The Madness That Is Ether Renewal

Sweet!
Could we start our road to an ideal PvE by balancing the FOES first?
Removing all the Ursans, ERs, CoPs, SYs, ... won't change the fact that Molotov will still hit for 1k damage.
But fixing such moronic concepts as Molotov, Maw, Lich, Shiro, environmental effects, ... on the other hand will remove the raison d'être for the above listed skills.


PvP:
You balance the player.
You balance the game.

PvE:
You balance the player.
And you are still left with an unbalanced game because you only did half the job.

I protested things like this for a long time before actually thinking them through.

In pve players want to be imbalanced, impossibly strong, blow away hordes of monsters with high level spells... etc. I think that there needs to be a certain degree of power tripping added to the game to satisfy the majority of players.

Another reason for the brokeness of certain PvE skills such as Ursan, Ether Renewal, Cry of Pain, etc; is when you put yourself into the shoes of a casual player, many areas by design, are poorly made when taking into consideration the time table that the average player is on when logged into guild wars.

For example, you take DoA, which is normally a 4-6 hour zone that could easily be botched if a player screws up and ends up wiping the party. It's pretty difficult to get together a party of 8 human players who just happen to have half a day of spare time to tackle this impossibly large and frustrating "elite dungeon."

Yes DoA, the Deep, Urgoz, Tombs, and Slaver's Exile are bad by design. They are huge zones that take forever to complete and cause class segregation and new players to be omitted from parties because lets face it; no player wants to sit around and chance someone screwing up a 4-6 hour dungeon.

Skills like Ursan Blessing and Consets turn whats normally a half a day nightmare into a 1.5 hour walk in the park. Rather than going back and spending hours upon hours upon hours of time to redesign these zones that Anet knows they screwed up on making, they gave us overpowered skills in order to allow casual players a chance to actually finish these zones without sacrificing their social life or holiday time.

There really is no alternative fix for these places, Ursan and Consets was really the easiest measure ANET could have taken into making these badly designed areas more managable.

Thus the obvious reason for the existence of these skills.

Although Ursan is the "One build to rule them all." I'd encourage ANET to overpower more skills from other professions, such as ritualists and assassins from PvE in order to bring them up to par and give them a place in the party.

When you look at the spread of classes, each one has its own way of being horribly broken for the PvE environment:

Ursan makes all classes equally and stupidly overpowered, making half a day dungeons take only an hour.

Assassins got shadowform back, making them single best solo farming class in the game, and guarantees them a party slot for holding half the mobs in UW when dealing with the four horsemen quest.

Paragons were always stupidly over powered, and with incoming, save yourselfs, spear of fury, and theres nothing to fear, they can reduce party damage to nearly nothing.

Ritualists got Ritual Lord back, almost putting them on the party defense level of paragons. Spirit Summoning also allows them to drag their spirits anywhere they want.

Rangers have expertise, which allows them to cross play just about any class in the game.

Warriors, are well, warriors.

You have to be joking if you dont need a monk.

And necros have soul reaping, MMs, SS, and N/Rt Sabway builds that make them nearly unstoppable in PvE.

Dervishes have eternal aura, they are also the best runners in the game aside from SF sins, and scythe damage is borderline retarded.

~~

So you see there's really alot of broken stuff in guildwars to allow everyday players an chance at completing high end stuff. It really can be no other way.

If you remember how bad the QQ was when DoA first came out, how empty it was because people got so frustrated with it that they just didn't even want to look at it... If you want all that QQ back, and these forums to flood with scrubs arguing about how unfair GW is, and why HM is impossible for the average player, go ahead and watch what happens if they revert all this stuff.

Sure PvE is broken stupid, but so was every other successful MMORPG, WoW, and games like diablo II, where a high level sorcesss can throw an ice orb into a room and blow away all of the hellcows that are supposed to be "hard."

What you want is beyond us.
What you want isn't found in game balance; it is found in game design.
What you want is for ANet to spend more time and effort designing the game, instead of cranking up the difficulty.

Didn't we say we wanted PvE enemies with secondary professions?
Didn't we say we wanted PvE mobs to fight as teams?
We got that.

The problem is that we also got the things you mention, which points to ANet trying to satisfy different people with different priorities. Overpowered bosses are fine - at the end of the game. Lich and Shiro are fine - if they're kept in end-game missions. The problem happens when Molotov rolls up to you in the middle of "regular" PvE, and when the whole zone is filled with Shiros and Liches.

In hindsight, it's nothing new. Mursaat and infusion, Shiroken and celestial skills, Tormented and Lightbringer. Making all foes "harder, better, faster, stronger" has been a part of ANet's game plan for a while, possibly because it's an industry standard and because it's much easier to provide "challenge" that way.

