Curse

Zuranthium · Jun 12, 2007, 07:40 AM // 07:40

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Honestly i'm not personally convinced about it, but i can't say i totally disagree either. And i have no clue at all why you want Shove Warrior to become the next SP sin (come on, Shove, Crushing, Mokele, Thrill of Victory, Death Charge... seems pretty damn similar to a current SP sin to me, except that it knocks the guy down right away on top to be sure that a solo monk that didn't pre-prot has absolutely no change at all to survive)

That Warrior spike wouldn't be on the same level as a BoA SP Sin at all. It's not possible to use IAS for the Shove combo, so he's only getting in two attacks by the time the person stands up from Shove (Crushing + something else).

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

"Attack chains should not have to be linked to a certain target. Any skill with a “must follow a XXX attack” requirement should be able to be used on ANYONE when they become open. Assault Enchantments and Impale are the only two skills which should be “marked” to one person and that mark should last for 30 seconds and not end if the Assassin starts a new chain on a different target."

Imagine something like 5 Assassins with Death Blossom and multiple straight offhands (or i dunno, Jagged-Wild Strike) and why not some shadowsteps... Death Blossom target in 3, 2, 1... bam, the guy just took 400 armor ignoring damage in the face + 10 dagger attacks... he's very likely dead. Oh, and everyone that happened to be adjacent is pretty damn close to dead too.

LMFAO. Yeah, that needs to be re-worded. Rather than opening up an attack skill on ANYONE else, you should be able to use an attack skill on someone, switch targets, and then go back and still have your attack skill(s) opened up on the original target if you didn't already use them.

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You want to limit Daggers and IAS? Here's an idea : Dagger attack skills are high precision attack and have 33% chance to miss when used in increased attack speed. Now you won't see any Sin trying to combo in IAS and you don't have to nerf every damn IAS skill.

It's not a nerf to the IAS skills...it's just a change to the wording on all of them, or a change to the values at low-spec levels, that prevents the Sin from using them for spikes. I don't like that idea you just proposed because a Flurry/Fear Me Assassin is a possible build that can utilize IAS for non-spike purposes.

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Critical Defenses

But this needs to be removable.

It ends if they don't get a critical hit in during the short timeframe which is required. Blind/being blocked/being hexed/being snared are the methods of removal. That's what the skill needs to be worth for it to be playable.

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Dark Apostasy

It's balanced as a spell and it SHOULD be removable. Otherwise you'll seriously end up with Grenth #2. What this skill needs imo is a 1s cast activation instead of 2s. That's all. The rest is fine as is. I used it regularly and the only thing that was truly annoying was that 2s cast.

Decrease the cast time, but leave it as an enchantment, and you'll just get people making group builds that can cover the enchantment quickly. This thing should be interrupt bait but powerful once it's up.

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Deadly Haste

I think that .25s cast would be fine and leave it an enchant. Enchants have their use for stuff like GPS/GLS too...

And those enchantments come from the Shadow Arts line, Way of the Empty Palm, Aura of Displacement/Shadow Meld, or a spell from a secondary class.

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Way of the Fox

I don't think you should be able to negate most miss with no penalty on a skill that can't even be stripped...

I do. Without an Elite, it's not like the Assassin is going to be able to do anything crazy. He just becomes consistent.

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Malicious Strike

It's a skill meant for A/X. Tried it with a Scythe?

I wouldn't want to - there are better Scythe attacks out there.

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Palm Strike

Add lunging, but 10E/8s is fine. It'd be the only straight offhand with a lunging attack, which would be enough of a buff.

This is an Elite. There are too many other, more-efficient combos you can do if it stays at 10E.

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I mean Assassins have tons of spells, don't see why there shouldn't be any in their primary attribute because it's called 'Critical Strikes'.

In an RPG game things have to make a certain amount of sense. Do Warriors have any spells? Should they have to cast Frenzy? Can Mesmers wear Plate Armor? Do Rangers have skills that allow them to exploit corpses? The Critical Strikes line consists of Assassin fighting styles and attacks the character has learned. Not spells. All of these abilities need to be more reliable to work anyway, so it all works out perfectly.

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Unsuspecting Strike

Lunging ok, unblockable no. It's really powerful as is, the damage is quite high. I'd increase the unconditional damage and reduce the conditional damage instead so that it's better at finishing targets too.

The purpose of the skill isn't to finish targets. It's pressure...constantly keeping the target below their max health if you can maintain the energy to pump it out.

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Way of the Assassin

No, just no. That 'lunging' attacks is a good idea imo for Lead attacks. But giving it to every attack just wrecks the mechanism and makes kiting all but impossible (even in a water snare i doubt someone could run from you once you get a hit on him).

How do you kite from someone with a permanet 33% speed boost, such as someone with Pious Haste? That's what this is. Lunging attacks are not an actual teleport...it's moving at a fast speed while performing the attack. If you're snared under this ability and tried to attack someone who is kiting away, the attack would fail.

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Falling Spider

No and no. It's a fine skill as is. It IS competitive, it's the other straight offhands that are retarded.

The other offhands are what made Assassins playable. It's Recall that is retarded, on certain maps, and IAS abilies. Nothing more.

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No. Self-defense elites are just for PvE and people in RA.

They don't have to be.

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Golden Phoenix Strike

10E is there cause the recharge is so good. I would instead actually buff that recharge even more, leaving the energy there as the 'limitation' of the skill. Make it 10/5, or even 10/6. Then its obvious advantage over the Blacks would be a very good recharge for a straight dual, but with a cost that makes it harder to do off-dual-off-dual. And no 'should always hit' on straight offhands imo.

No build that wants to use this skill cares about the recharge being lower.

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Jagged Strike

I'd like to say 'add lunging cause it's a lead'

I like that idea a LOT.

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Shurikens

I suggested the idea of Deadly Arts weapon before, but you're adding something that risks screwing up a lot of stuff. For example you could gain adrenal from range really fast with it.

The range isn't that far. It wouldn't be worth it for a warrior to ever be out of their main weapon and switching to these if they are that close to the opponent. But if it turned out to be a problem you could simply cause Shurikens to give half adrenaline.

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Dark Prison

It should be sporadic. That's what people don't seem to get about offensive shadowsteps. If they're not sporadic, they determine too much of the outcome. I used Dark Prison often enough personally and i think it's fine.

I'd like to see that build because it's truly not good for ANY kind of Assassin build I can think of with the current numbers.

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Iron Palm

Damage shouldn't be as high as Palm Strike, that damage is actually pretty huge for armor ignoring, but i agree it should be raised. Unconditional KD and conditional damage would be more interesting indeed.

Damage should be as high as Palm Strike because no Assassin ever specs high enough into Deadly Arts for the damage to go THAT high. If they do, then this deserves to be doing that amount of damage.

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Shadow Prison

No. Despite absolutely everyone else telling you repeatedly this is a bad idea you stick to it all the time.

I've never lost a GvG to a team that included SP Sins for any reason other than Recall being able to teleport them all the way from the enemy base back to the flagstand fight. *shrug*. When teleport range gets fixed you're going to see a MASSIVE drop in the amount of Assassins being played if other things don't improve.

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Death's Charge - Drop the recharge to 20 seconds

Disagreed. Offensive shadowsteps take too much out of the game if they're usable regularly. At least elite ones take your elite slot. Non-elite ones SHOULD have a longer recharge. Since this one has no real effect, i could see it at 30s. Not anything below that for non-elite offensive shadowstepping imo.

"No real effect". Exactly. That's why this SHOULD be recharging quicker. A sporadic teleport that doesn't let you make any kind of special play isn't going to be worth the skillslot.

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Death's Retreat

15s like Return would be fine. One cripples, the other self-heals, both would be worthwhile. And i don't want 10s recharge shadowstep on monk, seriously.

No, Return would be worthwhile and Death's Retreat would still never get used. Return is good because you can put it on a Monk with 2-spec and it actually has a useful effect. Death's Retreat at 2-spec has a very minor, conditional effect. 10s recharge doesn't matter that much because it doesn't actually slow down the melee from running after you again and you're not going to have the energy to keep teleporting every 10 seconds along with doing some actual healing/damage prevention. But, if it really did become too good for a Monk, just impose a 50% failure rate under a certain attribute rank.

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Shadow Form

Agreed with the 'disabled' part. Disagreed with the 'remove you lose X' part. It needs to be there to balance the skill.

The remove "X" life only needs to be there to balance the skill out with the way it is now...up almost constantly and able to cast nearly instantly when used with Deadly Paradox. It would be useless if that condition was imposed upon the skill, were it acting like an actual Dervish form.

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Shadow Refuge

.75s, ok. But you REALLY exagerate with all your 1/4 cast. You say that you think interrupts are good and important but you remove so much stuff that are actually interruptable at the same time...

Yes, interrupts are good and important for interrupting powerful effects. This is not a powerful effect.

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Shadowy Burden

Seems too powerful. Agreed with the speed debuff, but i only agree with the removing part if a global mechanic where AL reduction (not penetration) can't be stacked below -20. Because this + Weaken Armor + JI could make a Dervish crit at 300...

Yeah, cap global AL reduction then.

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Viper's Defense

8s is too short recharge for a sure block. Would be REALLY powerful on monks against spikes.

Not realy...you have to spec up to 5 Shadow to use it. If I have to spec up to 5 to get an anti-spike ability for a Monk, I'm going to go /W and take Disciplined Stance.

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Spirit Walk

It's one of the only direct Shadowsteps that allows you to teleport half radar away (2 x cast spell range).

No, it wouldn't be like that.

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I don't really like your idea of Rts leaving spirits forever all over the place to begin with (honestly i actually hate the idea).

They aren't left around forever?

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Swap - Should cost 0 energy and be a skill rather than a spell.

Fine as is. It can be used with Rupture even if it's 5E...

Sure, it CAN be used with Rupture if left at 5 energy. But would that build be worth using? No.

~Z

moko · Jun 12, 2007, 08:32 AM // 08:32

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

"In responding to this thread, please only use detailed comments explaining WHY you disagree with something I wrote and exactly how that proposed change would interact too strongly (or too poorly) with some other element in the game. Be sure to specifically look at other changes I have written for another related class or skill before commenting on one specific idea because EVERYTHING is listed here. This thread could become cluttered with unnecessary posts very quickly."

i would like to point this out to all of you.

i don't want to see anymore off topic posts, any posts saying that these changes are good, bad, appreciated or whatnot. just quote on the individual skills as Zuranthium explained in that post. i've deleted an insane amount of trash already, and this topic is hard enough to follow already due to the huge size, so don't make it harder than it is already.

thank you.

edit:

i messed up the thread while trying to seperate them. :< sorry ;_;

Thomas.knbk · Jun 12, 2007, 08:32 AM // 08:32

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Every Elite in the game that comes from a primary attribute line is playable pretty much for that class only. I'm not sure what you're trying to argue because I don't see how an elem with Healer's Boon (in its current form) is a build you'd ever want to use anyway.

