PvE Balance - Part 2

Pretty good point. There are moments where I overlook the general skill level possessed by most players.

That said, the Kournan teams are indeed a pretty good start to push players in a more aware direction, giving the player a good sense of who to kill in order and what and what not to hit

Regarding the "aggro bubble" suggestion: On second thought, I'm not sure that it sounds to be too good of an idea. It takes away a lot of the casual aspect of PvE, in the sense that any mob that appears on your radar rushes towards you (unless there's exceptions?).

If you want to cater to lesser skilled players then you provide alternate difficulties. You don't make the hardest difficulties easier. That's pretty much the same thing I said to Crom.

Ursan is in the game because ANet makes terrible decisions.

I mean Upier, none of the mobs are really hard at all. Kournan mobs are easily rolled by a bit of necromancer hexing, and that's it.

ANet used to balance pve, but they certainly don't anymore. The Perma-SF nerf I believe is in response to ectos dropping to 3k.

Don't tell anet but...
>_>
<_<
Ectos are almost 3k again. Shhhhhhh!

great guide glad one of few people have listed a few good arguements...

btw id love ursan nerfed to shreds!

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that this is the real root of the N/Rt problem. Perhaps, instead of mucking with Soul Reaping, we ought to be fixing the resto skills.

The obvious solution would be to make Spawning Power work something like Divine Favor, and lower the raw power of the resto skills accordingly. I suggest making the core resto heals into dual-attribute skills like the old version of Lion's Comfort that scale with both Resto and Spawning Power. (FYI, I'd put the break even point where X_current_resto = X_new_resto + 9_new_spawning.) That would make real resto rits more attractive than N/Rt's (or E. Renewal E/Rt's).

So, my revised outlook on Soul Reaping/Sabway is:

• Remove the timer from Soul Reaping.
• Covert the core resto heals to dual-attribute skills that need both resto and spawning power to be fully effective.
• IF that does not weaken Sabway enough, then:
  • Remove SR from minions and dramatically reduce minion spell costs.
  • (OR Make minions trigger SR only for their master -- same effect)
• IF Sabway is still too strong, then:
  • Implement "reverse expertise" for necromancer secondary professions. ie Secondary professions skills cost an extra +1e for every 2 ranks of SR.

Because Anet after delaying for ages to fix an obvious problem, release a patch that is supposed to "fix" the problem, but it actually does almost nothing. Welcome to the world of Anet.

Actually the way I imagined it would be to have two different bubbles.
The aggro bubble - which would function the same way as the current one - where the foes engage into battle if. (But keeping up with the whole patrol system we had in the game now - the foes can also engage into battle if an event is triggered! (Explained, below.))
And the second bubble - which would be the one I talked about - an enlarged aggro bubble - or better a battle awareness bubble.
When entering this bubble - the foes would become aware or your presence. This would mean that they would start preparing for the potential attack. They would lay down traps, enter battle party formations (with the backline in the back!), put up long lasting enchantments - bonds, attunements, ...
There is no point for the foes start these activities when the player is ready (eg. what we have now - when foes will activate stuff like Apply Poison when you aggro them!)!
What this would also cause is the that a new form of aggressive behavior could be implemented. After you enter the awareness bubble - teams could be programmed to randomly show signs of aggression. And in HM - the numbers of teams that act aggressively could be raised! Or the fact that you had shown signs of aggression towards a team A in the awareness bubble of team B - could trigger certain events. (Which would finally get rid of the whole patrol moving on the edge of our aggro bubble while you are taking down a second team!)
What this means is that you could actually engage into battle with a team - and have a second team attack you because you'd be in their awareness bubble with the random aggression event triggering.
And it's because the foes would act less predictable - that they wouldn't have to rely on overpowered crap. And if the foes aren't using overpowered stuff - that means (since the player IS smarter then the AI) that there is ABSOLUTELY NO reason whatsoever to introduce PvE skills!
And if you can't win - that means you are dumber then the AI!


The question was posed to make Crom think a bit. (That's why it was also so dumb - since the most simple questions usually get the point across in the easiest of ways. )

Regarding the hard mobs - it depends where you are at in the game.
The position where we are in the game right now - is that we are just too good for this game, so naturally EVERYTHING is easy.
So of course - anything proposed here wouldn't make the game harder for us. This is something we need to accept.
Unless a harder mode is implemented - we have outgrown this game.