Yes, we'd like our games to be better, but gaming is an industry and gamemaking a business. It's not practically possible to spend years designing a game, simply because the financial return on such an investment won't be good enough. Dedication and idealism alone are not sufficient; people still have to eat. It's not enough to make a game we want to play; enough other people have to want to play it as well, or the game won't sell and the company will go under. This is especially true in the age of MMOs, where population and the number of accounts are everything.

Once upon a time, I thought ANet and Guild Wars were different.
Once upon a time, Prophecies was Guild Wars.

Anet was doing this long time ago.

Bright example: http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Consuming_Flames of sorrows furnance fame.

Smart gameplay > this
Stupid gameplay -> wipe

Its like mosnter skill version of Frenzy. Okay, thats a bit overstatement, but still ...

Game design lays down the rules.
The rules serve as the ground for balance.

In PvP - the game design dictates that players are level 20, they have 200 attribute points to spend, ...

In PvE - the game design includes - players being knocked down every few seconds, players having constant -10 hp degeneration, skills costing 40% more, heals healing for 25% less, foes that can NOT be reached in melee exist, ...

IF one is looking to balance the game - one needs to take the rules that are present in the game into account.

Ohh and overpowered bosses at the end of a level aren't fine.
Because they aren't balanced.
Because we are screaming here that Ursan/ER/Winds/... should be trashed because they AREN'T balanced!
They can be fun though.
And you want to know something?
Given the popularity of Ursan - I'd say people have fun with it!

People here need to decide.
It's fairly easy.
Do you want a balanced game?
Yes?
No?
And then live with the consequences.

Great post and great point.

/agree

where did u get this information?I belive assassin can´t solo Rragar´s Menagerie

It also doesn't fix the fact that the AI in GW is dumb as hell.

I'm sure that for ANet, PvE's been a tough call. In order to have it be challenging on a balanced level, you would need to appropriately adjust the AI to function to hundreds of thousands of builds to encounter, as well as tailor each group in each area to its own party.

That can be a mess, and probably wouldn't "deliver" too well in the grand scheme of things. There have been "balanced" groups already implemented, noticeably in Nightfall, and I don't recall anyone complaining about how "challenging" they were.

So ANet had to go with plan B, the route traditionally took by most games (not just RPGs in general): Provide "overpowered" monsters. Find way's past the big baddies through non-traditional means. My only problem with this is that there's a certain threshold where it doesn't even matter how "tough" something becomes since it's always going to be stupid.

It goes much deeper as "simply give them balanced and effective builds. Ta da". With so many skills, builds, and profession combinations, it could be a crud-storm of one-trick encounters.

You cannot look at pure numbers and state that the mobs are overpowered. You need to factor in human intelligence, and how this affects balance in PvE. Mobs can be pulled, exploited, and they can be buildwars-ed as their builds never change. If Molotov hits for 1000+ damage, you bring Prot Spirit. If Shiro hits too hard, shut him down. AI will never match human intelligence, so it needs to be compensated by some form of artificial difficulty, like increased stats in HM or monster skills.

I wonder how they will make it in guildwars 2. Because general casual pvers want imbalanced skill and to be able to go load up xxx build and rock through pve.

More skilled players prefer to not take the easy way out and plan specific counters. Perhaps they will make something similar to diablo 2 hardcore mode.

One mode involves tougher monsters/ less or no imbalanced skills and requires strategy. The other is "easy mode"

I see how ether renewal can supply an almost infinite amount of energy under the conditions, but I havent heard of any great broken builds in PvE with ether renewal. What are they?

I would pay dearly to see an RSpike mob in PvE. Imagine the lolz.

I've found that the only really OP builds are the monk ones:

[glyph of swiftness][ether renewal][aura of restoration][vigorous spirit][healing breeze][infuse health][heal party]

This lets you use infuse repeatedly for +200 heals every second or spam heal party forever.

[glyph of swiftness][ether renewal][aura of restoration][reversal of fortune][shield guardian][spirit bond][protective spirit]

This is just super prot...

Balance is not in the dictionary of "casual" players. All they want is to have an easier time.

...And in Guild Wars 2...?

And the answer from the majority is a resounding "NO". Anets actions clearly show this. This is the exact reason why me and people like me fear for the future of the franchise. The original direction of Guild Wars was excellent. Now it is terrible. If Anet is going to continue down this road I see no hope for that future.

And for those STILL using the "if you don't like it don't use it" argument, please stop. Ignoring the problem means the problem is still there (which was pointed out earlier).

Didn't someone at Anet a while back say something along the lines of "If we wanted to make really smart enemy AI that could beat player groups we could, but the game wouldn't be fun."

We all know the AI could be better then this, but Anet thinks its more fun to face retarded AI's with 3x damage attacks. And they also seem to think players are better off being retarded with 3x damage attacks.