I wouldn't really want to use it either, but some people appearantly do because I have seen them. The guys basically just pump out ~100HP heal partys supported by GoLE, while doing some running too. I don't think it will ever be as effective as a Mo/E with healer's boon, but if they want to use it...

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

I've already talked about this earlier in the thread and I disagree entirely. Just because you're a Heal monk, that doesn't mean you can just watch the party bar.

I really don't see how you can disagree. Preventing damage before it hits take so much more skill than healing damage after it hits.

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

You don't have it on both Monks...a Healing Monk won't have a high enough prot spec to make this remove 2 conditions.

I thought in the OP you didn't say anything about attributes. I still disagree. With this change you're raising the bar for all other non-elite condition removals. I don't see why that would need to happen.

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Yes, I was very concerned about the recharge on the skill with that change. Probably should go up a little bit. Although, remember, Rangers used to carry around Blackout all the time...and that's on automatic, non-Elite way to remove Adrenaline (on a short recharge!).

Blackout has a pretty huge drawback though, and it locks your secondary.

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Kiting and positioning are certainly still important...it's not like the Assassin is the only person on their team you have to play against. Sins are lesser in other aspects in comparison to a Warrior in order to have their teleportation advantages. It's just a different layer to combat.

No, they take it out of the game FOR YOU. Where is the kiting and positioning in pressing shadow prison+attack skills every 20 seconds? Sure, during its downtime you're 'normally' attacking, which takes just as much positioning skill as any other melee build, but then SP recharges and you're just mashing 12345 again. It takes kiting out of the game because it's impossible to prekite your spike.

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

If Monks want to drastically limit their skillbars in that way, go ahead and let them. This isn't something you want on a Monk...it's something you put an on stand Assassin.

It's return without the cripple on a 10 sec recharge. You'd be giving up Dark Escape for this. I think we would see it on monks.

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Originally Posted by Zuranthium

I dunno, throw out another idea then.

Just leave the conditional like I originally thought you would.

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Originally Posted by MrGuildBoi

So

20(original) decreased to 15.

Just to say your strength is 16.
15 - 5 + (16/2)
15 - 5 + (8)
15 - 13
= 2

You want Sprint to have a 2 second cooldown o.O

Who would ever run 16 strength?

Patccmoi · Jun 12, 2007, 04:22 PM // 16:22

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That Warrior spike wouldn't be on the same level as a BoA SP Sin at all. It's not possible to use IAS for the Shove combo, so he's only getting in two attacks by the time the person stands up from Shove (Crushing + something else).

It would be easily on the same level as a BoA SP Sin. Tbh, it'd probably end up a stronger template than a BoA SP sin. Shove-Crushing-Mokele-Power Attack could easily deal around 150 armor ignoring damage, DW and 3 hammer attacks. Sure, the total damage is weaker than a SP sin maybe, but you do an UNCONDITIONAL 4s kd right off the bat. Absolutely uncounterable if you shadowstep to the target cause they can't kite and there's absolutely no counter to Shove (you're smart enough not to mention 'Can't Touch This!' =p). If you have any assist, what can a lone monk ever do against it? Keep himself preprotted at all time? Absolutely be forced to carry a self-defense stance? There's just no reaction time, you appear out of nowhere and there they are, knocked for 4s. If you have any assist, anyone that can remove preprot, a little bit of extra damage from someone else, well that's it they're done. And you could easily fit 2 of those in a build and do some heavy linebacking with mass Counterblow in between the spikes.

It promotes stupid gimmick. It's just a bad concept, and there's a lot of concepts that you seem like you want to stick to despite nobody actually supporting them.

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LMFAO. Yeah, that needs to be re-worded. Rather than opening up an attack skill on ANYONE else, you should be able to use an attack skill on someone, switch targets, and then go back and still have your attack skill(s) opened up on the original target if you didn't already use them.

Ok, makes more sense. But i don't believe this'd be balanced without keeping the time limit there and you'd possibly even need to reduce it. You could do EXACTLY what i said before with 5 sins, except you'll start by doing Jagged-Wild Strike, or GPS, or w/e around on multiple targets. Then who they prot? Cause at any point, you can still just do 5 Death Charge->Death Blossom on someone, the only difference is that you had to mark him directly before. But since you can mark multiple targets, it doesn't really tell the other team anything. Hell, you could have an extremely defensive team, even something like 5 E/A with Wards and whatnot, doing something like Dancing Dagger->Mantis Touch on different people to mark them slowly, and when they have enough mark just mass Death Blossom the guy.

It wasn't random that they made a time limit and made it so you can't 'Mark' multiple people. Hell, i did it often enough just on the same guy already, doing something like GPS, go hit someone else, then shadowstep to first target doing Horns-GPS-TF before the timer was over. People don't really expect it and a dual hitting straight is ridiculously powerful.

I think your idea is just opening a lot of abuses and shouldn't be implemented.

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It's not a nerf to the IAS skills...it's just a change to the wording on all of them, or a change to the values at low-spec levels, that prevents the Sin from using them for spikes. I don't like that idea you just proposed because a Flurry/Fear Me Assassin is a possible build that can utilize IAS for non-spike purposes.

I never said IAS would make you miss on auto-attack. You could even still Flurry-Locust's Fury. What you couldn't do is COMBO in IAS. Dagger Attack Skills have 33% chance to miss, not dagger attacks.

Honestly giving 33% miss to dagger attack skills in IAS is the best way i see personally to balance IAS combos. It leaves IAS for Assassins for everything else, you don't need to screw up low value of any IAS (which can be useful for OTHER chars too. Hell, i'd use Burst of Aggression on Dervish if it stayed how it was. Could even be useful sometimes on Rangers, etc. It was a good skill and the specs were fine, the only problem was Dagger combos). I really think that you need to focus on changing what's problematic and NOT change everything else around them. This always ends up screwing up multiple skills and combos needlessly. Fix the core of the problem, which in this case is Dagger Attack skills in IAS. Hit that, and leave all the rest alone.

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It ends if they don't get a critical hit in during the short timeframe which is required. Blind/being blocked/being hexed/being snared are the methods of removal. That's what the skill needs to be worth for it to be playable.

It can still act like an instantly activated protection when you're spiked that can't be removed in any way. You can't even Wild Blow it. Methods of removal shouldn't work in 10 seconds, there should be a way to remove it NOW or to prevent it from going up (which is the case for stuff like Wards, Defensive Anthem, etc. They can't be stripped, but they can be prevented. There is nothing that can prevent the activation of Critical Defense as you made it, and absolutely no way to remove it). Else you need to shutdown the guy something massive, especially if you take into account something like Wild Blow. As long as the guy can c-click someone every 10s and isn't heavily hexed/perma blind, he can keep it up just Wild Blowing them. Same can be done with Malicious Strike in many builds. I nearly never lose Crit Defense unless it's stripped when i build around it. At least, nearly never before it's already recharged, and with the way you designed it (instant cast skill) it means it can nearly be kept up permanently. It's stupid defense, sins shouldn't have an unstrippable passive defense that's so powerful.

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Increase the cast time, but leave it as an enchantment, and you'll just get people making group builds that can cover the enchantment quickly. This thing should be interrupt bait but powerful once it's up.

It's really not that easy to 'cover the enchantment quickly' if they're looking for it. I used it and good Mesmers could often Shatter it the second it's up (which is fine. It's a counter, and they wasted a valuable spike skill for it). A 1s SPELL is still fairly easily interruptable if you're looking for it too. It'd actually be far from easy to interrupt reliably over and over a 2s activation SKILL through something like Crit Defense (which goes perfectly well with Dark Apostasy) that can't be removed when you add on top stuff like Aegis, etc. You'd need specific interrupts for it.

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And those enchantments come from the Shadow Arts line, Way of the Empty Palm, Aura of Displacement/Shadow Meld, or a spell from a secondary class.

Ofc, go for elite options that you don't necessarily want or some lame self-heals that you wouldn't want most of the time? (let's face it, in GvG a glorified self-only Vigorous Spirit like Way of Perfection is NOT gonna make it on your bar). Being forced into specific secondaries so that you can use your own stuff is fairly lame too. The thing is, they are enchants now and they work as enchants. Some skills might be too weak and that's fine to tweak, but they should still be balanced being enchants.

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I do. Without an Elite, it's not like the Assassin is going to be able to do anything crazy. He just becomes consistent.

Well i don't, but since i don't see you changing your view i won't argue more than i already did. And Assassins are about the least elite-dependant class in the game right now. Their combos are extremely powerful without any elite skill involved.

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I wouldn't want to - there are better Scythe attacks out there.

A sure crit that deals +30 damage on 6s recharge? Not really. There's only Wearying Strike on a Melandru Dervish or elites. Malicious Strike is a very powerful attack on other weapons, and you just risk breaking stuff by buffing it. Less needless powercreep plz.

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This is an Elite. There are too many other, more-efficient combos you can do if it stays at 10E.

It's a straight offhand with no conditional and no way at all to prevent. That's WORTH 10E. And it does a huge amount of damage for an offhand, all ignoring armor. AND you'd have 'Lunging attack' to it.

And you want on top to keep your offhands mark on anyone? I can assure you that this would be an elite of choice for a 5 Death Blossom spike... Run around with some heavy prot doing Palm Strike on everyone (can't really stop it and you move fast lunging around. At 5E, you can just do it on recharge without a care. You can even score kills since x5 it's already huge potential damage), and then use a couple of Shadowstep skills and Death Blossom around! With the short recharge you can even do DB-Palm-DB on a couple of people.

It's fine at 10E. It does its job and fills its place as the most reliable straight offhand. You add a Lunging, that's a huge buff. If you remove aftercast on top (that's possibly required), that's another huge buff. It DOESN'T need further buffs.

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In an RPG game things have to make a certain amount of sense. Do Warriors have any spells? Should they have to cast Frenzy? Can Mesmers wear Plate Armor? Do Rangers have skills that allow them to exploit corpses? The Critical Strikes line consists of Assassin fighting styles and attacks the character has learned. Not spells. All of these abilities need to be more reliable to work anyway, so it all works out perfectly.

