PvE Balance - Part 2

This thread is designed to be a "part 2" of sorts to my original thread, in order to address concerns regarding the balance of other aspects of PvE that my first post did not cover <first post can be found here.>. I'm fairly interested in the communities reaction to this segment of the two parts (as should be ANet...), so I'm posting this is Riverside in the hopes of spawning some civil discussion.

In the current PvE meta, I would estimate that there are 5 core issues that one must consider when suggesting a negative spectrum balance (from here on, I'll resign to using the term "nerf"). When I say that these are core issues, I am implying that these are problems that require a simultaneous fix to bring any sort of true shake up to the current game's stagnation. Should only one or a few of these 5 important factors be considered, those skills left untouched would only gain additional overall power level, thus decreasing overall skill balance rather than increasing it.

The five core overpowered problems in the current build of Guild Wars are as follows, to the best of my estimation:

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1. The "Imbagon" - The synergy of the following skills in conjunction with a Paragon's primary attribute and sheer base armor level and consumables is too perfect, and thus, too powerful: "Save Yourselves!", "There's Nothing to Fear!", Focused Anger {E}

2. Ursan - The bear skill is just too powerful; with consumables it's basically impossible to fail.

3. Sabway - The synergy of Soul Reaping's mechanic with minion death is simply too much as it is; since the game's inception, this has been abused, first (that is, the first time this was problematic) as Blood Spike, but this continues on with N/Rt and N/Mo healers with more power than Monk and Rit primaries, simply due to basically infinite energy; this, combined with simple Curses builds that most of the community has been familiar with for literally years now, and you have an unstoppable build that heroes can run perfectly. This does not promote creative or intelligent play, but rather allows the player to win on autopilot.

4. Tank and Spank - The Holy Trinity must also be addressed as an overly effective mechanic which has only recently been overshadowed by the much faster Imbagon teams, Sabway hero zergs and Ursan. The effectiveness of certain builds must be matched so that all classes are dealing an appropriately similar DPS level, or certain builds (and thus certain classes) will be simultaneously propelled into use or discarded aside and forgotten.

5. Minimal Man Farming Effectiveness - When it comes down to it, this is what has ruined the value of most things in Guild Wars. In the end, it never really matters what changes you make if it's really still much faster (and thus profitable) to farm alone in the most difficult parts of the game using builds based around blatant loop-holes in skill synergy.
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There you have, laid out for all to see, the core problems with the current build for Guild Wars PvE. I'm fairly sure that you must know this, and I'm sure that as a whole, these deep balancing problems are something the Devs and the community both are reluctantly attempting to avoid having to face directly due to the excitement of Guild Wars 2. In all fairness, I understand the eagerness to move on to something newer and potentially better, but I can only assure you that de-alienating some of your most die-hard Guild Wars fans will bring you nothing but additional profit in the end.

When considering solutions to each of these problems, all things must be considered as a whole. If only the top three problems are addressed, the community would fall back on #4 and #5 in a likely successful attempt at re-experiencing success with tried and true methods. Though this would appear to shake things up at first, the stagnation would only revert to an even deeper level, and a greater number of problems would arise.

After some consideration of all I know about this game, I have come up with potential solutions to the problems that ail it. Before I continue, I would like to say that I understand that ANet is probably not going to reallocate resources from Guild Wars 2 development to work on these proposed fixes, however I must state that I believe there to be very little programming leg work involved. That said, on with the solutions:

1. The "Imbagon"

Proposed changes tied to solving this problem:

"Save Yourselves!" - Armor gained now scales with Warrior's Strength attribute: 10...80...110

"Watch Yourself!" - Removed recharge.

"Stand Your Ground!" - Increased armor gain to +40.

