[Dev Update] Soul Reaping and Mesmer Issues

Wow.
/signed

Also, whether SR needed a change is irrelevant at this point. Now the issue is the problem with the timer. Which IS a problem and is making the Necromancer have consistency problems.

Wow. There must have been a half dozen people throwing tantrums and threatening to quit in the last page and a half. I guess that's one way of showing your dissatisfaction. A more rational, less drama queen approach would have been better though.

First people gripe at ANET for supposedly not addressing or responding fast or often enough. And yet when they do release a statement, people start issuing threats because they don't like what they hear. Embarassing.

Anet speaks in money. If we're not going to buy their crap anymore, they wont get money. I personally wont buy anymore ArenaNet stuff.

First, they are sharing what point they're at in adjusting Soul Reaping. In other words, they are "updating" you on the status of their thinking on the skill.

Secondly, read the chat line above the one you quoted. She says this is the way they think necromancer players see things, but asks to be corrected if you think she's wrong.

You are, at least in this case, overreacting over nothing.

If you don't like what's been done to soul reaping, just say so and suggest an improvement if you can. All anyone involved here wants to do is to create a fun, playable game for a wide range of people.

Hey Devs,

Want to make mesmers more playable in PvE? Try not handicapping them by excluding them from what is supposed to be a universaly beneficial bonus.
See post/thread: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...7&postcount=41

Personally, I think the idea of incorporating some system of diminishing returns is a good one - like the suggestion on the fifth page, I think it was. (Although you'd probably want to make the energy gain a status like morale/DP rather than an enchantment that will make you a target for Shatter and Drain...)

On Mesmers... Boss monsters playing 'by the rules' would certainly be a good start - currently, the few times you do fight a single foe, most of the Mesmer's normal box of trickery is usually taken out anyway by the fact that the enemy's boss skills ignore the normal rules entirely. Let's see some big bosses that have normal classes and normal skills (possibly with a secondary or even a tertiary, or even multiple elites to help stand out) and that gain, if not all of their power, than a significant amount of it from them instead of unstoppable monster skills so that the Mesmers actually have something to stop...

And I certainly like the idea of area-of-effect hexes. Even at reduced strength, being able to Empathy or degen entire groups at a time would be... tasty.

(Incidentally, one thing I've noticed people talking about is things like armour-ignoring and single-target focus being a disadvantage to the Mesmer. I don't really see it so much - on the armour-ignoring part, in high-end PvE the enemies, from what I've seen, normally have higher armours than a typical PC of their class. And on the single-target focus... most high-end mobs, if you don't mess up your aggro, tend to be smaller than the party (5 or 6 seems to be about the median). With the numbers in your favour like that, having one of you shut down one of them is to your advantage, as the relative gap widens until you reach a point where, guess what? They're all shut down and you still have people free to go to town.

Now, while shutting a critter down entirely isn't exactly easy, the point is that one person on your side being able to neutralise one of them at the cost of not being able to do much else themselves is actually a good tradeoff.

A part of the problem are the skills themselves. Which mesmer elite is equal to Spoil Victor's usefulness in PvE? Or, which skill? Empathy? Yay for halved duration against hexes on bosses. And the damage only occurs if they attack. Backfire? Only if they're a caster, and it lasts for what, 3 seconds on bosses? Instead slap them with a Spoil Victor and their HP will drop only if they... do basically anything. Halved duration? Don't worry, it's recharged already.

Well, not to throw a tantrum...

But personally, I've been very displeased with the way ANet has dealt with Guild Wars since I bought the original Prophecies.

"Why?"

I've found, in my playing experience:

*Builds that I believe are fun have gotten worse, not better
*Builds I never had any interest in utilizing have been pushed upon my playing class
*Difficulty has increased by means of numbers, not tactics (not fun for me, personally)
*Rewards have decreased dramatically
*Fixes for common complaints arrive very slowly, and sometimes never
*Resolutions for problems that seemingly never existed arrive quickly and consistently
*Public outcry is heard but misinterpreted, sometimes ignored
*Chapters have higher progressive quality but have not improved or utilized good concepts very well: e.g., Factions' territory system
*PvE play, to me, increasingly feels more like a chore than an opportunity

Now, I'm not throwing a fit here. But speaking just out of my personal experience, I don't like Arena Net. I'm not being derisive, I'm just speaking as a customer.