Assassins are part casters. They have tons of spells. They are designed this way by ANet. I don't care what they are in other games or what the word means to you. I don't honestly care about flavor all that much. The spells in there are related to Critical Strikes, which just makes as much sense imo. No, Rangers don't have corpse exploit, Mesmers don't wear plates and Warriors don't use spells. But Assassins DO use spells. They do in their other lines, they do everywhere. OVER HALF their arsenal is spells. Why shouldn't it be in their primary attribute? That's what Assassins are about in GW, melee caster with deadly combos, and their primary attribute just reflects that. And honestly i don't want to start a debate on 'flavor' or what 'makes sense'. I never saw any1 anywhere complaining that Assassin having spells in Crit Strike make no sense. And i have yet to be convinced at all that most of this stuff is balanced when being unremovable skills, in fact i believe most of it becomes broken.

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The purpose of the skill isn't to finish targets. It's pressure...constantly keeping the target below their max health if you can maintain the energy to pump it out.

I know, but when target isn't full, it's nice to have the skill good enough to finish people. It's nearly that good atm, just not quite. And Unsuspecting-Fox Fang-Nine Tail with your recharge buff would be seriously scary. Unsuspecting is a very strong lead attack with a short recharge. It DOES pressure atm. There's no need for a 'no block'. Adding Lunging is enough.

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How do you kite from someone with a permanet 33% speed boost, such as someone with Pious Haste? That's what this is. Lunging attacks are not an actual teleport...it's moving at a fast speed while performing the attack. If you're snared under this ability and tried to attack someone who is kiting away, the attack would fail.

I did understand it at basically a shadowstep from Nearby location. So what you mean, it's a 33% speed boost while attacking? 50%? Put some number on it. It seems a weird mechanism and hard to balance with kiting if it's not actually a shadowstep. Like when does the attack fails, for how long do you run, why the hell would my attack fail because the target is kiting (hell i'd rather have it simply activate when i get there if it can fail cause the guy move and screw lunging). I thought it was a nice idea if it was a very short range shadowstep only available on Lead Attacks. If it's some kind of weird running skill that can make attack fails if they kite, it starts to look kinda clumsy to me.

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The other offhands are what made Assassins playable. It's Recall that is retarded, on certain maps, and IAS abilies. Nothing more.

No, the other offhand attacks means that the only Assassin builds that will EVER see play are SP-type Assassins. Even without IAS. Do you think an Assassin in a split, the only place where SP sins are really useful atm, care for IAS? Why did iPod use an Assassin with no IAS then? Why is nearly every good guild running sins often goes for A/Me with Web instead of an IAS? Cause IAS in a split is useless, it's only good trying to beat monks in speed. If there's no monk, or just one, the IAS is close to meaningless at times.

What's stupid is how good the offhand-dual-offhand-dual is compared to anything else. Its straight kill ability is too strong to balance well and either you make it too conditional and extremely gimmicky or it's broken.

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They don't have to be.

Sadly to break it to you, but yes. Don't be delusional. WHY would you spend your elite on self-defense on an offensive character in GvG? Your backline sucks? You're running an extremely gimmicky build where there isn't even a support character and you think that surviving 3s longer will let you win? The only case i would agree possibly is flag runner. Well guess what, Flashing Dagger can't work there. So forget it. Unless you make it so that people hitting you in melee drop dead, it won't see play. Elite self-defense on attackers don't fit in GvG by concept. Trying to buff a skill when the concept is flawed is bad. It's already a good skill where the concept ISN'T flawed (like PvE, or arguably RA).

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No build that wants to use this skill cares about the recharge being lower.

Hrm, no build you play maybe? Trust me, if i do Dark Apostasy with Dagger and i want to use Critical Strike regularly, i'd be very happy to have GPS on a shorter recharge. If i want to use my tactic of doing GPS, wait/switch target, Dual-GPS-Dual, i'd be very happy with a lower recharge. The fact that you don't see the use doesn't seem that it isn't there. Don't dismiss other ideas so fast if you want people to consider yours.

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I like that idea a LOT.

And see, that's one i think was NOT a good idea cause it's arguably broken.

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The range isn't that far. It wouldn't be worth it for a warrior to ever be out of their main weapon and switching to these if they are they close to the opponent. But if it turned out to be a problem you could simply cause Shurikens to give half adrenaline.

Or you could just not mess around with stats like this when you can just give it stats that have been proven in the game.

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I'd like to see that build because it's truly not good for ANY kind of Assassin build I can think of with the current numbers.

It's simply a utility skill. For example, think of a split situation. You don't need to shadowstep all the time, and there's potentially long duration between the need for 2 shadowsteps. You can run around and the skill recharges, etc. In which case it becomes nearly as good as Shadow Prison (the snare is lighter, but if you use something like Horns it hardly matters). I used it on a stand sin as a utility skill that helped a lot in skirmish (could close in the distance very fast) or to do something like kill an overextender or a flag runner that got out of monk range efficiently. It's the same utility as Shadow Prison, except you can do it less often which balances it. In the course of a GvG, you have more than enough occasions to make good use of a skill like this. The difference is that since it has a decent recharge, it's not mindless and you don't base your build around it. It becomes UTILITY, and is quite decent as non-elite utility. It fits very well for example on a Moebius bar that might need to skirmish too.

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Damage should be as high as Palm Strike because no Assassin ever specs high enough into Deadly Arts for the damage to go THAT high. If they do, then this deserves to be doing that amount of damage.

Don't see why. It's not elite. Deadly Arts Assassin in Deadly Paradox could make use of this skill damn often at high spec, you know.

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I've never lost a GvG to a team that included SP Sins for any reason other than Recall being able to teleport them all the way from the enemy base back to the flagstand fight. *shrug*. When teleport range gets fixed you're going to see a MASSIVE drop in the amount of Assassins being played if other things don't improve.

Not all Assassin always used Recall. And i saw many top teams running non-recall Assassins that won games (iPod? And a lot of others that ran A/Me, though i'll agree that many DID use Recall. But not all of them).

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"No real effect". Exactly. That's why this SHOULD be recharging quicker. A sporadic teleport that doesn't let you make any kind of special play isn't going to be worth the skillslot.

And i agree with 30s recharge, which is a serious buff already. 30s is not 'sporadic'. Is a skill like Shatter Enchant sporadic? Is Shame sporadic? No, they're ready when you need them to make 'special plays'. So would Death Charge at 30s. At 45s it IS sporadic, which i believe a skill like Dark Prison should be, but at 30s it becomes a skill you can use regularly, just not at will. And no offensive shadowstep should ever be usable at will imo, it would take too much out of the game if they did.

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No, Return would be worthwhile and Death's Retreat would still never get used. Return is good because you can put it on a Monk with 2-spec and it actually has a useful effect. Death's Retreat at 2-spec has a very minor, conditional effect. 10s recharge doesn't matter that much because it doesn't actually slow down the melee from running after you again and you're not going to have the energy to keep teleporting every 10 seconds along with doing some actual healing/damage prevention. But, if it really did become too good for a Monk, just impose a 50% failure rate under a certain attribute rank.

Think of other stuff than Monk primary. An Assassin for example that is deeper in their backline could very well want the self-heal and have enough Shadow Arts for it and doesn't care necessarily about crippling melee (that might not be what's hitting him anyway). A X/A caster could shadowstep and self-heal like crazy with this and would be a freaking pain to kill. It's a different option, and leaving it at 15s doesn't risk breaking anything. Honestly i think that a 10s recharge shadowstep risks being too powerful on certain characters.

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The remove "X" life only needs to be there to balance the skill out with the way it is now...up almost constantly and able to cast nearly instantly when used with Deadly Paradox. It would be useless if that condition was imposed upon the skill, were it acting like an actual Dervish form.

And what do you do about Shadowform flag runner for example? If there's no downside when it actually ends? Can't snare it, all you can do is bodyblock and hope you can maintain them there long enough so that it ends. And when it ends right now it means you can kill them because their health drops significantly. If there's no such downside, it risks being far too powerful to run flag or do stuff like kill bodyguard, etc. Because you wouldn't really have to dedicate much of the bar to Shadowform like you have to now, and the effect is ridiculously powerful with no downside attached. And recharge really isn't downside enough. And you'd hurt PvE seriously too, and while i don't care THAT much, there's little out of Shadowform tanking that allow Assassins to take part in anything like DoA, etc.

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Yes, interrupts are good and important for interrupting powerful effects. This is not a powerful effect.

You seem to think too much stuff isn't powerful effect. Not only powerful effects should be interruptable.

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Not realy...you have to spec up to 5 Shadow to use it. If I have to spec up to 5 to get an anti-spike ability for a Monk, I'm going to go /W and take Disciplined Stance.

It's still really fast recharge imo.

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No, it wouldn't be like that.

Yes, it would. It is NOW. Every damn spirit targetting skill works this way and always did, and so do minion targetting skills. You target someone in your team, and it will shadowstep you to the spirit closest to him as long as it's in cast range. Well, the guy is in cast range of you, the spirit is in the back in cast range of him, guess what you teleported 2 x Earshot (pretty much half radar). I used Spirit Walk actually quite a bit in TA. It's VERY powerful if you have spirits around.

And no, this shouldn't be changed, this make those spirit/minion targetting skills much more usable. The whole mechanic shouldn't be changed. This idea for Shadow Walk is just unneccessary and shouldn't happen.

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They aren't left around forever?

Sorry, just like 4 min or something. With 20s recharge. You can still have like 10 copies of each over the map. Which i think is pretty damn lame.

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Sure, it CAN be used with Rupture if left at 5 energy. But would that build be worth using? No.

Give me a build that'd be worth to use it at 0E? If a build is worth using with Swap/Rupture, i very much doubt that 5E will be the difference between the build being usable or not. But i don't see why Swap should be free.

Zuranthium · Jun 12, 2007, 07:55 PM // 19:55

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

It would be easily on the same level as a BoA SP Sin. Tbh, it'd probably end up a stronger template than a BoA SP sin. Shove-Crushing-Mokele-Power Attack could easily deal around 150 armor ignoring damage, DW and 3 hammer attacks.

Your target would have exactly 2 seconds of reaction time before Power Attack hits (you probably don't even want that on this bar, though). Mokele would not even hit until .25 seconds after they've stood up. The remainder of this Warrior's template would be extremely limited as well. You've overstated the case quite a bit. The build has a single strong effect (nearly un-preventable 4 second knockdown) and lacks a LOT of other skills in comparison to other Warrior bars.

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Ok, makes more sense. But i don't believe this'd be balanced without keeping the time limit there and you'd possibly even need to reduce it. You could do EXACTLY what i said before with 5 sins, except you'll start by doing Jagged-Wild Strike, or GPS, or w/e around on multiple targets. Then who they prot? Cause at any point, you can still just do 5 Death Charge->Death Blossom on someone

Why go through all that trouble when you could just Ranger Spike instead? Also, just limit the number of "marks" on a person to 2. Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

I never said IAS would make you miss on auto-attack. You could even still Flurry-Locust's Fury. What you couldn't do is COMBO in IAS. Dagger Attack Skills have 33% chance to miss, not dagger attacks.

