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Originally Posted by theclam
In a very close match 3% will turn the tide. Plus, 3% is just a number I picked randomly. When does it become an issue for you? 4%? 5%? 10%? 20%? Should PvE characters be able to get weapons that are better than PvP weapons, as long as they are less than X% better? Also, what if a match is an entire team of PvE characters with green weapons vs a team of PvP characters? Then the advantage becomes much more significant.
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It never becomes an issue for me, because I've played the 20/20 and 40/20 combinations, and have never won a match because of that. I win matches because I know how to play, so when I lose, it's because I've been outplayed, or I went up against a team where our respective skills stalemated each other (that was pretty damn cool, too). I speak from personal experience using the 20/20 and 40/20 combinations. They don't win matches, and they sure as hell don't give me an advantage.
"Instant" cast for Feast of Corruption? If I hadn't set it up first, it means absolutely nothing to cast FoC faster, because as far as that spike is concerned...if you don't set-up an AoE hex, and throw a few cover hexes around before it...don't even bother with FoC in the first place. If the player doesn't know to prep for the FoC spike, neither faster casting nor faster recharge is going to make a difference at all. That FoC spike will still be gimped as hell. This is speaking from personal experience.
A faster cast, or faster recharge, on my own FoC spiking is not an advantage.
If anything, it's detrimental to the overall team build (and honestly, detrimental to my own character if there's a particular casting rhythm I've grown accustomed to). I recall a time recently in Tombs with a FoC Spike team. They requested that I equip different items, but not because there was some "advantage" in using 20/20 equipment. They requested that I equip different items because it may (not would, not will...it
may) disrupt the timing of the spike.
Sure, that's one example, but let's look at Wroth's Holy Rod. Prot-based, right? How many Prot spells are really going to benefit from a faster cast or faster recharge?
In terms of faster cast...the longest cast time in Prot is Rebirth, which clocks in at 6 seconds. Everything else is 2 seconds or less. Some run in the range of 3/4 of a second. In PvP, what Monk would be using Rebirth? It's just not worth the secondary effects.
So then you're left with 2 second cast times and less. Let's not forget that some of those 2 second cast times are maintained enchants like Protective Bond...and we all know what's been done to P.Bond.
For the most part, most Prot spells take one second to cast, on average. They're almost an instant cast to begin with. An Interrupt Mesmer has to really have their build down to a science to be able to interrupt the usual Prot spells (like RoF, Guardian, etc). Why's that, you think? Because Prot spells are pro-active, which means the Monk has to be able to cast them quickly, hence the exceedingly low cast times.
In terms of recharges, there are about five spells with recharges over 20 seconds. The two longest recharges belong to Amity and Mark of Protection, both of which are Elite skills. I don't think any Monk in their right mind would take Amity over Mark of Protection, or Shield of Regeneration, or Shield of Deflection, or even Restore Condition.
Shielding Hands (non-Elite) has a recharge of 25 seconds, a duration of 10, and a max damage reduction of...around 16 or 17. Even with a faster recharge, the spell is clearly inferior. You could use a 20% enchant mod, with the faster recharge bonus, and yet you'd still only be mitigating 17 damage out of a spike that could potentially inflict upwards of 100 damage...say from Evis.
What I'm trying to get at here is that...the 20/20 green items like Wroth's Holy Rod aren't as useful as you think, because when everything is said and done, most skills won't benefit all that much from them, if they benefit at all. It either comes down to the player knowing what skills to use and when, or the fact that most Monk skills (both Healing and Prot) have some of the fastest cast times in the game to start with, which means any competent Monk is more than capable of functioning without Wroth's Holy Rod. The green item there is nothing more than a decoration, rather than something that has a profound impact on combat.
Regarding your PvE team vs PvP team...when have we seen an entire PvE team with all green items go up against a PvP team? Closest I've seen lately in iQ vs Te. iQ had some Gingerbread items, FoW armor on one War, etc. But oddly enough, I didn't see any green items. Not to mention it didn't seem like iQ was using all PvE characters. Perhaps Ensign can come in and clarify for us? He is in iQ, right?
I've got an example. You say a team of PvE characters equipped with green items will have an advantage over a "traditional" PvP team. Let's consider a PvE FoC Spike build, all equipped with that 40/20. If they went up against an identical build from a PvP template and that identical build was using PvP items...who would really have an advantage there you think? I highly doubt it'd be the PvE Foc Spikers. The spike team needs a good synch, correct?
How well can they synch when their items are giving some of them faster cast times on Desecrate Enchants (which I personally feel is a must for the FoC spike build), faster recharges on Shadow of Fear, faster casts for Suffering, and others get faster recharges on FoC? That spike build is ruined when (note when, not if) that happens.