Solution explained: "Save Yourselves!" is a Warrior skill; there is no reason for it to not be balanced the same way that "There's Nothing to Fear!" and Seed of Life were. Simultaneously, just nerfing "Save Yourselves!" with no other changes would ruin many Paragon's viability in groups needing that additional armor. "Watch Yourself!" and "Stand Your Ground!", buffed as I suggest, offer this utility without granting the party pure invincibility.

2. Ursan

Proposed changes tied to solving this problem:

Ursan Blessing {E} - Bonuses adjusted to "+100...200 maximum health and +1...4 health regeneration."

Wolven Blessing {E} - Bonuses adjusted to "+60...100 maximum health and Enchantments cast on you last 25...75% longer."

Raven Blessing {E} - Bonuses adjusted to "+60...100 maximum health and 10...50% chance to block."

General blessing mechanic adjustment: Increased energy degeneration while in-form to 3.

Solution explained: The changes I've outlined here would reduce the overwhelming power of the Bear skill by removing the base armor increase and replacing it with Wolven's health regeneration. Giving Wolven Blessing a new bonus (longer enchantment duration) would open up potential use for that skill, and increasing Raven Blessing's block rate makes it more attractive as well.

With these changes in place, all three Blessings still possess incredible power, and certain classes/skills may synergize with them too powerfully to preserve balance. To increase the difficulty of Blessing upkeep, I think it's reasonable to increase the energy degeneration it causes to 3. A creative or determined player could certainly still manage to meet this upkeep, but the extra effort required is a fair balancing affect on the power the Blessings afford.

3. Sabway

Proposed changes tied to solving this problem:

* Minion deaths no longer trigger Soul Reaping.
* Removed the Soul Reaping timer.
* Modified the functionality of Soul Reaping to include the additional effect "For each point in Soul Reaping, you experience 2% less effectiveness from skills attributed to your secondary profession."
* The maximum minions possible for a Necromancer to raise is still limited by their Death Magic attribute, however, Necromancers who achieve 16 Death Magic may raise an unlimited number of minions.
* Minions in PvE no longer experience accelerating health degeneration over time, nor any natural health degeneration of any kind.

*Maximum number of heroes allowed in party from one source increased to 7.

Solution explained: The Necromancer's ability to out-do many other professions at their own jobs due to his unlimited supply of energy must be curtailed to ensure a balanced play environment. Preventing minions from generating Soul Reaping stops the infinite energy engine that powers the majority of truly overpowered Necro builds. With this engine halted, power must be restored to certain game elements that were previously gimped in an attempt to balance without attacking the root problem. For this reason, I believe it would be safe to remove the Soul Reaping timer.

Even without infinite energy, Soul Reaping still offers free energy, and if combinations are found to be powerful enough to be worth providing the energy for, imbalances could be again formed. To prevent this, an increased investment in Soul Reaping deteriorates the effectiveness of skills from the Necromancer's secondary profession. A large debuff is not necessary; the variables I've provided are what I believe provide the best overall balance.

Once I made these changes, a re-evaluation of the situation showed that Necromancers had lost a little bit too much of their power. Curses and Blood untouched, it made sense to give some of that power back to Minion Masters. In PvP, the idea of unlimited minions and minions that never naturally decay is a bad one, but in PvE, where gameplay is slower paced and frequently interrupted by player-proposed breaks, minions dropping dead purely due to their age is slightly unreasonable. Removing the minion cap and removing minion decay are fair balancing measures to assure that all classes remain viably powerful in the meta.

All of this done, I looked over my changes and discovered that without further adjustment to this problem area of the game, I would be disregarding, disrespecting, and discarding a whole segment of the gameplay community which must value both the synergy of their hero's bars and also their ability to complete difficult challenges using this power. To award these players something to make up for the loss of the incredible Sabway (and to prevent these players from subsequently rage-quitting the game due to complete loss of power), I suggest increasing the maximum number of heroes that a player may add to a party to 7.