Flurry already would take 25% damage off the bonus of the attack skills you're using. No need to limit it further.

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Originally Posted by Patccmoi

It can still act like an instantly activated protection when you're spiked that can't be removed in any way. You can't even Wild Blow it.

Sucks that you can't just Wild Blow a Warrior's armor and shield off, huh?

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Various Critical Strikes Enchantments

Ofc, go for elite options that you don't necessarily want or some lame self-heals that you wouldn't want most of the time? (let's face it, in GvG a glorified self-only Vigorous Spirit like Way of Perfection is NOT gonna make it on your bar). Being forced into specific secondaries so that you can use your own stuff is fairly lame too. The thing is, they are enchants now and they work as enchants.

They don't work as enchantments, though. Skills that work don't see 0 play. You're not forced to bring anything from a secondary to use your own "Golden" attacks, either. If you don't like the enchantments provided within the Assassin's repertoire, though, use something else. That's just the limitation which comes along with the attacks being powerful. (and to think that just a few posts ago people were saying I'm trying to destroy the two-class system!)

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A sure crit that deals +30 damage on 6s recharge? Not really. There's only Wearying Strike on a Melandru Dervish or elites. Malicious Strike is a very powerful attack on other weapons, and you just risk breaking stuff by buffing it. Less needless powercreep plz.

It's not a sure crit or sure bonus damage...there's a possibility the attack will do nothing extra at all, especially if you're using a slow-attacking Scythe. I'd really like to see an Assassin Scythe-wielding build with Malicious strike (in the buffed form) than makes the character more powerful than what you can do as a Dervish primary. I'm not seeing it, although it sounds interesting.

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Palm Strike

It's a straight offhand with no conditional and no way at all to prevent. That's WORTH 10E. And it does a huge amount of damage for an offhand, all ignoring armor. AND you'd have 'Lunging attack' to it.

Sorry, not worth it. Sure, that sounds good, but in the end it's just vanilla damage for 10E. You can create more powerful effects with other Elites. The only reason you'd ever want this in the first place is if you were going to make an Assassin bar with a lot of utility and wanted a cheap, reliable combo like Palm Strike + Nine Tail Strike + Impale.

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Unsuspecting-Fox Fang-Nine Tail with your recharge buff would be seriously scary.

There's no deep wound there, however, and you'd need 2 energy management skills to be spamming the chain. By the time you add that all in, your character is very limited. Not that scary, imo.

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Lunging Attacks

I did understand it at basically a shadowstep from Nearby location. So what you mean, it's a 33% speed boost while attacking? 50%?

Hmmm...yes, I need to describe this better. It IS a tiny shadowstep but it doesn't happen until the end of the attack. If you're snared and try to attack someone, but they run away too soon, your attack stops. Same thing there. If they run out of range too soon the "lunge" fails. So basically, no, you can not chain lunge attacks on someone and keep up with them if you're snared.

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No, the other offhand attacks means that the only Assassin builds that will EVER see play are SP-type Assassins. Even without IAS. Do you think an Assassin in a split, the only place where SP sins are really useful atm, care for IAS? Why did iPod use an Assassin with no IAS then? Why is nearly every good guild running sins often goes for A/Me with Web instead of an IAS? Cause IAS in a split is useless, it's only good trying to beat monks in speed. If there's no monk, or just one, the IAS is close to meaningless at times.

iPod's Sin was an attempt at a stand Assassin. IAS is better on split than it is at the stand because it means you can do Black Lotus + Horns + Black Spider + Twisting Fangs, and your Twisting Fangs will hit before they even stand up (and obviously there isn't as much, if any, healing support around since it's a split situation). IAS also lets you jump into the Lord room, do your damage very quickly, and get out. You run Web if you're running the Black Lotus/Black Spider/Death Blossom/Impale combo. The IAS isn't as good there because it has no effect on Impale and also because that character is more flexible...you don't have to blow all of your attacks on one character. You can Black Lotus + Death Blossom someone and then wait a little bit and switch targets and do Black Spider + Death Blossom + Impale on someone else. I like that build a lot but the dual-Assassin split build becomes better when 1 of the Assassins has an IAS.

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Sadly to break it to you, but yes. Don't be delusional. WHY would you spend your elite on self-defense on an offensive character in GvG?

Because it's a split character. If Gladiator's Defense was good, it would actually be quite worthwhile to run on a dedicated split character.

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Hrm, no build you play maybe? Trust me, if i do Dark Apostasy with Dagger and i want to use Critical Strike regularly, i'd be very happy to have GPS on a shorter recharge. If i want to use my tactic of doing GPS, wait/switch target, Dual-GPS-Dual, i'd be very happy with a lower recharge.

Can you be happy with +5 energy too?

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Jagged Strike

And see, that's one i think was NOT a good idea cause it's arguably broken.

It's too much of an energy expenditure to use it in the way you're thinking of, imo.

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Shurikens

Or you could just not mess around with stats like this when you can just give it stats that have been proven in the game.

Huh? Why would you have to be forced to go along with someone that's already there. There isn't some rule beaming down from the Heavens that prevents it.

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Dark Prison

It's simply a utility skill. For example, think of a split situation. You don't need to shadowstep all the time. It's the same utility as Shadow Prison, except you can do it less often which balances it. In the course of a GvG, you have more than enough occasions to make good use of a skill like this. The difference is that since it has a decent recharge, it's not mindless and you don't base your build around it. It becomes UTILITY, and is quite decent as non-elite utility. It fits very well for example on a Moebius bar that might need to skirmish too.

Siphon Speed is 100x better as utility with the current spec of Dark Prison. Completely unsure why you say you don't need a snare to be more reliable in a split situation either. You absolutely do.

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Death's Charge

And i agree with 30s recharge, which is a serious buff already. 30s is not 'sporadic'. Is a skill like Shatter Enchant sporadic? Is Shame sporadic? No, they're ready when you need them to make 'special plays'. So would Death Charge at 30s.

Shatter Enchantment and Shame have powerful effects. Death's Charge does not. You need to be able to use Death's Charge + Death's Retreat to constantly get in and out of battle. It's Aura of Displacement, for 2 skills, with more limitations but possible self heals. That's not imba.

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Death's Retreat

A X/A caster could shadowstep and self-heal like crazy with this and would be a freaking pain to kill.

Conditional self-heal. People don't have the energy to be constantly teleporting around. Return is good because it actually slows down melee. The 5 energy is doing something extra and it can be used offensively as well. Death's Retreat is one-sided and less efficient, so the more frequent use is needed to ever make it useful over Return. Even at 10 recharge, only a couple Assassin builds would have use for this skill.

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And what do you do about Shadowform flag runner for example? If there's no downside when it actually ends? Can't snare it, all you can do is bodyblock and hope you can maintain them there long enough so that it ends. And when it ends right now it means you can kill them because their health drops significantly. If there's no such downside, it risks being far too powerful to run flag or do stuff like kill bodyguard, etc.

You can already do a Vow of Silence Dervish to have extreme resistance for running the flag in. And there is a downside...you're spending your Elite and attribute points on a sporadic defensive ability. It could be good it but I doubt the overpowered-ness.

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You seem to think too much stuff isn't powerful effect. Not only powerful effects should be interruptable.

Some of them, sure. I was against Shadow Refuge have a lower recharge at one point too. But it's pretty necessary with other options that are available.

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Viper's Defense

It's still really fast recharge imo.

Sure, but it also only stops 1 hit. Not nearly as good of defense as Disciplined Stance (which also provides +armor for attacks that do come through). The quicker recharge balances this out.

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Spirit Walk

Yes, it would. It is NOW. [work from double distance]

How does "now" matter? You can change anything if it doesn't require the game's engine to be changed.

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Sorry, just like 4 min or something. With 20s recharge. You can still have like 10 copies of each over the map. Which i think is pretty damn lame.

There's no way you'd have time to be running around doing that. Nor would it be that useful? Please describe another method that would make a Commuming Rit viable for a balanced build if you don't like this one.

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If a build is worth using with Swap/Rupture, i very much doubt that 5E will be the difference between the build being usable or not. But i don't see why Swap should be free.

5E makes a HUGE difference, because you'd be wanting to use Destruction + Rupture Soul + Swap very often...like every 15 seconds. Destruction + Rupture Soul is already 15 energy. No way you could support an extra 5 energy every 15 seconds and still be able to do enough other things along the way to make that character useful enough.

~Z

Patccmoi · Jun 12, 2007, 11:24 PM // 23:24

I still disagree with most of your answers but i don't really feel like doing the whole back and forth forever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zuranthium

Your target would have exactly 2 seconds of reaction time before Power Attack hits (you probably don't even want that on this bar, though). Mokele would not even hit until .25 seconds after they've stood up. The remainder of this Warrior's template would be extremely limited as well. You've overstated the case quite a bit. The build has a single strong effect (nearly un-preventable 4 second knockdown) and lacks a LOT of other skills in comparison to other Warrior bars.

And you want to promote lame, single-minded gimmicky builds why?

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Also, just limit the number of "marks" on a person to 2. Problem solved.

You could limit it to 2, but you could also just not change it. I never felt that this was a real limitation and it prevents a lot of potential abuse.

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Flurry already would take 25% damage off the bonus of the attack skills you're using. No need to limit it further.

Actually if you put any +damage, Flurry's effect is negated. It's not really hard to have someone maintain Strength of Honor or Brutal Weapon on an Assassin's back you know. I did it all the time before Nightfall came out when i used Flourish Assassin spiker in GvG. We just stuck Strength of Honor on his back and i used Flurry.

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Sucks that you can't just Wild Blow a Warrior's armor and shield off, huh?

And since when are Assassins supposed to be as resilient as warrior to physical damage? In fact with Crit Defenses they'd be harder than warriors to kill with attacks, which is a little retarded imo.

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They don't work as enchantments, though. Skills that work don't see 0 play. You're not forced to bring anything from a secondary to use your own "Golden" attacks, either. If you don't like the enchantments provided within the Assassin's repertoire, though, use something else. That's just the limitation which comes along with the attacks being powerful. (and to think that just a few posts ago people were saying I'm trying to destroy the two-class system!)

They see 0 use because of what their effect is, not because they're enchantments. And also because there's about only 2 Assassin builds used in GvG. And the Moebius sin template is actually often ran with Critical Defenses already even if it's an enchant, go figure...

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The only reason you'd ever want this in the first place is if you were going to make an Assassin bar with a lot of utility and wanted a cheap, reliable combo like Palm Strike + Nine Tail Strike + Impale.