As such, I'm not sure if I will buy Guild Wars 2. I think I'll go ahead and buy Eye of the North, simply because it's a seemingly new formula. However, it's also what I would call ANet's "last chance" in my relationship with the company. If I don't like what I find, if I find that GW:EN is just more of the same, and offers me absolutely nothing but new art assets and another disappointing PvE experience, I won't purchase GW2, because I don't think ANet will have the follow-through to make it an enjoyable experience. (For me.)

I've personally logged a lot of hours into Guild Wars. In retrospect, I'm not sure why. Personally, I haven't liked any of the chapters. I've found all of their storylines to be rather childish and hackneyed, and their gameplay to be too arduous to be enjoyable. What I expected to be a game of tactics has simply turned into a game of struggles. Rather than outwitting small numbers of powerful enemies, I find myself simply trying to survive an onslaught of overpowered monsters. It's as though I'm teaching temporal mechanics at a community college. It's just a wasted experience. Generally, I'd rate Guild Wars, so far, in my experience, as a whole, an average but uninspired game driven too often by engineering instead of... simple fun, and artistic merit.

But all of this is just me. It's not a threat, just a perspective. Not everyone that says, "If this doesn't pan out, I won't purchase any other ANet products," is just pitching a fit. Some legitimately are just displeased and disenchanted. I'm one of those people. I don't like how the game has found itself altered in many respects, and I find it's just become too tiresome in its difficulty.

My favorite example is the days of tearing through Prophecies with an army of 36 minions, having fun trying to reach 40 total. Was it balanced compared to what a warrior, or a mesmer can do? No. Do I care? No. It's PvE after all. And it was intensely fun. My problem is not that they tried to balance this, it's that I've been completely blocked from having that same experience. I can never have that experience again, no matter what build I use, no matter how experienced or clever I am. I will always have a 10 minion maximum. My experience has been completely removed from the game. Many of you will disagree with this, citing your own examples of fairness, responsibility on ANet's part and possibly even bias on my part. But that's you.

I no longer find Guild Wars to be rewarding, as I feel neutered from my means to over-achieve, which is how I enjoy myself in a game like this. I like feeling rewarded, as though my player avatar is unique and successful. And perhaps that's the problem - Guild Wars philosophy is so centered on equality of the masses that personal achievements (by my standards that is) are nearly impossible to achieve beyond very generic and purposeless rewards like titles and often unappealing expensive armor sets.

Forgive the analogy, as it seems harsh due to contemporary connotations, but Guild Wars philosophy, laughably to me, resembles Communism: an attempt to ensure complete equality among the masses that results in a select few being very powerful while the majority simply struggles and is left feeling slighted, one way or another. I probably lost a good number of people there since "Communism = evil" these days, but the general idea behind the philosophy remains the same.

In my own philosophy, I don't mind if one class is technically more powerful in a PvE environment than another, so long as the experience of playing those classes is so diverse that I can't help but want to experience them all. Perhaps my minion master was the most powerful character in the game for a time. But only in specific zones. Place single, incredibly powerful boss characters in my path and I'm helpless. Introduce a warrior, a mesmer, or some other class into that setting and the experience changes. That's what I've missed, and what I think has been lost somewhere along the way.

Fun is no longer diverse, it's pre-approved.

But that's just me. Not a threat, just a customer.

She said that is how she sees it. I think Q's "frustration" was over the fact that Gaile actually sees it that way. Hell, I find it infuriating myself.
You obviously misunderstood were the anger came from. Suggesting improvements is useless at this point, as we see, considering the way Anet works, AND considering the disregard of almost 70% of all the Guild Wars forums asking for SR to be changed back, MINUS the spirit gain. They'll do what they want, and will never admit they were wrong.

I, personally, read the line saying that that is how she "thinks" necromancers are taking it, and it very much feels like putting words into MY mouth, and makes me think that they straight up don't listen to anyone who isn't a damn PvP player.

Interesting comparison. Although undoubtedly our characters are richer than citizens of communist nations...And if capitalism teaches us one thing it's the celebration of buck over quality. We spend more on less. And GW has label products just the same...it's called 15k armour. It's not better, just more expensive. So I fear I do not agree from an economic point of view. But I digress...

Balance is an interesting thing and it proves a difficult one. The big variable is player skill and even when you make it all easy many people still manage to mess things up for themselves and the party they're in. But I agree that there is a problem that on the one hand you have to be able to do all missions with all characters and on the other you want to give each class a right of existence...a reason to be.

My mesmer is a domination mesmer. I haven't found a good illusion build yet although I am getting close to one. As far as domination is concerned I just notice that I have a flying start and then it stops and I wait for energy the rest of the combat and cast the occasional spell when I have the energy. The alternative is to limit the offensive side of my build for energy gain but that would mean either giving up interrupt or damage dealing basically crippling the build and make it very much a specialist build.

