Balancing Spoil Victor

Already had people suggested to have it take 2 seconds to cast. I can see the reason in that. One second cast + 2*20/20 wand/focus, you have a good chance to make it 1/2 cast time.

One second is not ez interrupt; not for professions that's not specialized in interrupts. Also skills that have 1 or less cast time cannot be canceled, so you can't break your attack chain to interrupt others.

Spoil Victor is basically empathy*4 plus backfire rolled into one, with a minor drawback. So yeah, I'd say it's overpowered.


Some suggestions, if they have an asterik they are some I'd lean towards:
-Make it a 25 energy spell*
-Add a 17% hp sacrifice*
-Make it end after the first trigger*
-Make it a 2 or 3 second cast
-Double or triple the recharge time and/or reduce the duration to 3...7 seconds*
-Make it heal the hexed person if that person attacks or casts a spell on someone with more life than them. On the other side, maybe make it so that if someone deals damage to the hexed person, and the hexed person has less life, the person doing the damage will take the damage instead.*
-Limit its effects to attacking/spell casting on the targets foes (so a monk healing someone won't cause it to trigger).
-Have it disable the caster's necro spells for 10...4 seconds or have it disable all other necro spells in its skill group for 15-30 seconds.
-Have it cause -4 energy degen for the caster while the hex is active.
-Get rid of the recharge and make it recharge on moral boost only.
-Reduce the damage or limit it to a certain amount that would end the hex early.
-Have it clear the target's existing hexes or conditions and/or stop any more hexes from being cast on him while the hex is active.
-Give the hex to the caster as well as the target.
-Make the hex trigger only when attacking or casting a spell on the caster of the hex in addtion to needing the caster to have less life than the target.*
-Give it a 100% blood sacrifice.

so... you're one of the types who attacks through SS+Reckless Haste, right?

And another thought, it's an ELITE skill for a reason! It's still a fragile little hex... just thank your stars I dont' got N/Mo 55 and dump it on your sorry ass and then vamp gaze you to death.

ANd yet another thought: It's like Empathy+Backfire, but you can only hurt a foe so much. As soon as he gets to your HP, then, well, the hex is useless. It doesn't trigger, it just takes up space on your UI.

If you don't attack through SS+Reckless Haste, you'll just get wand to death. One way or another, you can't win.

That's only half true, you need to think of it this way.

Melee characters (Warrior, Ranger, Assassin, Dervish) does 20-100 damage every hit. Most of the time you hit you'll do around 30-50 damage. So the trial will go this way. This simple chart shows the amount of hp after you hit.

Nec|You
----------
480|480
440|380
400|380
360|280
320|280
280|280
240|180
200|180
160|80
120|80
80 | 80
40 | 0

As you can see, if SV do 100 damage, it'll always stay 1 step ahead of you.

"If you don't attack through SS+Reckless Haste, you'll just get wand to death. One way or another, you can't win."

Lol, Run away for a time? Death by wanding, heh, dude, it's pretty easy to dodge wands, even with no speed buffs.

If you're a warrior with 480 hp max, you're in a pretty sorry spot to begin with, ok, so you do have sup runes, but if you're smart enough to fight other people and win with a hp level/build like that, you're smart enough to not just freeze and let yourself suffer death by wanding.

SS+reckelss haste is what I use as 55 on trolls, avicara(long as there's no guiles spawned in the group), and enchanteds(They get a little tough with bowmen causing dazed, hell, sometimes they seem to use concussion right before I prot spirit and I end up dying cause of recharge time)(I think it's called concussion shot, i could be wrong)

But that's the point, it works on AI, because AI isn't as smart as people, but even still the trolls..guess what.....RUN AWAY...sometimes.

Wait, you mentioned specialized in interrupts? Other classes can do that?
Sounds overpowered to me, because my build can't do it. Someone call the nerf police.

The problem with spoil victor is someone can keep it on a person, virtually all the time (okay there's that one second cast time) for no net energy lost*. Okay, the warrior runs away. It's now 4v3 or worse. So you either stay back for it to wear off and hope no one dies in that time (and of course the necro can always reapply it) or you can keep fighting and get some DP. Now you could bring some hex removal, but if you aren't watching the necro and see it put on you, he might put a cover hex on you by the time you can react... and most people don't bring 2 hex removals.

*That means you'll gain back all the energy it takes to cast the spell by the time it recharges.

/not signed

if u r in ra take hex removal, if u r playing ha or gvg some1 else will get rid of it

Run away? That's the whole point of SV! It disables you so that you can't do anything! At this point, the nec don't need to worry about you and as soon SV recharges he can cast it on a teammate of yours. What? Both you and your other teammate ran away? Then it became 4v2 situation now, your team is doomed.