A correctly balanced PvE would allow these players to complete areas using 7 heroes running a concise team build rather than forcing them to compact all of their synergetic power into only their bar and 3 additional hero ones. The players who prefer to play in this way are already avoiding PUGs and other players by using three heroes and four henchmen; it's time to expand these player's potential by allowing them to fill all 7 of those NPC slots with heroes of their own design.

4. Tank and Spank

Proposed changes tied to solving this problem:

Detailed in my first post, which is here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10303079

Solution explained: Once the top three ailments plaguing PvE have been tended to, we have successfully returned ourselves to the level of balance we had grown accustomed to before PvE skills and before heroes. This alone would be a huge step in the right direction, but stopping here, as I said, would be a mistake.

In my first post, I listed a good deal of changes that can be made to existing skills that will increase their potential effectiveness in PvE situations; increase enough of a class' skills, and the class will see an increased overall effectiveness also. A perfect Guild Wars would be a game where all of the classes are essentially balanced (and thus all approximately equally effective); groups would search for roles they needed filled rather than for people running specifically predetermined builds.

The suggestions I outlined in my first post would bring a great deal more range of power to the PvE side of the game. Keeping power spread accross a range of skills and abilities helps avoid stagnation caused by singularly powerful skills or skill combinations (builds). The balance method employed so far has been nothing short of an endless exersise of "wack-a-mole", in which overpowered builds are developed, overtake the meta, and then are subsequently destroyed by a nerf. As this method of balance always leaves a power gap in it's wake, this method of balance always has the unfortunate side effect of something else worse coming up to take the place of the nerfed method/skill/build. This method of balance also weakens the overall structure of the game's skills, and on an unlimited timeline, all skills eventually become completely ineffective.

As you're now attempting to shift focus from Guild Wars 1 to work on other projects, it would perhaps be best to bring your skill list's power level all up to one place before you abandon it completely, or balance will never be achieved.

5. Minimal Man Farming Effectiveness

Proposed changes tied to solving this problem:

*Drops now scale depending on the number of human players in your party; more human players means more drops total in any given zone.

Solution explained: Solo farming, duo farming, small group runs for higher difficulty instances, groups comprised of heroes, and groups comprised of henchmen are simply things that are unavoidable; if a solution is offered to a player, you must assume that at least some percentage of your playerbase will take that solution. It is unwise to attempt to destroy builds that allow players to do things alone (when it is so truly difficult to invent such a build; that is, difficult to invent, but easy to copy...), and your skill balancing decisions show us that you have this wisdom already.

The only imbalance remaining from my perspective, if you were to make the adjustments I've already suggested or something similar, is really simply the incredibly increased effeciency of solo play over group play. If you want to really balance PvE, you're going to have to adjust the way that loot is rewarded, and it really must be at least partially connected to the number of human players in the party. Until this is done, there will never be a reason to make larger groups to farm things that smaller groups recieve better rewards for.
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I believe that making the changes outlined here, or changes similar, is a step required in achieving anything resembling a balanced PvE environment. Without putting any effort toward the restoration of this environment, I believe many veteren players will continue to feel too alienated to put trust into your future endeavours, in particular, Guild Wars 2.

Sincerely,
A loyal and concerned player,
Sha Noran

Haha nice one Sha. I very much like your change ideas

PvE balance is something I can only dream of - and hopefully with Anet answering the concerns of SF and acknowledging the imbalance of Ursan this Thursday will be a step in the right direction.

<3 Sha

I personally don't agree with nerfing Sabway. Its not so powerful that it needs to be nerfed, its just very effective. A normal player could still fail while using it, especially while in a harder area. And quite frankly, Anet shouldn't start nerfing Hero builds until they fix heroes' super retarded AI. Sabway is one of the few builds that heroes can use correctly with out babysitting. Heroes were implemented as a substitute for real players, not something that required 1 player to uber micro 4.

Everything else looks great (^_^)--b

If those changes took place, there might be fun to have in GW PvE again.

