PvE Balance - Part 2

I don't agree with any of this im afraid

Sorry to take the post off on a mesmery tangent. I just think the original Luxon / Sunspear skills, and subsequant title based skills are terrible planning if they were just going to split PvE and PvP a year later. Instead of having the split as their last resort, it may have been better being their first.

I've a better idea:

(1)

Kick out the Paragon Class completely and put it only in again , when Anet has given that class a much better Concept as a unique Hunter Class (what would also fit alot more and better to the African Culture of NF).

Paragons are the most retardest Wannabe-Profession beneath Dervishs, and those 2 missconcepted professions completly ruin the good flair of the other 8 professions, which have concepts, that fir to the game and doesn't let them look like some Wannabe- 3 in 1 Professions.

After the Reconcept of paragons, the Class should look then more like this:

(Hunter)

[P]Sixth Sense
The Primary Attribute Sixth Sense for the Hunter will increase for every Point you have in it the Chance to dodge physical Attacks by 1,5%. (R16 = 24% chance to dodge physical attacks.) Every 3 points the amount of Energy healed when dodgign a physical Attack will be increased by 2. This Energy heal can happen only maximum 3 Times per 15 seconds.
Includes also Skills to detect layed down Traps and to deactivate them, before they can deal damage.

This Attribute will contain Self Buff Skills to increase Critical Hit rates, Attack Damage, Movement Speed ect.

Great Weapon Mastery
Weapon Attribute 1 *Short Range 2H Weapons (Sword/Axe)*
Slash Damage

Chakram Mastery
Weapon Mastery 2 (will include also Boomerang Skins) *Far Ranged both handed 1H Weapons* (like Daggers, but only ranged)
Slash/Blunt Damage (Boomerangs)

Spear Mastery
Weapon Mastery 3 (Short/Mid Range 2H Weapon)
Piercing Damage

Hunter's Instinct
Self Heal Skill Attribute as also Self Buffs and Trap Skills, which are more specialized on single targets, than to damage multiple targets like Ranger Traps, but therefore are naturally more powerful due to Armor penetration bonis for example.
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AL varies between 70 and 80 in regard of which Insignias you wear, but stand would be 70.

Energy stays 30 and Regeneration stays >>. So Hunter's would be similar concepted as Warriors with 5 Attributes having a wide variety of Weapons able to use, but be more mid to far ranged hybrids in Combat in first line.
That concept would fit to that class for NF alot better and with great Weapon Mastery it would give Warriors also the opportuniy to become kind of Berserkers, without that Berserkers need to be implemented as own class, so its a win/win only for both professions.
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(2)

Let the Skills, how they are, and just don't use them, if you don't like them
Just again +1 Ursan QQ... when will this perma QQ finally stop and people will learn to accept that skill how it is. Nobody ever forces you to use ursan Blessing, just play with your god damn GUILD MEMBERS that have the same opinion like you and you will have never problems in finding people for the Elite areas to play them without bear power or any other pve only skills -.-
Thats way this game is still called "GUILD WARS", because you play with other people of your same GUILD.
People bitch ever about, how dumb PUG's are, so why the **** do so much people make a ****** mess about it, what other people use for skills to play the game, how they want to play it.

Stop dictating other peoples, how they have to play the game!!!!
Guild Wars is also made for casual gameers, not only for lifeless basement dwellers of Hardcore Gamers and Ursan Blessing is Anets (i must admit) cheap solution to make the game more casual gamer friendly, so that these type of players will have also the chance to get one day things like the FoW Armor or to complete the Elite Areas in a normal time zone window, which a casual gamer can afford !!! and not that it takes for everythign ever like 3-4+ hours to do something, that is being called an Elite Area.

With Ursan Blessing and Consumeables as good party you can do the areas in like 1-2 hours or fasters, step by step if you don't make a FR and thats good for casual gamers.

But selfish players which think every only first on their own profit will never understand this -.-

Same counts for the non imbalanced Synergy of...

(3)

...Sabway.

