Aug 10 Skill Balances & HA Update Feedback... Again.

and how many ignore 25% or even all armor, which wielder's strike does not? not to mention half of that is conditional.

The conditionality is a joke with Vital Weapon, a buff you'd want on your whole team anyway. Wielder's does almost as much to a 60AL as Lightning Orb anyway, the question is whether or not the armor penetration against harder targets is worth taking twice as long to cast, spending three times as much energy on it, and risking having it dodged (I'm betting the answer to that is "no").

If you want armor penetration or ignoring, let's see.... Wielder's is 134 damage, against 100AL that goes down to 67. A skill that does 87 damage with 25% penetration will do 67 to 100AL.

So, since Wielder's Strike is obviously fair, let's find its peers even if your caller is dumb enough to select a ranger as the spike target every time: Find any ability that does 67 armor-ignoring damage, 87 armor-penetrating damage, or 134 elemental damage. Now count the number that are 1 second cast or faster, and cost 5 energy or free (i.e. signet).

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Element...uick_reference
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Monk_sk...uick_reference
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Necroma...uick_reference
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Mesmer_...uick_reference
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Assassi...uick_reference

Ready, go!

I have played against them and have stopped them with taht very same build along with most caster spikes thats been around a little while. Im not the one whos having the probs I gave 1 char outa 8. If you are still having enough probs with that. Im not gonna hold your hands. How about trying some other tactic besides a 1,2,3,4 build they work wonders. And yet if the PvErs thought the same as you guys are thinking we'd never have created the 55 build or even be able to do like this were an ele isnt supposed to solo grasps.

If I was Rit Spiking, here's some ways how I'd not get decimated by your Ranger in certain scenarios.

I get hit by the Dual Shot + Nightmare + Ignite Arrows hit:

I think, eek, that was mean. Then heal it knowing that won't happen again for a while because Dual Shot has a relatively long recharge. If monking and I see it coming I'd attempt to catch it with a Shielding Hands perhaps, negating the damage from Ignite + any of the Dual Shot Damage that doesn't become Life Steal (if there happens to be any)

I see you use Choking Gas:
I a) wait the pittance of it's duration out before spiking or b) spread out.
I'd likely do B unless in a particullary tight spot.
I notice Barrage + Splinter.
Someone will drop a Protective was Kaoli. (I'm pretty sure they have that) - then I'd expect everyone to spread out a bit. And to generally never get close to each other again. Alternatively we could ignore the damage and wait for a Life to die.
I get a spike skill D-Shotted.
I'll still have enough of a spike to kill whoever I want.

How would you handle the above? Also - how would you handle the fact I have 2 people with Weapon of Warding, I'm pretty sure a Displacement, a Union and 8 semi healers. Perhaps a Team Build as opposed to a Single build would really give us an idea on how you'd ideally beat Rit Spike. Perhaps I could find 7 people to Rit Spike with me and you can put your theories to the test? Obviously you'd have to find some people too but I'm interested in seeing exactly what would happen.

combine any non-exhaustion ele nuke with GoLE and bam, super powerful nuke for little or no energy. plus eles have a lot more energy to begin with. plus, and this is a big one, balance isn't all about direct damage.

plus, armor bonuses make the final damage number difference even greater. with the right skills and equipment a character can have over 200 armor.

I'll tell you what, if changing skills directly is the only way anet can come up with to stop a FOTM build, how about this for wielder's strike:

Wielder's Strike - 5e, 1c, 5r - Target foe is struck for 15...51 lightning damage. If you are under the effects of a weapon Spell, you deal an additional 15...51 armor-ignoring damage and this Spell causes exhaustion.

similar things can be done for other skills that were changed.

I never said I had problems beating Rit spike. I can tell you exactly how I beat it with the balanced build I usually run. But I want to know if *you* can explain it because, from the way you're responding, you have zero experience in HA and you're talking completely out of your ass.

So far you've only said to "stop the spike" and to use the Choking Gas-Barrage build. How is one CG, which is up only half the time, going to consistently disrupt multiple spikers whose spike skills are 1s and 3/4s? (the spike is still fatal even if one Rit doesn't spike) Or are you hoping to get the <1/2 second casts on the N/A? Not to mention what are the rest of your teammates doing to punch through 6 healers with defensive spirits, and often a N/A with constant Spellbreaker? Please explain.