The only difference would be - how the player would get to the place where we are now.
And a better mob composition would affect that.
What the player is taught now is how to counter gimmicks.
You aren't taught how to play better. And because PvE isn't random - you only need to know how to counter the gimmicks to succeed. (Look at something like mesmer chaos nuking. It's one of the biggest gimmicks in the game. But because it exploits the gimmicks that the foes use - it works insanely well.)
If on the other hand - the foes would have a more balanced composition - you'd need to play better then they do - rather then figuring out their gimmick.

(The problem though is where gimmicks take us in PvE. Gimmicks in PvP are limited by the game rules - so they are quite easily beatable. Whereas in PvE gimmicks just break all rules - they can seriously RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up the game. Which means that a player must play in a VERY specific way to be actually able to succeed! And a very specific way to succeed IS another gimmick. And instead of fixing the first gimmick - they gave us Ursan. Just so that every class has the ability to walk that narrow path on the gimmicky road!)





And - ohh yeah!
Restoration is a problem!

The simple fact that necro heroes can run builds that heroes of other classes would fail with - must suggest that it's not the primary necro attribute (that the other classes don't have access to) that is the problem - but rather the skills that they all use in the same way!
Yep - restoration is insanely overpowered!
Even if you AREN'T using restoration!

If both the timer and sharing are removed, what would happen to the N/Rt? The effect will be predicated on whether or not players can continue to kill as fast as the N/Rt burns energy. Considering the widespread use of N/Rts now in parties without a minion bomber, I wouldn't expect the change to have much of an effect. If anything, SR unconditionally returning energy will be a buff.


Again, consider why Rt primaries with Offering of Spirit are inferior healers compared to N/Rts. Why should an active elite skill return less energy than a passive effect? SR simply gives far too much for what you put in.

N/Rts, and SR in general wouldn't be a problem if SR was toned down to roughly the level of active sources of energy management, and that's being generous. A bit of number crunching reveals that e-management skills generally return around 2-3 pips in practical gameplay (slightly more if 40/40 sets were taken into account, which I did not):

[email protected] spec returns around 2 pips, [email protected] returns a bit less than 2, [email protected] gives roughly 3, Mind [email protected] has a theoretical maximum of 6, [email protected] hovers at around 3. On the other hand, [email protected] returns 2.6 pips per kill over 15s, with a maximum of 3 kills or ~8 pips.

This is too much for what you put in, considering other classes need to invest in a (elite) skill slot, to achieve what a Necro passively gets, and sometimes just a fraction of what a Necro gets.


That is a poor indicator of whether or not SR is overpowered. What if SR completely filled up your energy whenever you scored a kill? That would be clearly overpowered, yet you still wouldn't see Necros take the role of every other profession because they simply can't benefit from massive amounts of energy. And also, people do use N/Mo with power heals and expensive prots.

One thing PvE skills could have done if done properly is redress the balance for some professions that have been balanced so as not to rule PvP that leaves them weak for PvE (Mesmers, I'm looking at you!). By 'properly', I mean, as I may have said on this thread already, that they should have used the same attributes as normal skills, so you actually have to invest in the profession rather than being able to chaos nuke too just because you have a decent title and a /Me secondary.

The recent splitting of skills into PvP and PvE versions may have been sufficient, but either way, alas, the damage has been done and the genie cannot be rebottled until GW2.

You know, the thought strikes me that SR on heroes is powerful because heroes don't understand energy management. Better energy-management AI might mean that it's not - or at least less - of a problem. That build may work on a hero, but for a PC, Divine Favour is probably still better.

Personally, I'm in favour of the Spawning Power buff - make it increase the hit point return of direct heals as well as nerfing said direct heals a little to compensate - the difference from Spawning Power should only be a small one (and percentage-based rather than an absolute figure), so that taking Rit skills on a secondry is still viable, but large enough so that it is still beneficial to use them with a Rit secondary with SP. If you wanted to take it to its logical extreme you could apply it to damage-dealing skills and weapon skills that trigger a limited number of times (Splinter and Vengeful, for instance) as well. This would mean that SP would be providing at least some benefit to pretty much all Rt skills, which should remove the "SP is the worst primary" meme and give more incentive to having, for instance, a dedicated Ritualist Splintering the barrager rather than the barrager doing it themselves, without making Rit skills completely useless for Rit secondaries.