Thats the point, where I believe, that you must have lost completely your mind >.> LOL

However, i've absolutely nothign against the points of giving us finally 7 Heroes possible and that Necros should receive for PvE an increased Limit for summoning minions. NOT endless, but it should be at least 20 !!
1 Minion per level of your Character is fair and good, anythign else is just retarded crap that we got thx to PvP like ever -.-
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The rest is ok XD

Quoted for truth , if you don't like PvE , play PvP , if don't like neither , then don't play GW. Let other people play and have fun.

N/Rt and N/Mo healers aren't invincible and they address the problem that ANet forgot to give Rits and Monks adequate energy management and over-priced skills in the fast-paced PvE environment. Even removing the the soul reaping benefit from minions wouldn't hinder N/Rt healers because the rate of deaths in PvE means that there's a constant influx of energy from monsters.

which is to give a class an inherent energy management attribute that is active all the time, gives you a good amount of defense.
Ho yeah and it already contains self buffs, so no need to invest in an otherwise useless attribute (read, the present motivation line).


Anything wrong with that?

Ideas I really like:

remove SR timer, and energy gain from minions, at the same time. Makes sense.

Scale loot up with bigger parties instead of down with smaller parties. That idea alone is more intelligent than probably anything Anet has ever done for PVE.

(haven't read everything yet, just skimming at work)

The current inherent effect of leadership is not better. There you have also permantent energy management and all you need to do is using Shouts or Chants all the time. and you get the energy for every ally of yours, so the larger your group, so better the energy that you get back up to the point, that your Shouts chants will never cost energy, because you get it all the tiem instantly back or even more energy back, than the shout/chant had cost. and best is that Shouts/Chants are not stripable too yet.

More balanced would have been, when you get the energy only, when chants end. This way the inherent effect would have a balanced limitation.

About my idea for the primary iherent effect of my reconcepted paragons as Hunters...
uhm, if 1,5% per point is too much, its no problem to decrease the % to 1% per point or to increase the %, but to increase for example to increasign caps to "per 2 Attribute Points" to lower for example the maximum % possible from 24 to 16-20 or so.

But I think my idea is balanced enough, because it has 2 Limitations.

1. Its based on %, so also on Luck on only the logical theory would say, that you would receive at 24% (R16) every 4th physical hit energy through dodging it.

2. it has the same energy limitation, as Soul Reaping, so you can receive withing 15 seconds only max 3x the energy bonus, after that comes nothing, until 15 seconds are over and you can then receive for the next 15 seconds again 3x energy ect. pp.
This limits drastically the energy bonus rate and you will not receive permanently energy when dodging physical attacks.
So when you dodge a 4+th time an attack within 15 seconds, you will receive no energy.

Plus also the inherent effect is unique, no class yet has an effect, thats about dodging attacks.

I'm not sure if this is the best approach.

The SS Necro and the N/Rt healer are self-sufficient. That is to say, they will work with or without minions feeding them energy (Signet of Lost Souls + Soul Reaping). As such, we can assume that they will receive no real change from a nerf to the minion engine.

However, in the interest of toning down N/Rts, implementing a hard change to secondary skills isn't a good solution. The problem is that Soul Reaping feeds it too much energy, even more so than if a Rit brought Offering of Spirit and ran the same template. This is an issue of SR significantly outperforming an elite e-management skill, a decent one at that. It's better to have this addressed than adding a unintuitive change that solves one issue then brings up another - that being Necros are discouraged from bringing secondary skills at all. Inter-class builds are healthy for the game, and the few abuses of this mechanic (like the N/Rt) should be toned down without collateral damage.

N/Rts also bring up some other problems that aren't immediately obvious. A large part of why N/Rts are a problem is that Monk heroes can't manage energy. The WoH hybrid template is stronger than any Necro healer, and a decent human player with WoH will outperform any human or a hero Necro healer. If the N/Rts are gone, Monk heroes will still overheal and be bad at prots. An analogy would be like nerfing Searing Flames because heroes can't play Mind Blast. Just as it's better if the AI for MB were improved, it would be better if the AI for Monks were improved.

