Skill Balances moving forward - PvE/PvP

Originally Posted by Avarre

Changing your build to give you a different strategy against a known enemy is generally referred to as 'buildwars', and is the most basic form of countering.

Let me expand this; there are hard counters and soft counters. A soft counter is a skill that can be used to deal with a variety of enemy skills. An example is Diversion or Distracting Shot. These skills are commonly found in balanced builds as they are quite versatile. A hard counter is a skill that is useless in most battles but will completely wreck someone using a specific other skill. An example is Ignorance against Signet Mesmers, or Frigid Armor against Searing Flames.

Almost every skill has a hard counter to it. Buildwars, or changing one's build to deal with what you're going to face, usually involves adding hard counters against the enemy's build so as to be most effectively prepared for it, while impairing the ability to fight other builds not covered. A general example would be to run nrtranq against a hexway team.

Long story short, speccing your build against something is countering. It does not mean what you just countered with a rock vs scissors build was balanced.

To give a practical example, with [sad] we ran 5-hex. This build is ridiculously broken as most people who have fought it will agree. Our opponent, WASD, ran 2 LoD, 1 Divert Hexes, 2 HEV mesmers with shatter hex, and most chars with Hex Breaker. They won, does that make 5-hex not broken?

In summary, you are wrong Manitoba. Off you go.

Originally Posted by Dr Strangelove

Because no matter what you do to those, they only work if you go against massed paragons. In the 75% of matches where you don't, that slot is completely useless.

Second, if a hard counter to your build exists, you can bet like hell you're bringing a counter of some kind to it - in the case of paraspike, it's expel hexes.



Pearing beforehand? What if I'm not hungry, or if my pear isn't ripe? You should really consider the current meta when proposing fruit-based solutions.

Originally Posted by manitoba1073

No where did I say anything about changing ones build so no that is not countering but changing the way you ccould have used the build is statergy so you are wrong.

Originally Posted by Savio

Changing your build to fight against a specific overpowered skill/build is, believe it or not, countering it.

Originally Posted by manitoba1073

No its omg 1 minute gasp ready for it. strategy. oh ahhh. please go back to school and stop pretending you know anything at all.

Originally Posted by Magikarp

i really hope anet cares to look at smart discussion like this..

Originally Posted by Age

Give it up Mani we aren't balancing default and loadout shiplist here although if they understood that balance.They might have better idea of what you are talking about.

I wanted to make that earlier post as it was in my thought at the time and Regina was online.

Originally Posted by nugzta

Obviously Manitoba doesnt know what he's talking about, he is simply giving his biased PvE point of view. The main difference between PvE and PvP is that one is predictable and the other is unknown.

I already pointed out it is easier to bring counter in PvE because the monsters always have the same skillbar. It doesnt matter if Shiro has overpowered Meditation of Reaper, people just wiki it how to beat Shiro and therefore people already anticipate to spec against him.

In PvP, you dont know what you are up against. Sure you can spec against the current FoTM but in the end it would be another gimmick and would get rolled by other teams running different builds. Anyone can run hard counter against R/D way which most the time can be found farming fame in HA Underworld. But at later stage, they would get rolled by balance groups because they are only prepared to fight against R/D way teams.

Therefore "Use the counter" argument is not valid in PvP but people always use that argument in every skill balance update thread for their PvE whining.

Originally Posted by manitoba1073

For accusing me of saying about using a counter, I didnt. The only ones who seem to not know what the hell they are talking about are the ones who is talking about counters. As Ive never said bring a counter skill. Since you guys cant seem to grasp the simple Ill say it again.

Changing your strategy, simple as that, doesnt mean change your skills. Change how you are using the skills you currently are using. There are different ways a single skill can be used in conjunction with strategy. BUt if you guys really knew PvP you should have known that, but like I also said before I guess Im giving to much credit to some people around here.

Originally Posted by manitoba1073

For accusing me of saying about using a counter, I didnt. The only ones who seem to not know what the hell they are talking about are the ones who is talking about counters. As Ive never said bring a counter skill. Since you guys cant seem to grasp the simple Ill say it again.

Changing your strategy, simple as that, doesnt mean change your skills. Change how you are using the skills you currently are using. There are different ways a single skill can be used in conjunction with strategy. BUt if you guys really knew PvP you should have known that, but like I also said before I guess Im giving to much credit to some people around here.

Originally Posted by Master Knightfall

This is the part I get tired of reading out of pvpers. If someone beats them all of a sudden it's not the players that beat them, but, only the skills they used on their bars. Not even considering that timing takes a skilled effort to do as well as agility of hand eye cordinations while playing any part of this game both pve and pvp. There's alwasy those with an excuse for losing and it's almost never applied to skill by their opponents, but, anything and everything that attempts to prove that they didn't lose to skill, but, only to gimmick builds or extinuating circumstances. Accept your defeat and your loss and your own pitiful builds and lack of skills instead of looking for excuses why there should never be any other skill sets except the ones you choose.

