Avalon the critic - Chapter I - Nerfing

Hey there folks of GWG,

My name is Yannick, but some of you might know me as my in-game handle; Avalon. I'm going to post some smaller threads about a series of issues that have been bothering me and i'm sure, a great part of the community.
(if posting my criticism is allowed by the mods that is.)

In this thread I will be talking about the phenomenon: Nerfing

Nerfing can be seen from 2 pretty obvious different angles:

- Either it's bad
- Either it's good

I agree that nerfing exploits that have been found is inevitable and I will have to agree with some nerfs that have been done in the past, however, the most recent series of nerfs will have triggered me into posting a series of critiques.

Spotting a nerf that kills your favourite spell in the update notes is always annoying.

That's also what made me post this thread:

Light of Deliverance has been nerfed into oblivion and I don't like it at all.
I don't mind the fact that it's been nerfed, but 'izzy' surely could've made changes to LoD so it would still be useable. Instead of crippling it, it's been rendered useless by making it a 2 second cast spell, making it no better than heal party.

It seems to me that the recent nerfs have been attempts to kick out entire range of popular builds. I don't mind this at all, I like versatility, but making a bunch of spells completely useless won't trigger the community into making a lot of good builds, GW will just have to settle for another favoured build and that's exactly what happened.

By buffing Word of Healing it's now the most popular monk healing elite and no other elites have replaced LoD so far except for this one spell.
It's quite obvious that 'izzy' hasn't thought over the consequences of buffing one spell into supremacy and another into oblivion.
It's as if he just woke up some day and thought: ''Hey, how about I just change some skills, should be fun, no?"

Nerfing has been around to make sure that not one build reigns supreme and that exploits don't get exploited till the end of dawn.

'izzy' hasn't succeeded in one of them, let alone both.
The entire balancing and nerfing situation should be revised and a team of 'capable' players (note how I'm saying players, since 'izzy' alone obviously isn't around enough to notice what's wrong and right) to set right the current situation and create a game where it's not about playing one or two builds that win nearly all of the matches or pve sessions.

I have to admit that this has been written from a PvP point of view, but nevertheless, LoD has been hurt just as hard in PvE - where energy-management still lives on monks - opposed to the incredible strenght of WoH.

To sum it up:

Nerfing brings versatility and a chance for original and different builds: correct
Nerfing in Guild Wars by one person does the same: wrong


Comments and critiques on my criticism are highly appreciated.

Chapter II, the GvG scene, coming soon

Cheers,

Avalon

hi nice post - i agree with some things - yet i dont think izzy is really toying with us...i think he honestly people to enjoy the game without having it being ruined by specific spells

I very much agree - new balance team please!

Also, Spawning Power needs to have some sort of remake. It's the only primary attribute that has virtually No Inherent Effect. Spirits also are in desperate need of revision, as are a lot of Ritualist skills.

very well post.

As I already said in another thread: skill balance is needed where it is needed. However, buffing 1 skill through the roof or nerfing another skill to oblivion is not skill balancing, it is lazy way of solving unbalance problem.

Instead of toning down a bit the overpowered skill and buffing a bit the forgotten skill, ANET just becomes crazy and makes overpowered skill become almost useless and the forgotten skill become too good. Skill Balancing should make it so that there is trade off between builds/skills but they are equally effective making them all viable.

How about:
- WoH: increase HP healed but still can only heal other.
- LoD: 1s cast but derease HP healed to like 50 max if 80 was too powerful?

I agree, but the nerf on LoD buffed spiritway and degen teams but wait, spiritway was nerfed to so they balance out, overall pressure can be countered with WoH now, and not LoD, not as well but still good enough to survive, i sure would hope u intergreate this Nerf post with ur upcoming gvg, showing the dependancy's that izzy has on Guild battles and Guild battles on nerfed skills

not to mention, that GW has hundreds of Skills, that could still need Buffs or nerfs and are until now "untouched", for over 2 years oO

this shows me personally extreme, that 1 person alone for skill balancing is not enough...

The should be a team of say 10 people, which play pve and pvp since the begginning of GW very actively with their guilds they are in...people, which are nearly daily in into the Skill Content. people which know the skills from the FF and know, what consequencex their changes can have in both modes

And then, before anything gets changed, or even announcend, this team should FIRST TEST their changes on a Test Server ....

Misleading thread topic. It should be about BALANCING. Not nerfing. The skills are almost always balanced primarily, as they are overpowered and need to be changed in order to fit in with the other 1200. Hence why they are made weaker. So you really should be discussing balancing, rather than simply nerfing, which as of late gives people the idea that a skill has been removed from the game in the way of being made useless.

Nerfing is a term specifically applied when talking about negative balances to skills. Fenix is right, you're actually talking about balancing.

Aye, I guess you're right, my original intention was to talk about nerfing and those 2 monk elites but I ended up with a post that wasn't long enough to be worth being posted so I added balancing and didn't notice that it took the upper hand, thanks for the reponse.

Avalon

Usually when people (on Guru) see something about nerfing, they associate it with it being bad, and usually VERY bad. So it's better to talk about 'balancing', as it incorporates the GOOD changes as well.

Kinda agree... Just few skills that need a buff - Chaos Storm, Mending ;o, Peace and Harmony, Swirling Aura, Amity, Splinter Shot, Seeping Wound, Fox Fangs, Lacerate, Can't Touch This! (damn good song, btw), Thunderclap, Golden Lotus Strike, Tease, Defiant was Xinrae, Xinrae's Weapon, Wastrel's Collapse, Deadly Haste... Wow, that's a long list. And it's maybe half of useless spells...

It is, since most people (on GURU) will regard this thread as one giant ranting-session.

Cheers

In some ways light of healing has become WORSE than heal party, actually.
At lvl 16 healing prayers;

LoD 5 e 2 second cast time, 5 second recharge. Heals for 74 hp entire party.
HP 15 e 2 second cast time 2 second recharge geals for 94 hp entire party.

LoD twice the recharge, 20 hp less healing than HP. pros, 1/3 the energy cost. (Fair enough.)

HP, heals for 20 more hp, recharges twice as fast, cost 3 times as much energy.

They're like, the same skill with different things wrong with each.
Personally I'd rather take a faster recharging heal that heals for MORE health.
(Healing 8 people, for the extra 20 hp, thats atleast an extra 160 health your party wouldn't have had from LoD. And it comes out twice as often energy provided.)

OpenGuildWars.org

It won't happen. Not for a long, long time.

Not that the community isn't capable or anything.

Definitely not before Guild Wars 2. And at that point, no one will still care.


Live with the nerfs and keep suggesting fixes to age-old problems.

It's how it's always been and how it'll always stay.