SY nerf, yeah probally belongs.
Ursan: Yeah. I would have to agree
Sab: It isnt to powerful. Unlimited minions ultimantly sounds fun, but imba. No degen sounds good.
TanknSpank: Not to powerful, and most people cannot run a balanced non tank build well. If at all
SoloFarm: I think a better Idea would be a massive up on the rewards from Elite Areas, at least a more definete reward. Why spend over an hour on a HM dungeon to get 2 diamonds when I can get 10-20 ectos solo farming.

Well, duh. You're saying it won't have an effect on good players, but it will for bad players. That's kinda the point. You could delete SR entirely and good players would still win at PvE. We want to remove the crutch for bad ones though.

It would be a buff, no doubt. But the buff isn't directed at getting more energy, we have enough already. The buff is directed at making SR not a clunky, unpredictable POS on human MM builds. It's awful now. The timer ISN'T a problem for N/Rt because he's just using 5e spells and SR is explicitly designed around fueling much more expensive spells. (ie: MM builds)

Complete BS. The advantage isn't the strength, it's the automatic nature of SR.

You'll absolutely kill necro primaries, especially minion builds. Go ahead, spec 0 SR and use GoLE on a human MM build. You want an another example:

Even if SR is toned down to the point of being equal to GoLE (or any other e-management skill) it will STILL be HIGHLY advantageous to run N/Rt on a hero. SR is automatic e-management...heros suck at using e-management skills. Try it...spec 5 SR and run your N/Rt...bet it STILL works for good players

Now...you CAN run N/Mo and N/E (etc) builds. There are N/Mo Prot builds, but they aren't DOMINANT like N/Rt. N/Mo for pure Heals would be a closer match, but you could run E/Mo just as easily. The advantage isn't the strength of SR its the automatic nature on heroes. The strength can be reproduced on other characters (not pip for pip, but enough that it's not noticeable when you only using 5e spells)

1) The goal ISN'T to eliminate all viable secondary combinations.
2) The goal ISN'T to enforce PvP mathematical balance in SR.

The goal is to equalize DOMINANT builds.

It's the ONLY indicator of PvE balance. This isn't PvP. PvP balance is a non-issue in PvE.

PvE balance is ONLY concerned with dominant overly popular builds. Necro primaries are ONLY replacing healers. They aren't driving any other class/build out. NONE. That's the whole deal right there. It's complete PROOF that SR is not the problem people think it is. You can see it yourself, everyone can, ONLY the healer classes are being replaced.

Changing the Necro primary attribute to compensate for single-situation secondary abuse is not only overkill, it will seriously impact using necro primaries for anything besides N/Rt. (ie: You're balancing SR around N/Rt specifically)

You and everyone else needs to hear me on this: The reason that Necros haven't taken over Elementalists (or any other class combination besides healers) is because the inherent abilities of each class outweigh the power of SR in those situations.

Does everyone understand what I just said?

The fact that Necros haven't already run EVERY class out of business is because, despite the power of SR, it's STILL advantageous to run those primaries over N/*. That explicitly means that each class has an inherent advantage approximately equal to SR.

A major nerf to the strength of SR puts Necros BELOW other classes, and would only encourage OTHER CLASSES to spec */N. That's not an opinion. The fact that Necros haven't already taken over every class is a DIRECT indicator of (approximate) parity. Hammering SR makes Necros disadvantageous.

You've GOT to focus on the strength of Restoration....or completely rebuild the ENTIRE Necromaner line/attributes.

Following an in-game conversation, it seems I was not as clear as I could have been regarding what to do with resto. So I'm going to spell it out a little more clearly:

We're going to make the core heals (MBS, Spirit Light, etc) scale with both resto and spawning power -- the same way the old lion's comfort scaled with both strength and tactics.
We're going to set the resto scale roughly the same as the scale for healing prayers skills with similar e-costs and recharges.
Then we're going to set the spawning power scale roughly equal to the scale on divine favor's effect.

Why do this?

First (and most importantly, even though everyone is discussing necromancers), it brings the resto line back to the rit primaries. Want to use resto at full effectiveness? Then be a rit primary.

