Curse

Ben-A-BoO · Aug 02, 2007, 06:30 AM // 06:30

I got bashed for this before but I dare it again:

A. Rit spike is very powerful - but limited in strategy on certain maps
(poor split capability / semi-stationary due to spirits / relying on very visible spikes eg. spirit rift / spamable skills - skills like diversion, powerblock, pd can take out a lot of power)

B. Spiking is alongside Balance and Pressure builds a viable game style.
I know there is a lot of hate/ rants against spike builds but it is a coordinated team afford that should be able to win games.

C. Almost all (caster) professions have their spike skills and builds (Blood, Invoke/ SF, Dual-Glass Arrow, SoMW (okay, okay, doesnt see a lot of play), Paras...)

So my wish is:

1. Tone down Ritualist spike skills/ builds but to an extend that Ritualists as a profession still have spike potential that can kill - thinking recharge, thinking casting time.

2. Get the AI (Heroes) out of HA and GvG or at least allow a lesser number - thinking two.

Cheers and thanks for your time,
Timebandit

Div · Aug 02, 2007, 06:31 AM // 06:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Narayanese

Monks seem too good at keeping people alive at the moment.
And many buffs to uncommonly used skills would be nice.

Nerf suggestions:
Light of Deliverance: 5..60 healing
Shield of Regeneration: 2..6 health regeneration
Gift of Health: 10..135 healing
"Watch Yourself!": 6 adrenaline

Buff suggesions:
Illusion of Haste: 10..22 duration
Complicate: 5 cost, 10..40 duration
Lyssa's Balance: 12 recharge
Shatterstone: 6 recharge, 10 cost
Water Trident: 20..90 damage

Actually monks are pretty fail at keeping people alive in this meta. With heroway, hexes, and ritspike, monks can't even keep up with the degen. A nerf to LoD will completely destroy the monk defense and propel the metagame to a necromancer backline that spams skills fueled by soul reaping. Unless every one of the game's skill problems are dealt with, LoD should be left as is.

Div · Aug 02, 2007, 06:42 AM // 06:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by timebandit

I got bashed for this before but I dare it again:

A. Rit spike is very powerful - but limited in strategy on certain maps
(poor split capability / semi-stationary due to spirits / relying on very visible spikes eg. spirit rift / spamable skills - skills like diversion, powerblock, pd can take out a lot of power)

C. Almost all (caster) professions have their spike skills and builds (Blood, Invoke/ SF, Dual-Glass Arrow, SoMW (okay, okay, doesnt see a lot of play), Paras...)

eE and PvE rode ritspike to the top 50 and champ3+ without having any real knowledge of gameplay in GvG. They were able to handle most of the splits given to them and even diversion with an interrupt ranger is not enough to stop them. The strategy is not limited enough to justify the insane damage. If a skill says, "If 5 of your party members activate this within 1 second of each other, the target dies" it will still have mediocre to poor split capability, but it's still overpowered.

Also about the comment of other spikes: you have to notice that no other caster or physical spike has the ability to package damage and healing in one nice little profession. SoMW lacks the power (it used to be strong but got nerfed, which is why rits should too) and enchantment removal owns them. Weapons can't even get removed. Invoke/SF deals about the same damage as ritspike but has longer casting time or more energy issues, plus the fact both rely on monk backlines and are all squishies without stuff like displacement and shelter to help them. Bspike has good life stealing, but energy is a lot more of an issue, the damage is lower overall, has a slower cast (which ritspike needs to get nerfed too) ,and it relies on a weaker secondary profession to heal.

Ben-A-BoO · Aug 02, 2007, 07:36 AM // 07:36

Holy Masamune,
I got your points.
And yes, I do agree that Rit-spike was and is still overpowered - means needs balance - but the point of spiking is actually that "if 5-6 players activate a skill at the same time - striping spirit bond / prot spirit included - the target dies" usually combined with a fast follow up skill...