As for Minion Bombers and Minion Masters in general, another solution would be for minions to trigger SR only if the minion belonged to you. This would get rid of minion engines while maintaining the viability of MMs in as few changes as possible. While removing minion decay is understandable, the request to also remove the minion cap is less reasonable. Logically, by removing the minion cap you'd want enormous minion armies or else it would be easier just to increase the cap to, say, 16. However, large minion armies were somewhat kept in check with decay, and with that gone as well, it seems like an overbuff to MMs when they are currently already decent, and would be decent still with your changes to SR.

With all that said, there seems to be a thought among Necros that they should be able to spam a bar full of 10-15 energy skills with no energy management beyond SR. This passive source of energy has always given far too much for what you put in. Encouraging active sources would be a good idea, like Signet of Lost Souls, which favours awareness and timing. This would be a more interesting solution than simply reverting SR back to roughly where it was.

Unfortunately there are far to many flaws in the PvE balance of GW to fix at this point, hence GW2 is being made.

Every profession requires better internal balance currently to make use of all attributes and to allow for greater variety of builds.

The monsters we face require a better balance of skills to create a need for balanced parties.

The goals in PvE Missions/Quests/Dungeons require a greater amount of variety so that we are not simply creating a "kill all monsters" party for everything in GW.

Much as I love GW, there is no quick fix for the problems that currently exist.

If Ursan was added to prevent discrimination, it would put classes at a set health + armor level and not be upgradeable through a title grind. Not to mention I've already heard of instances where people have been taking Warrior only Ursans, so it doesn't look like it's working too well.

Problem is that we used to have the opposite, both a skillful game in PvE and /P.

I rather Arena-Net take out all PvE only skills lol, i don't use them, and stop trying to make changes to necromancer!

So , everyone else shouldn't use them too?

@Bryant Again : pve is skillful until you beat it on NM , in HM it's the same , only more stupid and grindy. GW1 will never be and most likely never was a skillful game because of the enemy AI , and no skill balance can change that. The most likely reason more experienced players think the game was more skillful in the past is because they weren't as skilled at the game as they are now.

Well, I can tell you that allowing skills that make players as strong as the monsters was not a good direction.

And since you added this:

Agreed if PvE skills + consumables did not exist.

I agree with some of what you've said, however I think ursan needs to be nerfed a little harder than just the 20 armor. I'd go with adding a conditional to the KD and a longer recharge on strike.

I don't really think nerfing sabway would do a whole lot, I've run with people who think it's the best thing going and get rolled. It isn't effective in all areas and can be countered quite easily in HM PvE.

No need to nerf the imbagon too badly just change the amount of armor gained and make the duration a set time of 3 seconds. It works great but it's not nearly as effective with just H/H. It's much more of a guild/friend's list type of build.

Nerfing tank and spank would require hitting so many skills, there's also nothing really imba about it imo. If you're worried about people only wanting to use SF eles as opposed to other classes then you're probably not playing with very good people.

Most of all, just get rid of consumables.

kostolomac, i am not sure why you ask me that. lol

i said i don't mind pve skills being remove from the game because I don't use them as oppose to making changes to necromancer.

necromancer is fine as it is now, is my view. Just becasue most players wants to use PvE skills, my necromancer gets change all the time is actually very unfair.

i think the sabway ones are retarded, everything else is a great idea.

i mean really? lowering effectivness of secondary skills is just silly, plus, emanagement would be hard on any MM using higher energy minions.



sy nerf is good, it is much harder to maintain as a warrior primary, and it is the only party wide utility they bring as uposed to the imbagon

yes but if you really want to make party play more interesting and rewarding then you have to look at the drops, in gw every boss drops the same boring crap green, in "another game" you can get 200-400 different greens/blues with random stats from a single boss which makes farming with friends more interesing than just going for the same green over and over again

Skill changes didn't "Disturb" PvE. Anyone who truly believed that it affected them went onto forums and expressed they are bothered about it. Skill balances didn't do anything drastic to PvE.

As for PvE skills, some, such as the Blessing skills (Which go against this game's design in the first place), and severely overpowered skills beyond stupidity (Ursan Blessing, Save Yourselves are two big ones), basically made the PvE part of the game more of a cakewalk than it ever was.

