Curse

zoozoc · Jul 24, 2006, 06:29 AM // 06:29

At least with eles you have 2 main classes, water,air, and occasionally fire. And plenty of interchangable skills within the most popular 2, air and water. Plus you have wards as well. And they are good at numerous support roles.

Aug · Jul 24, 2006, 03:43 PM // 15:43

Assassins need some skills to make them more like Warriors for an elite other than AoD to be seen with frequency. And they need more skills that inflict deep wound, poison and bleeding to get away from the Falling Spider/Twisting Fangs combo.

Or change how Deep Wound works. It really is broken (IMO) that it causes a ~100 hp loss regardless of your current hitpoints.

The Son Of Morgoth · Jul 24, 2006, 04:47 PM // 16:47

IMO assasins are well balanced, maybe a little more defensive spells in the shadow arts line that doesnst deal only with teleporting but maybe more armor hp stoff like that. The thing about assasins is that people are sticking to the same skills such as twisting fangs and horns of the ox. Now dont get me wrong these are great skills and i still use them. I believe they are great for a condition spamming assasin who just wants to take targets down fast. However the deadly arts line is very good imo and support assasins could also be seen soon in gvg or so. the assasin just needs time to Flourish (to all of u running the build you know its prob the best build for assasins so far

u know what i mean)

Ritualists however seem to have no use except ritual lord and maybe a healer...... which is really a monks job.

Divineshadows · Jul 24, 2006, 06:04 PM // 18:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by zoozoc

At least with eles you have 2 main classes, water,air, and occasionally fire. And plenty of interchangable skills within the most popular 2, air and water. Plus you have wards as well. And they are good at numerous support roles.

Agreed. When scanning the opposing team at the start of a match if I see an E/Mo, then there is still some mystery as to their skillbar. However, if I see a Rt/* there is virtually no mystery whatsoever. Same goes for the sin in as much as you will know their skillbar based on their secondary. Sure some players will deceive you my making a pure rit as a Rt/Me without any anti-interrupt stances such as concentration, resolve, or distortion. But this is the same as a pure warrior W/N designed to make your opponent think you may be using plauge touch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phades

That sounds more like a ladder design issue opposed to a class balance problem. ANET could easily just hold more tournaments and give rank bonuses as a byproduct of the results, instead of only relying on the current system and forcing the rapid farming that currently exists.

Agreed especially since every team that plays several matches in theory will encounter the same percentage of matches that are forced to VoD due to a team with a Rit turtling their NPCs. Still does not mean its frustrating when you wiped them at the stand within the first 4 minutes and yet still have the match go to VoD. Even more frustrating when this happens three matches in a row. It is equivalent to playing on the kill count fire map in TA and wiping their team with ease going up 4 - 0 only to have the opposing team stay and waste more time and eventually winning 10+ - 0.

From the chat in observer mode, highly ranked guilds get railed on by the observers for resigning in a lost cause. Personally, I respect guilds quite a bit that can accurately determine which matches are lost causes and which matches are not and save their time and their opponent's time by resigning when it is a lost cause.

Greedy Gus · Jul 25, 2006, 12:18 AM // 00:18

Calling the skill balance a "success" or "failure" would require knowing what the original goal was. I tend to agree with Dzan that the classes were added to fill a few niches, which they do (admirably or cursedly) well. Remember the big picture, 2 new classes every 6 months while the core classes continue to get skill updates.

In GvG it happens that the niche skills are very specific, but if you play arenas you can see some effective Restoration/Communing 'healer' ritualist builds as well as more varied types of assassins.

Spura · Jul 25, 2006, 12:45 PM // 12:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

I'm sure anyone observing GvG's has noticed the obvious lack of creativity when it comes to ritualists and assassins. There just isn't any diversity, as soon as you see a ritualist or assassin, you pretty much know what his entire bar will look like and what he'll be doing, where he'll be doing it and how he'll be doing it.

Looking at the 6 original classes, they all offer different viable skill setups for different builds, but the 2 new factions classes just don't have that. The ritualist is almost exclusively ritual lord + defensive spirits, while the assassin is usually golden phoenix - ox - spider, or leaping mantis - jungle strike, usually with twisting fangs, dark escape and some other common skills tacked on the end.