However, even if I am tempted to go deeper in this discussion I don't think this is the right thread for it. It will get nerfed and I hope it will see some play after that as well in a limited form.

Since i don't have actual balance suggestion skillwise I will shut up now and leave room for others.

Cheers and thanks for your time,
Timebandit

Riotgear · Aug 02, 2007, 10:02 AM // 10:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by timebandit

but the point of spiking is actually that "if 5-6 players activate a skill at the same time - striping spirit bond / prot spirit included - the target dies" usually combined with a fast follow up skill...

The problem is not the concept, the problem is the implementation. I don't exactly have a problem with, say, Invoke, Obflame, rainbow spike, etc.

Caster spike builds have their primary weakness in disrupting the spike and the overall defensive fragility of the group. Rit spike's two bread-and-butter spike abilities are both 1-second casts with relatively short recharges, producing a strong hard-to-disrupt spike and an extremely high-damage followup in addition to that.

As has kind of been mentioned earlier, the uselessness of Spawning Power allowing them to go sink points into two attribute lines and a secondary (or just a strong sink into two attribute lines) is another major culprit, they're really not giving up anything to run a huge amount of defensive and healing power in combination with a powerful spike.

Buttermilk · Aug 02, 2007, 10:27 AM // 10:27

Two words:

BUFF SMITE =D

Oh, and back off with the LoD nerf, back off man >: (

Burton2000 · Aug 02, 2007, 10:46 AM // 10:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by timebandit

A. Rit spike is very powerful - but limited in strategy on certain maps
(poor split capability /

I would have to completely disagree here as rit spikes defensive split is so powerful as it can keep it self alive very easily and still pump out all that damage at once which forces the other teams split to retreat and the main team can still spike people down. How evever this might just be because they are always on burning isle all the time.

Lorekeeper · Aug 02, 2007, 02:03 PM // 14:03

noone wants rits to get hit hard. This is not the aim of balance.

The aim of balance is to keep options open for as many skills.. classes... builds to enjoy a similiar to be competitive, to be as effective as eachother.

In situations of imbalance, broken skills, classes or builds overshadow other options and become widespread because of this superiority. They spread into the meta and dominate. Its happened throughout the history of GW PvP.

Changing a skill, class, build so that it was not so superior to other options does not necessarily make it useless. Changing a build so its not superior to other options doesnt mean you have to make it useless.

The best suggestions to changing skills are those that seek to achieve this balance instead of making something completely unusable. And the most reasonable of players, PvP and PvE both, should recognise that this is necessary for real balance to be achieved.

But right now, the overwhelming majority of people running rit spike, are running it because they are exploiting the fact that it is a far superior build than anything else possible. And what makes it an even more attractive build is that the tools to shut it down, the ability to survive against its spike are things only the most experienced players can do. And furthermore it doesnt take an incredible amount of experience to play and to beat players of equal experience. It even allows players of relatively low experience to beat players of very high experience... witness guilds like Virtual Dragons being beaten by totally unknown Rit spike guilds on observer mode and you will see what i mean.

Because of these imbalances, it overshadows other options, and needs to be dealt with.

I dont see how most of the suggested changes to ritualists will make them significantly less effective in PvE.

Splinter weapon doesnt need a massive change. The biggest concern at the moment is the fact you can cast it about 3 allies before you even enter a fight as it lasts for like 60 seconds its the complete opposite to an active buff, its duration makes it a fire and forget skill that requires little to know careful use by its user. I dont think the dmg is that much of an issue, apart from in GvG at VoD, but thats is more a consequence of the broken mechanic that is VoD more than anything. A reduction of the duration and an increase in its recharge will make it much more of an active buff, meaning it will have to be used only when needed to avoid being wasted.

Vengeful was Khanhei farming is still possible... there are no concerns over this skill for PvPers at all. Its still viable.

Minion bombing is still viable, there are no changes called for to explosive growth or any other skills needed to bomb minions.