They are balanced by the fact that they are AI controlled. Sure they have skills more powerful than you. WHo cares? They will attack a protted target without switching etc.

It seems, that ANET has kicked the rest of the balance-team they once employed.

That, sadly, is where you are mistaken. Ursan's popularity is a clear indication that "continuing down this road" will leave ANet with more "mainstream" MMO gamers getting lured by "no monthly fees," which will assure the survival of the franchise.

Guild Wars, as a franchise, will go on. Guild Wars, as we know it, will cease to exist - assuming it hasn't already.

To my knowledge, ANet has never made such an admission; that's just something we as players have gathered from our experiences with the AI. Anyone who remembers what henchmen were like before Factions and can compare those experiences with the heroes we have today will have to concede that ANet is capable of programming good AI "helpers," even if it is reluctant to do so and caves in only under high demand. Conspiracy theorists have long noted that ANet could have improved hench AI, but hold that ANet is reluctant because ANet wants the players to be a superior choice. Otherwise, no one would cooperate in this "cooperative RPG" of ours. To take a more current perspective on the same, consider the "7 heroes" issue, which boils down to the "party of improved henchies" anyway.

"Retarded AI" + 3x damage is infinitely easier to code than "smart AI," which makes the first a clear winner for a cost- and time-constrained company. In today's cost-cutting capitalist world, going with the second choice would be tantamount to "gimping yourself" - good for a challenge, bad for the bottom line. It's like outsourcing: everyone does it, and if you don't do it too, you'll end up with a possibly better but definitely costlier product, and won't be able to keep up with your competitors.

Considering you're not arguing against the power of monster skills and environmental effects that will usually affect the whole party, do you actually want to have Protective Spirit up on each party member in regular PvE? Suddenly the Ether Renewal un-nerf is making a lot more sense...

I have no knowledge of these "ass-spells" you speak of, but I assume by "guru" you mean "a poster on these forums," yes?

I love you.

If you were a chick, I'd ask you to marry me.

I freaking loooove XKCD. #37 was just so good.

That is exactly what pisses people off. Guild Wars attracted a lot of people with the unique "skill>time" and "no grind" and "competitive" claims. And for a while the game followed those. Now all of those have went down the craphole, and we are left GW being the testing ground for the next wannabe WoW that will be GW2.

The uniqueness of the franchise is what should have ensured the survival of the franchise. Now it just feels like a sellout.

In PvE I don't see "balance" that easy to define - obviously a large part of yours has to do with build variety. For many that is true, yet this allows for some builds to be more powerful than others, you just need variety. For others "balance" means that your "skill" affects what areas you clear. Here we end up with two camps. The first (and most vocal on the forums) feels that less skilled players shouldn't be able to play and beat later areas. That those areas should be reserved for highly skilled organized teams and the rest can just learn to play. Other feel that said balance means that anyone can play there and have a chance at beating them and it is your choice how you do it. For many others it means that there are no builds that are more powerful than others - this is basically the PvP stance (obviously random skill bars shouldn't be included and are allowed to fail).

So, who's balance do we follow? Any one of them you pick will tick the rest off as the are obviously correct and all the others are mindless drones who can't see anything. To some extent this is true - none are exactly incorrect and most can not see past their own noses. That is true for the vast majority of the people posting.

For myself I prefer the "all can play" balance and that includes many of the PvE only skills. However since I am a H/H player only Ursan doesn't affect me and I get screwed by the "not all can do it" crowd (several places I am not allowed into without other humans no matter my skill level with them).

Lastly, we have what is probably Anet's balance - what gets us the most sales. Since we purchase games to play that "balance" is going to be tipped towards the "all can play" group. They also don't want to totally alienate the upper end of players if for nothing else than to give the bottom end ones something to shoot for. So we get what we have today, I don't really see it changing. Nor do I see any game really being successful doing differently. Every MMO I have ever played is plagued by these "discussions" for the very same reasons.

There is another way to "balance" PvE - is the build stale? One can have a 100% perfect balanced system by any put out and it become stale as nothing ever changes. So, again - which balance is "correct"?

I'd love to see ANet do a "Return to Zero" weekend or something, where they revert all skills and stat behaviour to their initial release candidate states.
Intermingling nature ritual spirits, infinite minions, soul reaping behaviour, adrenaline generation, damage reduction behaviour, all that stuff back in the game along with the removal of the PvE skills.
It'd be interesting to see if individual things that have been nerfed due to being imbalanced would be offset by other things that have been nerfed.

Of course, it'll never happen.

Do that, lock the ladder, strip ATs of QPs, double or triple Balth faction, reward points and HoH chest drops, and you've got yourself a very, very fun weekend.

PvE would be nuts; PvP would be ridiculously entertaining.

