PvE Balance - Part 2

You are pretty bad if you only factor in the fact of energy gain. Sure, ER possibly does better than SR (depends on SR attributes, if your ER gets stripped or not, etc), but you just sacrificed your elite (and thus a large part of your utility) to do something SR does just fine.

Yea, because Weapon of Remedy is just oh so good.

You misunderstood.
Heroes will ALWAYS play badly in terms of "choosing what and when to cast". So that was taken out of the equation. There is no point in wasting time on a constant.
"Shitty builds" were always builds that could not work because they were to energy intensive.
Or do you feel that monks running 10e skills without any form of e-management are playing good?

That's what I have been saying ALL along for Ursan!
If you don't like - don't use it!
Right?

It actually is.
It's damage, it heals, and it removes a condition.
Almost insta-cast and spamable.
Quite sweet actually.

It's Ok, but it's a weapon spell. Casters get less benefit from it, in general. The trade to ER is more than worth it. All the power heals are still on the bar.

Yes, but you're still missing the point:

If you bring ER, you have 7 skills, plus you have to invest in Energy Storage.
If you go N/Rt, you still have 8 skills to work with, and you only have to invest in SR.

You're taking up an elite skill to do something a single attribute does perfectly.

Also, manitoba - you remind me of people from school who get kicks from being different to everyone else, even when it's detrimental to them.

"ok"?

You do know that it is fairly imbalanced (granted, it is outdone by a few other skill combinations right now but yknow...) skill right? If there was a guild wars dictionary you'd find versatile and it would be the definition of it. WoR does everything except hex removal that you would want to do on a rit bar.

It's 5e.
It's spammable.
It does life stealing.
It cures conditions.
It heals.

And it doesn't do the last 3 things that it does suck like at all. If it was like YOU STEAL 25 hp or something, then sure maybe, but it does a fairly substantial life steal (which again, isn't mitigated by armor, so useful all the time), and is good at what it does...which is being everything at the same time.

I wish Monks had an elite that was a prot and a heal spell at the same time. Or at least a good one that was spammable as hell, removed a hex, unremovable, and only cost 5e.

WoR is pretty much the best elite for the Ritualist. It's insane bar compression that doesn't suck, that you can use on anyone quickly, and such.

WoR is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ER. Ya you can keep your energy up, but so can I if I'm a necro and the party knows what they are doing. You should want utility, and ER has no utility for your party. All it does is take up the spot of one of the best things a ritualist has.

EDIT:
there is more than just power healing everything and you need more than just power heals if you want to be a good rit.

I think people are missing the point regarding WoR.

Is it good? Yes.

Is it indispensable? Almost certainly not. It gives a lot of things in one slot, yes, but it's basically a backup for Mend Body and Soul and Vengeful Weapon. You can do without it.

Is N/Rt better than E/Rt due to still having it? Possibly. I might even say likely.

Does it matter? Not really. All the E/Rt needs to be is comparable to N/Rt, and then, even if SR is nerfed into the ground so badly that no-one bothers playing primary Necromancers at all any more, the E/Rt will sooner or later become as much of a balance problem as Sabway. Nerf that, and maybe it'll be those 'silly' Me/Rts - sure, they're not as strong, but if they're strong enough, doesn't that indicate that maybe all those other nerfs were mistargetted?

And hey, if Restoration is balanced by being linked to Spawning Power, maybe Spawning Power will stop being the worst primary in the game and the title can go back to where it belongs: Fast Casting. [/self-deprecatory joke from a primary Mesmer player]

Why did you believe the moronic idea that the resto healer is the problem when it comes to SR?
SR is the problem when it comes to SR.

I really wish that Ensign was still around to explain how terrible WoR is.

I suppose I'll try my best here. Yes, it's three skills in one... but two of them suck ass. It's a damage dealer, but it's a bad one. 63 damage to a pretty much random target is darn near useless. It's a straight heal, but it's a bad one. No, a terrible one. At only 63 healed, it is the weakest heal on your bar, both in terms of hp/e and hp/cast_time. It is excellent condition removal. But, so what? You've got passable non-elite condition removal already. And Foul Feast makes it really tempting to assign condition removal to a necro on your party (either Foul Feast + Infuse Condition or Foul Feast + Plague Sending).