Most of the skills that people want changed fall under the Channeling line, and most are single target dmg skills like spirit burn and wielders strike. I do not see how toning these down will have such an adverse effect on the usefulness of ritualists in PvE.

It really is not the PvPers fault that skills got overnerfed. Sure we dont like overpowered skills, but that doesnt necessarily mean we want them to be underpowered or nerfed into oblivion.

Think about Ether Renewal. Its become a popular phrase used by players when a overpowered skills gets nerfed into oblivion.

We dont want things to get 'ether reneweled'

we just want balance.

equally effective alternatives to success.

Just Another Chest Runner · Aug 02, 2007, 03:38 PM // 15:38

if anet introduced a way to get rid of weapon spells via some form of removal i wouldnt bash rit spike so much, but until they do that, just nerf vital weapon and the spike crumbles

SOR needs +24 armor, +40 armor on a flag runner in gvg with mending touch keeps just about anything alive

frozen burst does need longer recharge

fear me needs more adrenaline

and of course, make it pvp again and not pvo,player vs olias

Calen The Civl · Aug 02, 2007, 03:51 PM // 15:51

I follow that skills must be balanced; however, because of the nature of the skills available it seems to be nothing more than a bandaid measure. I have always thought the best way to allow players to win based on skill is the allow only the same team builds to go head to head. These builds could be voted upon every month or so to keep the arenas fresh.

For instance, one arena is dedicated to a spike vs spike team formation; another is dedicated to pressure vs pressure, and so on. The team builds would be posted for study and practice in each arena. Only that set of classes and skills are functional in that arena for that build period. This would eliminate the rock,paper,scissors mentality of higher level pvp. Open arenas would still be available to formulate and test the next set of builds. No title rewards or points would be awarded in these arenas as they are for practice and testing only.

I am not sure how feasible such a measure would be, but it would help eliminate overpowered builds. In theory, ritspike vs ritspike with identical skill bars on each team would allow the more skilled team to win. HA would have to be modified however.

Kyp Jade · Aug 02, 2007, 04:41 PM // 16:41

@ Just another chest runner

the vital weapon nerf will just force those same rt spikers to play the more powerful and harder to disrupt ancestors rage rt spike. Oh yea, you cant touch the N/A because he has spellbreaker on him, and you cant rely on a ranger to interupt because he teleports and you cant be sure youll be in a spot to interupt him.

@ Calen the civil

HA is fine the way it is, everyone likes being able to play against everyone, playing spike v spike doesnt make better players, same with pressure v pressure. and it wouldnt be the Hall of Heroes if there were 2 or 3 of them.

@ Anet

Please bring rt spikes in line with its cousins, it is currently far to much damage on a spike, and far to hard to disrupt enough to take the pressure of your infuser/spirit bonder. Dont even get me started on the imba 1v1 parts of it, how incredibly mobile the build is which gives it an advantage in situations like relic run and kill count, and the incredible holding power it has on all three objectives in the HoH map, oh yea, thats only possible because everythign for spiking/healing is in the RITUALIST proffesion, far to much utility for a SPIKE, it has everything a balanced build has for the maps of halls and then some.

Did I mention how difficult it is to disrupt the spike.

Dont nerf it into oblivion, just do something nice like
------------------------------
Increased Cast time on spike skills. 2 seconds is nice in that it allows time for disruption to ease pressure on monks.

Lower Damage Output of Spike skills so that Five ritualists dont do anywhere from 650 dmg (130*5) to 1325 dmg (135*5 + 130*5). Did I mention thats AoE damage? For power like that every other spike team in the past needed a bigger commitment than five spikers. Sometimes they got damage in the 800s, but that was with a FOLLOW up skill. Dont kill them completly, but I think it should be low enough to require a follow up spike skill. (maybe kill wielders strike as a spike skill in its own right, make its damage cap to something similar like lightnign strike, and theres a follow up skill)

What were you thinking when you made Song of Concentration? This skill DOES need to be ether renewaled. Can you look at a rt spike and say 'I win' on a king of the hill match?