Yes, and that's where it fits too. And it has its place. If what you want is some utility out of your elite, you'll never pick it anyway unless it is blatantly overpowered. You're doing the same thing here as stuff that get Discord buffed into a ridiculous skill. You just buff and buff the stats of skills because they aren't versatile enough to see regular play. Either you make them versatile, or you let them be and accept that they're going to be situational elites for certain types of builds. If you want to make it versatile, you could make it something like 'straight offhand attack. If target has a lead attack mark, he's knocked down'. This way you could decide for example to use it straight for a quick dual attack combo or as part of a lead-offhand-dual combo chain (which could be something pretty nasty like Iron Palm, Palm Strike, Horns of the Ox, Falling Spider, Twisting Fangs which would do some massive kd for example and could be used in a tons of different orders depending on what you aim for, long knockdown, fast deep wound spike, medium spike with kd, etc.). This would make the skill interesting without doing some power creep on its stats.

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There's no deep wound there, however, and you'd need 2 energy management skills to be spamming the chain. By the time you add that all in, your character is very limited. Not that scary, imo.

Can pretty easily add Impale. Or you can just use Critical Strike, and although it has a possibility to be blocked it gives pretty insane energy back when it's not.

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Hmmm...yes, I need to describe this better. It IS a tiny shadowstep but it doesn't happen until the end of the attack. If you're snared and try to attack someone, but they run away too soon, your attack stops. Same thing there. If they run out of range too soon the "lunge" fails. So basically, no, you can not chain lunge attacks on someone and keep up with them if you're snared.

This does sound quite clumsy in effect the way you put it there.

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IAS is better on split than it is at the stand because it means you can do Black Lotus + Horns + Black Spider + Twisting Fangs, and your Twisting Fangs will hit before they even stand up (and obviously there isn't as much, if any, healing support around since it's a split situation). IAS also lets you jump into the Lord room, do your damage very quickly, and get out. You run Web if you're running the Black Lotus/Black Spider/Death Blossom/Impale combo. The IAS isn't as good there because it has no effect on Impale and also because that character is more flexible...you don't have to blow all of your attacks on one character. You can Black Lotus + Death Blossom someone and then wait a little bit and switch targets and do Black Spider + Death Blossom + Impale on someone else. I like that build a lot but the dual-Assassin split build becomes better when 1 of the Assassins has an IAS.

I don't agree, but its beside the point anyway. The point was that straight offhand being too powerful will always lead to offhand-dual-offhand-dual being more popular and effective. Straight offhand should be a real tradeoff, trading in power and reliability for a quick dual. Atm they're actually better than the rest.

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Because it's a split character. If Gladiator's Defense was good, it would actually be quite worthwhile to run on a dedicated split character.

No. It wouldn't. Cause then you'd totally screw up your use at flagstand and if it ever became popular people would just fit Wild Blow somewhere (not like it's uncommon on Melandru Dervs). And then it'd never see play again.

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Can you be happy with +5 energy too?

Yes but i don't want too much ease in doing offhand-dual-offhand dual combo, and that's all this promotes.

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It's too much of an energy expenditure to use it in the way you're thinking of, imo.

Not really, i do it regularly just running up to people. Especially effective on a R/A though when you add Apply Poison on top.

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Huh? Why would you have to be forced to go along with someone that's already there. There isn't some rule beaming down from the Heavens that prevents it.

Because you don't risk adding something imbalanced in the game when it really can't afford any other abuse. That's a big problem with all the skill buffs you add in all your posts, so much abuse potential that you can't really gauge properly because there's too many changes at once, and nobody wants an even worse 'let's abuse broken stuff' meta to come out if this one can ever get fixed.

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Siphon Speed is 100x better as utility with the current spec of Dark Prison. Completely unsure why you say you don't need a snare to be more reliable in a split situation either. You absolutely do.

Yes you need the snare, i never said that you didn't either i said that Dark Prison's snare doesn't need to be as powerful as Shadow Prison. Dark Prison actually snares enough for a combo. Siphon Speed doesn't shadowstep you to a target afaik and has half range, which means that you can get pummeled pretty harshly in a split, or blind, etc. much more easily than if you just pop up in their face and knock them 1-2 seconds later. And i actually ran both Dark and Siphon on the bar, cause if you use a Black offhand you can't rely on Dark Prison to activate it. Both have different utility even if both snare, and saying one is 100x better than the other makes no sense. It's like when you pretty much say RoF is 100x better than Orison. No it's not, it's just different, and it happens that RoF is the effect that's the most desirable no matter how much you buff Orison. It doesn't mean that Orison needs any buff.

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Shatter Enchantment and Shame have powerful effects. Death's Charge does not. You need to be able to use Death's Charge + Death's Retreat to constantly get in and out of battle. It's Aura of Displacement, for 2 skills, with more limitations but possible self heals. That's not imba.

You seem to seriously underestimate the effect of an offensive shadowstep.

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Conditional self-heal. People don't have the energy to be constantly teleporting around.

You likely don't need to be CONSTANTLY teleporting around. And many casters would still have the energy (Mind Blaster for instance). And it's hardly a 'conditional' self-heal. If you need it, it's gonna work nearly every time. Just teleport to someone with more health than you... if you need the heal and this can't be found, your team is likely already screwed enough that the self-heal from Death Return wouldn't change much.

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You can already do a Vow of Silence Dervish to have extreme resistance for running the flag in. And there is a downside...you're spending your Elite and attribute points on a sporadic defensive ability. It could be good it but I doubt the overpowered-ness.

They can also use 2-3 melee to bodyblock you and bash your face while you can't get healed reliably. There's heavy risks in running Vow of Silence, just like there's heavy risks running Shadow Form currently and that's why you don't see flag runners with them cause nobody wants unnecessary risks with flag. And if this became viable, another layer of strategy would be gone from GvG cause then flag running would become trivial.

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How does "now" matter? You can change anything if it doesn't require the game's engine to be changed.

As i said, it's GOOD as it works now. It's seriously required for most of those spirit targetting skills to be actually usable in a game cause there's no easy way to target specific spirits in the middle of a fight.

And screwing this up for an unneeded buff would just be stupid.

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There's no way you'd have time to be running around doing that. Nor would it be that useful? Please describe another method that would make a Commuming Rit viable for a balanced build if you don't like this one.

Limiting spirits to 3 in earshot and limiting defensive spirits to earshot range is a pretty good start and that's what i suggested before, but tbh i think that allowing to cast more of the same type close is where your idea gets bad. Because then you can truly leave spirits all over. You can have possibly 2 different Pains, Bloodsong and Anguish behind your backline that could both hit a melee attacker wanting to overextend AND have some more midline that can hit their casters and melee. A single melee could easily find himself with 9 attacking spirits hitting him all from the same Rt just using 3 skill slots. I just think this is a very very bad idea. And i don't see why spirits need any longer duration than what they have now, especially if you buff cast time and recharge.

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5E makes a HUGE difference, because you'd be wanting to use Destruction + Rupture Soul + Swap very often...like every 15 seconds. Destruction + Rupture Soul is already 15 energy. No way you could support an extra 5 energy every 15 seconds and still be able to do enough other things along the way to make that character useful enough.

Offering of Spirit, Splinter Weapon, Wielder's Strike, Essence Strike? Can spike support, melee support, useful at VoD, and could do that bomb of yours while having more energy that he'd really need? Channeling has very good emanagement if you use Essence Strike. If you use Offering of Spirit on top, your energy is pretty damn crazy. I'm not saying the build is perfect, it'd depend too much on the rest of your team build anyway, but it's just to show that 5E doesn't suddenly make a combo viable or not in this case.

Zuranthium · Jun 13, 2007, 05:23 AM // 05:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Shove

And you want to promote lame, single-minded gimmicky builds why?

You can already make a teleporting Warrior build with Burst of Aggression + Hammer Bash + Shove if you wanted to. The new Shove Warrior wouldn't be any more effective (and would most likely be harder to play), really...just provides a means to do it with the "teleports make you lose all adrenaline" rule.

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Lots of Sins spiking a target with a dual attack

You could limit it to 2, but you could also just not change it. I never felt that this was a real limitation and it prevents a lot of potential abuse.

Not being able to switch back and forth between targets is a pretty big detriment, actually? Yet another big reason why Lead + Offhand + Dual chains are so sucky as well. Any potential abuse was just left behind too...

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Actually if you put any +damage, Flurry's effect is negated. It's not really hard to have someone maintain Strength of Honor or Brutal Weapon on an Assassin's back you know. I did it all the time before Nightfall came out when i used Flourish Assassin spiker in GvG. We just stuck Strength of Honor on his back and i used Flurry.

That's nice? Flurry wouldn't be functioning in the same way as it used to.

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And since when are Assassins supposed to be as resilient as warrior to physical damage? In fact with Crit Defenses they'd be harder than warriors to kill with attacks, which is a little retarded imo.

It's what you get for spending your skillslot on the ability. Warriors have better armor than Assassins, longer knockdowns, better ability use to IAS skills, and more reliability. Sins have to make up for it in other areas. At worst Crit Defenses should be a stance with a competitive recharge time (and then dropping the "refreshes when you make a Critical Strike" property), but definitely NOT easily removable.

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They see 0 use because of what their effect is, not because they're enchantments. And also because there's about only 2 Assassin builds used in GvG. And the Moebius sin template is actually often ran with Critical Defenses already even if it's an enchant, go figure...

The effects on all of the skills are just fine. It's the unreliability and wasted time re-applying that kills them. Critical Defenses might work at times for smaller arenas but you just can not depend on things like that for a front-line build to work.

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"The only reason you'd ever want this in the first place is if you were going to make an Assassin bar with a lot of utility and wanted a cheap, reliable combo like Palm Strike + Nine Tail Strike + Impale."

Yes, and that's where it fits too. And it has its place.

Yes, that's where it fits....a low-cost, reliable attack chain. Which is not how you'd be able to describe it if Palm Strike was left at 10E.

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You're doing the same thing here as stuff that get Discord buffed into a ridiculous skill. You just buff and buff the stats of skills because they aren't versatile enough to see regular play. Either you make them versatile, or you let them be and accept that they're going to be situational elites for certain types of builds.

Wow...the amount of damage and spamming Discord could do was SO much greater than what Palm Strike would be capable of!

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Lunging Attacks

This does sound quite clumsy in effect the way you put it there.

No more clumsy than a speed boost? LOL? A speed boost that stacks with other speed boosts.

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I don't agree, but its beside the point anyway. The point was that straight offhand being too powerful will always lead to offhand-dual-offhand-dual being more popular and effective. Straight offhand should be a real tradeoff, trading in power and reliability for a quick dual. Atm they're actually better than the rest.