The reason Anet gave us PVE skills and seperated PVE from PVP in the first place is because of ruining the game experience for a lot of us through nerfing, so you are proposing to attempt to get anet to further ruin our game by nerfing more PVE skills? The only thing that would do besides piss off a lot of people, is give even more people a reason to leave GW and never look back. Can't you eliteists simply alter your skill bars so that your true godliness will shine through, instead of destroying the way we enjoy playing GW? In case you have not noticed, there are a lot of people that enjoy using some of these skills and builds, why try and take that away from us when all you need to do is adjust your skills....Pick weaker skills, which will further prove your superiority over the rest of us!
I would however trade a few PVE skills for 7 heroes anyday, I actually like that idea.

I like your proposals, nice ideas and very well thought out.

Ah you are back. I remember your old epic thread.

Basically I agree with all the problems, but disagree with the solutions. Of course, this is coming from somebody who would simply remove all the crap from the game if I had the choice.

I am basically at the point where I am like ok, Anet broke this game completely. Any attempt at fixes to the additions that made the game broken are just patches in my eyes. The real solution is undoing everything that caused the problems to begin with.

Of course...this will never happen. Thus in my eyes there are no realistic solutions.

I kind of quit this game when they split pve/pvp skills. But I do pop on these forums every now and then. I do agree with your points. However the large issue with pve is the AI. ive played this game since release - skill seperation day, and have about 7100 hours logged into this game.

The BIGGEST problem this game has is terrible AI, the smaller problem (and easier to fix) is just the power level of the game, which is accomplished by toning down all that crap you mentioned, like ursan, paragons, and hopefully you mentioned in your other post, consumables.

Guild Wars suffers from the same problem that every single online RPG game suffers from (including my new favorite, age of conan). Terrible AI design. It is indeed possible to get what we want from pve, but the approach is wrong. All of the AI has always been designed for solo mob against world. WHat we want as players, is group mob against world.

We should expect a mob thats in a group to be behaving different, even coordinating different than a mob all by himself. Yet they do not. I will be buying guild wars 2, and I am hopeful that they will address this, but right now, if Im rushing into a big group of mobs, I can just treat it like im rushing into 1 really powerful mob.

Please design the AI in gw2 to be different for mobs in groups than mobs that are solo. Please dont make the last 3 years of my gaming a waste

Um no, no, no, and um, no. Minions don't count for soul reaping... You try raising 25e bone fiends and see how your energy is doing after a battle. A 2% less effectiveness from skills for each soul reaping point? You have got to be kidding me. This won't just kill necro healers, it will kill any secondary profession for necros. While you're at it, nerf touchers because they should be effective with a secondary profession either. Nerf down secondary professions for everyone to make it fair (No I'm being sarcastic). No health degen on minions? Well without that I can easily raise an army of 100+ minions with the cap off.

If your "solution" to Sabway is done that way, we would have a solo game. No thanks. It's a social game and it's played as a team, thus synergy is neccessesary between team builds.

Ursan won't get fixed, ever. Don't you realize that's why people buy EotN? To get into the Ursan groups that do al the hard and elite areas.

SY! is one of the few things that gives a Paragon a job, without it it's just a hybrid of too many professions without excelling at something.

Since it's a team game, each class has different habilities and contributes to the party in a different way. Monks won't do big damage because that's not their job, warriors won't heal because that's not their job. If you don't like to have specifically one job with your current char, then do another toon of the desired profession.

And sins are the only thing that should be nerfed.

Poor design choices led to the current state of affairs, and they cannot be fixed without removing certain things, which wont happen.

We know they are done with Guild Wars and all focus is on the new product.

I dont expect them to roll out any kind of big "pve skill balance". The skill split provides more advantage to the PvP side of things, now that skills can be changed without worrying about PvE. Dont place bets on them suddenly rolling back all previous skill changes.

oh i know! how about all classes get one skill. how about this:

QQ Signet: R-0.25s CT: 0.25s (Non Attribute)
Signet. Hits target foe and all foes within earshot with 999 damage. After effect: Heals non-hostile targets within earshot with 999 health.