Recharge is alright for the most part, however the healing power of the ritualist needs to be lowered some, they ARENT monks, never will be an alternative, and currently, energy is not a problem for the build, they can easily spike spike spike away under extremley heavy pressure beacause the healpower makes it so easy to keep themselves up, even against two pressure teams.

------
as for map mechanics, everything is fair except for capture points, this needs to be thought out more or removed. Kill count is actually fine, but in my experience teams are too slow to respond to a threat or too lazy to respond to it. However there are three big issues I see with the mechanic, however they reside in the thread here

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...152771&page=10

Master Ketsu · Aug 02, 2007, 04:57 PM // 16:57

Their actually isnt much overpowered stuff. Sure their is some, but thats alreayd been stated. I would much MUCH rather see:

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Special...templates/lame

Many of these skills need a buff, to the point were some of them are unuseable in their current state ( scavenger strike is obviously inferior to brutal, ect. )

Buffing these skills would be like giving us new skills

African War Lord · Aug 02, 2007, 05:17 PM // 17:17

double dragon- 5 sec recharge

Seamus Finn · Aug 02, 2007, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

@ Just another chest runner

the vital weapon nerf will just force those same rt spikers to play the more powerful and harder to disrupt ancestors rage rt spike. Oh yea, you cant touch the N/A because he has spellbreaker on him, and you cant rely on a ranger to interupt because he teleports and you cant be sure youll be in a spot to interupt him.

The ancestor's rage spikes are incredibly easy to catch with big prots like Spirit Bond. Even the toughest, with the tele necro, still has much easier visual ques so you can almost always get your prot on the spike target before he goes down.

The wielder's strike stuff is much harder to catch because the cast time is so quick that you don't have much time to identify the target by where the rits are turning, which is still a more subtle que than a necro teleporting in on someone.

Sab · Aug 02, 2007, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seamus Finn

The ancestor's rage spikes are incredibly easy to catch with big prots like Spirit Bond. Even the toughest, with the tele necro, still has much easier visual ques so you can almost always get your prot on the spike target before he goes down.

A decent N/A caller will time his Rend so it hits right when the Spirit Rifts go off. That means pre-protting is useless, and the only way to catch those spikes is to interrupt the Rend, or to time your Spirit Bond or Infuse in maybe a 1/2 second window between the when the Rend and the Rifts/Ancestor's hits.

So in other words, even though you know who's going to get spiked 3 seconds before it happens, there's no guarantee you'll catch it.

Lorekeeper · Aug 02, 2007, 08:50 PM // 20:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

A decent N/A caller will time his Rend so it hits right when the Spirit Rifts go off. That means pre-protting is useless, and the only way to catch those spikes is to interrupt the Rend, or to time your Spirit Bond or Infuse in maybe a 1/2 second window between the when the Rend and the Rifts/Ancestor's hits.

So in other words, even though you know who's going to get spiked 3 seconds before it happens, there's no guarantee you'll catch it.

If only it was just an issue of preprotting. The power of the Nec/Ass spike is that if they spike your mesmer theres no way to interrupt the enchant removal and its EXTREMELY difficult to time your SB the instant the Nec removes your preprots and when the spike actually lands.

What i usually try to do is RoF the target as soon as the Necro shadow prisons in. Then when i see RoF disappear i cast SB. But if im caught with my pants down and i dont spot the necro porting in, getting SB on the target at the right moment is a matter of luck. So most important for a prot is to watch the necro 24/7 and to learn how to time the prot at the right moment.

Its hard, but it feels great when you get it right and the spike does nothing to your ally.

hehe gg

zalxixmavon · Aug 02, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

A common theme on this thread seems to be Rit Spike and Steady Stance builds so Ill start with those: (all skills listed between 0 and 12 ranks)

Offering of Spirit-..If any spirits are within earshot the nearest spirit is destroyed.