Aside from situations where you really need the condition removal effect, the only thing WoR really has going for it is that most of the other elite options for a resto build suck even worse. SLW? Preservation? You get the point.

I think you understand perfectly.

WoR is not terrible in PvE per se. Of course the parts it does aren't EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD. If they were it'd be even more broken. But what it does is do a little bit of everything rather well, so it is useful bar compression/utility. Are there better options? Sure.

Would I consider an elite that you are using because you can't manage energy better? Nope.

(Mind you, I think N/Rts are bad in general, Soul Reaping is too much of a safety net. You should never need an energy management ability, even passive, to run a build like that. But I know they are rather good because of it. Yes, your Me/Rt or E/Rt or whatever Rt or even Rt/X can do just as good, but the N/Rt is better because it gets an extra slot or two to do whatever the hell it wants that the others don't.)

EDIT:
And this topic has changed too much onto the Ritualist issue. Soul Reaping needs to be nerfed for other reasons besides N/Rt, obviously. That isn't to say Resto isn't overpowered in some of its abilities, because a few of them are power creepish in general, but there are more important issues.

Mistargeted, huh? Or maybe it indicates that you have now idea what you are talking about....? We are saying here that SR is broken BECAUSE OF insane energy, and then you are coming with another broken e-management arguing beside SR....? Does that make sense to you?
SR: 5-15 pips energy regen <------Broken

ER: 10-30 pips energy regen <------Broken
5 enchant cast every 2s: 30pips
3 enchants cast every 3s: 12pips

Mesmer interrupts (at ins=14, +10s recharge and I am very generous here) <---------fine
Leech S: 1 pips (conditional)
Power D: 2.5 pips (conditional)

Energy regen of builds:
N/Rt: ~16pips <---imba
E/Rt: ~16pips <---imba
Rt/Me: ~7.1pips (ins12) <----fine
Me/Rt: ~7.5pips (ins14) <----fine

Rt sucks, if you don't have orsion and healing breeze on your monk, she can be better than any Rt. Obviously any Rt/X is still better than the corresponding X/Rt (in teh case of mesmer, that 0.4pips energy is not going to make a difference but the Rt runes will!), unless you use broken e-management like SR and ER.

And yet being different in this case is the better thing. The only ones being detrimental to themselves are the sheep that have no clue. I'd rather be the wolf.

Such as? This is where I say, "OK, please point to some specific overpowered builds that rely on SR to make them overpowered."

We've seen that SR gives you a whole lot of energy. There's tons of posts "proving" the obvious that SR gives you (a lot) more energy than anything besides E.Renewal. (See, for example, Vazze's post on this page.) But I've come to question the validity of the premise that a whole lot of energy, by itself, necessarily makes a build overpowered, or even good. So I want to see the dots connected -- show me specific builds that are overpowered specifically because of the energy they get from SR.

Sould Reaping is powerfull, no body can possibly argue against that.

However its power should be offset by the skills the Necro has rather than by nerfing SR to the point where Necros can't run thier own skills.

If SR is solely to blame then we should be talking about Pure Necro builds that are dominating everything, not Necro/X builds that are reaping damage or healing beyond design.

Show me the Necro build, using only Necro skills, that tears apart all of GW.

Aside from limiting SR to Minions controled by that particular char, ie if a party members minions die you get 0 you must control them yourself, then there is no possible means of changing SoulReaping that will have any true effect upon builds where a Nerco/X is using secondary skills with equal effect as the primary classes those skills belong to.

People who want a necro build as proof that SR is overpowered are a bit wrong. SR is not UB. SR and UB are two completely different things. UB is a build , SR is a method of energy management. UB is overpowered because it's the most powerful build of all. SR is overpowered because it's the most efficient method of energy management from all methods , mostly because the user of SR doesn't need to equip any particular skills to benefit from SR , stop casting spells on recharge , play in a particular style , he just plays the game like he had infinite energy , which he has. That's why SR is overpowered.

Another chief difference between UB and SR is that the former takes much less effort to use it to its best capabilities.

E/Rt's are stupid. Ether Renewal shines when you're going overkill with 10e skills. That's why E/Mo prots are so good - they can have Prot Spirit/Shield Guardian/Spirit Bond all on the same bar....even that's way too much for a nec to handle. Restor bars arn't really that energy intensive. An E/Rt wastes more skillspace, including it's elite, even if the Restor elites arn't all that great. I have no idea why anyone would use an E/Rt over an E/Mo or N/Rt.

