Toning things down

Dear All,

Everybody in the community is aware of the issues with nightfall power creep. I have been seriously thinking about this topic since the last update, and I have come to a few conclusions.

One of the skills that saw buffing was primal rage. To me this is a bit crazy. This skill is probably more powerful than the original rampage as one, because warriors have the ability to put a fair number of disruptive skills on their bar while still outputting stupid damage. And again, rapid use of skills, high weapon mastery, not watched chop chop in a while but he prob still runs a sup means that I would say that the current Primal rage probably equals the dps of the old rampage including the pet.

So not only do we now have a skill that allows warriors to output close to the dps of the old broken RAO thumper but has even more disruptive skills to kill stuff with and you have gone the opposite way than the way the game needs to go.

Quote: Originally Posted by intention of post The general principle that I wish to propose here is that offense and defence need to be toned down and that disruption needs to be toned up or that maybe disruption in its current form would be eneogh if the aforementioned offense and defence is toned down.

This is a one sided post. I do not intend to start talking specifics with regards to disruption and defence. I only intend to discuss specifics with regard to damage output. The first thing that I want to say is to point out a number of principles that underscore my way of thinking.

1. Passive immunity to active defence is bad. The contenders for this are, assassins remedy and avatar of melandru.
2. Massive midline damage (spike+pressure) is bad. I have to appeal to Greedy Gus for this, a reading of his posts in older threads is necessary. The idea of the offensive paragon and the current turret ranger is just too much for the game. The difference between these and a third warrior is that a third warrior removes a lot of spikiness from builds due to positioning, and the fact that it takes a lot more to spike well with three wars.
3. Builds that involve spammability are bad. Current contenders are warriors endurance, assassins particularly palm stike but this is true in general.

These are the skills that break the balance of the game. A lot of this assumes that obviously broken stuff is fixed. However upon toning things down, these are the things that would now need fixing.

Dealing with the increase in Ranger power.

One of the things that is an indication of this is the fact that it was considered ok for cripshot to come back down to 10 energy.

Those elites need to go back up to 15 energy. Correspondingly natural stride and mending touch need to be taken of ranger bars by change or some other way. This has been mentioned by Gus in the past. This also means that antidote signet needs to be treated the same way.

Here is where I become a heretic. There are a couple of things that have been looked at in the past but could never have been touched due to power creep. Dshot and Savage Shot recharge needs to be looked at. The only person I can remember agreeing with me is Akaraxle.

Best way to fix nat stride would be to remove the run buff IMO.
Troll unguent has to be left at 3 seconds, The calls for its buffs are wrong because those are reactions to the current broken state of the game. You have to have a second chance to interrupt troll when its covered by a defencive stance.

What I would love to see is blackout coming back on ranger bars, somehow.

To fix the turret further I would suggest making hunters shot and other skills do more damage but take away the 1 sec activation because that makes turrets way too spiky.

Dealing with the increase in Warrior power.

The only things that are currently a problem are things that have been buffed like wars endurance and primal rage.

However to reduce the offense eneogh that you can start seriously looking at rush. Yes this is where I become a heretic. As far as I can see, all people will agree with me when I say that rush/frenzy interaction takes skill. Most people will agree that taking rush over sprint will increase a warriors pressure a fair bit.

I think that having rush and frenzy pretty much on demand is too powerful in the hands of warriors like chiizu smgzor and so on. I am not saying nerf as in destroy because making a sacrifice in terms of split mobility should be rewarded. However the adrenal cost of it needs to go up maybe to 6 or 7 strikes.

This would also negatively effect hammer dps as it would moderate the use of flail slightly.

I think that what changed at nightfall release is that suddenly nobody carried sprint almost at all, and of course with the increase of damage coming in from other sources we suddenly have a situation where very few people will think that rush needs to be looked at.

Again I acknowledge that I may have become a heretic.

*******************************

While I have not dealt with degenerative spike builds like blood spike in this post I think that dealing with them by the nerfbat is obviously desirable. If you are going to reduce the pressure of a balanced build by nerfing turrets, rangers and warrior pressure you would also have to sort these things out too.

Joe

So you're playing Guild Wars from about a year ago? Maybe more?

... Since when does crip shot do anything right now? Pin Down is better in 90% of all cases, and is non-elite. If anything, crip shot needs to be buffed.

I consider Troll unguent to be almost perfectly balanced right now. The minor buff to its duration was a result of power creep, but with or without it, it is a resaonably balanced skill.