By the way, I'm not asking for advice. Like I said, I already know how to beat Rit spike. I'm asking you to prove that you can too. Either: prove your credibility by explaining how your build beats Rit spike, or: admit you've been talking complete trash all this time because you have no experience in HA.

I find it hard to believe how many people don't get this (and how many people will spout about things they have very little experience with).

OF COURSE Ritspike could be countered. ANYTHING can be countered. But the problem with overpowered builds is this: when one build vastly overpowers everything else ... EVERYONE runs either the overpowered build or the counter. That leads to extreme boredom ... people would rather quit than play in that scenario.

Here's the thing ... in PvE there are 1000+ builds you can use to beat an area. In fact I thought half (all?) the fun was coming up with new builds...

However in PvP ... if you restrict the viable builds to an overpowered one ... and it's direct counter ... you have just ruined the format ... goodbye players....

Do you see why balance changes ned to be pvp-centric?

Casters needn't only do spike damage - that's another example of stubborness amongst the community. However it is easy to pursue and chosen by most and is effective (see Rit. Spike). High-end GvG players pursue 3-2-1 spike tactics too, usually with an Eviscerate/Conjure warrior providing the deep wound which is a critical part of most spikes.

Everyone is aware that melee "kills things" and it is sensible for people to preemp it and bring melee-hate like Spirit of Failure, Faintheartedness, Blinding Surge because the threat is so great. Neither of these skills render melee useless for the duration of the battle and conditions/hexes can be removed.

I can figure up 193 Armor...

Ranger/Assassin

+70 armor base +30 Elemental
+5 Sword/Axe/Spear +8 Shield
+80 Feigned Neutrality

= 193

That's about as high as I can figure... highly useless, though, but yeah.

Oops, +2 more vs. elemental on that sword/axe/spear... so 195

Oooh, wait, one more... you can have +10 vs. lightning (since we're talking rit spike, here) on the shield...

so yeah, 205 - OMG over 200!

EDIT: Just had to add this - It's over nine thousaaaaaand! :P

Meh even I can get it "better".

W/E
80+ 20 (vs phys) + 20 (vs elemental insignia, req 13) + 16 (shield) + 5 (weapon) + 68 (kinetic armor) = 209 AL (spam stone daggers)
W/A
80+ 20 (vs phys) + 20 (vs elemental insignia, req 13) + 16 (shield) + 5 (weapon) + 80 (feigned Neutrality) = 221 AL (deadly paradox + feign)

40 armor is conditional.

If you gonna post these, it's a big LOL from me.

Ok, so how do casters kill without spiking. The correct answer, in case you were thinking of it, is not fire aoe/sf spam, because that is terribad.

If you think high-end GvG warriors build up to 3-2-1 spike, then you're not really that correct, though not entirely wrong in all cases. Spikes are called usually as convergence of damage to provide pressure and force monks to prot and respond, rather than a waiting build-up for a single burst of damage. This is because of the DPS capability of melees, in that they can train targets, combo separately to disrupt/damage multiple targets, converge to break a single target, and so on - a far more complex and multidimensional form of offense than simply counting down and using all your skills on one target.

Hmmmmm...always found the Mesmer skill, Mantra of Lightning, quite useful.

mmhmm, and what are you going to do if you face a guild without lightning damage? that skill just became useless.

what many people don't get is that GW cannot just be a simple game of rock-paper-scissors. if i want to play that kind of game, i'll just find some kid to play rock-paper-scissors and save on my internet and electricity bills. GW needs flexible counters, counters that will work against a certain tactic/build with some player skill added in, and won't be totally useless if you don't meet that tactic/build.

examples of inflexible counters: divert hexes, mantra of *elemental damage of your choice*, purge signet.

examples of flexible counters: diversion, interruption of any kind, divine spirit+deny hexes, restore conditions, light of deliverance.

to promote a healthy pvp game, anet needs to balance the skills so that flexible counters, combined with some player skills, can counter the majority of builds out there.

as for exhaustion of ritualists:

other than ritualists, there was no other profession that can provide good healing, good protection, good melee buff, and good damage output. in fact, rits were the only profession to be able to put them all on the same bar, leading to the ritspike mess we had before. now with exhaustion, at least they will have to think when and how they shit spirits, and when and how they blast targets with their ridiculous damage spells.

i'd rather have the exhaustion and low cost/recharge, knowing that if i really want something to die, i can spam it and pay the price later, than having high energy cost and recharge and not having that option available.

in other words, the rit exhaustion change benefit skilled players, and punish the bad players. as it should be.

