Expertise and Soul Reaping in PvP

If you're going to buff rits you should also remove recharge on Unnatural Signet and give it AoE splash damage.
Death to spirit farms. Death, I say!

Also, Soul Reaping is easy enough to fix: make minions not trigger SR, just like spirits no longer do.

That fixes SR in PvP how? Last time I checked the only build that uses minions in GvG is that old heroway build that isn't used too often anyway.

Your logic is flawed. You want don't one the change because of one instance, which would not effect the game terribly at this point.

I would support a change to Soul Reaping or Expertise to balance it in PvP.

But I would rage if they were to split the effects between PvE and PvP.

My fix is for PvE. I don't see that Soul Reaping is being abused in PvP at all, so it doesn't require fixing.

Get rid of almost everything that people say is overpowered and annoying about rangers: touchies, thumpers, pack hunters, axe thumpers, scythe rangers, dagger rangers. Pretty much everything that's easy to play and only used by bad players to get easy wins.

I don't see that Soul Reaping is being abused in PvE at all, so it doesn't require fixing.

SR-powered ritualists and monks in Sabway & Discordway.

Now, where was it abused in PvP again?

half of the build you mentioned dont even need expertise because they use adrenaline, scythe rangers are just plain bad, touchers are dead from what ive seen (not even any in RA anymore)... same with dagger rangers (it would only effectively change the toucher, dagger, and scythe builds).

i realize that yes, axe rangers, pack hunters, and to a lesser extent thumpers, are degenerate builds that are effective and easy to play. i just dont think the stated change would help enough.

the same places. n/rt healers that can ignore the effects of tranquility and nature renewal. the newer blood pressure/spike build with 7 N/A. any team with a necro in general. they all have infinite energy pretty much all the time.

Remind me why "effective and easy to play" is a bad thing. They're not really overpowered, completely lacking any defense or healing abilities and subject to every variety of melee counter...

Remind me when "easy to play" was a good thing. Something easy to play shouldn't equate to even half the efficiency, even minimally of say, a Shock Axe.

Almost all melee builds are subject to anti-melee anyway. That, and Shock Axe has no defense or at least in your logic. Niether do Dervs, unless they take Faithful Intervention. Niether do Assassins.

Heck, not many builds with Dervs, Assassins and Ranger gimmicks hold anything that benefits player skill aswell.

i see soul reaping as being exploited in pvp with n/rt healers and n/a blood spike things. still though, they require deaths. if you have bad players spiking, you can catch it. and the n/rt healers use rangers with RaO to get kills. anyway..
expertise isnt the problem here. thumpers and rangers with axes all go back to RaO. an unremovable overpowered skill that anet put into the game to promote using melee weapons. scythe rangers are using over powered scythes. its not expertise thats the problem.

So let's just force everyone to run the exact same shock axe based balanced team build and eliminate all other skills and professions and attribute lines from the game forever. That way nobody will have to worry about someone being creative and forcing other teams to adapt even a little. Plus then the meta won't ever become stale with the same old gimmicks... it'll simply be stale with the one thing people are allowed to run. No need to ever cry about skill balancing again either since this is already the measuring stick used for that... balanced doesn't like it -> must be imba -> nerf it! It's not like every gimmick out there has a glaring weakness or anything that can usually be remedied with a copy or two of Cry of Frustration or Mirror of Disenchantment. Nope, that shock axe balanced team is the pvp version of the Holy Trinity and anything else is completely unacceptable.

/end sarcasm

Now I'm not saying there aren't some broken skills out there (RaO is pretty glaring), but even builds that rely on those can be dealt with by making a couple adjustments. Skill on the battlefield and tactical use of the skill bar should definitely be important to pvp, but there's also something to be said for pre-battle prep and planning. Take away the ability to gamble on a gimmick (that's all it is really, either they work great or get absolutely steamrolled, and that by definition would make it less effective/efficient than a consistent balanced build) by locking everyone into the same build and experience becomes the only factor that matters; the team with the most experience running it will simply obliterate those with less essentially without fail (save for a fluke interrupt or lag issues); the vast majority of new teams won't stick around for long if they know they have no chance at all, so they'll give up on pvp or leave altogether. Killing off the already dying population of those who play will just cause more problems.

In short, doing away with the ability to make/use gimmicky builds simply creates an atmosphere where winning is simply a matter of who has played the most/longest. Last I checked the idea behind the game was to make the playing field as level as possible, and prevent that scenario where time logged is a major factor. Realistically, of course, experience does matter but these gimmicky and 'imba' skills/attributes are the counterbalance to that.

So - if I understand you correctly - a good game will allow lucky players to beat good players?

Not really... what I'm saying is the only way a good team can ever be beaten in a game that is only conducive one setup is by dumb luck. A good game fosters growth and is one that challenges lesser players to improve (without necessarily sending them through an excessively long meatgrinder) while still challenging good players. Making skills and attributes go the way of Smiter's Boon reduces the number of viable builds. For those that are accomplished this has little impact, save they have to worry about certain gimmicks less. But for those that are still learning or just starting it steepens the learning curve and (in my opinion) leads to frustration that causes newer players to lose interest. In the very least I feel it stratifies the player base.