You complain about spiking, but maintain that ranger defensive skills should be nerfed, Mending touch, natural stride, and antidote sig all encourage splitting. They give rangers survivability away from the group. I fail to see how these fit into your argument.

D-Shot and Savage Shot are pretty well balanced with current mesmer interupts. You sacrifice interupting accuracy for a faster recharge. The only problem with them that I can see is the ability to use savage shot for spiking. Then again, I'm a fan of r-spike, so I won't support a nerf there =D.

My biggest concern with your proposed ranger changes, is that they basically nerf rangers our of the game. The only thing left would be condition rangers which quite frankly are pretty boring. Crip shot is ridiculously weak, posion arrow is overshadowed by Burning, that only leaves the same three elites as we've been using, but without any survivability. Mendulu's, IA, and BA would become useless without NS/Mending Touch, and you already want to get rid of the damage availiable to turret builds. Wll you suceed with that is taking GVG from using 7 classes to 6.

I'm not going to comment on warriors, because rush could be nerfed pretty significantly before actually hurting axe warriors, and I really don't know that many warrior builds outside of shock axe.

Seriously Joe, start playing or stop posting.

To be honest, the main bullet points from my post 10 months ago still apply. The most relevant sentiment at this point is probably similar to this:

Quote: Originally Posted by Kaon

"but we all know deep down a-net wont make the changes i mean seriously, totaly revamping some of the factions / nf would have came in the Alph/Beta testing stages of factions and nf, not MONTHS after they are released."

If that is the case then we should never ever post balance threads again. This is the only option that will improve the game. Take it or leave it. As I said the changes are only little effort, it's the point of view that needs to change.

It's very simple: Convince Izzy that this is the right way to go instead of nerfing what's most used and buffing random skills each time. It's not less work and will considerably improve the game. Izzy is a nice guy and I trust that he'll finally see the point. I don't question izzy's personality at all, merely his intellect.

It is pretty clear that anyone with a little insight in the game can see that these changes will improve the game more than anything else we've ever had in guild wars. Izzy's listened to us before, why would he not in this screaming matter? It comes down to a matter of mindset. As long as Izzy continues to see his job as personally keeping the game "fresh" by superficially updating swaths of skills to force the metagame to something new, then overarching design/skill suggestions & feedback are meaningless.

If at some point he ever deems it finally time to stop using GW1 balance as a palette for experimenting with (or realizes it doesn't need constant changes to continue existing), and wants to design a lasting balance based on specific goals and utilizing lessons from the past, then there will be a reason for input. It's probably too late at this point though, as the current method has already alienated a lot of competitive players, and a majority of those left seem to agree with his prevailing mindset. Jaden's recent posts about "pressure" are particularly revealing I think.

I'd disagree with your comparison of primal rage and RaO and some of your other opinions, but it seems against the intended theme of this thread to have an uninspired discussion on individual skills.

Izzy's job is to make GW players hang on for GW2 if it ever gets released. That's it. The game changes, builds degenerate, skills get nerfed and others get buffed. That is all he has in his toolchest to keep interest. Anyone who wants to play the same builds constantly is an unimaginative moron. Major changes to GW is impossible now as GW no longer has personel for sweeping changes. Utopia was tossed as soon as the developers realised they made the game too complex for them to maintain without the team a monthly fee would pay for. That is exactly why they wanted GW2 instead of new campaigns. They CAN'T balance GW . Get over it.

Play the game as it is and quit complaining. There will always be someone that is a "Hater". If you feel that certain builds are overpowered, do like other (skilled) people out there and adapt. Quit using the same old cookie cutters. A good player adapts to the current meta. How else do you think that the newer "overpowered" builds came about? People had an idea and used it. Damn this game reminds me too much of MtG.

There's nothing really wrong with the gme. I suggest you just play and have fun, try something new yourself!

Power creep is good, you must be a monk or something :S tbh 18 minutes matches in GvG proved that defense and stallway is bad. You have no idea how many bad monks hid behind maintaining aegis and barpushing and anything that promotes having a clue imo is good. This stresses kiting to lessen your load and preproting and such. 2 strong monks can still hold their own against most teams with maybe a warding or something to back them up, asking for it to be any easier would just help out the new pvpers really.

What makes up the majority of power creep imo is gamestyle and gameplay, not the skills. Weaponsets, selection of mods like vamp when you spike, high energy sets, how to bulls, quarterknock, all the minor details that no one thought of really before the game got really competitive.