This is the whole argument, right here folks. In case you missed it, this guy doesnt understand why Ritualist tactics like spirit-laying and caster-spiking promote skill-less play. I will venture further and assume that many people here dont even understand why this game should discourage skill-less play.

Oh really? Great, thats my favorite topic to philosophize on. I suppose I'll start from the beginning:

The usual tablestakes:

Every serious game (which is what Guild Wars was originally meant, and still has the potential to be) needs to be balanced and
reward player skill.

Why?

Because the point of every competitive game is for players to prove that they are better than other players / the best. This is only accomplished when it is possible for good players to distinguish themselves from other players through superior play.

How?

Ideally, there would be a direct, linear relationship between the difficulty of any given strategy or tactic, and the effectiveness of that tactic. A skill that rewards player skill becomes more powerful based on the skill level of the player using it.

Examples of this:

- Distracting Shot: A poor player will fumble and not accomplish anything with this skill. A mediocre player will be able to disable some enemy skills, but usually not very important ones, and only ones with easy cast times to catch. An excellent player will be able to disable nearly any skill he wants through superior reflex, yomi, and awareness.

- Diversion: Again, a poor player will not accomplish anything with this skill. A mediocre player may accomplish something, but will probably only disable trivial skills, and his success will be very inconsistent due to the fact that he is living off of luck. An excellent player, through yomi and awareness, will be able to disable key skills on a regular basis, with little to no luck involved. He will also be able to combine it with other skills like Shame, Blackout, and Gale to deny large portions of casting time to opponents, opening windows for his teammates to capitalize on.

- Bull's Strike: A poor player will not accomplish anything with this skill. A mediocre player will only occaisionally be able to knock people down with it, and when he does it will usually not help him very much. An excellent player will be able to consistently knock people down, use the window created by the opening to score kills, and combine it with other skills like interrupts or other knockdowns in order to amplify its effectiveness.

How most Ritualists do not reward player skill:

- Spirit-laying: Any idiot can lay spirits. It is the most easy task in the game to just sit back and press 12345, summoning spirits to play the game for you. So it violates one principle of rewarding player skill (difficulty). Further, there is no way for spirit-laying to be played any better or worse from player to player, since the spirits are beyond player control. An 8 year old girl who has never played GW before, let alone played a spirit-pooper bar, could, with ~5 minutes of practice, play one just as effectively as the best player in the world. So it violates another principle of rewarding player skill (differentiation based on player skill).

- Caster-spiking: Spiking has one small merit in that it requires a little coordination between many players in order to pull off correctly. But sadly, thats as far as it goes. Upon close examination, what the members of any caster spike are doing is very easy (a violation) since 1) they are doing almost nothing of merit between spikes and 2) while 'coordination' may be an impressive word to tag it with, when you realize that all they are doing is hitting a couple buttons in time with a cadence, you realize that what they are doing is not impressive at all. Also, casterspiking doesnt lend itself well to differentiation by player skill. With ~15 minutes of practice, any semi-competent player who has never PvPed in his life could play a spiker just as well as the best player in the world.

Summation:

A serious competitive game must reward player skill by making sure that the most powerful tactics in the game are also the most challenging, and will only be powerful if employed in the correct manner by a skilled player. Powerful tactics must appeal to one or more of the main facets of player skill:

- Reflexes
- Awareness
- Timing
- Multitasking
- Appraisal

mmhmm, and what are you going to do if you face a guild without lightning damage? that skill just became useless.


My fault, should of stated that Mantra of Lightning could be used as a possible counter to the rit spike.

I solo farmed rit spike before it was nerfed

This tells me that you play a lot of low-end pvp. in higher forms and even in most pve, positioning and timing are key. put your spirit too far away and gg, its useless. put your spirit too close and gg, it was just killed in 2 seconds flat. cast spirits when a decent ranger is within longbow range of you and gg, it was interupted and put on a seriously long recharge

The closest things to skilless play I can find are: 1. dervishes in general, and 2. spammy or prot monks.

but then, in skillful play, if a group of people becomes considerably better than another group, the skills they chose are nerfed, whether they are overpowered skills, or if they are just better at using them.

and finally, not directly to you but in general, what is considered skilless in one build can actually be a cornerstone of a completely different skillful build.