Good teams not having to adapt means they can devote all of their time to improving their own tactics and compete at a higher level amongst themselves. By itself there is nothing wrong with this. However, on the lower end lesser teams only find success against their peers... essentially they learn how to beat teams that make mistakes that aren't made at the higher levels... when these teams match up against the elite they'll get rolled without fail because the tactics they learned prior are not applicable. Furthermore, when these good teams leave there is nobody of comparable ability to replace them (look at the dropoff that occurred when the original HAers went away). Essentially it creates a glass ceiling and serves to reduce the aggregate skill levels across the board.

However, the existence of gimmicks (should) force the elite teams to vary their builds and tactics somewhat. They still improve and perfect their tactics (as a good balanced team should beat a gimmick team anyway), but at least lesser teams have an outside shot at being marginally competitive... in theory they should get a better look at how and why teams run what they do, and perhaps even learn something from it. In the short run these teams may learn some bad habits, but if they intend to move on to more 'respectable' styles later this experience can be valuable. Of course, many of them won't, but those that genuinely want to get the chance. Observer mode is meant to help with this, too, but very few people know how to use it correctly and first hand experience is better anyway.

Gimmicks themselves don't make better players, but instead open the doors to a much larger playerbase; ideally a portion of this base graduates to higher levels. The key is variety, not homogeneity.

Edit: Perhaps you were implying that any time a gimmick is successful (wins a match) it qualifies as lucky? If this is the case then maybe we're closer to agreement than I initially thought. I see a gimmick build as being one that sacrifices offensive or defensive capabilities in order to supplement the other and exploit a perceived weakness in the build(s) that compose the current meta. In this sense I'd consider this win something other than luck, as the build accomplishes exactly what it is intended to do; perhaps you and others would still consider this luck. If so I guess your assessment of my idea is accurate, though I'd disagree with the semantics of it.

Funny - and I thought that actually getting better then the good team would make you win.

What you described is the situation we currently have in PvE.
And just look with how much love in their eyes the better players are looking at it.
What this achieves in PvP is that good players now play against bad player - and instead of the good players smashing the bad ones into the ground - the bad players get the sense that they somehow improved (a feeling that's trashed when the next skill balance arrives because the players are still left with the low skill level and nothing that would lessen the gap) and good players are wasting their time fighting players that can't teach them anything (because like you said - they STILL win).
And this then brings the game closer to what the you consider the goal - everyone being on the same playing field.
Everyone is bad.

Bad players do have the right to get better.
But bad players do not have the right to win over good players.

And this is what SR and E do.
They allow a player to perform much better then they should had they had to worry about energy.
And that's why they are bad and need to die.

as for the n/a vampiric spirit current gimmick, wtb old xinraes wep...
gimmicks are one of the things that make gw great. yes with each skill balance some gimmicks are ruined, but others are created. these supposed bad teams adapt to the game(guess that makes them bad?) and utilize the newly changed skills and start the next gimmick. last i checked, the ability to adapt to a new environment was a good thing. the guild ladder cycles its way through once again and the best teams still remain at the top in the long run.

And here I thought the best way to get new people to improve and continue playing was to beat them mercilessly into a pulp time after time after time without providing them any sense of a progression or anything. Certainly the team that never has any success and is unable to get any meaningful battlefield experience because they get rolled in 3 minutes flat will be motivated keep going. Surely that will bring other teams into the mix, too... who doesn't want to leave PvE or lower level PvP where they can succeed on occasion to plow full-bore into this new world where they can be annihilated without fail? There's so many threads about how this game is dying... let's remedy that by shutting out a significant portion of those that remain from the quintessential aspect of this game's PvP side. At no point did I say there was no need for players to improve... in fact I said the exact opposite several times in my posts.

That sense (whether founded or not) is what drives new people to play, is it not? There are two ways to run any build - balanced or not - It can be played adeptly and it can be played poorly. Even these gimmicky flavor-of-the-month builds can be run well in the right hands, and these are the people that learn from them. When these skill balances occur certainly some, maybe even most of these players and teams are right back where they started, but those that ran the gimmicks well and understood the concepts behind them are able to adapt. If there was nothing to lessen the gap (as you say) there would never be a need to do more than a single skill balance again, as nothing would be overpowered and no new gimmicks would arise.

Furthermore, any good player will learn at least something from every match regardless of the competition; if not that person is simply a button-masher. The reason gimmicks work at all is because they attack a particular aspect of the opposing build. In other words, gimmicks are intended to force teams to leave their comfort zones, a situation from which it is necessary to learn in order to remain a good team. The good teams and the teams that win understand this and adjust their tactics in the match in order to compensate; those that lose to gimmick more than just a few times (if ever) refused or failed to adapt, and flat-out did not display the characteristics of being a good team. Bad teams get to see how the good teams react firsthand, so they have the chance to learn from the experience. Both sides can and should benefit.