The problem (and not only for the mesmer) is that PvP has lvl 20 enemies only and PvE has lots of 20+ mobs and bosses. Realm of Torment only has lvl 24 and lvl 28 mobs.
So how to balance skills between 2 area's of the game (PvE and PvP) where on the one hand it's lvl 20 vs lvl 20 and on the other lvl 20 vs lvl 28?

Sure the mobs are AI driven and not as smart but when they spike you for 200 damage a couple of times you need to be able to deal with it. And when as a mesmer you are up against lvl 28 foes 3 interrupts are not gonna stop it. And of course then you are waiting for 10-15 seconds for your interrupts to recharge. So then you are forced to use an elite to have a faster recharge (Mantra of Recovery) but that limits your damage output (Energy Surge) or energy gain (Energy Drain/Mantra of Recall).

A mesmer wit illusionary weaponry that can only be used on melee attacks? Who in the world came up with that? A mesmer isn't gonna charge in. It should be usable on a staff...that would actually make sense!

And too many skills are too specific. Yeah sure..it's great to have a billion interrupts to interrupt spells. However not everybody uses spells and even spellcasters don't use spells only. As you need to be able to counter all kinds of things in a battle that means you only take part in part of the battle. That's not fun. So it's better to take interrupts that counter skills, but then there are too few to make a full build out of it. Maybe that's what they want to avoid because it would be too powerful but the truth is that it's better to give interrupts to your mesmer hero because his computer directed timing is better than mine. They lack tactics but they got speed on their side.

And one more thing....bosses. There is the situation that in PvE a boss only suffers from a hex for half the duration....Diversion only lasts 3 seconds!!! And conjure phantasm lasts 7 seconds with illusion on 16. Since bosses are harder to kill per definition, try to make a mesmer build against a level 28 mob with same level boss that has a sustainable use during the entire combat. I haven't been able to...I just stand around a make myself feel good with the occasional interrupt of a self-healing skill or an empathy...energy allowing.

I too am unsure if I will be purchasing GW2. For me, one of the key deciding factors will be if PvP and PvE mechanics are kept separate. When I was introduced to Guild Wars, PvP wasn't even mentioned. I was looking for an online roleplaying game that I could enjoy with friends. One that I could pay for upfront (I don't liek the required commitment of monthly fees). Heck, it took me a week to figure out what "pre-searing" was. The environment was large and beautiful. Plenty to explore, I could walk in many of the water spots (not swim, but that was ok). Later I discovered that PvP existed, and that for the most part, I wasn't welcome because I wasn't UBER 1337 (I actually had to look up leet speak on the internet to find out what that was. I've learned a ot since then, but the feelings still stick). "Fine," I thought. I'll enjoy this large roleplaying place where I don't have to be approved of by the UBERs of the world.

Things went along fine, but as time went on I discovered the UBER leet were demanding that my game be changed. Change my game? How weird? I didn't kick up a big fuss when they didn't welcome me into their game. Why should they be so interested in changing the way I play my game? Then I found out that they weren't really interested in my game at all. And that many of them could care less what happened in my game (not unlike I for their game since my early encounters). The problem stemmed from the fact that their game, and my game, used the same skills. And that though a skill might seem jolly great fun in my game, it was causing sorrow and unhappiness in theirs. Far be it for me to support the sorrow and unhappiness of others, so the skills must be changed. But now the skill is no longer fun for me. The change has caused sorrow and unhappiness in my game. What used to be fun and enjoyable, is now becoming more of a strenuous chore. I used to be a HERO, blessed with magical powers and great strength. Now, my characters, seem more like plough horses.

In the end it frequently seemed that for happiness to be achieved in one place, unhappiness must be the accepted norm in the other. This was small at first, and able to be tolerated with a bit of deep breathing and a small break. But as time presses on, it only seems to be getting worse. Perhaps this is the "overly complicated system and mechanics" that the developers were referring to in the PC Gamer article. Perhaps not. What I do know is that I will be very disinclined to spend money on another series of games where the happiness of one portion of the customer base must result in the unhappiness of the other. I hope that GW:EN might be taking a step towards independant mutual happiness with its PvE only skills. I also hope that GW2 will take that idea even further, to the point where one style of gaming need not be imposed upon another. But I suppose I shall have to just wait and see...

Seriously, stop the threats to leave. You say you wont buy anymore products from them? Yes you will, I know it, you know it, ArenaNet even knows it. You say you are going to quit? Why are you still here? Leave. You seriously think Anet will return everything to the way it was because you threaten to leave and they lose $50? lmao.