actually, positioning spirits is not a matter of skill, but a matter of stupidity. only an idiot will consistantly make those positioning errors.

the fact that you believe prot monks are "skill-less" says to me that you haven't played pvp beyond RA. your comment about the way skills are balanced also suggest to me that you haven't played any balanced build, and played gimmicks for much of your GW playing career.

lastly, i'm going to say this: exhaustion is not handled by the profession. it's handled by the player. if the player can handle exhaustion, then whatever profession the player happens to be playing will be able to handle it too. if the player cannot handle exhaustion, not even the ele's energy pool will help.

actually the only "gimmick" build I've played is the Touch Ranger. It's so much fun when less intelligent people don't make any attempt to stop it other than sitting there and hitting me with damage. and its funny because its so EASY to stop if they just try. oh yeah, and its also the one that hasn't been nerfed nice try, though, really.
and I've played every form of PvP quite a bit except for hero battles because, well, that's really not just pvp, its ava (assassin vs assassin)

so in other words, you've experienced every reasonable pvp arena in gw, and still make such ungrounded statements about the game. what does it say about your intelligence and skill as a player?

my point still stands though: exhaustion is handled by the player, no the profession.

average rit energy bar: 40-55
if using an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~20-35 in the worst case
take one hit of exhaustion, and thats a little under 1/2-1/3 of your energy bar gone. and 25e spells are uncastable. and with some dp, you might as well be a warrior.
compare that to... an ele primary. average energy bar 90-115
lets say you're going to run the same build, except with minor changes to get the extra energy.
with an item spell, subtract 12-20
which equals ~70 to 95 in the worst case.
take a hit of exhaustion and still have 60-85 energy, more than the rit even started with.

make spawning power either increase energy pool or decrease exhaustion, or implement one of the multitude of better suggestions as an alternative to exhaustion.

ungrounded statements? read your own post.

Protip: don't use an item spell.

I'm having a hard time thinking what decent item spell is worth using. Maybe Songkai if you're just powering out 5e spells, or...er...actually, I can't think of any.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Hi Miral. Enjoying the ban?

Protip: huh? Do you play a Ritualist much? I'm sure you do but there are many useful item spells available for the Ritualist you might want to read up on them.

Item spells are a staple of the Ritualist class. I find many of them useful in both PvP or PvE settings. If you combine with Empowerment as I do with many builds you suffer little drawbacks and still gain the benefits of the Item.

Take a look at Empowerment

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Empowerment

@Sab

You may not like the tactic but its what the class does as opposed to an Elementalist who spams AoE or a shadow stepping knockdown assassin who appears from no where kills you then disappears. (boy I find them annoying but hey its what the class does so deal with it...,,,right?). There are also many ways to counter said tactics through many class options. If you find yourself running into many Spirit fences over and over and over again you should consider taking at least one counter skill. I can think of many counters and if you are good at PvP I'm sure you can find the counters as well. Lets face it not everyone is or should be an Elementalist, Warrior, and Monk.

Doesn't mean that many/any of them are actually good. Which ones do you use?

like i said, it's handled by the player. if you can't handle it, i guess you're just not good enough.

Thank you for asking, I use quite a few of them for various reasons but I will list the most common ones. Please also note there are many spells such as Caretakers Charge that almost require that you have an Item equipped to use them.

Cruel Was Daoshen - fun with timed spikes.
Anguished was Lingwah - fun to use in Aspenwood or Alliance Battles impractical for PvE, fun in some GvG matches. (should be in Channeling IMO)
Defiant Was Xinrae - is not fun anymore, exhaustion plus your energy reduced kinda sucks now. Makes this item spell almost pointless since your energy is reduced for casting it plus exaustion now. Effective energy loss of 20 plus exhaustion problems.
Mighty Was Vorizun - was good for E management as it increases the amount of energy you had to cast communing spells, however ANET has killed the communing line to only a few very narrow builds now. This skill is still a viable option for those builds that can still be used by communing.
Tranquil Was Tanasen - good for restoration Ritualists in PvP as it adds armor and you cannot be interrupted. + Use with Empowerment, Its a very underused skill but I still like it since most don't expect it.
Vengeful Was Khanhei - One of the single best farming skills in the game. Plus I use it in Alliance Battles and some other PvP just to annoy warriors and Sins. Outside of farming I don't bother with it in PvE thats what spirits are (were) for.
Attuned Was Songkai - Just a great energy management skill overall since it reduces the overall cost of spells and binding rituals when held. I also use this with Empowerment. Attuned Restoration Rits have massive amounts of energy to heal and spam weapon spells.