Now there's probably some kind of channeling ritualist that works well as a spiker, and there's a slim chance that there's some non-gimicky assassin build that is as capable as the AoD assassin with the abovementioned skillbar, but with chapter 3 around the corner and nothing promising having shown up yet, it's starting to look bad. So are the skills for these two classes balanced poorly or are we just too bloody slow to figure out good combinations?

I will make a longer post later elaborating on why assassin class is like it is, but here I'll just say you are right about assassin. I know in advance when I see an assassin that he will have:
Shadow refuge 100%
Twisting Fangs 100%
AoD 95%
shock/falling spider or GPS/HotO/falling spider 90%
leaping mantis/jungle 10%
dark escape 90%

Random skills: Caltrops(often on jungle build), rarely contemplation of purity, very rarely heal sig, sprint, warrior stance

JiggyFly · Jul 25, 2006, 04:39 PM // 16:39

Warrior, Monk, etc.. should have more builds out there because the core professions are getting more skills and have been around for longer. Should they have more good, popular, fotm builds by such a large amount?...no.

After some point I think Anet has to look at Assassin and Ritualist skills and give them a kick in the pants, because as of right now entire attribute lines are under-used. Deadly Arts, Restoration, and to a somewhat lesser extent Channeling, and Shadow Arts aren't being used at all in the higher forms of competitive PvP.

Byron · Jul 26, 2006, 06:51 AM // 06:51

Anet maybe just has to expand the game a little...

Ranger>deadly arts
Monk>restoration magic.
Ele>Channeling

Add something new, IMO.

Dzan · Jul 26, 2006, 11:06 AM // 11:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

Nobody's arguing that. What I'm talking about is the fact that out of 75 or so assassin/rit skills, a very small number of them are actually being used, and all the builds are virtually identical to each other (in terms of GvG). When ANet said the new classes will be niche classes, I assume they meant assassins/rits will only be good in specific builds and for specific purposes, not that they would create 10 good skills and 65 useless skills.

To be fair to anet on assassins, if warriors only had one weapon type, there would only be one good warrior adrenal chain.

JR · Jul 26, 2006, 12:33 PM // 12:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Locust

What I'm talking about is the fact that out of 75 or so assassin/rit skills, a very small number of them are actually being used, and all the builds are virtually identical to each other (in terms of GvG).

Hi, welcome to Guild Wars.

Enjoy your stay, and try not to get too upset about the shocking number of skills that will never see any play in their current state.

Thom · Jul 27, 2006, 07:01 AM // 07:01

Any team with top 400 skill can take a team to VoD with overly defensive play and a 3 healer back line. The "problem" with ritualists is that they make your 3 healer back line more efficient through controlling overhealing issues. You could play the same game before with a bonder, forcing teams better than you into VoD but now it is a bit easier.

The problem with ritualists is the inablity to be effective as the second healer. This forces your ritualist into the "3rd healer" role, which greatly limits what you want from the position. Communing ritualists can add some flavor to a teams particular build, but they are limited to 2 reasonable elites and 2 reasonable skill lines. Until I see a ritualist build that can hold up in GvG with one other monk, restoration is useless. Channelling simply isn't interesting offensively as a strategy, but the skills may show up in an odd build.

Ritualist would be fine "swing" characters, providing both offense and defense, and I have played one in such a manner in casual GvG. In optimized GvG, they really only play one role exceptionally. Movement is poor and utility is worse, therefore ritualists are a poor fit for any type of flexible build. While skill variety could allow for a dual-threat build, casting time and energy management prohibit this. In this sense design is indeed flawed.

Assassins do one thing really well and the have one skill set which best facilitates that style of play. Like the ritualist, the design flaw isn't the skills themselves, it is the one-dimensionality of the style of play. No one use would assassins for anything other than ganking, so why use any other skill than those that fasilitate a gank. All the core classes have a variety of equally viable competitive roles, giving more variety in skills used.