So if you need to nerf something, nerf the people not the skills? :P

Rangers are probably the most balanced in the game tbh and "
I think that having rush and frenzy pretty much on demand is too powerful in the hands of warriors" because frenzy has no down side like the energy cost, double damage, needing rush charged to cancel, and not being able to frenzy under pressure really. You get the point. Because people think things through and make a strat behind the build doesn't make the entire build OPed.

Quote: Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

Primal Rage needs to be nerfed because it's 33% IMS and IAS with no downside. Oh...take double damage? Oh well, it still needs a nerf.

Oh wait...

Quote: Originally Posted by What Now

...because if skills were never changed no one would ever get bored and the current FoTM build would never change. Seriously it's how gimmicks fall out. When a build , even balance, becomes too much stronger than any other alternative he buffs other skills (smite, sins) or nerfs balance even (bsurge, snaremes to a point). Every time there's a moderately sized update there's usually several different builds being run on Observer for GvG and HA.

The balance you seem to speak of seems more like leaving the game alone. Do you know how many people quit due to IWAY or Heroway or Smiteway even just because fighting heroes in PvP that use insanely gay builds isn't fun and neither is fighting imbaway with 8 heal rits or necros with a super spike. Yet people complain about balance? I'll be honest and say I don't really care about the reasons HA shitters leave/left. I care about why the Korean, then American, and probably now European top GvG scenes almost completely died out in that order after nightfall. And as I already said, expecting any change now is probably futile because those players already quit, and the ones left playing now see the game differently and have different expectations/needs (as easily shown here by the responses). I quit as well, so my only stake is in hoping that GW2 will be a good game having learned the lessons from GW1 (looking less likely as time goes on).

Quote: Originally Posted by masterjer1

Damn this game reminds me too much of MtG. a game can never be too much like mtg imo. more similar=more better

Disclaimer: The following is entirely my opinion.

The main problem is that shutdown is so weak you're better off bringing more damage, or bringing more defense...leaving 321lolrendspikerawr builds as the best because shutdown isnt strong enough to create windows of opportunity long enough for anything but a spike(rend is the best shutdown skill in the game atm(and unfortunately it promotes spikes rather than timing pushes))

Straight damage(turret rangers, paragons,dervishes) needs to be lowered and shutdown(dom mesmers) needs to be strengthened. The reason is to make it so you arent worse off for bringing a dom mesmer(window of opportunity push build) over a pew pew ranger(lolspike build). Defense just needs to be strong enough that it warrants being shut down.

If a team could win using shutdown to make windows of opportunity to take control of the battle rather than spike the other team into submission you would see a lot more builds on obs mode than dedicated split or dedicated spike.

Oh yea and this lingering curse hex/smiter meta is pretty gay too because it's not skillful play pressure its just overload them with a bunch of shit they're not built for pressure.

Turret Rangers: The problem with these guys is they do too much *concealed* damage in a short period of time, by concealed I mean it's hard to see it coming until it already hit the target, and they do too much damage for a character that can switch targets and start doing damage again instantly, not to mention they are survivable enough to get high damage on the guild lord towards the tie breaker easily, oh and their interupts are too strong for a character that does that amount of damage(i'm not saying nerf the interupts I'm saying nerf the damage).

Paragons: Pretty much the same as the turret rangers just they are overshadowed because of how imba turret rangers are ATM

Dervishes: Scythes max damage is too high, and they don't have any interesting skills like bulls strike or frenzy so they just promote brainless hack and slash gameplay. If I wanted that I would go play diablo 2. Basically they are too good for how easy they are to play.

Become a top GvG tier player for your opinion to matter and then you get a shot at having a chat with Izzy and express your opinions where they might matter a bit more.

Otherwise all this is like pissing against the wind.

But I guess people really have nothing better to do with their time.

Quote: Originally Posted by tigros

Become a top GvG tier player for your opinion to matter and then you get a shot at having a chat with Izzy and express your opinions where they might matter a bit more.

Otherwise all this is like pissing against the wind. It doesn't really matter, Izzy has more or less given up on balancing GW and is working pretty much full time on GW2, the little time he does work on GW1 is mostly spend buffing elites to get even further away from a balanced game.

Quote: Originally Posted by scruffy

Disclaimer: The following is entirely my opinion.