Players that consider "Sabway" overpowered are often bad and don't have a clue. There's a reason why PvE skill-balance threads often turn into a waste of space. The only thing really dominating and affecting PvE is Ursan. Soul Reaping is powerful in PvE, but not in the same way it used to be in HA. "SY" para's are also insanely good, but they also haven't managed to affect the game like Ursan has. That 1 skill alone completely changed the price on most high-end items because it made the game so easy. That right there is obviously a problem and is pretty much the only problem.

"SY" para's are just as powerful as Ursan (and better in many situations), but not in the same way, but that's a whole different thing sorta...

UB and SY! share the first prize for the most overpowered thing in PvE. Hitting them both with the nerfbat would multiply my love factor for A.net at least by 100

I want to hear Racthoh's thoughts on SY.

Personally, I think SY simply needs a recharge that only allows it to be kept up somewhere in the 10-30% range. Leave the strength alone. It's basically Shelter, and it has a clear value. But it needs to be changed so that it cannot be maintained. Force it to be used tactically.

Also tie it to strength.

Shelter also needs a PvE version where the spirit doesn't take damage...it just last for 5-10s and ends.

EDIT: UB could probably be fixed by giving it a fixed duration of 15-30s and a 1-2 min recharge.

As Kosto said - the problem isn't what the build can do.
The problem is the fact that SR is so insanely out of touch with everything else in the game.
It's too good compared to other options.

Yeah - but something being broken badly and something being broken a bit less have a thing in common - they are still BOTH broken.

Great!
Then you'll see 6 warriors / 2 monks - with 3 warriors morphing into Ursan at each group - while the rest recharges and they use the wiki build of the moment.

Well, what would you suggest regarding SR upier?

You don't have to provide math, but conceptually what model would you build around?

If you want to balance it - then I suggest the delete button.
There is no way around it.

If you want to keep in the game though - something like what I posted here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=211
Spirit Burn like nerf. Would be interesting. Since Ursan is so easily overshadowed by good builds when not used by a full party. So if you "balance" it the normal way (by trashing it for a single user - rather then trashing it for the party!) - it becomes even worse then it is now.

Soul Reaping, not UB.

EDIT: I agree about deleting UB though.

I largely agree with you. Achieving PvE balance has 2 major components: (1) getting all of the "best" builds for each class onto roughly the same power level, and (2) choosing how high to put that top power level in reference to the monsters, so as to strike the right balance of challenge and doability for the bulk of your audience. I have to agree that Ursan is off-the-charts bad in both respects. I also have to agree that it's pretty much alone in how far up there it is. Other things that get the label "overpowered" aren't nearly so much stronger than other options as Ursan (or full Ursan teams to be precise). Perhaps more importantly, they don't really violate the player/monster power balance the way Ursan does. There's a lot of complaining on the forums that PvE skills, SR, E.Renewal, etc. make the game "too easy." Not really. I think they're just about right for striking a good balance between challenge and doability for the bulk of a-net's audience. I might personally like the game to be a little more challenging in places for my own enjoyment, but I understand that, for the sake of the game as a whole, these things are in the place they need to be along the player/monster power balance. Now, we still have the problem that they are too strong as compared to other player options. Well, that means we need to buff the other player options. (Yes, Sha, I have decided to embrace your "buff most everything" approach. After thinking about it, I think you're right.)

I'm going to resort to some rudimentary visual aids.

This is the current state of affairs. Red bars represent the power levels on various builds. Consider this maybe the best build for each class represented on the graph. The dashed line is the level where I think challenge and doability vis-a-vis the monsters are in proper balance for the bulk of a-net's audience.

Several things are wrong here. Ursan is way out above everything else, and it's way out above the dashed line. The rest of the builds aren't really in balance with each other. Many are way below the dashed line. A few are a bit above it.

This is the state of affairs that I consider desirable.

Ursan is taken down. Maybe a few other builds are taken down a little bit. And a whole bunch of builds get brought way up. This is the "buff most everything" approach, and I've come to think it's correct.

There's one other state of affairs I want to look at. Call this the "nerf everything" approach.