What's the point of having more HP than 480? You're just gonna make yourself suffer more from SV. Here, I'll make it 1000 for you, the warrior with both Endure and Defy pain.

Nec|You
----------
480|1000
440|900
400|800
360|700
320|600
280|500
240|400
200|300
160|200
120|100
80 | 100
40 | 0

There, you're dead.

[QUOTE=lightblade]Run away? That's the whole point of SV! It disables you so that you can't do anything! At this point, the nec don't need to worry about you and as soon SV recharges he can cast it on a teammate of yours. What? Both you and your other teammate ran away? Then it became 4v2 situation now, your team is doomed.
QUOTE]

SV does not disable you from running away. It does not stop you from using a hex removal, it does not stop you from using a interrupt/knockdown. It doesn't stop the 3 other people from ripping his guts out through....well you get the point(actually, you still don't get the point, and likely never will).

All this time, all 4 people are just standing idly by while the necro SV's everyone? get a freaking clue.
KILL THE NECRO FIRST!?!?!? Maybe? I don't know.

Since apparently you don't know how to remove a hex, the teams are already 4 v 3, and your "team" is screwed.



"but if you aren't watching the necro and see it put on you, he might put a cover hex on you by the time you can react"

There you go, if you aren't watching...Who's fault is that? oh yeah, the necro using SV whenyou weren't looking, how unfair, lets Ban him.

Lightblade,
Possible scenario
1. Hey, neato, I see a necro.
2. Use hex removal immediately upon noticing you get SV, if you and/or your party haven't already killed the necro.
3. You've got ample time to kill him now, do so. The best defense is a strong offense, said so yourself. If you can't do this, your offense isnt' strong enough.
4. It's done, rejoice.

Really, if a skill was overpowered, you'd have people in all arena's and gvg matches complaining about it. Not just you and a few select others saying "it stops you from doing anything" as your main argument for the first 3 million posts, or "just because you can cancel it doesn't mean it's not overpowered".

If it's as aweful as you say it is, every single non necro player would be in this forum right now backing you up. Apparently it's not, cause there's like 3-4 of you. Buck up and learn to counter, avoid, or deal with it.

Not all classes have, or have equipped interrupts or knockdowns. If they do, maybe they have someone else to worry about at the same time, like a SF el.


And his monk casts prot spirit on him and keeps him healed while you are trying to kill him. One of those people, assuming they do attack, will probably die anyways.


Ever hear of a cover hex? And how am I supposed to constantly keep watch on the skills that everyone on the other team is using at all times? Maybe there are two necros on the other team and I can only keep a track of one of them. Maybe someone is attacking my monk and I had to switch my focus for a few seconds.


Aeon, I take it you play necro a lot and SV is one of your favorite skills to use.

[skill]Holy Veil[/skill][skill]Pious Restoration[/skill] <-- The only 2 skills fast enough to get rid of SV before the cover hex comes.

People still haven't catches this up. People will soon start using this to counter those Melandru Avatars in gvg...as Melandru Avatar's hp boost going to get punished a lot from SV. Hex removal you say? Divert Hex and Expel hex are the only 2 that can bypass cover hexes...and Divert Hex is on the list of "to be nerfed"..and Expel Hex haven't been used for ages for unknown reason.

You all keep asking what if this happens after I counter or before I counter?

That's all left up to random chance in a random arena, can't take the heat get out of the kitchen.

Second, I'm not here to baby sit you and talk you through every possible scenerio, skill by skill by skill for a random 4 vs 4 match.

If you have interrupt skills and chose not to use them, it's your fault.

"If they do, maybe they have someone else to worry about at the same time, like a SF el"

Well, from they way you all put it, SV is the root of all evil, and they'd better be dealing with it first?

What I do and do not play is of no concern here, but I can say that none of my characters have SV captured at all.

Other minor notes of Major worth.
Monks have all kinds of hex removals, some that remove multiple hexes.
Monks are not exclusively for healing, you can make a good offensive player with all monk skills.

It's true, you cannot go in prepared for everything, that's a given, you've got 8 skills to chose and that's it.

But, having identified a problem, SV, if people were to actually build around it, it would be easily conquered, and you wouldn't have vast numbers of people relying on SV, or the few of you complaining about it.

Take it for granted that there's going to be a necro in one of 8 people, it's a pretty good chance. Necro's have multitudes of hexes. Bring a hex removal.