Yes - the AI sucks.
But that's not a balance question.
That's like saying that PvP skills should not be balanced because of the people that do not know how to use them or use them poorly. Or that we could balance the game by punishing the better player - something like ... all players from Top 100 guilds have a 10% reduced movement speed, 10% longer casting speed, 10% chance of missing with attacks, ...
It kinda would be the easy way to balance, wouldn't it be?
Or should that be the PvE way?

They took some shortcuts - and balance was trashed because of it.
And it's obvious that THAT'S a sacrifice they are willing to take.
So keep that in mind.
Because that means that coming here and saying that ER should be changed for balanced reasons is like saying that Power Spike should be changed because you dislike that it's icon is pink.
So now tell me - what are the odds that you will find a person in A.Net's team that dislikes pink so much that they will listen to that argument?
And keeping in mind what kind of a game we are playing - what are the odds that they will care that something isn't balanced in PvE?
ESPECIALLY when the argument of "if you don't like it, don't use it" works.
And I don't mean theoretically.
I mean IN PRACTICE!
They don't care about balance, the players have a chance of balancing themselves (which is the point of "don't like it - don't use it!") - so ... what makes you think they'll do anything about it?

You know - I am not the party-pooper that is saying to not balance something.
I am the party-pooper that is saying to look at WHO IS DOING the balancing.

There is no reason for the above listed skills. Player Versus Environment means Player Versus Environment. It does not follow that every monster you fight should play by the same rules as yourself.

You have the ultimate advantage, which is a brain. Arenanet can't code that. Complaining that there are foes of a higher level than 20, that do tons of damage, that can't be knocked down, etc, etc, just makes you look stupid.

Anet will just have to make a "superhard mode" LOL

And pve only skills can't be used in it. =)

I'm not surprised I'm not the only one who's entertained that ridiculous idea.

and in the superhard mode there's random bosses that spawn and they can use all the professions and they're all level 100. All other enemies are level 50. Basically it will be pretty much impossible.

People have potential to improve, the AI doesn't.

Yeah - it's as if the AI would need some sort of outside help with their builds and their behaviour.

Uh-huh, even if you give mobs perfect skillbars and different behaviour patterns they won't be as good as normal, intelligent human players.
There's no way that AI will be as good as I.
Try harder.

That's what they thought until everyone realized heroes are better than the average human player.

BUT the point of PvE still is for the player to win.
So it's all good.

That's why I said "intelligent".
Unfortunately, normal GW player isn't intelligent

No if you can win hard mode and elite areas with 1 skill. Where did the challenge go?

Depends on the task. There are some aspects of gameplay where computer controlled characters are already vastly superior to any human. Then there are other tasks where achieving transhuman performance levels is not economically feasible for the given setting and resources (if you think that AI is somehow fundamentally unable to perform better than human players in mental tasks then try some advanced chess program - the issue here is that a server must run a vast number of AIs at any time and thus the available resources for a single AI are pretty limited). Then there is yet another issue that if the AI is too smart the game stops being fun for the vast majority of the player base, and considering that heroes perform better than the average PUP I'd say that the level is quite right

On topic, the buffed Ether Renewal is the Elemental Attunement for non-elemental skill lines and I'm cool with that. It requires somewhat gimmicky builds, doesn't break the game any more than what it is already, and it will not lead to a situation where only ER eles will be accepted to PUGs. It can be abused, but so can half of the skills anyway.

/signed

Except since the game is already broken b/c of Ursan, it kind of maintains the same level of brokenness.

GW2 please. With a new development team.

Hold your horses.
We'd have a state of balanced PvE then.
And Ursan COULDN'T exist in that world.

Coming from a certified noob here, I'm not sure how I would get through PvE without my Great Dwarf Weapon, Save Yourselves, Pain Inverter, and Seed of Life. I don't really use Ursan since I'm not high enough rank to use it, but damnit if I was I'd make good use of it. When I decide to PvE, I have a goal in mind. Everything in between character creation and being PvP-ready is a huge obstacle, and everything that makes that obstacle easier to clear is A-Okay with me >_>

On that note, I sympathize with people who want to be challenged, and I think there's probably hope at the end of the tunnel. If I were you, I'd lobby for Hard Mode to incorporate some kind of PvE skill change. In PvP areas, you are affected by some effect called "PVP", I'm not joking. The presence of this effect changes your skills to their PvP versions where applicable. Isn't it possible to take the existing "This is Hard Mode!" effect, and make it replace your existing PvE skills (and PvE versions of normal skills which are out of balance) to eat heavy nerfs? Make Hard Mode harder by way of isolated skill nerfs exclusive to this gametype. Those who want to get through PvE burden-free, people like me, don't have to play Hard Mode and be challenged against our will, and people who want to be challenged can be accommodated. Anyway, that's just an idea.