29 Nov 2006 at 04:47 - 130
The only time you need to PM someone is if you need to correct or congratulate them without being obnoxious, I find that rather childish. But I also find the idea that everything should be nerfed if it works well pretty childish as well.
As many have said, the only reason other classes have any difficulty is because many of their skills just get nerfed over and over.
Having an indominable Paragon lineup is no different than having an indominable Monk lineup, a support heavy build is going to last, and the fact that a team with 2 paragons and a paragon secondary, as well as at least 1, likely 2 monks survives like a mountain isn't a surprise. The fact that bringing half a team of support unit ensures longetivity really doesn't impress, of course it does, half their team is support...... What WERE you expecting?
If you were against a party of 3 monks rotating Aegis and a Ritualist spamming spirits, would melee attacks get through?
Reduced damage has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages like overall less damage, but completely open to interrupts, conditions application and attack rewards (energy return for criticals and such), is it overpowered? Imagine if there was an elite version of Aegis?, how strong would it be?, how cheap would it be?, how often could you use it? Imagine it was on a class which had better defensive abilities, and worse healing abilities. You would have "Incoming" on a Paragon class, and it is perfectly balanced. Paragon has its advantages and disadvantages, just because a skill is effective doesn't mean that it is broken. What Anet should do is start returning much of the power that has been stripped away in the past and allow more classes to be effective. Paragon requires a party to be bunched together to receive powerful support effects. The would be no problem at all if DoT spells wern't axe murdered, but instead improved like I have been saying since the game came out. Naturally when the situation which requires it finally arrives, you just want to nerf that too, so the classes you use are proficient again.
All I can say is you don't know how to manage a good game. There are 2 ways to fix the problem, nerfs, or improvements. I don't have to debate which is more enjoyable, and whether you recognize it or not, it is a better solution. Nerfs will lead to more nerfs, which lead to mundain gameplay, which leads to less sales, which leads to the end of the game. Improvements lead to more enjoyment, more sales, and a longer lifespan. I have seen the power of nerfs in previous games, and they never prosper, the players who enjoyed the function become disgruntal, and turn to all the other classes and call for nerfs, those classes get nerfs, and it exponetially weakens the game until everyone is disappointed and unhappy. The cycle has already begun, there are alot of skills which were never that great to begin with which are totally crap now, and just as many which were enjoyable and now are broken.
When you choose to nerf, you choose to keep nerfing, and the nerfing will continue until improvements are chosen. And the longer you continue to nerf, the harder it is to switch to improvements, because the cycle of nerfs has lowered the effectiveness of everything in the game, and require extreme retroactive developement to return everything to enjoyable means. Nerfing is not the solution.
As stated, these builds require close proximity and clustering, the class which has always been involved with group damage has been nerfed since day one up til now, now there is a situation which requires it to be even more powerful than it ever was, but now a legacy of nerfing stands between improvement and balance, and you want to nerf some more. It is obvious that DoT spells need to be returned to area wide effects, and they all need a 1/3rd reduction, if not 1/2 reduction in recast time, as well as improving the radius and recast time on most other elementist skills, to make it easier for Elementist to punish groups. Likewise, Dervish need to have their attacks returned to the way they were, if they are in a situation where they are surrounded by more than 3 enemies, than they damn well need the advantage, and when the face of battle includes 3 enemies with "Incoming", they damn sure need it.
Likewise, there is no reason why 2 paragons cannot be on your team providing the same effect. Is it broken?, no more than 2 or 3 monks being a standard part of every team. People act like it is broken just because a new face has become a common appearance in battle, it isn't the first class which is required in any team, and hopefully not the last.
And all this nerf trash for what? Will anything change if they increase Incomings cost to 10 energy?, will it be less difficult to damage the enemy when it has a 30 second recast? No it woln't it is still going to be just as powerful, and balanced so, the enemy will bring more copies of it if they need to, bring skills which increase the duration, and what? You think a 5 second laps in use is going to give you the advantage you need to win?, Whatever. There needs to be attacks which will punish the enemy even if they have that defense, there needs to be much stronger, effective, economic, and frequent group damaging spells in elementist and other classes to make staying together a liability. When DoT owns grouped units and there are 5 other spells which can punish a group like Rodgorts Flame, there woln't be a problem with "Incoming" builds. People will be ringing out the Ward Against Elements just so their paragons can survive, and the game will be balanced again, the way it should have been, and enjoyable at the same time.