As for Ursan "Removing" discrimination, I think I should just quote Bryant.
Now, onto the OP...

I agree wholeheartedly with the Paragon change. Nothing to add or argue against.

The blessing skills should be killed, or should give an effect to your bar. It should leave the pre-made bar to the quests, much like Wurms.

As for Sabway; removing the ability to gain energy from minions will kill MM's energy-wise. I suggest that it is changed to:

As for making heroes be able to be up to 7, I wholeheartedly agree.

Tank&Spank, I agree.

I understood that as a wish to take all pve skills out of the game , I don't use them myself too much (only "Finish Him!" , UB is boring) , but I wouldn't want them to be nerfed or removed.

i don't either, but if its a choice between changing necromancer, i choose removing pve skills

btw: what the is a con?

Responses to various replies:
- If A's and Me's 'need' PvE skills, this is a fundamental error in the class design, and should be addressed as such. The introduction of 'PvE skills' (i.e., skills that implicitly ignore balance) is counterproductive. The example of Critical Agility is a terrible one, because that skill is broken too, and if anything actually makes the case for banning PvE skills even stronger.

- Nobody is telling casual players how they should play the game. You're free to use all the broken stuff you find 'fun', but do so in normal mode (i.e., the newbie sandbox). I don't see why you'd feel entitled to play in hardmode when it's beyond your ability. As I said, the casual players can stay in normal mode - which, in fact, was designed for casual players to begin with.

- AI and skillbar improvements ultimately make PvE more dynamic and allow targetted changes to break overused builds without punishing the innovators. PvP evolves because your opponents are humans that think and improve over time; PvE lacks this sort of evolutionary development and fails in large part because of it. Thus, regular dev-driven changes can be made to keep the game unpredictable and fresh, without touching skills or attributes.

- Against MMs, I cited Backfire as an example, but it doesn't have to be Backfire specifically. I will note, however, that punishment hexes in general work very well against heroes simply because heroes often fail to take them into account. As for Banishing Strike vs. MMs, while MMs would like to cycle minions, remember that they need corpses to do so. Banishing Strike can destroy clumped minion armies of arbitrary size while inflicting heavy damage to characters in the vicinity - MMs are thus riskier to run, where is the problem? And, again, Banishing is an example; there are any number of other ways you could address MMs - for instance, adjusting monster AI to ignore minions, or even to prioritize the MM. You could put in more enemies with corpse-denial or minion stealing skills. Use your imagination.

- My overall point is that while PvP is mostly a function of the skills themselves (since all players have free access to the same skills), PvE has the added components of monster skillbars, monster AI, and level design that have largely been ignored. You don't have to adjust PvE by nerfing the players, because you can adjust the monsters or the areas instead.

The classes are fine, it's just the way PvE functions that makes them less efficient.
It's been discussed over and over again in for example the Mesmer forum.

If it came to which one you'd rather adjust - PvE or the class itself - I'd much rather go for the class.

And why then you feel that you are entitled to play HM without pve skills?
I play HM using the best skills at my disposal , if some of them are pve I will use them. And btw , PvE was designed for casuals to begin with , PvP is for real players. Anet devs must have been on some crazy sh*t when they got the idea to make more elite areas (urgoz , deep , doa) to please the PvE'ers. Every player is entitled to every aspect of this game , it's his choice if he does that.

However I agree that the design of some classes is flawed , and that adding pve skills inefficiently solved this problem.

Why do inexperienced and demanding players feel that they're entitled to play in HM if they can't do well in NM?

Likewise, Hard Mode should remain for more skilled players. If the normal mode of the areas is too inaccessible, then fix that. Don't screw over the whole game just because of that, though.

It really makes no sense for ANet to appease to people who can't complete stuff in NM yet want to see the hardest challenges.

I'm not even sure why did they put HM in the first place , moar titles to grind? By beating the game I become entitled to play in HM , it's my choice and ability that shows how will I do there , but that concept is junk since any moron with 3 hero builds from wiki can beat the game and unlock HM.

It was to give players who wanted harder content more things to work on. Some people refused to move onto PvP.