A fair number of people on the forums are advocating this sort of change for various reasons (desire for a more challenging game for themselves, misguided belief that nerfs are good, petty desire to protect one's e-peen by "nerfing the other players" before they gain "leet" items and titles, trolling, etc.). While this certainly puts player builds in balance with each other, I don't think the player/monster outcome is desirable. Making the game hard enough to be nice and challenging for the hardcore makes it impossible and frustrating for the rest.

I'm not sure how much constructive conversation can be had between the "buff most everything" and "nerf everything" camps. We can hash out "A > B," but we fundamentally disagree on whether that calls for nerfing A or buffing B. To go back to the SR example, Carinae has pretty much conclusively shown that SR isn't responsible for any builds above that dashed line, or above the other high-lying red bars, and yet there's still a lot of screaming "but SR is the most overpowered thing ever!! Nerf! Nerf! Nerf!" What's going on? Did these people just not read the thread? Maybe a few of them. Are they stupid? Some of them. Are they trolling? Well, upier is. But I think most of it has to do with a belief that the dashed line of player/monster balance ought to be much lower, and lots of things, including SR, need to get nerfed down along with it. I think they're totally wrong. But I'm not going to convince them of that through any amount of exacting analysis of how powerful SR really is or isn't. I would need to convince them that the proper place for the dashed line of player/monster balance is somewhere higher than they think it should be. And I'm not entirely sure how to do that.


-----------------------------------

Topic change: Save Yourselves.

I want to point out that nerfing SY very hard would have some negative unintended consequences.

To see why, it helps to look at SY historically.
(1) The monsters are stat pumped, and became more and more so as newer chapters came out. Counteracting their huge stat pumped damage requires a MAJOR damage mitigation.
(2) One of the first forms of major damage mitigation was the tanking component of tank-n-spank. By directing the damage through the warrior's armor/stances/bonds/etc. it could be mitigated it down to a manageable level.
(3) Except it was labeled as "bad" and "degenerate" play. It was boring. It was slow. Except for the warrior, it was relatively skill-less. It encouraged class and build discrimination. In short, there were a lot of things wrong with tank-n-spank.
(4) SY exists -- and I'll go so far as to speculate that it was intended to exist -- as an alternative way for warriors to do major damage mitigation without all the "badness" and "degeneracy" of tank-n-spank. The tank is still soaking up damage. He's just using his lungs instead of his face. But this way the rest of the team is constantly in the fray, playing too. And the class and build discrimination is no longer necessary, since the success of the damage mitigation doesn't depend on the other players staying out of the way.

Now, what happens if we nerf SY? Well, if we nerf it a little bit, then nothing happens. Except a lot of forum QQ. But, if we nerf it enough that it no longer mitigates damage as well as tank-n-spank does, then people are going to jump back to tank-n-spank. Insofar as most people seem to think that tank-n-spank was a really bad thing, giving people an incentive to go back to it isn't a very bright idea.

"Why not nerf SY and tank-n-spank?" you ask. There's two reasons. First of all, I don't think a-net can nerf tank-n-spank. Tank-n-spank plays off the weakness of the monster AI. From what I've seen, a-net either doesn't have anyone who could make a monster AI that wouldn't fall for tanking, and was also good in other respects, or they are unwilling to dedicate said person's time to improving the AI for GW1. Second, it would make the game disgustingly harder. The monsters are just too damn stat pumped to get past without major damage mitigation, and there's very little foolproof major damage mitigation available. How would you defeat DoA with no SY and no tanking (and no Ursan)? Maybe you could stick PS on every single party member, but even then it would be ugly.

Accordingly, my thoughts are:
1. Putting a recharge on it, or anything else that forces downtime, is a bad idea. That's almost sure to send people running back to the "reliability" of tank-spank.
2. If you must nerf it, lowering the AL bonus is probably the way to go. I think you could probably get away with taking it down to 80 safely.
3. Tying it to Strength would be OK in my book. But, at the same time, some serious buffs would have to be given to paragons, since they would be losing what many believe is the only good PvE build that class has.

See - I KNEW you were asking how I'd nerf one overpowered piece of crap!
I just got the names mixed up!


(I'll return to your question in the morning though!)

If you really think Weapon of Remedy is garbage then you're sadly mistaken.... I would say the same for anyone who dismisses the power of free energy through MM/SR synergy.