The offhands are absolutely not too powerful (save Black Lotus for spike purposes)...it's just the Lead/Offhand chains which suck? Assassins seem to be like these really scary monsters for you. In reality, they see less play than Warriors and Dervish and the amount of play they do see is greatly linked to their ability to run off and kill NPCs and then shadowstep way back over towards the main fight (which would be getting nerfed).

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Gladiator's Defense

No. It wouldn't. Cause then you'd totally screw up your use at flagstand and if it ever became popular people would just fit Wild Blow somewhere (not like it's uncommon on Melandru Dervs). And then it'd never see play again.

A Warrior can do a lot with his non-Elite skills. They are versatile. It's not something that would become popular either. Which is the whole point - creating new ways for people to try different builds that can be effective but specific towards your own team's playing style.

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Golden Phoenix Strike

Yes but i don't want too much ease in doing offhand-dual-offhand dual combo, and that's all this promotes.

Why do you even care about that? A Lead/Offhand/Dual chain is most likely going to have Impale anyway and be able to do a 4-attack combo in the same manner.

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Because you don't risk adding something imbalanced in the game when it really can't afford any other abuse. That's a big problem with all the skill buffs you add in all your posts, so much abuse potential that you can't really gauge properly because there's too many changes at once, and nobody wants an even worse 'let's abuse broken stuff' meta to come out if this one can ever get fixed.

Well these changes obviously assume that people are behind the game who care and would monitor + fix things very quickly. No point in trying to argue the pessimistic side...that's not what this this about.

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Yes you need the snare, i never said that you didn't either i said that Dark Prison's snare doesn't need to be as powerful as Shadow Prison. Dark Prison actually snares enough for a combo. Siphon Speed doesn't shadowstep you to a target afaik and has half range, which means that you can get pummeled pretty harshly in a split, or blind, etc. much more easily than if you just pop up in their face and knock them 1-2 seconds later. And i actually ran both Dark and Siphon on the bar, cause if you use a Black offhand you can't rely on Dark Prison to activate it. Both have different utility even if both snare, and saying one is 100x better than the other makes no sense. It's like when you pretty much say RoF is 100x better than Orison. No it's not, it's just different, and it happens that RoF is the effect that's the most desirable no matter how much you buff Orison. It doesn't mean that Orison needs any buff.

K, the thing is, I don't believe that Assassin build you talk about is strong enough. That last part makes no sense either:

Child 1: "I got 95% on my test Mom, I only missed question #2!"
Child 2: "I got 5% on my test Mom, I only got question #2 right!"

Child 2 did one thing better than the other Child, but it's quite clear that Child 1 did BETTER. Orison's isn't just "different" than Reversal....it's absolutely inferior 95% of the time.

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Death's Charge

You seem to seriously underestimate the effect of an offensive shadowstep.

A shadowstep with no offensive bonus on a character who can't spike as fast as a regular Warrior and who will get owned without additionally bringing another skill to either teleport him away again or help him stay alive in the dangerous spot he just teleported to.

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Death's Retreat

You likely don't need to be CONSTANTLY teleporting around. And many casters would still have the energy (Mind Blaster for instance). And it's hardly a 'conditional' self-heal. If you need it, it's gonna work nearly every time. Just teleport to someone with more health than you... if you need the heal and this can't be found, your team is likely already screwed enough that the self-heal from Death Return wouldn't change much.

The thing is...you can't just teleport when you need the heal. Sometimes you are casting a spell. Sometimes you are knocked down or otherwise disabled. The effect really isn't better, on average, than what you could do with a defensive stance. Or Return, which people can already use at a lower spec and is more versatile.

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Shadow Form

They can also use 2-3 melee to bodyblock you and bash your face while you can't get healed reliably. There's heavy risks in running Vow of Silence, just like there's heavy risks running Shadow Form currently and that's why you don't see flag runners with them cause nobody wants unnecessary risks with flag.

No...if you're running a Vow of Silence character you'd obviously have mystic regen and a blocking enchantment (if not on you, then shield of deflection on your monk). It's basically Shadow Form, on a character that gets the energy back when the effect ends.

In both cases it's hard to slot such a character on your team, even though it might be very effective. While I see your concern about a Shadow Form Assassin going to solo the Bodyguard as well, that would really only happen if the other team lets him...the same threat as any other current Sin. A single Elem/Monk/Rit runner should be able to heal through whatever that Assassin can do for the period it's up.

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As i said, it's GOOD as it works now. It's seriously required for most of those spirit targetting skills to be actually usable in a game cause there's no easy way to target specific spirits in the middle of a fight.

And screwing this up for an unneeded buff would just be stupid.

I'm not sure what you mean by screwing it up - I've NEVER seen a Rit in a balanced build with Spirit Walk? And properly placing + being able to target your spirits at the correct time would be part of the skill necessary to play that Ritualist build. I don't think that's a problem?

Quote:

Limiting spirits to 3 in earshot and limiting defensive spirits to earshot range is a pretty good start and that's what i suggested before, but tbh i think that allowing to cast more of the same type close is where your idea gets bad. Because then you can truly leave spirits all over. You can have possibly 2 different Pains, Bloodsong and Anguish behind your backline that could both hit a melee attacker wanting to overextend AND have some more midline that can hit their casters and melee. A single melee could easily find himself with 9 attacking spirits hitting him all from the same Rt just using 3 skill slots. I just think this is a very very bad idea. And i don't see why spirits need any longer duration than what they have now, especially if you buff cast time and recharge.

Do you honestly think ANY team would feel the need to bring Pain + Bloodsong + Anguish if the mechanics are left as they are now? Certainly not. You're also ignoring the fact that spirits can be killed and that it would be impossible for the Ritualist to place the spirits in that kind of formation (9 all within attack range) on most every map, to not mention unrealistic on the maps where it might be possible.

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Swap needing to cost 0 energy

Offering of Spirit, Splinter Weapon, Wielder's Strike, Essence Strike? Can spike support, melee support, useful at VoD, and could do that bomb of yours while having more energy that he'd really need? Channeling has very good emanagement if you use Essence Strike. If you use Offering of Spirit on top, your energy is pretty damn crazy. I'm not saying the build is perfect, it'd depend too much on the rest of your team build anyway, but it's just to show that 5E doesn't suddenly make a combo viable or not in this case.

That build wouldn't work.

You can't rely on those Spirit spells (or at least Essence Strike anyway, for the energy gain) when your only spirit is Destruction and you plan on blowing it up a lot. Moreover, it doesn't matter how much E-management you can pack into your build. An overpriced still is still an overpriced skill, no matter how you look at it. You wouldn't use Swap in the first place if it cost 5 energy. You would include a more useful skill.

~Z

Zuranthium · Jul 03, 2007, 07:05 PM // 19:05

Updated the listings to reflect the last update and a couple other fixes as well.

~Z

Andrew Patrick · Jul 03, 2007, 09:39 PM // 21:39

Wow...that's a long post.

Please keep this discussion going! I am adding it to our community report for the designers to check out. You don't all have to agree 100% with each other but if you could mention why you disagree in your posts, that will be a lot of really useful data.

Thanks for taking the time to make such an epic-sized post!

DreamWind · Jul 03, 2007, 10:40 PM // 22:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Wow...that's a long post.

Please keep this discussion going! I am adding it to our community report for the designers to check out. You don't all have to agree 100% with each other but if you could mention why you disagree in your posts, that will be a lot of really useful data.

Thanks for taking the time to make such an epic-sized post!

Thanks for reading. I highly recommend passing on anything Ensign posts about skill balances to the higher powers or whatever. I have too many disagreements with many changes listed in this thread, even though some of them are decent.

This is one of those threads where there is a lot of good information and a lot of bad as well. I'd rather just have a little bit of good passed on with regularity than a ton of information that has to be searched through.

Willow O Whisper · Jul 03, 2007, 11:18 PM // 23:18

quote@ Zuranthium
Shadow Form - Remove the "you lose X amount of health when this skill ends" component, change it to a skill with a 20 second recharge that also changes the form of your character, set the duration at 10 + (Attribute Rank * 2), and cause the skill to become disabled for 60 seconds when used. Also make it so that the character is unaffected by traps while in the Form.

Why - The skill in its current state is either useless or gimmicky with things such as Deadly Paradox and Arcane Mimicry. With this change it would temporarily give the Assassin near-invulnerability without the drawback of massive health loss when it ends and not be abusable by other skills in any way. Worthy of being an Elite but not problem causing.

Now i like ur idea + give it a shadow animation (forms whitout any char changes are boring.)
But there is one little problem if this change happens, this would Completly destroy the only way a sin can farm therefore kill the economy for many pve sin's. + i don't think the range of shadow steps need a fix, it's fine as it is.

Apart from that i love ur ideas.
Good job!

TheOneMephisto · Jul 04, 2007, 02:36 AM // 02:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Wow...that's a long post.

Please keep this discussion going! I am adding it to our community report for the designers to check out. You don't all have to agree 100% with each other but if you could mention why you disagree in your posts, that will be a lot of really useful data.

Thanks for taking the time to make such an epic-sized post!

I <3 you Andrew. Thanks for taking the time to read through and comment on these threads.

frojack · Jul 04, 2007, 01:22 PM // 13:22

Quote:

Bestial Fury / Tiger’s Fury - Remove the “all non-attack skills are disabled for 5 seconds” clause and change the IAS so that it’s 33% and only applies if you have a pet.

Why? - No reason this can’t be 33% with RAMPAGE AS ONE existing.

RaO was also nerfed for much the same reason those 2 skills were nerfed in the first place. It's too strong. RaO is a severe energy hog. It can't be run indefinitely without a substantial energy investment which is usually reserved for healing/resurrecting your pet and the few attack skills that have energy cost (on a thumper/Spear chucker bar that is). I think the Anet message is "really strong passive buffs are a 'no no'. Strong buffs used at key moments is ok". Seems quite reasonable to me.

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Bestial Mauling - Decrease the dazed duration to 1 + (Attribute Rank/2) but quicken the pet’s attack speed for this to 3/4 of a second.

Why? - With a short duration and long recharge, the actual attack deserves to hit reliably when the knockdown happens.

Disrupting Lunge - Set the pet’s attack speed as 3/4 of a second for this.

Why? - Pets attack too slow to make this useful otherwise.

These are good changes, however I feel they wouldn't be necessary if pet's didn't have peculiar attack rates (bizarre initial pausing, really really slow etc.) and had an attack rate comparable toswords/axes/spears or even hammers.

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Brutal Strike - Cut the energy cost in half but triple the recharge time.

Why? - This skill doesn’t make sense as high cost and quick recharge...it’s a spike ability and as such it should be changed to reflect that.

