Curse

Cirian · Feb 25, 2007, 04:26 PM // 16:26

Since the conditional range to a spirit was increased, I totally agree with Pat that the cast time should have gone up with it. I find myself looking at Shadow Strike, a skill I've used a hell of a lot, and particularly take note of the 10e cost and 2s cast time.

Lamentation's damage is so good, that if the cast time was raised to 2s it could be used as the spike opener (like the necro's old Shadow Strike -> Vamp Gaze combo). It would look the same as ObsFlame actually, 5e cost and 2s cast. The only reason I'd go for 2s cast over 1s cast is that it's armour-ignoring damage, and that makes it very attractive over a 1s cast lightning nuke like Gaze or Burn.

I briefly considered 10e cost, 1s cast, but don't think it sufficiently addresses the problem. The problem is that rits are snapping their fingers and dudes are getting vapourized with gamebreakingly little chance to react. If someone wants two 1s cast nukes on their bar then they can still take Gaze and Burn, but for the extra punch of Lamentation's armour-ignoring damage I think a 2s cast is the better price tag to put on it.

Ensign · Feb 25, 2007, 09:06 PM // 21:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alleji

If somebody can explain the throught process behind this, please do.

Sure.

The person balancing this skill is locked into this design mindset: 'The purpose of Lamentation is to blast someone who ranges too closely to one of your spirits.'

Now, those of us who play the game know that design idea is horrible, but work with me here.

So they release the skill, and predictibly no one is using it. Watching for people getting close to one of your spirits just to hit him with a DD isn't something that's all that valuable. So as game balancers, they look at it being neglected and think, 'hmmm, no one's using this, it must not be good enough' and start buffing the numbers on it. First, the damage goes up. Still, no one uses it because they still have to be hugging a spirit for it to be good. Then, they reduce the cast time to a quarter second - probably thinking, 'hey, if they could react more quickly to people getting in range of the spirits, it might be used'. Still no dice, because, believe it or not, people just don't want that effect. Then, they reduced the recharge to 20s - which, I assure you, would have also had no effect at all on the skill being played, because as ridiculous as the numbers were getting you simply couldn't make use of it effectively when you had to target someone getting so close to a spirit.

Then, in the last patch, they more than tripled the radius that spirit-dependent skills functioned at as you moved away from a spirit. That huge AoE change shifted the skill from one that you simply couldn't use with any reliability, to one that you could make trigger *very* reliably. All of those previously meaningless buffs to a fundamentally flawed skill roared into the metagame, as that flaw was removed. This isn't a unique case. There are dozens of skills in the game that are way too powerful, but simply aren't playable because they're buried by obscure mechanics that keep you from ever using them, or placing ridiculous skill dependencies on them that can't possibly be met by the current skillset.

But as soon as those mechanics change, or the dependent skills get buffed, another dumb gimmick is going to be unleashed on the metagame for us to suffer through for a month while Arena.net shuffles its collective feet about fixing the mess they made.

Peace,
-CxE

Cirian · Feb 26, 2007, 05:21 PM // 17:21

Agree 100%!

They really do need to be a bit better at forward thinking with skill balances. A designer needs to look at skills from many perspectives, one of which being why a player would or would not take a particular skill. Then if a designer does buff a skill, they need to sift through all those perspectives again to see if there's an unintended knock-on like... oops, creating an overpowered spiking skill. And of course, being responsible about reworking it into a skill that is used, but also balanced - after all, if it's still not taken then what was the point in messing with it in the first place?

There should be some automatic red flags in any good designer's mind, constantly looking for potential signs of abuse and then working out how to address that.

lorinton · Mar 01, 2007, 02:47 AM // 02:47

I did a lot of observing today and watched a few matches with rit lamentation spike teams. I don't remember any of the teams having more than six ritualists. A couple of the rit teams eventually cracked under pressure. In one case because they kept spiking a paragon that was able to survive the spike and in another case because they failed to defend their guild lord from a split. There was a third case but I don't remember anything pivotal about it. I hope the master plan isn't for bad tactics to be the only way for a team to win against lamentation spikes but that appeared to be the case today.