And Anet catered to those people , the catered to another group when they made ursan. The game is going down the drain just because of that. People need to realize that Anet isn't there do make everything to their wishes and accept the original concept that the pve part of GW was just a story line , more like RPG rather than a MMO.

OMG! How is it possible someone changes his attitude 180 degrees in such a small amount of time? I fully agreed with the first list, but this... Destroying the most popular builds, you must be out of your mind! It would cause a lot of still dedicated players to leave the game inmediately.

Did you really had to quote all that?

I think it would do the oppsite: encourage dedicated players to find and to exploit more broken things. Plus, it would give the game a new lease of life by shaking up virtually untouched things for the past year+.

Mesmer are just simple boring, because they have absolutely no skills, that you would imagine under that Class, which should be masters of "Sleep", because thats is the real specialization of the Mesmers - Sleep Control through Hypnosis.

I fail to see for example, where the Mesmer has really skills that have the effect to lullaby enemies into Sleep to dominate then through Domination Magic their Dreams to deal damage direct to the Souls of the enemies cause of manipulating the Dreams with Nightmares and Illusions.
Yet imo the Mesmer is only one many of the Professions of GW, which are gameplay wise imo a complete concepted FAIL. Not to mention that normally the real masters of Illusions should be Harlequins (Clowns) and not a Caster Class, that has the specialization of manipulating/dominating foes through Sleep and Hypnosis and dealing damage through their strong psi powers.
Not to mention, that the measmers have no single skill, which effects really look like illusions and should have the effect to confuse the enemies.
and why ? because simple in GW1 exist the negative status ailments Confusion and Sleep not -.-

Real good concepted Mesmer would look more like this:
(a hybrid between GW1's Mesmer, Puppeteers + Psions)

[P]Will Power
Attribute for non elemental Psi Attacks. Increases for every point in WP the duration of Enchants and Hexes by 2% and whenever a Hex gets casted on you, your Defense Power against Damage from all Sources will increase per Attribute Point in WP also by 2 Points, as long the Hex is on you.
Will Power will also decrease for every 5 Points the Energy Cost of Mesmer Spells by 1

Domination Magic
All the Skills we know from mesmers out of GW1, but under Domination will fall now then too also the Control of magical Puppets as Puppeteer.
Caster Interrupt Skills

Hypnosis
Skills that have to do with Hypnosis bringing Foes into the Sleep Status being able to manipulate their Dreams and to deal so damage
Physical Interrupt Skills (you need no Illusions for that, Sleep does better, Illusions is the speciality of Harlequins )

Ether Channeling
(the better naming for "Inspiration Magic" *cough* which is also no School of Magic at all, but only a silly thought out name for a type of Magic to give that attribute somehow a name. Not every crap must end ever with "Magic" for Caster Classes -.-

This way mesmer would act like what Mesmers are specialized for and not like Wannabe-Illusionists that Mesmers don't are in reality.

However, thats an other topic XD.

B2T:

Hard Mode is not only for hardcore players and such players which think, that NM is no challenge (what it is as skilled player in the end really not, but however, thats not the point) If a casual player plays now in NM, or in HM plays no role. fact is, nobody should dictate other players regardless in which mode, how they should play the game in any of the both modes.
No one should dictate others, which skills should be usable in hardmode, and which not, only because certain pepople are at the opinion, UB destroys the game's challenge, when the simple solution will be ever juts not to use UB and/or Consumeables when you want to have challenge.

but the important fact is: only because you play something with ursan does not mean, that the "challenge" will vanish after you beat the game as ursan group. NO... people can ever replay the missions so often they want, first tiem play as ursans, just to get it done and the next time then without ursan for more challenge, when you don't have to worry about things anymore, like that you could die in the mission or so.