I guess what it comes down to is "One mans treasure is another mans garbage." I find each of these item spells useful in some ways for both PvE and PvP.

ritualist item spells are kinda like assassin lead attacks. nice to have when you can fit it in, but still kinda useless. generally, there are better choices than the item spells, so they never see play.

And out of those item spells, which actually require you to hold them to have an effect, and which synergise with the exhaustion-causing skills?

Well, there's actually an easy answer to that, though it boils back down to old R/P/S again.

The way you've always dealt with the various defensive spike teams was to put enough damage on them that they had to stop spiking and start healing to avoid taking casualties. Usually once they got onto their back foot, they had trouble turning things back around without the ability to put pressure on a team, and having to stop healing for several seconds to spike again just sped up the meltdown. Traditionally, that meant using a lot of disruption to slow down the spikes until your offense had a chance to break through their defenses, at which point you got to sit on their face. When they're in pure healing mode, they're actually pretty inefficient, since healing and prot doesn't stack terribly well and they end up wasting a ton of energy on redundant tasks.

The big issue with Rit spikes was how hard they were to disrupt. The spikes themselves are composed of 1s casts that are a pain to interrupt; their defenses are unremovable passive prots and the strongest heals in the game. Everything they use costs 5, and they aren't reliant upon some sort of energy engine to function. Add in the massive redundancy in the build, and you couldn't practically slow them down significantly through energy pressure, interrupts, etc.

The only real weakness of the build was that it didn't have any real power prots (relying on Vital Weapon, occasionally replaced by Weapon of Warding) and the heals, while super efficient, aren't super fast. So instead of disrupting it heavily to slow it down while applying pressure, the only really effective way to fight it was to run a build with a massive damage output, one that they couldn't keep up with, and make their lack of mitigation and prot a weakness. The old Searnthump teams did a very good job of ripping through ritspikes traditionally. Trouble being that such builds lost pretty much everywhere else because of their tactical inflexibility, and their vulnerability to traditional prot and disruption.

So you actually needed fewer tactics to effectively fight rit spike, but you had to abandon the potential for those tactics to have a chance of blowing it out...basically reducing any team to a glorified heroway.

Thanxs for clearing part of it up Ensign. Some people forget simple basics like that. Lets not forget tht once they do seperate its makes it far easier to pick that spike team apart.

GW.PvP should be treated like a pro sport but considered one as there should be rules of conduct.The skills aren't over powered only in the hands of the player.It is not the skills themselves it is just the way players use and abuse them.There has got to be some responsibly on the players side and guilds especially the leader.That is what guild leaders are for.Skill balances do nothing to prevent the abuse of the skills themselves.It is like when guilds take fall.It is not the skills fault it is the person using it.Yes it should be treated as such like sport.





The only other solution to the problem is to create a duel skill set one for PvE and one for PvP.The PvE ones will be locked when entering a PvP zone like the battle islands.

Spikes are all about direct damage. Which of these super-powerful nukes does 134 front-loaded damage that isn't mutually-exclusive (i.e. comes from Burning degen that doesn't stack from multiple sources).

I already gave you numbers for 100AL, spike targets are not typically going to have 100AL, they'll have 70-90.

So basically, if you don't have a weapon spell, you cast Flare, and if you do, you get exhausted. This is an improvement?

Casters are never going to have strong killing power outside of spikes (which have their own limits) because the tactics needed to fire off a spell are significantly less than what's needed to melee someone.

Casters can still be good for offensive pressure in other ways, Mind Blast is useful but depends on keeping MOR up, AOE abilities depend on exploiting positioning to be worth the lengthy recharges, etc.

Then it's designed poorly. My opinion of ritualists as a concept is markedly more positive than most of the GA-frequenting posters (who hate the idea). Ideally, builds should involve some fuel that is useful in its own right (i.e. a staple item spell, spirit, or weapon spell), and some abilities which utilize that to provide some diverse, interesting ways to do what they do. There are some good concepts to be found: Weapon spells in general are pretty interesting, some spirit effects like Recuperation, Recovery and Life have strategic use, etc.