Second, it puts rits more evenly in line with monks (though there still need to be some buffs to resto -- a curse removal and some better damage mitigation than weap-o-warding -- to complete that task).

Third, it nerfs the N/Rt resto healer. I strongly suspect that it will be enough of a nerf to end the N/Rt's overpowered state. If it's not, I've got two more narrowly-targeted nerfs waiting for it (remove SR triggers from minions and reverse-expertise). Only if none of those work is it time to seriously consider wrecking SR as a whole and rebuilding the necro skill lines around a wrecked primary attribute.

I very strongly suspect that you're wrong. I think the N/Rt would suffer quite a bit if SR was removed from minions, even with the timer gone. However, that may not be an argument that ever needs to be settled. Let's start by straightening out resto. If that doesn't work, try removing SR from minions (with the obligatory dramatically lower minion costs) in addition to straightening out resto. If that doesn't work either, then it's time to renew the argument.

I think you need to listen to Carinae here. You seem to be after some sort of "mathematical" balance that doesn't really have anything to do with "real PvE Balance." PvE Balance is about creating a rough parity between classes and builds within classes. Give every class as many diverse top-tier builds as possible, without creating anything beyond top-tier power. That's PvE Balance.

It doesn't matter how good SR looks on paper. What matters is how many builds it can actually make work at the top-tier level (good) and how many builds it can actually make work at the beyond-top-tier level (bad). Right now, there's only one beyond-top-tier build that anyone is mentioning -- the N/Rt healer. If it can be brought back down to merely top-tier (or below) with narrowly-targeted nerfs, that's how it should be done. And I think it's entirely possible to do so.


If you care for my speculation as to why something that looks so good on paper fails to deliver overpowered build upon overpowered build, I'll tell you: Energy is really not that important. It just isn't. Energy is only as valuable as what you can spend it on. And GW has a huge dearth of skills that are both (a) good enough to be really worthwhile, and (b) so expensive that you need more energy than basic, less-powerful-than-SR e-management provides. Most of the good skills are 5ers, and a sizable majority of the viable combination of good skills can be run just fine on GoLE. Thus, SR may give a necro more energy than anyone else (except a E.Renewal ele, who blows SR out of the water), but the difference is largely wasted because there's virtually nothing to spend it on. The two notable exceptions are (1) necro skills which were balanced around needing the huge energy provided by SR (bone fiend, SS, etc), and (2) resto spells, which weren't balanced around a DF-like mechanic because the design team was on crack at the time Factions was released. Which brings us back to the original point -- fix the N/Rt and there's no manifest over-power problems with with SR, just the damn timer.

(I might add that E.Renewal has failed to produce the radically overpowered builds it seemed to promise for pretty much the same reason. Energy, energy everywhere, but not a useful spell to cast. Thus far, the best use I've seen for that energy is to pump out 10e prots and a spot heal or two, but those builds lack the robustness of a real monk.)

Exactly.

Necros do Blood, Curses and Death.

ONLY Death requires a Necro primary. Running minions on a human MM right now is somewhat marginal because of the timer. Reduce SR and minion builds would cease to function at all. You'd be forced to dramatically reduce minion costs to even have the pretense of viability...and that's WITHOUT any talk of removing minion triggers from SR, which NEED to go, the sharing effect is clearly overpowered. Remove those AND nerf SR and minion build STOP COLD.

You'd also have to rescale ALL of the skills in the SR line, because there would be a strong disincentive to running SR in the first place. No SR skills are worth speccing without the actual effect of SR in addition.

You can DEFINATELY run Blood/Curses on an Ele....or Monk spells...or Rit spells.

So if SR is debuffed to the point of any other e-management, what is the point in running a Necro primary? What advantage would there be to running a Necro? NONE. You'd just push everything Necro over to Eles and the situation repeats.

SR must be stronger than even the strongest Elite e-management or else what's the point in being a necro? You'd just spec for that Elite e-management instead.

The idea that "energy is not that important, but what you can spend it on is more important" is pretty bad in my eyes. Many of the most abusive builds in the history of the game were energy abusers. Many people go /E solely for glyph of lesser energy, even though that skill was "nerfed" ages ago.