Come on now guys, of course the builds are viable if you're going to run them with Mesmer interrupts or Ether Renewal. Of course! The whole point of those energy management skills existing in the first place is to offer potential buffs to the player's energy pool to allow larger overall output.... the whole issue with Soul Reaping is that you get all of that wonderful e-management for NOTHING.

I'm continually amused by people's bickering over one or two issues without stepping back to take in the whole game's imbalance situation at once.

Delete all armor, weapons and items.

Delete all character classes and attributes.

Delete all character skins.

Delete all skills except UB.

Restore Stickmen skins.


Balanced. Differences do not exist. Differences are bad.

Balanced is not that everything is equal.

If you honestly think it is then you have other problems to worry about besides N/Rt's.

LOL that is loaded with fail....


Your posts are mirroring the state of GW,ie slowly failing to provide any sensible reasoning and sense whilst continuing to promote the ludicrous.


Cheerio.

congrats your bad and have no idea what you are talking about. :/

I thought that was a very good analysis but I didn't want to quote it all. One thing that I'd like to add you can still employ the same tactics you do with an imbagon (everyone attacks stuff) with out one, you just can't be AS careless. Aside from DoA most HM is reasonable with out sy or tank n spank. I don't think nerfing tank n spank along with save yourselves is as important as you've made it out to be because tank n spank is slow enough that most people aren't willing to take the safety it provides in exchange for how inefficient it is.

There are several levels of Balance in PvE that seam to be forgoten most of the time.

One big one is the balance between Offence and Defence.

In PvP this balance should be perfect, thus the team with the better strategy/skill or the team that makes the first mistake desides the outcome.

In PvE this balance can't exist since the Monsters will always have an edge in numbers. If they had perfect balanced skill bars then a battle between 1 mob could last 20minutes in a mission with 100mobs!

So the question becomes what advantage should players have to balance out the numbers?
Currently the players have the advantage in Defence, we can't match the power of monster when it comes to damage.

Should this be changed?

One thing to remember with the dotted line: With the exception of PvE and monster skills, the monsters are using the same skills as the players. So buffing or nerfing skills that aren't player- or monster-exclusive will self-correct the line.

This includes enemy Necromancers.

My point largely with the E/Rts and so on is... sure, maybe N/Rts are more powerful than the others. However, N/Rts are still the only overpowered build that's been cited to be overpowered due to Soul Reaping.

Thus, while Soul Reaping looks overpowered on paper, is that really what is causing the N/Rt build to be overpowered? If it's only a little more powerful than the E/Rt and Me/Rt, then that would seem to be the case - implying it's the other part of the build that's actually causing the problem.

Because we're not going to start saying that Mesmer energy management is overpowered in PvE, right? RIGHT?

Theory Wars is all very well and good, but it wouldn't be the first time I've come across something that was obviously broken on paper that turned out not to be in practise. The question that really needs to be tested here is that of whether the alternate /Rts are still overpowered or just viable.

Well, we have the test case from a few pages back: Pongmei with a N/Rt, a half-empty skillbar, a MM and a handful of (non-healer) henchmen. Let's have someone do that run with a N/Rt and again with an E/Rt and report their findings...

Sadly that's not true. It would be true if the monsters were level 20 with the same 200 attribute points and 12 attribute rank cap that we have. But they aren't. Monsters get stat buffs and significantly outnumber you. As a result, a lot of PvE, especially a lot of HM PvE is "playing against the monsters' stat buffs" instead of "playing against the monsters' skillbars." 90% of the threat from, say, a HM Margonite Executioner is the ridiculous auto-attack damage. Tweaking skills is not going to have an impact on that on way or the other.

I've previously called this the "original sin" of Guild Wars. Avarre also identifies it as the place where GW went off track. As do several others. The "right" answer to fixing everything that's wrong with GW is completely redoing the monsters. Make them level 20's with decent skillbars, decent team compositions, and decent AI. Make the challenge come from their builds and not their stats. Doing so would make that dashed line of player/monster balance self-correcting. Then you'd just have to worry about class-to-class and build-to-build balance. PvE-only skills could be nerfed/removed, as their purpose for existing would be gone. And, most importantly for some bitter people here, the PvE/PvP Split could be reversed, since balance changes would, for the first time, actually be balance changes for PvE instead of just nerfs. (To explain that last comment: In a stat-pumped-monster world, nerfs hurt the player a lot, but don't hurt the monster very much. So, "balance changes" feel like nothing but player nerfs. In a world where monsters are build-based creatures too, balance changes really would change the balance across the board.)