An opportunity to interrupt one or two spikers or wearing down their energy with high pressure to prevent the spike should be a given with any spike skill. As a bonus, it might be possible to do so without taking over 25 minutes and be a lot less boring to watch as a bonus.

Comparing to other skills, Patccmoi's suggestions look good.

Unlike the rits, the seven necro spike team looked like a "degenerate build" to me.

They were able to spam their spike, and with seven, nobody survived it either.

HolyHawk · Mar 01, 2007, 06:39 AM // 06:39

You see, the close cousin elementalist has l.orb and hammer that do dmg comparable to lamentation. One of them has 25 energy cost, the other costs 15 and is dodgeable, both have 2 seconds casting time, and they compensate with a low recharge; still, they both deal lightning dmg that can be reduced with elemental protection, shields, etc. Lamentation ignores that for a 20 seconds recharge. What should be changed, in order to not kill the skill completelly, is a 2 seconds casting time, making it at least interruptable. Energy cost would make no difference, and a longer recharge would probably remove it from the bars.

Zui · Mar 01, 2007, 07:40 AM // 07:40

Holy, a better comparison is Obsidian Flame. Obsidian Flame does 118 untyped damage at 16 Earth Magic. It costs 5 energy, and causes Exhaustion. It takes 2 seconds to cast, and has a 5 second recharge. The recharge misewell be 30 seconds, because of the fact Obsidian Flame causes Exhaustion. Lamentation, on the other hand does 106 untyped damage at 16 Channeling Magic, 12 less damage than Obsidian Flame. It costs 5 energy, which is the same as Obsidian Flame, but it causes no Exhaustion. It recharges in 20 seconds, and takes 1/4s to cast. Yes, it casts a full eight times faster than Obsidian Flame, and it's recharge is 1/3 less than the actual recharge on Obsidian Flame.

Balanced? I think not.

Patrograd · Mar 01, 2007, 09:31 AM // 09:31

A lead ranged spike skill has to have a 2 second cast really, almost all the others do. The damage would be OK with that. If the decision is that this is a follow up spike skill then the damage needs to be reduced to closer to its equivalents like lightning strike or wastrels

Xasew · Mar 01, 2007, 03:48 PM // 15:48

Nerf dmg by 25, nerf energy cost to 15 energy and nerf recharge to 30 seconds. Now it becomes an expensive follow-up skill that can't be used that often. But remember that when(if?) Rtspike gets nerfed, I doubt that Lamentation will be the only thing that gets changed. And we don't want to see another Ether Renewal, do we? (Well, we kinda do on this case, but anyway.)
And people who keep repeating the casting time nerf, take this into consideration: When Izzy made this skill, he said(I'm about 90% sure I read this somewhere, might be BS though) he wanted to take a new approach and to make a high damage spell with a very fast casting time, but to keep it in check with a condition(being near a spirit) and the high recharge. So changing the casting time would make this just another Obsidian Flame/LOrb/whatever(Rts already have Gaze and Spirit Burn ffs). And you can see from Ensign's post how the skill gended up so broken, but IMO changing the casting time is not the solution.

Sofia Sofia Sofia · Mar 01, 2007, 05:10 PM // 17:10

I'm surprised no one has made the obvious balance suggestion:

MAKE IT AN ELITE

I mean, we have lots of regular skills that should be elites and lots of elite skills that are often times less useful than regular ones.

If you tweak the numbers, you're always going to get people complaining about it...

Zui · Mar 01, 2007, 05:20 PM // 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sofia Sofia Sofia

I'm surprised no one has made the obvious balance suggestion:

MAKE IT AN ELITE

I mean, we have lots of regular skills that should be elites and lots of elite skills that are often times less useful than regular ones.

If you tweak the numbers, you're always going to get people complaining about it...

If you make it an Elite in its current form it still reads "This skill is broken and can only be used in gimmicks. Because of this, whenever this skill is used the target dies instantly."

It's not like rit spikers really need their elite slot.