Wielder's Strike-..If you are under the effects of a weapon Spell, you deal an additional 15...51 lightning damage and that weapon spell ends.

Steady Stance-For 10 seconds you cannot be knocked down. The next time you would be knocked down by a foe, you gain 1...4 strikes of adrenaline, 1...6 Energy, and Steady Stance ends.

As far as assassin skills go, I play assassin a lot and personally find the SP builds rather lacking. Its an entire skill bar dedicated to a spike, they have no defence or utility. The build can be powerful at times but is fragile. Not overpowered. Some more:

Dark Apostasy-Longer duration

Disrupting Stab-Lower recharge

Jungle Strike-Lower recharge, at least make it same recharge as Leaping Mantis.

Way of the Fox-Lower Recharge. Worse than Guiding Hands in basically every way.

Wastrel's Collapse-3 second KD. Getting this to trigger is fairly difficult, the wait needs to be worth it.

Lion's Comfort-Disabling signets seems unnecessary. Especially Res.

Auspicious Blow-7 adren

Hamstring-12 second recharge.

Savage Slash-10 second recharge, at 10 energy its not going to be spammed anyway.

Warrior's Cunning-Lower recharge.

Melandru's Arrows-24 second duration.

Scavenger's Focus-Increase damage slightly.

Healing Light-3/4 cast

Reverse Hex-8 second recharge.

Spinal Shivers/Shivers of Dread-10 second recharge.

Chaos Storm-Increase radius to nearby, lower recharge to 25. Does this ever see play?

Cry of Frustration-10...46 damage.

Power Flux-8 second recharge.

Frustration-Lower Recharge.

Illusionary Weaponry-25 second recharge.

Avatar of Melandru-As has been suggested before: Remove a condition on skill use like Dwayna.

Kyp Jade · Aug 02, 2007, 09:33 PM // 21:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

If only it was just an issue of preprotting. The power of the Nec/Ass spike is that if they spike your mesmer theres no way to interrupt the enchant removal and its EXTREMELY difficult to time your SB the instant the Nec removes your preprots and when the spike actually lands.

The real problem with the build,is spellbreaker prevents the rend from being interupted. Its usually easy enough (so my monks tell me, i fail at modern day monk, Im limited to teh old SB/infuse in my experience) for the SB to prot the correct target. Trouble is keeping the enchant strip from happening.

THE PROBLEM lies in finding a mesmer that can interupt rend 100% of the time, AND interupt spellbreaker 100% of the time. Its not easy watching 2 targets for TWO ONE SECOND CASTS, but I've had ppl pull it off.

(if the rend is interupted, the spike fails because the target was spirit bonded)

honestly theres not a whole lot you can do to disrupt the spike.
Look at it
Spike in 3/4s or in 1s, depends on rage or rift.
5 spikers, 650+ dmg
1 N/A applys deep wound. note: you CANNOT PREVENT DEEP WOUND, augury gets covered.

the weakness in the spike is the necro gives it away. trouble is the build is set up to compensate for that, and it takes a LOT of effort to get around the spellbreaker, especially if your playing a pressure build.

The High Lord · Aug 02, 2007, 11:36 PM // 23:36

To sum it up in a few points (mostly elites):

* LoD is too powerful, literally every (non ritspike) team is running it. It doesn't allow for more varied monk bars to be runned. Maybe buff inspiration line again a bit?
*Dismiss Condition heals a bit too much in my opinion.
*Healing Hands: Decrease recharge.
*Peace and Harmony: Add "you and target ally get healed for 50...90" or something along those lines.
*Spellbreaker: decrease recharge to 25, cast time 1/4.
*Withdraw hexes: Make it 10 energy, 2 seconds cast.
*Healer's Convenant: Remake the skill to not let it be an upkeep, but something along the lines of Healer's Boon.
*Healing Light: Decrease cast time to .24.
*Amity: Decrease recharge to 24, increase energy to 15.
*Life Sheath: Decrease cast time to .75.
*Balthazar's Pendulum: Too one sided, Should have increased duration and add some smiting damage.
*Ray of judgement: Decrease recharge to 25.
*Divine intervention: Decrease recharge to 25.
*Pensive guardian: Increase recharge, decrease casting time to .75.
*Reverse hex: Increase recharge to 15, decrease energy to 5
*Judge's Intervention: Decrease recharge to 25.