Originally Posted by Master Knightfall

This is the part I get tired of reading out of pvpers. If someone beats them all of a sudden it's not the players that beat them, but, only the skills they used on their bars. Not even considering that timing takes a skilled effort to do as well as agility of hand eye cordinations while playing any part of this game both pve and pvp. There's alwasy those with an excuse for losing and it's almost never applied to skill by their opponents, but, anything and everything that attempts to prove that they didn't lose to skill, but, only to gimmick builds or extinuating circumstances. Accept your defeat and your loss and your own pitiful builds and lack of skills instead of looking for excuses why there should never be any other skill sets except the ones you choose.

Originally Posted by cyvil

I have learned to endure Ursan to achieve the only thing that really keeps me in GW. Without the mindless grind for titles, I would not tolerate the mindless grind of playing an Ursan "build." Ursan makes the grind go faster. Once through the title grind, I intend to "enjoy" other aspects of the game, possibly even more PvP, assuming I can figure out how to stay alive for more than 12 seconds.

If the titles rewarded play, rather than grind, it may be a different story. If titles were based on points for utilizing the core attribute wisely, or a particular skill type well, or exceptional use of conditions, hexes or interrupts rather than points towards a title track that improves all ready strong skills even more, I might feel less grind. That is a very convoluted sentece - how about, give me a title for interrupts, rather than for UB?

PvP vs PvE? I think that I have two main problems with the balances. The first is that a toon, on its own, can be made useless. I used to love my Paragon. Because of the balances in PvP, because of truly overpowered P teams, I cannot get my sole Paragon in a PvE group because of those same balances. That stinks. My Paragon does still have a purpose, he is currently full of mods from raptor farming. The other thing that I do not like is having to spend a bunch of time figuring out new builds. I do enjoy experimenting, but spending time creating builds takes away from time spent towards completing missions, vanquishes, etc. It is nice to be able to jump in and complete a little something in a half hour, without having to retool, not just my toon build, but the heroes that come along as well. Associated with this is the fact the the PvP community can change weapons and runes on a whim. Some of these balances mean that I have to spend gold on these items for my toon and heroes, money that would otherwise be spent on knocking a title out of the way.

There seems to be such a difference between the purpose of PvP and PvE that I often have to remind myself to look at it from the other perspective. This is diffeicult as I do not PvP (ask me to GvG sometime, easy points for you). PvP is, at least from my perspective, highly competitive. PvE is, for me, a time to lay back and unwind. PvP requires thought and, although I am capable of this, this is something I choose not to spend my time on. I think this is why I tend to resent the balances, although I am sure that many will be happy to tell me that this is not what I think, followed by a few random shift characters and then a kind explanation of what I should be thinking.

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Balancing one will always imbalance the other as long as you only look at the skills. They have improved PvE through AI changes however there are a number of other ways they could improve the game without damaging PvP at all.

Having such things as Exhaustion work slightly different in PvE and PvP for example. PvP = 10energy loss, PvE = 5energy loss.

Minion caps could be set differently in PvP/PvE and in PvE hard mode as well.

Adjusting some skills so that they have a broder effect when used vs a non human fow, like [club of a thousand bears]. Imagine adding to Hexes, If target is non-human then 1-3 nearby foes are also effected.

They could also adjust what is concidered In The Area and Nearby and Ear Shot to create a better balance between how they work in the limited arena space vs the wide open places of PvE.

These are just ideas off the top of my head, but you can see there is a great deal of flexability they can utilize to balance the game outside of pure skill changes.

Originally Posted by Zamochit

No I believe that he means when balancing certain skills such as splinter weapon, you could utilise the fact that pve is ordinarily against non human foes. effectivly 'Nerfing' damage, recharge etc for pvp to maintain balance there, but keeping the skill the same in most cases in pve. For example.

[skill]splinter weapon[/skill]Weapon Spell. For 20 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next 1...4 attacks deal 5...41 damage to up to 3 adjacent foes.

Could become

[skill]splinter weapon[/skill]Weapon Spell. For 20 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next 1...4 attacks deal 5...41 damage to up to 3 adjacent human foes or ALL adjacent non-human foes.

Skills could have damage buffs against certain enemy types, that sort of thing (in the same way that Holy damage deals double damage to undead.) Im not saying its necessary but its something they could take into consideration for GW2

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

PvE is about stability.
PvP is about diversity.

In one you learn from mistakes so you can build the perfect counter, and know that it will work anytime you come accross a foe using that same strategy. In the other you have no knowladge of whats coming so you need to build something that will work vs everything and hope you do not run into something completely unexpected that is the perfect counter to your build.

Balancing one will always imbalance the other as long as you only look at the skills. They have improved PvE through AI changes however there are a number of other ways they could improve the game without damaging PvP at all.

Having such things as Exhaustion work slightly different in PvE and PvP for example. PvP = 10energy loss, PvE = 5energy loss.

Minion caps could be set differently in PvP/PvE and in PvE hard mode as well.

Adjusting some skills so that they have a broder effect when used vs a non human fow, like [club of a thousand bears]. Imagine adding to Hexes, If target is non-human then 1-3 nearby foes are also effected.

They could also adjust what is concidered In The Area and Nearby and Ear Shot to create a better balance between how they work in the limited arena space vs the wide open places of PvE.

