Post-WC skill balance change ideas

That's kind of unfair. Everyone should be able to help out their teammates a little! It's bad enough that the monk is the only class with [I]good[I]healing skills for the whole party. I say the res sig should stay at 100%

I love these discussions. I'll just comment on some of the more important suggestions.

Probably the most important balance change they can make in the game.


Mind Shock is fine, and Mind Burn would be tempting at 10 energy (I really don't know why it costs 15). Mind Freeze needs to snare longer, the damage side of the water line has never been the draw. Scale the snare to 10 seconds and I'd be happy.


I agree with a damage buff to all but Eruption - the damage on that skill is fine, it just needs to blind with every pulse like a trap. Searing Heat burning on every pulse might be a bit much - I love burning, and if they made it work that way they probably shouldn't buff the damage.

I've been calling for a buff to these for a while and the AI adjustment will hopefully allow that to happen.


Just give it a 2 second cast time. No need to completely rework the skill at this point.


Shatter Hex is amazing, there's no reason to buff it. Don't look at Smite Hex as an example - that skill is overpowered and just being held back by how random its attribute is.


Because Shame is amazing and evil while Guilt still is very close to being crap. Nerf Guilt into uselessness if you need the symmetry - please don't make Guilt even better. The only thing keeping Shame in check is the recharge.


Why? Who cares?


+2 on this skill is dangerously good - this wouldn't be a marginal change. I don't think that's a bad thing, though - Ether Prodigy is nutso now too but that hasn't broken the game open. I agree with this but I caution that it's a much bigger buff than you might think.


Awww, I'll miss the 'Ok everyone, die in a pile!' jokes.


They've priced this thing like a damage skill, when no one really cares about any effect but the AoE enchantment removal. I don't know that they need to tweak it into more usable removal, but they do need more options, in the expansion if nowhere else.


Putrid Explosion got the recharge nerf because of how it could turn a single death into a one-sided Edge of Extinction GG bomb. All a recharge on this skill would prevent is More Funny Videos


Daze is evil in 4v4...but not that evil. Would at least make the skill have 8v8 implications.


Stoneskin Gauntlets for the win? Do you think all the bunnythumpers need a buff to their only adrenal skill?

Knockdown is one of the most powerful mechanics in the game. Hammer Bash is already good and a staple of hammer warriors and their knockdown chains. Why exactly does it need a buff?


People don't have enough respect for Hundred Blades. The skill is great. If you really wanted to buff it, lower the recharge.

Peace,
-CxE

Well its not like warriors are rangers and can keep up with it if it was reduced recharge time without a zealous mod. If you do that, then you are giving up on a bit of free damage from a mod that would have optimal use from it. Or, you could just take a ranger, get prep damage bonuses, the vamp string and leave the eliete slot open for anything else while being harder to counter. I dont really see the point in the skill beyond some kind of an afterthought for teams who might ball up.

Then there is the consideration of utility if axe is not the weapon of choice, giving way to charge augmentations for travel.

I don't know why I thought they would anyway. Wouldn't hurt to also adjust the duration/recharge slightly so you don't have combos that leave it up all the time.

I suppose I simply haven't seen enough of it to understand why it's so good, as I haven't often seen it on either side lately.

Probably true, but it's annoying that even any corpse exploitation skills that are good aren't going to get much use if they take more than a second to cast because most good teams bring somebody with consume (or insert other no-recharge skill). I suppose they'd have to change the mechanic to actually fix that, though.

I forgot about stoneskin gauntlets. Consider it removed. Not sure what you meant by "only adrenal skill", though - Irresistible Blow is the only energy skill with knockdown in the line.

Oh please - if you're using Hundred Blades Zealous becomes the best mod in the game. Zealous has the most powerful effect of any weapon mod - it's simply hard to maximize it on a 'normal' build due to kiting and blocks. When you have multipliers like HB on your bar though there's little reason not to use it.

That's why HB is good, by the way, multiplication. Multiplication is a really dangerous effect in games like this, where damage and buffs are usually the product of adding small numbers together. Tack on an AoE and you have a skill that can be downright scary.

Think about it - Dual Shot is one of the strongest non-elite skills in the game due to multiplication (and arguably in need of a nerf). Cyclone Axe is another solid damage multiplier that's gone crazy in PvE, and has utility in PvP as well. So you stick those together in one skill, without the damage reduction, and...this skill is poor? Please. It doesn't have the general purpose of Eviscerate, but if the build has even a bit of support for the skill I think you need to take a hard look at it. For starters, I have no idea why iWay templates do not include more sword warriors with Hundred Blades, the skill is amazing for them.


You can't keep it up all the time though, there's a 6 second downtime right now even at 16 (which would grow to 7 if you upped the cast time). The only real problem with it is that like Spell Breaker you can't remove the thing. I don't think that's game-breaking, though, as it's a whole lot less flexible and the movement hit does matter. My complaint with it is the same as I have with most potentially game breaking effects with 1 second cast times, that you can't reliably interrupt it without camping the target and almost anticipating it.


The difference is that defense tends to be a whole lot more timing intensive than offense. Shaming a monk to trash his energy can give you a window of opportunity at worst, and breaks a team at best. They really don't have a choice but to break it for a 15 energy loss, plus time, at a minimum.

Guilt has some utility in breaking up spikes, but outside of that the skill is pretty poor. Against a pressure team an offensive character can just wait out the Guilt - they tend to be energy limited anyway, the exact timing isn't as important. Gaps in an offense are natural, there are pseudo-spikes and lulls naturally. Gaps in a defense can be game breaking. That's the difference.