The main problem is that shutdown is so weak you're better off bringing more damage, or bringing more defense...leaving 321lolrendspikerawr builds as the best because shutdown isnt strong enough to create windows of opportunity long enough for anything but a spike(rend is the best shutdown skill in the game atm(and unfortunately it promotes spikes rather than timing pushes))

Straight damage(turret rangers, paragons,dervishes) needs to be lowered and shutdown(dom mesmers) needs to be strengthened. The reason is to make it so you arent worse off for bringing a dom mesmer(window of opportunity push build) over a pew pew ranger(lolspike build). Defense just needs to be strong enough that it warrants being shut down.

If a team could win using shutdown to make windows of opportunity to take control of the battle rather than spike the other team into submission you would see a lot more builds on obs mode than dedicated split or dedicated spike.

Oh yea and this lingering curse hex/smiter meta is pretty gay too because it's not skillful play pressure its just overload them with a bunch of shit they're not built for pressure.

Turret Rangers: The problem with these guys is they do too much *concealed* damage in a short period of time, by concealed I mean it's hard to see it coming until it already hit the target, and they do too much damage for a character that can switch targets and start doing damage again instantly, not to mention they are survivable enough to get high damage on the guild lord towards the tie breaker easily, oh and their interupts are too strong for a character that does that amount of damage(i'm not saying nerf the interupts I'm saying nerf the damage).

Paragons: Pretty much the same as the turret rangers just they are overshadowed because of how imba turret rangers are ATM

Dervishes: Scythes max damage is too high, and they don't have any interesting skills like bulls strike or frenzy so they just promote brainless hack and slash gameplay. If I wanted that I would go play diablo 2. Basically they are too good for how easy they are to play. Quoted for truth.

Quote: Originally Posted by scruffy

Disclaimer: The following is entirely my opinion.

The main problem is that shutdown is so weak you're better off bringing more damage, or bringing more defense...leaving 321lolrendspikerawr builds as the best because shutdown isnt strong enough to create windows of opportunity long enough for anything but a spike(rend is the best shutdown skill in the game atm(and unfortunately it promotes spikes rather than timing pushes))

Straight damage(turret rangers, paragons,dervishes) needs to be lowered and shutdown(dom mesmers) needs to be strengthened. The reason is to make it so you arent worse off for bringing a dom mesmer(window of opportunity push build) over a pew pew ranger(lolspike build). Defense just needs to be strong enough that it warrants being shut down.

If a team could win using shutdown to make windows of opportunity to take control of the battle rather than spike the other team into submission you would see a lot more builds on obs mode than dedicated split or dedicated spike.

Oh yea and this lingering curse hex/smiter meta is pretty gay too because it's not skillful play pressure its just overload them with a bunch of shit they're not built for pressure.

Turret Rangers: The problem with these guys is they do too much *concealed* damage in a short period of time, by concealed I mean it's hard to see it coming until it already hit the target, and they do too much damage for a character that can switch targets and start doing damage again instantly, not to mention they are survivable enough to get high damage on the guild lord towards the tie breaker easily, oh and their interupts are too strong for a character that does that amount of damage(i'm not saying nerf the interupts I'm saying nerf the damage).

Paragons: Pretty much the same as the turret rangers just they are overshadowed because of how imba turret rangers are ATM

Dervishes: Scythes max damage is too high, and they don't have any interesting skills like bulls strike or frenzy so they just promote brainless hack and slash gameplay. If I wanted that I would go play diablo 2. Basically they are too good for how easy they are to play. It doesn't help that you nerfed all the shutdown, dom mesmers (the real ones not the INTERUPT ALL YOUR SKILLLZ dom mesmers) and curse necros (who uses a necro for anti-melee anymore) because PASSIVE = MEGAFAILBAD. Basically with the only real purpose of midline is SNARE B**** and INTERUPT B***** it almost doesn't matter how much you lower the damage potential of classes people don't use anyway (sorry para and derv). Even hits at the ranger damage won't matter, warriors now do 600% now that all the PASSIVEDEFENSEFAIL skills have been nerfed and there is no way a real dom mesmer can be useful in the current game. Just bring more damage and get over it, this is the game YOU created, so burn in its stale hell.

Quote: Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

Quote: Originally Posted by Iotan

And thank god for this. If the time he could be spending on GW1 instead goes to GW2 we will hopefully see a polished game at launch. I'm not disagreeing with this, I just think the time he does spend on GW1 could be better spend than buffing some shit to insane levels and actually moving further away from a balanced game rather than towards it.