There. no more monks. no more warriors. no more paragons. no more necromancers.

Even with one skill on a bar, people on this forum will still QQ about something.

I don't think that Sabway needs to be nerfed at all. The Soul Reaping attribute has been nerfed so much already. Its really not all that powerful. People bitching about necros and there effectiveness is one thing that really angers me because, its there primary attribute...there giving up the Monk or Rit primary attribute. So your losing your ability to rune yourself for that attribute (1-4 attrib points) and your access to Divine Favor,Spawning Power etc. This build is built around the necro's primary attribute. And th 2% effectivness is a bit overboard i think. Many other professions run builds that have a utility skill in it. The Timer for soul reaping is very effective imo. And the unlimited minions idea made me lol forget jagged we can keep 20 up at all times easy! I do agree with other things that need fixed, just not your solutions.

First of all, N/Mo and N/Rt are not better than Mo/x for a player. They only are for heroes because heroes cannot manage their energy properly on a primary Monk. A GOOD player-controlled Mo/x will outdo N/Rt's and N/Mo's anyday. So I don't see a problem with those.

"SY!" will still be abused by Warriors. Make "FGJ!" not give double adrenaline from skill effects.

The minion ideas are quite nice; however, don't kill the energy gain completely. Maybe 1/4 of regular energy gain for minions and spirits would suffice. The soul reaping timer should really go, though; that was always an unelegant and desperate measure.

I really hope 7 heroes will be implemented someday; it would open up a whole new world of opportunities to explore that can't be done with other players. But I doubt that.

Your ideas for nerfing Sabway are... odd. I can understand why you do them, but looking at the whole picture, I can't see it happening. I do understand your point, however, of wanting to move from doing strong 3-man synergy to an 8-man build that still synergizes while not placing all power in a small few.

Great points on Imbagon, Ursan, and farming. I didn't quite understand your point on Tank&Spank, but I think it has something to do with doing a giant balance of skills, which doesn't tell me how the problem is solved.

Good suggestions, it'd be nice to see some action taken on a few of those.

while i dislike tanknspank as much as anybody else, i wouldn't really call it overpowered - or even as effective as some other non-ursan-esque playstyles.
tanknspank, from my experience, is exceptionally slow and boring. sure, everyone has their assigned roles and it might be a more primitive version of the "pug-in-a-box" solution offered by ursanway, but in terms of effectiveness tanknspank is simply not on par with ursan as a problem in pve.
the real problem with tanknspank is in players' ways of thinking about how gw was designed to be played. a surprising number of people still seriously think that warriors are most effective as tanks and that eles are the ultimate kings in terms of damage-dealing. unfortunately, this problem isn't so easily remedied by a series of skill nerfs and/or buffs - in fact, it's my opinion that the current skill balance already favors more skillful (or in less offensive terms more "gvg-like") play over tanknspank. instead, the player-base would have to become more interested in skillful, efficient play, which would of course require that they read forums, wikis, etc. and generally become more knowledgeable about the game. as most players tend to be casual - in the sense that they are generally less interested in playing as skillfully as possible than more hardcore gamers - this is unlikely to happen, so tanknspank is probably here to stay.

I can agree with nerfing Ursan and SY builds, but sabway isn't nearly overpowered. It just happens to be a build heroes can use rather well. There are plenty of more powerful builds a player can run on their heroes. Some of the necro changes are really stupid as well. MM is already one of the most powerful builds a necro can run in PvE, does it need a buff? No, blood and the non-mm (meaning worthless) death magic skills need a buff.

Before you nerf tank and spank, fix DoA HM already so other builds can actually beat it. With ursan and SY gone there is pretty much no alternative unless this area is made less retardedly difficult and more intelligently difficult.