Now, unfortunately, I don't believe a-net is either capable or willing to adopt the "right" solution. It's just too much work too late in the game. Plus it requires a better AI programmer than they seem to have/seem to be willing to task with developing better AI. Given that, what's the next best choice? I think it's to go forward with the PvE/PvP Split, and give PvE Sha's "buff most everything" approach. Make a diversity of builds roughly equal to each other and all equal to the challenge posed by the stat pumped monsters.

You'd have to talk with Carinae. I've seen the Me/Rt's in action. I didn't find them noticeably different from N/Rt's. I think the E/Rt with E.Renewal turned out to be superior to N/Rt, except maybe for situations where tons of condition removal is needed.

"Better builds" does not always equate to easier difficulty. This can be seen in the numerous instances of much better thought out monster team builds, who are easily crushed just as any other gimmicky mob.

The chief for what we have now is the AI, and this is what would be an utter pain in the ass to do: Having to have monster adapt to thousands of skills, builds, professions, compositions, and positions is a whole crap load to take into note. Given the near millions of variables that exist in GW that you'd have to take into account for the monster to recognize, it's very understandable and acceptable of why we've been presented with what we have now.

In terms of energy, the low recharge heals are the most important in the build: Weapon of Remedy, Weapon of Warding, Mend Body and Soul, Spirit Light. It takes (1+1.75+1.75+1.75)= 6.25s to cast these skills and they cost 25 energy which is 4 ene/s or 12pips (the long recharge PwK and life does not change this much). So the build is cast time restricted above 10-12pips, and it is energy restricted below that. I seriously doubt that the Rt/Me can get even close to the theoretical maximum 7pips of energy (the mesmer interrups are not sure deals) I think realistically it is not more than ~6pips even with "hero reflexes". In the same time the necro has >>12pips so the N/Rt should be able to heal ~70% more than the Rt/Me after the energy pool of the Rt/Me is consumed, which should happen after 45ene/(11pips-6pips)= ~25-30s. (due to the runes the Rt/Me has ~10-15% more heal in the first half a minute).
Actually it becomes cast time restricted earlier than I thought, anyways, is it godmode? No. Is the N/Rt clearly better than the Rt/X? Yes.

/signed.
HM was only a "present", we did not pay for it like we did for the chapters, still .... I hope to see some changes in GW2.

double post ftl

You're failing on the part where SR isn't a skill and 2 mesmer e-management skills are and an elite is and they are equal. (or in SR's case, hella better on 2 of the 3)/

Mesmer e-management and ele e-management take valuable skill slots. SR doesn't. This makes the N/Rt superior because Soul Reaping gives it more options that a Me/Rt and an E/Rt just do not have because they have to use slots to achieve the same effect.~

EDIT:
Also it is unclear if enemy monsters use the same soul reaping as players. It largely doesn't matter (they have obscene (200+) energy levels with +4-+8 e-regen anyways) but monsters/NPCs do not play by the exact same rules. Enemy creatures can exploit pets, players can't, for example.

One simple solution that Anet never clued in on was to create random swaping of monsters on maps.

Rather than have the exact same mobs, with the exact same professions in the exact same location or even same patrol routes what they should have done was create a tiny variable that sets the monsters on the map each time you enter it.

Example: When a player enters North Kyrta Province the game sets up each of the mobs by selecting from a list of mobs that can be on that map. Mob A) Mergoyle OR Bog Skale OR Fire Imp. Mob B) Caromi Tengu OR Gypsie Ettin OR Fog Nightmare. Mob C) Ancient Oakheart OR Reed Stalker OR Spined Aloe.

As each mob is a random creation from a fixed set you create at least a small amount of uncertanty for the players to deal with. Add to that creating 2 builds for each monster that are randomly selected and youve got a much more challenging game without much effort.

But in that case, the "challenge" would still remain the same. You put together your team build based upon the area you're going in, and just swapping monster locations wouldn't change that a whole lot.