And where exactly do these gimmick builds come from in the first place? In order to design one that works a player needs to have some understanding of the common teams he or she is facing, or else there is no way to come up with a way to exploit the weaknesses. Most often these builds (the ones designed to target weaknesses in the balanced meta) are designed by good players in an effort to A) find out more about the main builds they run and diagnose possible problems, or B) take a one-time crack at catching an opponent by surprise in a tournament. They operate on the same principles as these balanced and skill-requiring builds, but attack from a different angle. When a good team does this it is a crafty, intelligent tactic to deploy; when a bad (read 'not already considered a member of that inner circle we consider good') team does this they're scrubs. Elitism ftw.

First, the level playing field is anet's stated mission and goal behind level caps, PvP-only characters, skill balances, max damage weapons caps, armor level caps, etc., correct?

Second, this is exactly where I was going by pointing to the HA example. Back when all we had was Proph the game was it's most 'balanced' state to date. Back then there was no power creep to spawn decent gimmicks, so everyone more or less had to run the same thing... on the rare occasion when something did come up these good teams simply reacted and adapted rather than cry to the dev's for a nerf. The top teams in each region (the ones who perfected this first) ended up in their own tier; they were challenged laterally by the best from other regions, but there was no threat in a vertical sense. These elite teams simply did what they wanted on the battlefield... they had the best understanding of the builds and had played it the most so that they were familiar with all the potential tricks. There was no way for a team below them to force them to leave their comfort zone so other teams could force them into a mistake. And is that not the single most important tactical goal of all? To pressure or force the other team into making a mistake? This old HA environment took that away, so it became solely a matter of experience = tactical superiority.

As such, the levels below that elite simply entered a battle to become the 'best of the rest,' and they did not become any better. These lower teams simply learned how to beat bad teams, not the good ones. Then, as time progressed and these elites teams dispersed or left there was nobody of comparable ability to take over; the stratification that occurred simply did not allow it. The aggregate skill level of the player base decreased and it became a mess of bad teams playing bad builds in an effort to just be the last bad of them all.

By that logic, then, the guild ladder and rankings systems should only change if a guild disbands. The team that is ranked higher should simply be awarded a victory because the lower ranked team has no right to beat them based on the fact that they are ranked lower. Defeats the purpose of playing and reduces the Champion title track to that of the Commander track you progress in by typing /roll, does it not?

Bad teams don't become good simply by pounding even worse teams into the ground... they simply learn how to beat worse teams into the ground. Learning to beat crap tactics does nothing to make the victorious crap tactics marginally less crappy. But at least in this environment the good teams can continue to not have to adapt and can sit atop their pedestals lol'ing at all the scrubs below that will never get the chance to be good.

Well then Divine favor needs a nerf too, as it allows monks to heal perform better (heal for more even if they're protting and have no points in healing at all) while indirectly expending less energy. And strength, too, as it allows warriors a few extra points of damage without increasing energy/adrenaline costs. Hell, energy storage allows elementalists to perform their jobs better because they get more energy than the other classes with which to work, plus they have GoLE which every other casting class uses for e-management anyway. Mesmers can interrupt faster than the other classes because of fast casting, and if they use signets (they have most of them anyway) they don't need energy at all.

That was merely an example. A Shock Axe is a multi-functional build that utilizes the heavy utility of Disrupting Chop, Bull's Strike and Shock. You also have to be smart about when you're using Frenzy. This bar isn't "hit IAS and train a target", whereas RaO is, with RaO giving you a speedboost aswell.

Easy-to-run builds shouldn't be strong at all. There has to be breakpoints where you need to be more skillful to actually run it for greater efficiency. Using your logic we should give D-Shot a 1 second recharge to make it "easy to use" too because that's "better for the game".

Also, if you're comparing the mass energy gain from SR and ER to the small heal of DF, I don't think you should be talking at all.

You are right.
Shitty teams get better by fighting and winning against bad teams.
Bad teams get better by fighting and winning against mediocre teams.
Mediocre teams get better by fighting and winning against good teams.
Good teams get better by fighting and winning against great teams.
Great teams get better by fighting and winning against godly teams.

And as such - godly teams should crush shitty teams.
Why should we even entertain the idea that shitty teams should be able to stand up straight for more then mere seconds against godly teams?
Like I said - when you start molding the game to suit the mediocre masses - you end up with GW PvE. And nobody likes GW PvE in it's current state.

No.
When you have over 1k skills there is no way that one can create an even playing field.
Some people will be better by something as simple as knowing all skills.
The game is simply to big for an even playing field.

The issue is that the basic premise of this discussion is incorrect.
SR and E do not need a PvP version.
They need to be killed and rebuilt from the ground up. Because there is just nothing in this game that would justify PvE having access to something as obscene as SR/E. (Don't get me wrong - there ARE other issues. Leadership WTF?!?!? But here the idea of buffing SR/E is being entertained.)
If those primary attributes should receive a do-over - do it right.
Otherwise - don't bother.
If there will be issues in PvP - just kill the thing that is causing them and move on to the next one.