Also only because certain people (not includign me9 are casual gamers doesn't mean automatically, that hard Mode is for these peopel beyond their abilities. Saying that has something imo of an insult against casual gamers beign too dumb for hard mode, if you ask me Burst Cancel >.> like

"Go little Noob ,stay with your Teddy Bear in the safe NM, in HM will eat you only the big scary monsters, as long your are not strong enough to selfdefense you without your Teddy Bear"

It is really exactly that "its ok to play ursan like you say in NM, but for HM you want to forbid it huh?" thats the point I mentioned, where people should stop to dictate others how they should play the game. Only because you have a personal problem with UB, doesn't mean, that automatically all will have the same problem with it, like you have it

When I want to play ursan in hardmode, regardless of which reasons, then Anet should let me, anyone should let me and nobody has the right to forbid me which skills I should/can use, and which not, with the exception of naturally pve only skills not being usable in pvp, but thats understandable - therefore they are called PVE ONLY-Skills.

What?

Look, logic doesn't apply to Guild Wars. When I use Dismember, I don't dismember a part of the enemies' body.

If you feel Mesmers are boring, don't play that profession. You are entitled to running any of the 10 professions, which have different playstyles to them.

An odd distinction. By that argument, those classes shouldn't even be in PvE to begin with - you wouldn't use a screwdrive to hammer a nail, would you? The problem here is that, given that these classes are available for PvE, the fact that they aren't suitable for it is a class design flaw. Or maybe you'll argue that Anet never expected people to use these classes in PvE.

Hardmode is a difficulty setting, not additional content; the elite areas can be done in normal mode. Furthermore, casual players wouldn't actually be banned from hardmode - they just wouldn't be able to use cons or PvE skills in hardmode. Thus, anyone is free to play Hardmode provided that they have to aptitude to handle it. I fail to see how this is inherently unfair or undesirable.

Ultimately, I fail to see the point of adding a higher difficulty level, and then including tools to make it easier. The entire point of higher difficulty levels is to challenge and reward better players. A higher difficulty level that is still easy for bad players accomplishes absolutely nothing.

The expert/casual distinction exists in practically every skill-based activity we do. You're free to try the expert ski slopes if you want, but if you're not physically ready for them I doubt you're going to have much fun. Nobody has any problem with this sort of thing in real life, so why is this a problem in GW?

I honestly don't see how I can make this reasoning any clearer.

See above. Further, you simply state this as fact, without any supporting rationale. Why 'should' Anet 'let you'? Talking about 'rights' is laughable, because the only party here with any rights is Anet - specifically, they have the right to change their game however they want, regardless of your opinion. Just as they had every right to add Ursan, they have every right to take it away from you. The only thing you have a right to do is to chose whether to play the game.

Disabling pve skills in HM is catering , which brought us here in the first place. If you don't like playing in HM using ursan or pve skills , then don't , but please don't try to impose your view as the right one. If you play hardmode for the challenge and satisfaction then it shouldn't matter to you that someone is playing differently right?
that existed in GW before HM , the expert slope was pvp.

You have the same right , use it but don't demand more like you demand now.

You fail to understand that this is a game that everyone plays like he/she likes to play and have fun, not like you want it to be played.

If you don't like Ursan, cons and other broken stuff, then don't use them.

If you dislike people who use them, then don't play with them. But you can't (and shouldn't) force everyone to play the way you want.

Overall good points, although I have my doubts about the sabway part, especially with the suggestion about 7 heroes. Don't get me wrong, I'd love 7 heroes, but it would only make the "PvE Balance" situation far worse.

That would still gives paragons an edge over warriors using this warrior skill

You fail to understand that the majority of the community use this, it is near impossible to find a group non-Ursan and that is avoiding the problems, not fixing them. I wonder if DLDU strawmen can be reported.

Elite areas excluded the DLDU argument about ursan is valid. If elite areas are a question you have several choices: 1. Just grind the title , 2. don't play them , 3. find someone who would and 4. guilds and alliances.
If ursan is removed , I would have to abandon my char who isn't the holy trinity or imbagon , and create a holy trinity/imbagon charr. I spent over 300 hrs with my charr ( for some not much , but my standards more than enough) , if ursan is removed , he can only /stand in in ToA or gates of anguish .

Second , ursan is not a problem , it's a solution (a bad one I must admit) to the idiotic game design of HM and elite areas (fight fire with fire).

Ursan is a solution thats become its own problem. ;P

One that didn't have to be implemented so badly.