The energy cost controls this. In the right situation it is a good modifier for pet dps. However if you want to spam it, you need to pay for it. Meaning you need to be tactical when you front-load it or you run out of energy. Reducing the cost and increasing the recharge removes flexibility. Even if it makes it easier (simpler) to use, I can't see that as a good thing.

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Call of Haste - Should affect all allied pets.

Why? - Let’s see if Beast Master teams are workable. This skill is crucial.

Too strong. This skill worth the slot for the added effectiveness it adds to a pet. It's basically a slightly weaker RaO for pets. Besides adding skills like this only promotes class stacking. We can all see how 'bad' that is (Ranger spike, Blood Spike, Rit Spike, Para shout stacks etc...)

[quote
Call of Protection - Decrease damage reduction to 5 + (Attribute Rank / 2) but have it affect all allied pets. Also decrease the recharge to 30 seconds and the duration to 60 seconds.

Why? - Needs to affect all pets but would definitely be too good with the current reduction rate.
[/quote]
Same as above.

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Otyugh's Cry - Drop the duration a few seconds but affect all allied pets.

Why? - YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO SEE THIS GET PLAY IN GVG.

Same as above. In fact in this case. Hell no! Way too strong. It's strong enough to be worth the skill slot on any pet user. They should need to take it themselves.

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Heal As One - Remove the “under 75% health” conditionality.

Why? - It’s an annoying clause on an Elite that is already marginally useful.

I wouldn't call the effectiveness of this skill 'marginal'. Nothing like that at all. I imagine the reason the clause was left in when the skill was buffed was to prevent pet users 'over-healing' by using it to top up any damage, then re-use it again once the recharge is up. Under heavy fire this would be allow for a good chunk of effective healing on a fully offensive character.
Not completely against the change, though I can see why this would be undesired.

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Run as One - Decrease the recharge to 15 seconds and change to a skill (rather than a stance) that requires your pet to be alive for it to activate.

Why? - It’s not a worthwhile run buff at the moment.

I really, really like this. Probably because on some level I feel it would be over powered. Wouldn't object but at the same time, not too sure. (Lightning Reflexes + This?)

Over-all some interesting Beast mastery ideas.

Zuranthium · Jul 05, 2007, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

RaO was also nerfed for much the same reason those 2 skills were nerfed in the first place. It's too strong. RaO is a severe energy hog. It can't be run indefinitely without a substantial energy investment which is usually reserved for healing/resurrecting your pet and the few attack skills that have energy cost (on a thumper/Spear chucker bar that is). I think the Anet message is "really strong passive buffs are a 'no no'. Strong buffs used at key moments is ok". Seems quite reasonable to me.

If Tiger's Fury + Run As One got buffed, together it would be just about the same as having the current nerfed version of Rampage As One (would cost a little less energy but not give your pet IAS). That seems fine to me...an Elite skill having the effect of 2 non-Elites is a pretty standard model. Also, remember that the old version of Tiger's Fury was being run with the un-nerfed version of Irresistible Blow and pets that didn't get DP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Brutal Strike

The energy cost controls this. In the right situation it is a good modifier for pet dps. However if you want to spam it, you need to pay for it. Meaning you need to be tactical when you front-load it or you run out of energy. Reducing the cost and increasing the recharge removes flexibility. Even if it makes it easier (simpler) to use, I can't see that as a good thing.

I just don't believe it's good enough at 10 energy. In thinking about skillbars, I saw no use for this skill the way it is now in comparison to other effects you can cause through other skills.

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Call of Haste, Call of Protection, Otyugh's Cry

Too strong. Adding skills like this only promotes class stacking. We can all see how 'bad' that is (Ranger spike, Blood Spike, Rit Spike, Para shout stacks etc...)

Perhaps. I really don't think it would be as problem-causing as those builds, though. In any case, even if the current suggestions are perhaps not on-target, I really do think these need to be improved. I can't see any GvG builds where they would be useful in their current forms. Or do you disagree?

~Z

frojack · Jul 06, 2007, 08:02 PM // 20:02

[Urgh... That post of mine is almost illegible. Need to stop posting in the middle of the night ^_^]

Quote:

If Tiger's Fury + Run As One got buffed, together it would be just about the same as having the current nerfed version of Rampage As One (would cost a little less energy but not give your pet IAS). That seems fine to me...an Elite skill having the effect of 2 non-Elites is a pretty standard model. Also, remember that the old version of Tiger's Fury was being run with the un-nerfed version of Irresistible Blow and pets that didn't get DP.

Difference being it would be more or less perma' RaO (without pet), since the cost is a lot cheaper and is more manageable since it's broken down into 2 chunks. RaO was nerfed after Irresistible (I think) so that wasn't the problem. RaO was just a massive passive buff that made already strong thumpers complete monsters. If you remove the need for the elite to achieve a 'better' version at the cost of 2 skills slots instead of 1, Thumpers start taking scarier shit like Backbreaker or even Devastating. Only 3 attack skills sure and no utility, but the kinda' pressure these crazily buffed Thumps can dish out would more than makes up for it I'd wager.

Quote:

I just don't believe it's good enough at 10 energy. In thinking about skillbars, I saw no use for this skill the way it is now in comparison to other effects you can cause through other skills.

That is quite fair. While on paper this skill is stupidly good (come on, Final Thrust every 5 seconds), it's the fact that pets are inherently slow at attacking that makes it too unreliable. This is why I suggested a general attack rate buff for pets.
Incidentally, splitting the +damage into separate chunks (ala conjure) might be a good buff. Maybe also a nasty conditional like 'If blocked by a foe under 50% hp, that foe is knocked down'... That would be... hmm.... Dangerous.

Quote:

Perhaps. I really don't think it would be as problem-causing as those builds, though. In any case, even if the current suggestions are perhaps not on-target, I really do think these need to be improved. I can't see any GvG builds where they would be useful in their current forms. Or do you disagree?

Indeed I do agree, I can't really think of a really over-powering and/or effective build they could be exploited in. However you know how it goes; put it in and people will find it (Paragons and pet owners? Nah...).
The other 2 are questionable but workable I guess. Otyugh's Cry however is a very scary thing. It's like perma-Expose that can't be stopped or removed. I really wouldn't like to see a nasty surprise with that one...

frojack · Jul 06, 2007, 09:10 PM // 21:10

Woah, hold the phone. Theres more

Quote:

Mind Shock - Cause knockdown even if the energy requirement is not met.

Why? - Should never be reduced to just a Lightning Strike that causes exhaustion.

Leave Mind Shock alone! In all seriousness though, this thing is nigh on perfect. One of the best in the game, and 'the' best example of how exhaustion should be used. Perfect balance of flexibility, cost, and power. I really can't see the need to change this skill. In all honesty, the change just makes bad players look better by dumbing it down.

Quote:

Ride the Lightning - Remove exhaustion and make the damage equal to Lightning Orb.

Why? - So bad right now. You obviously want to use this on combination with Shock and there’s way too much exhaustion between those two at the moment. (or, you can keep the exhaustion on this spell but cause it to knockdown the target as well)

In truth, warriors are probably the only reason this thing has exhaustion (something I completely understand). It's just a 'traveling' skill on elementalists though I guess. Sure, remove the exhaustion (buff casting time to if you want) just as long as it's cost becomes 25 energy...

Quote:

Ebon Hawk - Should cause weakness ALWAYS. Also decrease the casting time to 1 second.

Why? - It’s obviously asking to be used in conjunction with Glowstone and Stoning but sucks too much right now to ever be worth playing.

While I generally only post about things I have issue with, this gets a special mention because it so needs to happen...

Quote:

Shockwave - Decrease recharge to 15 seconds.

Why? - Needs a bit of a push to become a solid pressure Elite.

I know you mean well with this, and I don't disagree with the buff (in fact Anet implemented it) however I can't see this ever becoming good enough to actually use. PBAoE aren't amazing in general (Frozen Burst being the exception), so an elite version isn't going to be that hot either. Needs to be more useful.
Something like blinding knocked down foes it strikes would be far better. Now that would be useful even on a 20 second recharge. Utility is always better than mindless damage.

Quote:

Stone Sheath - Decrease recharge to 5 seconds.

Why? - You should at least be able to constantly spread the spell if you’re determined to make a build that benefits from the effects.

This thing 'has' no real benefits. After literally months and months I still can not fathom why anyone would bother with this hex. It offers absolutely nothing of value. An elite hex for crying out loud. What's it gonna' do? Gimp a conjure warrior? Waste of time.
It needs a complete overhaul. Something strong like 'Damage from all sources becomes earth damage". Yes that's right. Even raw +damage on attack skills, or mesmer damage, life steal, the works.... Then we can talk about balancing this thing.

[note]Obviously all those raw damage skills would have their numbers rated at 60al. To not do so would be stupid ^_^.

Quote:

Mind Blast - Gain half of the energy bonus even if your energy isn’t higher than the target’s.

Why? - The entire point of the spell is the energy management. You should never be getting just a targeted flare out of it.

No need to make it mindless (ha ha). Seriously good players are rewarded for not using this like idiots. Bad players who just spam shit should suffer all the torment mediocrity offers. Like in the case of Mind Shock.

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Freezing Gust - Increase the recharge by 1 second.

Why? - Just a touch overpowered. Shouldn’t be able to keep someone snared 100% of the time.

This is not overpowered, it's just strong. Sure you can snare someone all day if you want, but that is all you'll be doing. In the long run it becomes pointless and while 10 energy is the most efficient in terms of attunement rebate, it won't last forever. This is yet another skill that favours intelligent play.
That 1 second is a flexibility clause to allow the player to choose damage over additional snare if it suits their needs. Besides is 1 second really gonna' change anything? Not really...

Quote:

Maelstrom - Increase AOE to Nearby.

Why? - Too easily avoided at the moment.

Ooh asking for trouble ^_^. I love the idea but then I guess I would. I think it could be heavily exploited in certain situations. Especially on a class that has the best snare and knockdown at range in the game.

Quote:

Swirling Aura - Decrease to 5 energy and a 1/4 second cast and increase to a 75% block rate.

Why? - Way too sucky in pretty much every way.

Nice change. I hope that block rate is still only for projectiles. Even still, it's pretty strong when you consider it's on a water guy.

I'd say make the cast time 3/4 (if not 1 second), also keep the 10 energy cost, but reduce recharge and duration (allow for about 5 seconds of downtime) to make it more energy intensive. A powerful interruption deterrent, but a costly one. Promotes intelligent usage.

On your energy elites; Most were quite good. I really liked the Second Wind change for example. Thing is elite energy management is kinda' pointless in a world where GoLE exists.

Cool ideas overall though. Some real gems in there ( Lightning Javelin) even if a few were glaringly obvious (Ebon Hawk, Icy Prism).