A 5 second recharge isn't going to change that under most circumstances - it isn't like people die more often than that outside of a few extreme cases. Putrid was an extreme case because the first use often made fuel for the next, and if you got two in a row everything in that AoE tended to just die.


I meant that Hammer Bash is oftentimes the only adrenal skill carried by a */W, which is the only group that buff would affect. The stoneskin gauntlets aren't automatic, though - experience in the arenas has taught me that most hammer warriors do not use them =/

Peace,
-CxE

I like most of Mysterial's changes. I think the elementalist glyphs need a little more reworking:

Glyph of Concentration: Ignores all casting timing increases, cast time reduced to .25 sec

No point in having a glyph that protects against interrupt if you can interrupt it easily.

Glyph of Sacrifice: Reduce casting time to .25 sec

Again, you want an instant cast...but it sort of defeats the purpose when the glyph itself takes up 1.75 secs.

Glyph of Elemental Power: +4 attributes, .25 second casting time. It's a one shot deal, it better make a big difference. Now it doesn't.

Glyph of Energy and Glyph of Lesser Energy: Increase cost reduction to 25 and 20E respectively.

Since there are still a bunch of overpriced elementalist spells that cost 25E and do damage that's heavily affected by armor...

Glyph of Sacrifice is underrated. Besides how it works with Arcane Echo, the latest buff that gave it 15 second duration means you can use it early and wait for the right time (making its casting time not particularly relevant). And because you can use non-spells (i.e. warrior/ranger attacks) without losing it, you can set up some pretty nasty and hard to counter combos that way. The 1.75 seconds and large obvious effect are the only warning to the enemy that something bad is about to hit them.

Balance changes need to come in baby steps. +3 first and see where it goes.

Energy glyphs are fine where they are and are used all the time. If you really need more energy management, take attunements.

The penalty you pay in terms of recharge is huge. Precasting is an option, but because of the way glyphs work that's not particularly practical for primary casters that are throwing out spells all the time.

I'd like to use this reactively as an "OH SHIT! That enemy needs to die NOW!" rather than just as a part of an echo/shower build.

Attributes scale linearly, so the difference between +3 and +4 is not particularly significant. I'd settle for +3 if the cast time was reduced.

I disagree. Right now twin attunements are so far ahead of all other elementalist energy management options that it's not even funny. Glyph of Energy is used a lot because of the "no exhaustion" bit but Glyph of Lesser Energy is not.

It can be significant when you're talking about small numbers. Protective Bond is the obvious example. I don't know if a 20 in Fire would up the burning duration to 4 seconds or not, but if it did that'd be significant (although probably not balance breakingly so). And so on.

No, they aren't, people just prefer to use attunements because they're easier to use; cast and forget. The glyphs have the advantage of being usable with low energy as well as not being strippable, although enchantments don't currently get stripped often from Elementalists in 8v8. Glyphs are also hard to interrupt, while you spending 5 seconds renewing your attunements is quite a bit easier to target. The biggest weakness of the glyphs is that you have to find spells that cost enough to maximize their effectiveness and recharge at least as fast as the glyph. Increasing how much energy they give isn't going to do anything about that, though.

So, you are suggesting that people go ?/w and take hundred blades for energy efficiency due to the zealous mod? That does not make any sense, nor does it make sense to give up the free damage that a vampiric mod would bring. However, my point was going the ranger route yeilds a better overal gain for the application of the skill on a single target and not have to make the same style of sacrifice. If you are suggesting to use it as a energy battery for spell casting, then its merely limiting the number of swings performed and is not optimized that well. You are being remarkably vauge for once.

I would have thought that you of all people would know the difference between cyclone axe and hundred blades. They dont hit the same areas at all really, not that it matters that often in pvp. I also never said poor, but there is just used skills and not used skills. Just like when you made the comparison of cleave to eviserate. You could bring this skill in a sword build, but you can also bring charge helping everyone including yourself. In a way it would be similar to comparing barbs to orders. On the one instance you are only helping against one target and is helpful if they are all focused on it, or you could help everyone at the same time regardless of targets involved. I realize my comparison, the skills involved are not both eliete skills, but the thought process is the same.

Also, in the instance of focusing fire on targets its easier to switch with a ranged attacker that a ranger is when compared to a warrior and has fewer counters to stop the ranger, while also getting the benefits of preperation damage in the multiplier. The only time hundred blades makes more sense is in the instance of teams who ball up, but then if they do that you are also fighting wards, healing seeds, etc making the actual application of the skill in question rather arguable at best given the alternative.

It looks like burning is capped at 3 seconds for most skills so I doubt there will be any problems there. What other elementalist spells would suffer from a disproportionate increase?


Nope. Dual attunements offer (very roughly) a five fold increase the the number of elementalist spells you can cast while they're up, slightly less if you account for the downtime for elemental attunement. Dual glyphs offer slightly over a two fold improvement (just under 4 pips of regen equivalent for GoE, just under 1 for GoLE) under optimal circumstances. And I wouldn't say that attunements are substantially more vulnerable to interruption, sure they're longer casts but using glyphs give your opponent many more opportunities to interrupt.

Enchantment stripping is a big deal, which makes glyphs more desireable. But I think there needs to be a clear advantage for glyphs in more builds. Making them render your big nukes practically free would be a start.