Anyone remember the AoE change? lol. I remember eles complained, before that they were able to run around nuking the hell out of anything. They learned to play without it. If you seriously can't play a Necro as it is now: delete it. If you are incapable of playing without unlimited energy: you obviously don't know how to play a Necro.

Please, try a different class. No other class is able to pump out skill after skill without energy management, and have max energy when the fight is over. SR was not changed for PvP, which is why reverting it and removing energy gain from spirits will not solve the problem.

SR was overpowered, we all know it. Just get used to thinking about what spell you cast, and when you cast it; like the rest of us. Bring some Energy Management (Don't even start about not having primary profession energy management; you may not have much, but it is more than say... monks).

Oh, and just because a part of the community (please, show me statistics if you say 70%) thinks SR should be changed back (without spirit gain), doesn't mean ArenaNet has to do it (They probably will, to stop the whiners <YES, you are all whining, don't act like you aren't>).

Hmm, in your post you told everyone to stop whining, but your whole post was nothing but whining. Can you say hypocrite? You should take your own advice.

"Seriously, stop the threats or leave."

The person above me is a pvper ohh sorry wrong thread!

Whining? Please, quote a line where I whined. Please show me where I am being a hypocrite.

I said "Seriously, stop the threats TO leave." People are threatening to quit the game, yet they are still here.

Try not to react in such a emotional way and read the sentences which u are reacting on a bit better, read between the lines. There she says necromancers, meaning necromancers in general, and not just you. SO she doesnt put words into people mouths. But she reflects what they can observe from the fora, and probly more and other resources you can imagine. This is nothing to feel insulted about. I think you are taking it too personally and behave a bit in a overreacting fashion. Be more mature and reasonable, and think out of other peoples view. Having played all professions I can see the necro from various points of view, and I can clearly see that soul reaping is broken as it was before the nerf.

Good, back to the change in SR. One of the main induction in the change is I think still the effect it had on PvP, not meaning that they didnt take the PvE brokenness not in consideration, but it was IMHO not the droplet spilling the bucket of water (freely translated proverb from dutch). SO in order to solve the problem in PvP they need to adress the infinite energy engine, this also counts for PvE but there are no real "balance" issues directly visible. Still the power of the necro does affect game balance, they make other professions less favourable, giving them therefore less chance to join pugs. IMO it would have been best to just eliminate the SR gain from spirits and minions. This would kill the infinite energy engine in PvP and PvE. Now players still have to kill to gain their energy, it will still need some team effort to establish that. SR in this way would still be extremely powerfull in PvE but much less in PvP preventing any abuse. Basically PvPers would only invest a limited amount in SR for some skills linked to it, for example energy managment like SolS or reapers mark. And I think that is good enough as I think people (necro players this is) should learn the economy of energy management like other players have to coop with.

I really support the vision of ANET that there is a problem with SR, however I do not understand why this solution was chosen over other more obvious ones. A spirit fulled necro team still can get some 5 energy per 5 seconds in at an SR=10 level, this equals some 3 pips. Using a jagged master, it could pump that up to 4 pips (10 energy per 8 secs or so). I really wonder why the devs developed this less obvious mechanism to abandon a much better solution, only gain energy from players or mobs deaths. I would be pleased (and with me many others I think) to see what Anets arguments are to favor their choice.

About the mesmer in PvE, Ive played all campaigns with them, and I never experienced much trouble getting into groups. Played most lines, and most likely did not explore all the possibilities. I find mesmers pretty effective and can make up a nice build for about any area, from degen to interupt. Why are mesmers according to others then disfavored? I guess it has to do with the fact that other professions do just more damage or are renown for it. The more experience people have with other professions or with game mechanics in general, the more open they will become to other professions and let them join their group. Why u can't get into DoA then? Well because DoA is favoring many gimmicky builds (symbiosis tank builds for example and others) and as people do not meet very differing situations they have evolved a strategy that can deal very effective with that specific situation. But it is not very "balanced" in terms of dealing with other situations.

How could Anet maybe also restore balance in PvE? I think one nice option is to vary more the groups consistencies. Don't compensate by numbers or levels, but by varying skills in even single professions, constructing several builds (i.e. skillbars) that can spawn. And vary group composition more, eventually also adjusting the groups strategy towards the players. No battle will be the same again and will IMO lead to more enjoyment as you constantly need to judge what the opponents are about. It will prevent mindless grinding. And may help with another problem Anet has, professional farmers. Teams would need to be more flexible in order to meet the differering situations. Obviously if a necro in the spawned party might sum up an unexpected Gaze of contempt or chillblains on a symbiosis tank the single minded strategy will obviously fall apart. I feel they are being correcly taught that their strategy was good but not versatile and therefore they fail. Failing is learning, and an important part to become better at the game (or any other activity that is). Accepting failure and improving on it brings more appreciation in the end.