Who gives a crap about Solo farming? This is PvE balance were talking about, not economy and epeen balance. The economy is meaningless anyway.

Ursan is still way undernerfed as you describe, and SY retained full effectiveness in D-Slash builds. Needs a much harder hit with the nerf bat.

Even with all my complaints about the OP, if it was implemented as is it would be 10x better then anything Anet has done in the past 2 years. We all know they are busy making Grind Wars 2.

Bone fiends are not the only type of minion.

Not sure why you want an attribute to have a negative effect. Removing the minions or some other downscaling of returns is probably enough.

The problem and solution aren't in the player builds but in the AI's. If you create AI that doesn't encourage steamrolling, tank and spank goes away along with other problems like N/x.

Increase rewards for completing dungeons, vanquishes, etc. and make them more challenging. People are more than willing to farm in large groups if it still guarantees good drops for easy kills.

Alright, so I'll pretty much be evaluating all of your suggestions as I've got nothing better to do.
This DOES nerf Imbagons, but it would lead to increased usage of "Dragon Slash lulzmobile of infinite adrenaline and "Save Yourselves!"", to quote yourself from part 1. This change would merely shift SY! to be used with Warriors instead, essentially losing a Paragon's position in a party, even with the Watch Yourself! and Stand Your Ground! buffs.

It may be better to simply add "This blessing ends in 90....900 seconds" or something, scaled with Norn rank, or simply "This blessing ends in 5 minutes." and removing the energy degen, as even with the increased degeneration, a Necromancer with high Soul Reaping or a Paragon with high Leadership could still infinitely maintain the blessings with no sweat. Your change would bring an interesting shift to the generic "Warrior Ursans Only!" PuG requirement, as it would make people choose between higher armor or lengthened blessing time for their profession discriminations. Even with your suggestions, Ursan would still be used a lot, but in conjunction with the other two. I'm not sure if this is what you were aiming for, as in your post, you made it seem like you wanted to nerf this skill pretty hard, in which case, you should nerf the variables of each skill.

*Note: My suggestions in this following section may be biased since I mainly play a Necromancer.*
This is a step in the right direction for getting rid of Sabway, but it kind of lowers the effectiveness of human MMs. I'm not sure how to change it in any other way to avoid hurting human players. Maybe just make it so you gain one energy for every four ranks in Soul Reaping when a minion dies, as opposed to the current one energy per rank for all creatures. Or, better yet, you can only gain energy when a minion under your control dies.

[bias]No opposition here! :P [/bias] On second thought, removing the timer seems to provide what you want to avoid: An infinite energy source for Necromancers. Maybe just increase the maximum triggers to 5 times per 10-15 seconds.

Without the ability to use runes from your secondary profession, this would slaughter most builds using skills from secondary professions, and would promote the normal MM or SS cookie cutter builds you see in PvE. So, I say no to this. An alternative would be something like "For every three ranks in Soul Reaping, you lose an additional 2 energy for each skill you use from your secondary profession."

At first glance, this doesn't seem like it's cause many problems as long as this is only in PvE, other than making MMs more IMBA than they already are, though the Soul Reaping changes may balance this out. I'd have to see this in practice to evaluate it.

Don't see a problem here, either, though it makes some of the Minion healing skills less useful.

This change would be wonderful.


I agree wholeheartedly, especially with your explanation.

To me, it seems that you're saying that they should simply expand Loot Scaling to encompass everything, instead of the few items it already affects. If so, from a selfish farmer's point of view, I'd have to say no. But, when looking at the grand scheme of things, for the game's sake, I'll (very reluctantly) say yes.

Well, those are my opinions. When reading through my post, I've found that your suggestions all balance eachother out, while my counter-suggestions tackled each one of your suggestions one at a time instead of trying to balance with eachother, so mine are probably extremely flawed.

Edit:

Only if they make a monster skill which disables all signets for foes within radar range and stick it in every single mob in GW. And no, I'm not kidding.