GD Defender · Mar 01, 2007, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Nerf to 10 energy, 1s cast. In my opinion, non-Rit Lord Rits need a gamebreaking skill anyway to make them wanted.
Of course, I don't PvP all that often. Am I wrong that Rits are better now, but still not amazing?

Thomas.knbk · Mar 01, 2007, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by GD Defender

Nerf to 10 energy, 1s cast. In my opinion, non-Rit Lord Rits need a gamebreaking skill anyway to make them wanted.
Of course, I don't PvP all that often. Am I wrong that Rits are better now, but still not amazing?

No, you're right about that. What you're wrong about is that 'it's the only thing they can do' is a reason not to nerf it.

Suppose I created a new profession, and I called it loser. The loser has a lot of bad skills. Things that other professions can do better. The only good thing a Loser has is a .25s instant death AoE signet (Signet of Ownage). Everyone would run teams full of Losers because of this one signet. Like I said, all his other skills suck.
Now, would you not nerf Signet of Ownage because it's the only thing keeping Losers in play? Of course not. You would nerf SoO and buff his other skills to keep the Loser viable in PvP play, just not in the form of an overpowered spiker.
The sad thing is Lamentation is pretty much a .25c instant death skill. Just not AoE.

Zui · Mar 01, 2007, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by GD Defender

Nerf to 10 energy, 1s cast. In my opinion, non-Rit Lord Rits need a gamebreaking skill anyway to make them wanted.
Of course, I don't PvP all that often. Am I wrong that Rits are better now, but still not amazing?

So, instead of a super cheap uninterruptable spike skill, you have a relatively low cost spike skill that falls under that "interruptable but relatively quick casting" spike skill. Result: It's still imba and misewell read "when you use this skill, your target dies almost without fail."

leguma · Mar 04, 2007, 03:11 AM // 03:11

How about:

For each corpse or Spirit within earshot of target fow, that foe takes X...X damage (maximum of X).

ZenRgy · Mar 06, 2007, 10:40 AM // 10:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by leguma

How about:

For each corpse or Spirit within earshot of target fow, that foe takes X...X damage (maximum of X).

This type of nerf depends on the numbers considering how many spirits rt spike has.

zling · Mar 31, 2007, 03:47 PM // 15:47

why is it that ANet decides to give every class spiking ability? heck the only class that doesnt is the Monk which is too busy keeping his team alive anyway...
GW isnt just about spikes, so why make every single profession able to spike? Mesmers are designed to disrupt and annoy the enemy, why bring Wastel's Worry and Demise, Spiritual Pain? etc. Rits are designed as pary wide boosters via spirits and restoration spells, why bring lamentation, spirit burn, gaze from beyond, etc? Necros are supposed to mess up the enemy team with hexes and raise a minion army, why bring shadow strike, lifebane strike, jaundiced gaze, etc?

I'm not saying be close minded, it's good to think outside of the box but why make every single profession do the same thing? spike???

suiraCLAW · Mar 31, 2007, 04:06 PM // 16:06

Quote:

heck the only class that doesnt is the Monk

Signet of mystic wrath?

Moun10Dew · Apr 01, 2007, 01:02 AM // 01:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Suppose I created a new profession, and I called it loser. The loser has a lot of bad skills. Things that other professions can do better. The only good thing a Loser has is a .25s instant death AoE signet (Signet of Ownage). Everyone would run teams full of Losers because of this one signet. Like I said, all his other skills suck.
Now, would you not nerf Signet of Ownage because it's the only thing keeping Losers in play? Of course not. You would nerf SoO and buff his other skills to keep the Loser viable in PvP play, just not in the form of an overpowered spiker.
The sad thing is Lamentation is pretty much a .25c instant death skill. Just not AoE.

very nice post, i think i finally understand skill balance now. so skills are not overused/overpowered and there are not builds like boa? which is pretty much the only sin build now.

and btw it was changed, it does 79 damage at 16 channeling (lol!) with 1 sec cast. it was also changed to within eartshot of a spirit or corpse.