*Decapitate: Change to "lose 5 energy"
*Forceful blow: reduce adrenaline to 4.
*Magehunter strike: Add something like bleeding?
*Skull Crack: Decrease adrenaline to 7.

*Cultist fervor: increase duration
*Life transfer: Decrease recharge, decrease amount drained.
*Lingering curse: decrease energy to 20.
*Contagion: reduce health lost.
*Jagged bones: Decrease cast time.
*Virulence: Decrease recharge to 10.

*Enchanter's Conundrum: decrease energy to 10, recharge to 10.
*Visions of regret: Decrease recharge, decrease damage.
*Air of disenchant: Reduce recharge to 15.
*Crippling Anguish: Reduce energy to 10, reduce duration to 15.
*Shared Burden: Make it adjacant, recharge 15.
*Energy Drain: Buff it again.
*Extend Conditions: Decrease recharge to 10.
*Lyssa's Aura: Decrease cast time, increase duration, decrease energy gain.
*Power Leech: Change to "for 15 seconds".

*Blinding Surge: Should make the "adjacent blind" a few seconds shorter than the target blind. It's one of those completely skillless/mindless spells that shut down characters 100%.
*Glimmering mark: Make it 5 energy.
*Stone Sheath: Decrease cast time, make it do damage.
*Ether renewal: decrease duration again, it's quite useless atm.
*Double Dragon: decrease recharge to 20.

*Nerf channeling magic, doesn't need explanation I think?
*Splinter weapon: too powerful.
*Buff some of the completely useless/bad skills.

Lorekeeper · Aug 02, 2007, 11:58 PM // 23:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

The real problem with the build,is spellbreaker prevents the rend from being interupted. Its usually easy enough (so my monks tell me, i fail at modern day monk, Im limited to teh old SB/infuse in my experience) for the SB to prot the correct target. Trouble is keeping the enchant strip from happening.

THE PROBLEM lies in finding a mesmer that can interupt rend 100% of the time, AND interupt spellbreaker 100% of the time. Its not easy watching 2 targets for TWO ONE SECOND CASTS, but I've had ppl pull it off.

(if the rend is interupted, the spike fails because the target was spirit bonded)

honestly theres not a whole lot you can do to disrupt the spike.
Look at it
Spike in 3/4s or in 1s, depends on rage or rift.
5 spikers, 650+ dmg
1 N/A applys deep wound. note: you CANNOT PREVENT DEEP WOUND, augury gets covered.

the weakness in the spike is the necro gives it away. trouble is the build is set up to compensate for that, and it takes a LOT of effort to get around the spellbreaker, especially if your playing a pressure build.

Hmm yeh the new rit spike with 2 monks does have that added layer of protection against mesmers. LOL

gotta hand it to them... they are good at evolving these gimmicks to higher and higher heights of effectiveness.

only thing i can say is that with a recharge of 45 seconds, unless they get lucky with recharge bonuses on their weapons sets, only 1 spike should be uncatchable everyone once in a while. Then while spellbreaker is recharging you should have a better chance of interrupting the enchant removal. Ive started to run a earth warder to counter the thumpers, ward stability works wonders in helping the mesmer stay on his feet when being spiked by the Nec/Ass. And while you have this window of semi-catchable spikes lol you can get to work on pressuring the rit team. But if they catch a monk on the first spellbreakered spike... its going to be very difficult to survive the subsequent spikes.

Sigh

ingenius arent they