Flux - June 2011

This mechanic is dumb.

Why reward a team for being less talented?

Trade offs are trade offs for a reason.

GvG is a fine competitive setting, but the game is so skewed by balance RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO ups by ANet.

Just restore balance and GvG is fixed.

Then all ANet would have to do is promote the play of GvG and revive PvP by making every other format besides GvG not shitty.

easy as that eh? no doubt a 5 minute job

I do agree though that the flux is in essence a 2nd chance for bad teams, rewarding dying? but it is a complete see-saw effect of teams gaining extra damage, and then assuming they make good use of it, losing this bonus whilst the other team gradually gains it. In one sided matches its going to make no difference at all, one team still gets dumped on. But in evenly contested matches, the game will become more exciting with a better chance of an epic comeback.

I'd like to think this flux will increase the number of deaths during the game as well, (there should in theory be more deaths to both teams), and the more DP teams get, the less chance of a game going to 28 minutes. The tiebreaker is still stupid as hell so the more chance of avoiding a match getting to that stage the better imo.

Very interesting flux this time. The previous one was pretty worthless, not to say completely useless.

This one gives teams a second chance, a third and a fourth one, which should create some nice GvG matches. (Actually looking forward to the mAT)

I also would love to see how this plays out for byob/split builds, as the only way to beat a split is to kill the split. As such, they will keep getting stronger and stronger as the match prolongs. Obviously it's the same for honor balanced teams, but split builds are usually already designed around doing the most with the least amount of damage, so we'll see some interesting changes there...

Also a nice "nerf" to quad necro, as degen obviously doesn't count.

@Killed u man - Really depends on what type of PvP you play to consider it useless or not. I only play JQ and it was pretty fun with the last flux, I'm guessing they decided to let high-end GvG have their month of fun. Good luck you guys and have fun with this months flux.

I honestly don't think Jade Quarry qualifies for balance discussion.
In fact, I don't think it really qualifies for PvP.

Consider a fullwipe on a spike, most of the party is on 15-30% DP. roughly 10% increase on spike damage. Spike, for obvious reasons, now has HUGE advantages over pressure builds, as DP on one target will not give the pressure build much of an advantage, but just letting yourself wipe once vs the pressure will mean you can spike out the same target without recovering much DP 60ing them, and making the game pretty much won, them having a 60dp target.

In retrospect that's not entirely true. Current pressure builds are mainly frontliners pumping damage. Three frontliners is alot of damage and I bet the +x% damage is really gonna count after you've full wiped and you're fighting a team in your own base. Basically mini-VoD right there. It really doesn't only favor spike builds, maybe a bit more, but pressure is still very strong.

I like this one, gives squishy warriors even more bravery points for epic game turn arounds, suites me fine.

So an 8 necro saccing-MM team rules this month in PvP?

If you haven't figured out by now, PvP at Anet is synonymous with GvG. If it's bad for GvG, it's bad for all of PvP....
I'm starting to think that they need to make another split just for GvG.

90% of the nerfs since product release have been due to GvG gimmicks or overpowered builds.

There is nothing wrong with considering it the penultimate form of PvP, but it takes a disproportionate amount of the developer's attention sometimes.

Am I alone in thinking that if they weren't so busy balancing out the dervs in PvP that we would be hip deep in Winds of Change by now?

Minionfactory was a terrible gimmick that was only good when Flesh Golem was bugged. It won't be seen this month except maybe for the lulz.

Its just the really basic idea that you don't want to die, but this flux rewards dying.

Aside from that, I can't help but feel that this is going to encourage turtling even more.

I should have added a to convey my sarcasm.

Comebacks make for exciting matches. That's the idea behind this flux.

Also, how? Turtling means you're stalling but with this tiebreaker if you turtle in your base you're in a bad position for 28(lord damage is a map-distance away, compared to the other team's damage already being in your base).

Things I can see this flux do is people being very careful about pushing into enemy base after they full wiped them, spikes being up to par to current pressure (trip front) builds and possibly epic comebacks on obs.

I like this Flux more than the Lone Wolf one, tbh.

A guaranteed loss at 28 hasn't stopped turtling yet. This just gives teams that are going to lose a false hope of keeping going while making it harder for the team that is going to win to reach the win state without waiting 28 minutes.

It still doesn't change the fact that this flux rewards bad play. If a team does make a comeback and pushes out, do they cap the flag? A morale boost (good play) is rewarded by a loss of 7.5% damage across the team. Aside from that comebacks are good when they aren't forced. If the game mechanics artificially force comebacks, it is extremely unsatisfactory. There are already many amazing comebacks on obs without having something try to artificially create them.

Also are all of the fluxes going to be silly mechanics that just give +%dmg? I thought Anet realized such mechanics were bad when they got rid of the VoD buffs.

I don't particularly see this as rewarding dying. At 50% DP, it takes half the damage to kill them, and their damage is only boosted by 25%.

Player A = 600 health, does 50 damage per hit. 6 hits to kill Player B.
Player B = 300 health, does 62.5 damage per hit. 10 hits (9.6) to kill Player A instead of 12 (unmodified).

Of course lots of factors go into both ends of the argument. Which is why I think it's a pretty interesting mechanic for a month.

Like it or not the person who you killed is being compensated for their death closer to even grounds with that scenario.

Just gonna be a dumb month for GvG with people running gimmick spike builds and teams with heavy protting.

Ele and Necro spikes are gonna be lame this month.

Time to bring back good old protective spirit?

I am honestly wondering this myself.

Though I still feel that SB is going to have more mileage since more attacks are going to hit for 60+ An axe warrior with any DP is now going to auto-attack crit in the 60+ range.

I'm just going out on a limb here by saying it but I get the feeling EoE bomb will see it's way into HA this month. 60death penalty = 30% more damage? Eh...