These are just ideas off the top of my head, but you can see there is a great deal of flexability they can utilize to balance the game outside of pure skill changes.

Originally Posted by Sab

Pre-nerf Splinter was an I Win button vs huge balled-up mobs. Now it's been toned down so Splinter doesn't completely overshadow every other reason to bring a Rit. I know you used it just as an example, but I still don't see why retaining overpowered skills or buffing skills unnecessarily is a good idea.

Originally Posted by Zamochit

You are right, perhapts I did make a mistake utilising splinter as the example, as it is so extreme, all I mean is that when 'balancing' skills for pvp which are not problematic in their current form in pve, they could almost split the skill by creating two alternate effects. One against human foes (predominantly pvp) and one against non-human foes (pve).

Originally Posted by Sab

So, basically, PvE is currently too hard so you want your skills to be more powerful. Are you seriously suggesting that would be an improvement to PvE?

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

In GW2, I'd like to see the dichotomy PvE/PvP disappear completely. Skills are just skills, and you can fight humans or AI with them (people may be smart, but AIs are fast, synchronised and very reactive to the set of programmed actions). Then balance would be brought into the equation by automated means on Anet's side, where they examine when players/teams win too easily on this or that part of the game, with statistics on the skills used (both by players and monsters, thus enabling an almost-automatic response. But imbalance should also be introduced to enable people to look for new ways to play and have a non-bland gameplay experience (being pwned is not a nice moment but you do get strong feelings and emotions, you remember what it feels like), maybe with more randomisation over the skills (this way, the skill balance can be a bit less visible). I'd even like to see gears/armors brought into the equation, but I think that NF inscriptions, HM and things like the BMP are already doing a good job. (then comes the question of how you balance the economy and it becomes a nightmare!)

IMHO, with GW2's linked instances, skills will become a little less of a problem, with the strategy (as in Factions) and storyline (as in favor) mixing seemlessly into everyone's experience. So it won't only be about your skillbar only, because the situation you're facing will be changing in an almost random fashion. May be we'll get evolving monsters and NPCs too: earning XP and getting new skills?

Originally Posted by Clarissa F

I thought they made it official. There will be a pvp part with arenas, a pve area, and a PVP world area. The five races will each have their own bonuses, nothing to make them imbalanced, just advantageous for certain situations. pure pvp/pve skill sets separate from each other will be the rule, as there will be separate pvp/pve servers.

Read up on the GW2 conversations from Jeff Strain et al.

Originally Posted by JR

Got any links/quotes? Would be very interested to read that.

I did try and research what had been released so far before I made the thread, but there's a good chance I missed some stuff.

Originally Posted by Erik Flannum

We want races to really have a pretty big impact on the way characters play. For example, the Norns, who are the big, burly, half-giant Viking guys from up in the North, all have the ability to shape-shift into a were-bear form; giving them more health and making them stronger, that sort of thing.

Originally Posted by Celestial_Kitsune

Source

If I recall correctly, PvP and PvE will have separate skills, but I'll have to find the interviews to back it up.

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

PvE is about stability.
PvP is about diversity.

Originally Posted by Crom The Pale

Its not about making the game easier and its not like they havent already made some changes that only effect one.

Take pets for example, when they die in PvP your skill bar doesnt reset like it does in PvE.

Originally Posted by Master Knightfall

This is the part I get tired of reading out of pvpers. If someone beats them all of a sudden it's not the players that beat them, but, only the skills they used on their bars.

Originally Posted by spawnofebil

Oh wow.

It's not often I say this, but manitoba you are beyond belief.

To add my views on the topic:

I think that, while it's desireable and nice to have a variety of options to pick from, buffing random skills such that they are useable/overpowered is not the way to go about it.

It's a bit like MtG. There's always a certain number of cards which are worth looking at and are 4-of in most decks of that colour, just like there are skills you would be a fool not to take (RoF and Frenzy). Then there are the cards that give your deck it's defining characteristics, like Dragonstorm or what have you, just as there are skills which you take depending on how you like to play (i.e. I like to play W/A with DDagger and dash, intead of shock).

Then there are the thousands of cards which have no use whatsoever.

While it would be nice to have every single card on a par, this won't happen. The game would get far too complex, and you'd get unforseen synergies that break the game (Steady Stance immediately springing to mind). Just look at Vintage or Extended, where the card pool is much greater and as a result decks are generally more powerful.

The main difference is, MtG is played 2-of-3, and you can change cards depending on what your opponent plays. However, GW is a one shot event-if you meet a spike guild you can't sideboard in CoF after 1 match to shut them down.

Hence, it's much better to just keep a core of usable skills instead of having a massive library.

I realize this has little or nothing to do with the topic, but that's just my 2 pence.

Originally Posted by Magikarp

while i understand your analogy, the real fact of the matter is that MtG also has well over 6000+ MtG cards give or take, and about 400-500 are total, unusable trash. thats a far cry different from our 600+ skills, and only having about 100-120 good ones to choose from.

thats also between 10 professions, and thats only if you have all 4 games.

this is causing that stale, monotonous gameplay.. in both pve AND pvp.