Well enough for now, and I hope the topic gets back in its tracks instead of being a huge flame towards people and Anets opinions.

Cool, you just gave the impression with your 'where it matters most' that it was all that was important in balancing, and also sorry, I wasn't trying to offend you just tryin to get you to (mistakenly) get you to see there's more to balancing that PVP. I didn't mean to imply in my responses that either is more important, and in fact I also believe true balance MUST adress all areas of GW. PVE can and does become imbalanced as well, it's just not as obvious. Balancing looks to PVP not because it's necessarily more relevant, but because it's really the only place to see it clearly.
If something is not working in PVP it's also not working in PVE and that's bad, but it *needs* to go both ways. you're right though my first idea didn't really hit on the spirit spamming issue, not because I didn't think it was a problem but because I was brainstorming and hadn't fully formed the idea yet. Kinda sad too, since I was still messing around in HA back when bloodspike 'hit the streets' (we brought Rangers back then though). Regardless, I still refuse to believe however that it was the sole reason the Dev's finally cracked down on SR... not that it really matters.
SR really is the bigger immidiate issue in my opinion, since an already Viable (in PVE groups) profession has wounded pride right now, and I'd like to not see folks deleting their characters. Mesmers have been too much maligned for far too long in PVE, and quite frankly it can't get much worse for them in groups... The only time the poor Mesmers got a break was when Factions came out and there were 90 bazillion Assassins hitting the pavement heh. I still remember my first time through Viz square, the pug leader was like 'lessee 19 assassins want to join the group... and ooh take the Mesmer!!!' Yeah, Mes rocks at soloing, but damn... what good is an online game you can only play by yourself (if someone isn't much into PVP).

Anyways, I doubt Anet can make it so you only get energy back from your own spirits (although this would probably work for minions) the more I think about how they work. Spirits are just allied critters I think. Perhaps just a lower cap on SR gains from spirits (approaching 0?) would work. I don't believe that just making spirit gains from SR nil by itself will correct the imbalance though. There really does need to be -some- kind of further reduction/limitation on SR. Way I see it is there are now 2 conditional primary attribute energy management skills for necro, [wiki]Reaper's Mark[/wiki] and [wiki]Signet of Lost Souls[/wiki] which are (generously) slightly less efficient than say skills in the energy storage attribute line alone. This doesn't even factor in attunement skills in the other Ele lines (but I suppose the blood line kinda makes up for that ). Yet the passive gain from SR grossly overshadow's any other energy management ability, skill or spell.
I'm all for a change to how it works, but there just has to be a more 'realistic'(within the context of GW) way to do it than the present change of 5sec timer. Distance is already factored into GW, so why not take advantage of the proximity codes already in place. Certainly there needs to be some testing on how best to precisely implement, but it does seem viable and clean.

Removing spirit spamming was the stated reason for the nerf. Nothing else was mentioned.

Nevertheless not a word has been said about it, or any alternative solution.

Well said. I play PvE only, I have two characters that I play, of which 1 is a necro, my first character and my most-played until recently. I am still not happy with the nerf.

Currently I am using an auspicious incantion/arcane echo/SS build for SS, which works much better at killing stuff than my previous pre-nerf build.

So why am I not happy?

Because I don't want to play SS all the time, and I don't want a mesmer secondary all the time. It may be unconscious energy-planning, but it's what I call the rhythm of a build. Learning builds is about learning rhythm, and when one plays a character regularly one gets a certain rhythm.

So maybe I'm a bit on the old side to be so sulky about it and should be reflecting the maturity of my years. My fellow necro-playing guildies who are mostly even older than me are just as sulky, but they have fun ritualists and elementalists to turn to.

Maybe I can learn to really love my ranger.

The current state of Soul Reaping has certainly caused more problems than it solved, and is clunky and inelegant. It was probably a mistake to give spirits a "soul" that could be reaped... but what a slow reaction, is it only Gaile of the ANet people who actually gets in there and plays the game?

Getting a mesmer into a PvE group certainly can be a problem, except in certain specific missions, I look forward to seeing what ideas the developers come up with. Maybe nerfing strength, divine favour, expertise, energy storage, etc would be a route worth investigating...?