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As for the concept of PvP characters, the 2 hour lifespan is a strength, at least for me. I don't have to spend 100 hours getting a character to Droknar's, getting him several sets of perfect weapons, perfect runes (including a Sup. Vigor for each character and a Sup. Absorbtion for each Warrior), several sets of armor, each with different runes, spending another hundred hours getting the skills I want, and doing all the secondary class changing quests. Even then, I'd be limited, since I'd only be able to use 4 out of the 6 primary classes. Instead, all I have to do is spend 5 minutes making a PvP character and spending a few thousand faction when I want to obtain something new. Is the system clumsy? A little. Saved templates would be nice. I'd like to have equipment managers in the PvP areas if I want to change something.
The low shelf-life of my PvP characters is because of my gameplay style. Some people may spend 10 hours per PvP character. I like to try new things fairly often. My PvP characters would be gimped if I wasn't able to delete them every 2 hours without something (e.g. an expensive weapon).
If I spend 5 minutes getting a character that's perfect in almost every respect, then why should I have to spend 50 hours to get him a perfect weapon? A weapon that I can't even customize (a major concern for Warriors and Rangers - I don't believe that they would use a non-customized weapon in PvP).
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I think you actually proved my point that PvE is actually a better idea for PvPing.
You like to try new things very often, right? Not to sound glib, because that's not my intent here, just trying to prove a point, but I'd bet you that I could swap my PvE Curses/Dom N/Me to an Death/Axe N/W build just as fast (if not faster) than you could re-roll your PvP character.
I'd bet I could get the skills I needed faster than you could. Presumably if you're trying out a build you don't have the skills for, you'd have to unlock them. Gold in PvE isn't hard to come by. We don't have a cap on it (at least not a cap that's prohibitive), and we don't have a cap on skill points. We spend 1k (and a skill point) on skills at the end-game.
Faction, however...each skill costs around 1k Faction, right? 3k Faction for Elites. Runes run at...3k to 5k? Your Faction caps out at 10k. Sounds like a lot of time and Faction to me.
The only two runes I'd have trouble getting in PvE are Sup Vigor and Sup Absorb. There are maybe a few weapon upgrades that would take longer to acquire. But other than that...PvE is very efficient when it comes to swapping stuff around, and I'd venture it's even more efficient most times.
And I wholeheartedly agree with what I bolded in your post. But I don't agree that the PvP characters desperately need their own "types" of green items, because in order for such a request to be justified, there needs to be clear evidence that such an imbalance exists, without dealing in purely hypotheticals. I would be completely fine with an equipment manager-type of NPC in the arenas. I think it'd go a long way in improving how PvP flows.
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Let me rephrase:
"But what I can tell is that a player was able to cast slightly faster than me, or that their energy supply lasted slightly longer." Do I care that someone is using a Chaos Axe in PvP? No, because the difference between a Chaos Axe and a PvP Axe is that Chaos Axes look cooler. Do I care that someone is using Wroth's Holy Rod in PvP? Yes, because they can get more powerful than my PvP character could, without spending 50 hours on a PvE character per weapon that I want (and I'd want 7 or 8 weapons, none of which I'd want to customize, because of the low shelf-life of my PvP characters). My PvE Monk has a 10%/10% global recharge wand. He's got a permanent +5 energy wand. I know how powerful the modifiers are (the two weapons both suck for PvP, but that's not because of those mods). A fast recharge Offering of Blood is very nice. A fast cast Heal Party is very nice. An extra 5 energy has saved my party in FoW/UW half a dozen times (and don't say that it makes you more susceptible to energy denial; that's what weapon switches are for). Do I wish I (and EVERYONE else) could have those mods in PvP? Yes.
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But you're using PvE as a support point for your argument regarding PvP. FoW and UW are nice areas and all, but the AI is hardly a human opponent. Do you believe you'd have that 5 energy in PvP?
It sounds like those FoW/UW experiences were made possible not because of your extra 5 energy; those FoW/UW saves were made possible because monsters don't know how to interrupt efficiently, and they don't know how to e-deny.
You're right about one thing: I'm not going to say you were more susceptible to e-denial there. After all, you could only be susceptible to e-denial if your enemies were capable of it. And how many enemies in the game are capable of actual e-denial apart some random Spirit Shackles chain-cast spam?
It's been said time and time again around here: PvE doesn't prepare someone for PvP. Largely, that's true. And I think in the context of your point here, it still holds true.
Plus, in a PvP environment...if 5 energy saves your team (keeping in mind 5 energy gives you one Reversal of Fortune)...that means you, the Monk, were one of the last ones standing, which means something in that battle went terribly, terribly wrong. I could understand a situation like that arising if everything came down to you and a Warrior squaring off against another Warrior and a Necro at the end of an initial 8v8...but that's pretty situational I think.