-prot. But that isn't why i like playing utility in this game. What I really like about the PvP system we have is the idea of keeping a team clean. Removal of negative statuses adds a lot of the real diversity that I always enjoyed in GvGs...something thats kinda died strategically with RC/LoD backlines becoming the "only" backline for balanced play.

So, in that regard, prot versus heal is apples and oranges to me...and lets say I like fruit. Cleaning teams is my chocolate covered cherry.

Of course, that statement doesn't help when a pre-protted Holy veil on a priority target is one of the most effective skill uses in the game. i don't know if I'm making sense here so, I'll cap with this:

Its not prot that I like about GW. It certainly isn't healing. Its helping keep my team alive, and helping them do their job while everything on the other side tries to clog them, me and the kitchen sink down with hexes and condis. Thats what keeps me coming back.

I guess thats it for me unless someone has a rebuttal or question

GGs