But most of the design is poor: A forest of turret spirits that requires no strategy beyond walking around and shitting 'em out is annoying and brainless. Pre-nerf Communing basically made it impossible to kill anything and all you needed was someone standing way out of casting range dropping spirits.

Elementalists "spamming AOE" can be countered fairly easily: Move. Assassin gankers can be countered fairly easily in larger-scale play: Stay with a healer, or bring something to block (well, at least once Expose gets kicked in the crotch again).

Spirit spam can be countered with essentially one thing: Interrupting the binding rituals, which is easier said than done when there's a rather small selection of abilities that interrupt non-spell skills and most of them can't keep up with a whole skillbar of binding rituals anyway, especially when they're usually sitting there already cast when the fighting starts.

Every class is viable in PvP right now.

If item spells are just used as fuel, they kind of suck.

Daoshen = Positioning nightmare and kind of redundant.
Lingwah = Okay for avoiding stop-and-cast in mobile situations, but until you drop it, it's mostly a liability.
Xinrae sucks, and has always sucked. It's an elite which is only useful when you're being targetted by some gimmicky caster-spike team or SF. Outside of those, it's not just a waste of an elite, it's a waste of a skill slot.
Vorizon is OK, but you can get almost the same effect from just using intelligent item swaps, which don't take up a skill slot. Max energy is also not "energy management." Offering of Spirit is energy management. Efficient abilities are energy management. A temporary increase in max energy does not let you chance the pace that you cast spells at.
Tanasen is kind of useless because binding rituals are easy to avoid interruption on just by using range, while other spells are mostly 1-sec casts and not easy to interrupt anyway.
Songkai is worse than Offering of Spirit: If you have 9 Spawning Power, for example, you get a 32% reduction in cost. Over the course of 15 seconds, you'll regenerate 20 energy. If you spend all of that, you save 6 energy AT MOST by having Songkai up, possibly less because of rounding. If you were to cast OOS at 9 Channelling every 15 seconds, then you get 8 energy every 15 seconds. This isn't even taking into consideration the cost of casting Songkai, or the fact that OOS benefits heavily from HSR equipment swaps and Songkai does not.

This runs completely counter to the very nature of competitive play. The objective is to win, not to win by using strategies that the other team approves of, and not to uphold some "code of honor" until Anet fixes their shit.

In any competitive environment, why would you gimp yourself by not using the most effective tactics? Running a broken build is what happens, because it's a competitive environment with prizes. Competitive people play to win, competitive people play what will win.

which is why so much emphasis must be put into pvp balance, or else the end product will be no fun to everyone.

Hmm. I'll have to play with more of them, but Most of the buffed skills are looking very usable to me now.

Pretty much all of the mass and/or extremely long duration anti melee effects took a hit. The more specific stuff actually stayed the same or got boosted. And the most of the anti melee hexes that got hit look to me like they will still be sufficiently effective against enemies that don't remove hexes or don't have particularly efficient or prioritized hex removal, which is true in most of PvE. They generally lost some duration or gained cooldown rather than losing effectiveness while they are up. You may end up being right on this one, but I suspect that most of the effected skills will still do their job in Hard Mode.

I had the same reaction on this one. Adding exhaustion to any skill that isn't in the profession that has the energy storage buffer and the exhaustion handling skills really doesn't sound like a good idea to me. I'd prefer that they deal with whatever Rit skills are causing problems by other methods. It may not end up being as bad as I think it will, but just based on basic mechanics I don't like this set of changes.

Overall I'm still happy with the update, but it does feel like my Ritualist has a lot less options I can really be justified with her equipment being +armor rather than +energy. Exhaustion really hurts at barely over base energy.

It is easy as sports are more competitive than GW is as they get payed to beat the other teams and even at the amateur level.They have a set of guide lines and rules to follow or to this day a certian figure skater got banned by the the United States Figure Skating Assn. and runner of Canada was banned for using steroids well winning a gold in the Commonwealth Games as he was given a second chance after the Seoul Olympics.There are several sports leagues in Canada and the USA that enforce these rules very strictly.In GW there should be no more than one shock/frenzy warrior in competive play as a rule if there are more the guild is penalized.

The same goes for you Moriz.

The difference is that in figure skating and running, steroids aren't given to the competitors for their use. In Guild Wars, all skills are given to players for them to use BY THE DEVELOPERS. You can't just give them the ability to run two W/E's and then say "Oh sorry but if you do that then you get penalized, even though that's specifically what we designed this to do."