Patccmoi · Jul 07, 2007, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

I know you mean well with this, and I don't disagree with the buff (in fact Anet implemented it) however I can't see this ever becoming good enough to actually use. PBAoE aren't amazing in general (Frozen Burst being the exception), so an elite version isn't going to be that hot either. Needs to be more useful.
Something like blinding knocked down foes it strikes would be far better. Now that would be useful even on a 20 second recharge. Utility is always better than mindless damage.

Personally, for Shockwave and Earth magic in general, i think there should be more synergy with Weakness. It's a condition that, despite its buff, is still largely unused. It sees play once in a while but it's usually for secondary reasons (for example you see sometimes BSurge Eles with Enervating Charge. But it's not for weakness in itself, it's for a cover condition on blind).

It's already something they seem to want to do with Glowstone and Stoning, but the whole thing doesn't really work because inducing weakness as an Earth Ele just sucks. Ebon Hawk is how you do it, and Ebon Hawk is attrocious.

Personally, here's the skill changes i'd see to maybe see Earth becoming an interesting attribute line in itself because atm, let's admit it, it's the most deficient Elementalist line by far and there's a reason why you now regularly see hydros, aeros and pyros but more or less never earth eles appart from a ward at 9-10 Earth on a guy:

Ebon Hawk:

10/1/5
Spell. Send a projectile that strikes for 10...82 earth damage if it hits. If this Spell hits a moving or attacking foe, that foe suffers from Weakness for 5...13 seconds.

This means that it more or less always causes weakness on attackers (when are they not moving or attacking? Try not to hit a warrior activating a heal sig plz). It wouldn't allow for too mindless weakness inducer on casters, but i think that's fine because it's also a good damage dealer and at 10/1/5 you could spam it quite a bit.

Ash Blast :

5/.75/8
Target foe is struck for 20...56 earth damage and suffers from weakness for 5...17 seconds. If Ash Blast strikes a knocked-down foe, that foe is Blinded for 3...13 seconds instead.

So if the foe is knocked he's blind, if the foe ISN'T knocked he has weakness. This would become your reliable weakness inducer that gains versatility as it can be used as a blinding skill too.

Shockwave :

10/.75/15

Elite Spell. Adjacent foes take 15...51 earth damage, nearby foes take 15...51 earth damage, and foes in the area take 15...51 earth damage. Adjacent foes suffering from weakness are knocked down.

The idea is that you could use this to knock foes directly if you weakened them first. Which would be a great combination with Aftershock (would makes sense too, no?). Shockwave-Aftershock on foes suffering from weakness would cause a MAJOR spike (300+ damage), but realistically it's pbAOE, which means that using it on their casters would be chancy at best. An elite pbAOE should be powerful imo to ever see play. I mean, sure you would likely see spikes in RA of Ash Blast->Shadow Walk->Shockwave-Aftershock, but is it any worse than SP sins? Not really. But like SP sins, it might actually have some value in organized play too because of the mix of powerful spike + disable.

Stone Sheath:

10/1/15

Elite Hex Spell. For 10...30 seconds, attacks made by target foe and all nearby foes deal earth damage and cannot cause a critical hit. When a foe affected by Stone Sheath is blocked, he suffers from weakness.

This would become a mass weakness inducer on attackers. If they're blocked, they suffer from weakness, and so are open for stuff like Stoning, etc.

I think that a revision of Earth Magic with something like this would give it a PURPOSE. The skills would actually synergize together. You would have weakness inducers, and skills taking advantage of weakness, mostly revolving around knockdowns and blinds (cause you still have stuff like Earthquake, Eruption, etc. too, i just don't think those need any change if Earth actually becomes viable. Then they can be interesting to fit in). You could throw Ash Blast on a caster and throw Stoning in his face if they don't remove weakness fast enough, and at the same time you could use that same Ash Blast to blind a knocked warrior if needed. And i don't think it'd be overpowered, because Weakness is still a condition, and you could control all that with stuff like Draw/RC/Mend Touch, etc. But as Air Eles can spam blind at will, you'd have Earth Eles able to spam Weakness (and not even as well as blind really, but decently enough) and take advantage of it through their other skills.

Zuranthium · Jul 07, 2007, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Oh, nice, you found some that I forgot to update too! Others:

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Tiger's Fury

Difference being it would be more or less perma' RaO (without pet), since the cost is a lot cheaper and is more manageable since it's broken down into 2 chunks.

You'd still need an alive pet to activate Tiger's Fury. I don't think it reaches the level of pre-nerf RaO (together with a buffed Run As One). Perhaps it would be a bit better than RaO in it's current form for a standard build but, then again, RaO in it's current form really needs to be used on a specialized team with Energizing Wind to be worth it. That's the reason why it doesn't really see play anymore.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Leave Mind Shock alone! In all seriousness though, this thing is nigh on perfect. One of the best in the game, and 'the' best example of how exhaustion should be used. Perfect balance of flexibility, cost, and power. I really can't see the need to change this skill. In all honesty, the change just makes bad players look better by dumbing it down.

No matter how good the player is it doesn't change the fact that the Elite will sometimes just be a shitty Lightning Strike. Yes, even wielding double +energy items. Which is why we don't see any of the Exhausting-causing Mind spells get play (although for Mind Burn, the the rest of the line is also a little bit of a problem). Yeah, it would make the skills better for bad players, but...meh. I don't think that's a real argument.

Quote:

Originally Posted by frojack

Freezing Gust

This is not overpowered, it's just strong. Sure you can snare someone all day if you want, but that is all you'll be doing.

Sometimes, especially in GvG, all you NEED to do is inhibit movement to win the game. It just doesn't sit right with me that Freezing Gust gives you a snare that is 100% constant. Grasping Earth and Frozen Burst have a range restriction to go with that effect....

~Z

frojack · Jul 07, 2007, 03:15 AM // 03:15

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Personally, for Shockwave and Earth magic in general, i think there should be more synergy with Weakness. It's a condition that, despite its buff, is still largely unused. It sees play once in a while but it's usually for secondary reasons (for example you see sometimes BSurge Eles with Enervating Charge. But it's not for weakness in itself, it's for a cover condition on blind).

Well cool. For me it was a toss up between either blind or weakness on the Shockwave thing. Weakness is however the crutch of the Earth guy so I'm with you on that. However I actually quite like the synergy of Whirlwind > Shockwave (blind). Potentially a good defense skill in a ward where allies are kiting mean melee. Meh, I dunno. Besides I'm not too fond of promoting more suicide teleport spiking on eles.

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Ash Blast :

5/.75/8
Target foe is struck for 20...56 earth damage and suffers from weakness for 5...17 seconds. If Ash Blast strikes a knocked-down foe, that foe is Blinded for 3...13 seconds instead.

So if the foe is knocked he's blind, if the foe ISN'T knocked he has weakness. This would become your reliable weakness inducer that gains versatility as it can be used as a blinding skill too.

You do realise that with your change to Ash Blast (which I like a hell of a lot ^_^), Ebon Hawk would never see play on a sane earth bar. There's so much other crap and earth ele usually needs to pack (wards, Obsidian, perhaps Extinguish or Convert etc.) that theres no room for happy-go-lucky crap like Ebon Hawk. Even with your changes it's too conditional to be worth a damn.

Like most conditions these days, they get removed almost instantly in higher end pvp, and pretty damn fast in any other organised area thanks to all the strong primary monk removers and the easy-as-pie self-use condition removers (Mr. Sheen himself, Mending Touch, and YAA/Crip Slash + Signet of Malice feels overpowered).
In light of how good condition removal is nowadays, these silly conditionals are almost retarded. The only reason Blindbots are still pretty good is because they can spam blind without conditionals. Would they see play if they required knockdown to blind? Yeah right...
Jumping through ever smaller hoops just to apply easily removed conditions isn't ever going to be good. Which is the main reason I don't like your Stone Sheath idea. Sure enough it's better but it still isn't worth it. You still need to look elsewhere for reliable weakness.

Edit: Ha ha. Just read your closing paragraph again. Naturally you covered a lot of this already.

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No matter how good the player is it doesn't change the fact that the Elite will sometimes just be a shitty Lightning Strike. Yes, even wielding double +energy items. Which is why we don't see any of the Exhausting-causing Mind spells get play (although for Mind Burn, the the rest of the line is also a little bit of a problem). Yeah, it would make the skills better for bad players, but...meh. I don't think that's a real argument.

This is true. There are times you will not be able to have the knock down. However more often than not, this is in the face of another elementalist. It's an easy decision not to use it. Bars built around an elite are usually pretty bad anyways so I'm sure the ele can play a different game. The fact is Mind Shock has the best damage on a single spell in all of Air (thanks to the high tier damage coming in 2 screw-Prot-spirit chunks). That on top of solid knockdown... Theres no need to touch it.

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Sometimes, especially in GvG, all you NEED to do is inhibit movement to win the game. It just doesn't sit right with me that Freezing Gust gives you a snare that is 100% constant. Grasping Earth and Frozen Burst have a range restriction to go with that effect....

True enough, but adding one second does nothing but remove flexibility from it

shoogi · Jul 08, 2007, 01:33 PM // 13:33

my main problem with ur list is that u almost dont make any overpowered skills weaker, u just make underpowered skills stronger. its a BALANCE- it goes both ways.
i didnt read everything, but i agree that some balances u mentioned need to take place- especially all the crap divine favor skills. but there are some skills that are way overpowered that need ro be nerfed.
the way to see if a skill is under/overpowered is so compare it to an equivelant of a different profession. here are some required immediate updates-
- all the ritualist channeling skills are ridiculously strong. u said that anet should increase cast and recharge times. not enough. damage must be decreased, period. just compare- a channeling rt is completely stronger than any elementalist. that is impossible. and btw ur new suggestion about another inherent effect for spawning power- definitely no. item spells come with the price of energy, thats their point.
- "i will avenge you"- omfg, NERF THIS. this is getting freaking retarded. either remove the IAS, or make it un affected by dead allies (pets), only party members. this skill makes u constantly attack faster and regen health- and its just a skill, not even a stance or enchantment (it would still be overpowered if it was). impossibly overpowered skill.
- paragons are overpowered. and their also a completely idiotic profession that was added to gw because anet decided they need to add a profession and didnt have any ideas (same thing goes with dervishes). but anet cannot remove paragons ofc, so they just gotta weaken them by reducing their AL to 70, and nerfing several skills.

in conclusion, there are overpowered skills. u suggest to strenghen all the non-overpowered skills so they match the level of the overpowered ones. u make everything overpowered. if ur balance will be implemented, and all skills will be weakened by 10-20%, maybe it would be good.