All casters have a weakness in interupters. All Melee's have a weakness in Necros. Necro's have a weekness in Monks, there's all sorts of interaction in there that goes on that you need to consider, not purely What 8 skills from any combination of 2 from all the classes will deal the most damage all at once. It's not that simple.

There will always be someone better than you. It's a fact of life, and is true in PvP also. Those same people that use SV, get trampled on by other people/builds. Those builds? They get trampled by others. It's a cycle that's unavoidable.
Smart people looking to better themselves will learn, will change their play style, builds, or even change classes.

If you want to 55 PvE or even PvP, you have to stick to pretty much melee fighters, no necros, they can remove enchantments pretty easy.
55ers don't complain, they just don't do it, or they do do it and laugh.

There are thousands, or maybe millions, of 8 skill combinations you can choose from, and you're telling me, SV is unstopable?

You are wrong, period.

I'm done posting here, I've tried to help, but some people don't listen to reason. Just continue butting your head against the wall till you bleed and fall over. That's what you're doing in the game, may as well emulate that and save the rational people some headache.

Spoil Victor is quite a powerful skill now, but the nerf requested by the OP would make it useless, and there are way too many useless elites now.
The only place I've ever seen SV is in RA, I play an SF ele alot in RA (when I'm trying to get balthazar faction to unlock stuff), and never have I been killed by an SV necro. Furthermore, I've played SV before, and I never killed someone fast enough for it to warrant a nerf. I can kill faster with DISCORD.

Anyway, my point is that SV does not need a nerf, use hex removal more.

The official nerf is to lower the duration from 1..31 to a flat out 20 seconds.

That will do just fine.

If you find yourself hexed with Spoil Victor, then you have to deal with it. The skill alone will not kill you. You are permitted to attack or heal targets that have more health than you. Switch targets and try to minimize the damage that the hex can do to you. You are also permitted to run the other way.

Even more importantly, you're allowed to use spells on yourself without triggering the penalty. Remember that.

If you're stupid enough to attack through it, or any other hex combination (SS/Reckless, Backfire, Empathy), then you probably deserve to die.

that right there...is genious...

Make it damage whoever has more hp, either the hexed person, or the person doing damage to the hexed person. It would be a lot more like the "original" dark bond (which was in their first set of screenshots released), which was "If you take damage, target foe takes that damage as well. If target foe takes damage, you take that damage as well", except, in this case...it would be much more killer.

/signed for quoted suggestion

Yes, let's just make another elite skill completely useless, since all you have to do is look for the melandru's dervish and hit it once for the hex to be gone. Please think before posting...

there is a very simple skill called "Power Return". requires no investment in fast cast. 5 Energy only, 0.25 cast time, 5 sec recharge. Easiest way to disable Spoil Victor. On a competent player, you can shutdown SV + one additional spell on the necro. OMG one nonelite > elite & another nonelite.

Damn it, NERF NERF NERF Power Return. But wait, too many newbies don't bring an interrupt in RA. Maybe BUFF BUFF BUFF intelligence on RA players?

*cough* just like grenths balance *cough*
if it worked like that, it would be great.

This is where equipment kicks in. The 20/20 wand/focus combo. Gives you...
36% chance to have at least one half cast time trigger and
36% chance to have at least one half recharge trigger...

You have less than 64% chance to successfully interrupt it. Even if you do interrupt it, another 36% chance it'll recharge at the rate same as Power Return.

And I haven't add in all the possibilities with skills preventing interrupts...but thats irrelevent to SV, so I'll skip..

ok, i have read quite a bit about this skill in this thread. as a Necromancer myself, this skill is not, i repeat, NOT overpowered. this skill is not used to kill anyone other than an NPC. its used to keep pressure on people, mainly melee class. as you all know, this hex can be removed. and almost everyone believes that this skill puts entirely too much pressure on monks to either heal through SV or remove it. if you are not an NPC, and you attack or cast while hexed with this skill, then its no one else's fault but your own. you have but three options when hexed with SV.

1. go sit in the time-out corner for the next 25...35 seconds.
2. wait until someone else removes SV from you.
3. remove SV yourself.

there is a 4th option, but i think you know what will happen if you do it. instead of complaining about this skill, i think people should start bringing hex removers, and i don't mean just monks either. i mean warriors, assassin, elementals, everyone. if it means changing your build to do so, then so be it.

to conclude, just so everyone knows that i can be considerate of others, mainly people complaining about SV, the only "nerf" to me if there should be one would involve moving SV to the Soul Reaping Attribute. at least if there, you may not see the full potential of this skill.