Players who started in 05 ( those that are left) have been adapting and overcoming for three years.

With UB you cannot adapt or overcome it because there is no stronger or better alternative in the game right now for teams, thank God.

UB needs to be doctored.... and soon, but i doubt it will be.

From a personal perspective i think that the Ritualist class since its inception has caused more 'balance' problems to the game than any other.
Before i get flamed to hell and back im not bashing Rits i had one and enjoyed playing it for over a year, i just think that resto skills when combined with other primaries have been the source of many op builds.
I agree with the others on that the Rit skills need looking at rather than a complete attribute line for Necros.

I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying it wouldn't have a much of an effect period. If a player is so terrible that the N/Rt continually hits 0 energy without a minion bomber, then something is horribly wrong and minions fueling one N/Rt isn't going to be enough of a crutch to save him.

Obviously minion costs would be scaled down to match SR's power.

That why I said it was still too generous.

To reproduce the strength of SR, you need burn a skill slot, sometimes an elite slot, and yet SR is still capable of outperforming that. It's the combination of the strength and the passive nature of SR that makes it overpowered.

Assuming that you're right for the sake of argument, I can argue that N/Rts haven't made anything obsolete. Rits and Monks still see play healer heroes, and properly microed, they end up outperforming N/Rts.

I'm not balancing around N/Rt, I'm balancing around energy being far too accessible on a Necro.

A nerf to SR isn't going to make Necros less viable, assuming certain skills have their costs reduced also. It'll weed out the bad players who can't manage energy, which is what we want, right? After all, Necros still get 14 spec Curses and 16 spec Death, plus decent passive e-management, which are solid reasons to go N/ primary.

Because then you'd use your elite skill on energy management.


----------


The problem with these changes is, as you've touched on, is why would anyone run a Rit healer? The Monk hybrid template is pretty much perfect as it is, and there would have to be a lot of drastic changes to the Resto line if it to compete with what Monks have already.

I very strongly suspect I am right. N/Rts can be run successfully without a minion engine already.

Numbers provide a baseline for balance. Things that are imbalanced need their numbers adjusted or a complete rework, and the basis of comparison goes back again to numbers. It's how you figure out if something is top-tier or beyond top-tier.

You are making the same mistake as Carinae, and that is the assumption that overpowered ability must produce a large number of builds in order to be considered overpowered. This is false, quantity does not matter. Save Yourselves serves as the basis of only two overpowered builds - Imbagon and Dragon Slash Warrior, but it's clear that SY is overpowered.


Ether Renewal hasn't caught on as much as it should have because of the investment needed to make it work. It takes up an elite slot, requires another maintainable enchantment as fuel, Glyph of Swiftness to upkeep and a high spec in Energy Storage.

Absolutely.
The current way that PvE skills are implemented is insane.
(It is fun though. Just as I have fun going into easy-mode on my necro ...)

Even bad play (as evidenced by heroes!) gains you insane rewards.
Now the problem isn't only the fact that the bad players gain rewards - but actually that the rewards are so great - even at good play!

Regarding Spawning/resto - you need to remember what the ritualists lack.
The guys don't have Protection prayers.
And it's because of that that the heals are numerically bigger on the ritualist - because the monky can prevent INSANE amounts of damage and then just heal up what comes through.
The ritualist on the other had - needs that raw healing power!
So if you were to "balance" resto by creating a DF-like bonus - you kill off resto. Because nobody in their right mind would waste 2 lines worth of attribute points to have something that will resemble a healing monk.

If you're gonna have the "battle awareness" bubble, then it's going to have to be as big as the compass. Otherwise people will just pull farther away and exploit it further.

You'd have to give more examples of "certain events" and "aggressive behavior". The way you made it sound with the "second group" coming to fight you seems just like accidentally pulling a second mob of monsters. The buffing and preparing sounds like a good idea, though, as long as the new bubble is as big as the compass.

A single idea isn't enough to warrant a full "they'll be smart" buff to the AI. The monsters will still have to coordinate with each other to take down the key targets, identify which of the players will prove the biggest threat, know when to switch targets or to stop pursuing a certain enemy, know what to do when put on a certain hex, know who to put the proper hexes on, the list goes on.

In general, in order to have "no need" for "overpowered crap" for the monsters, the AI would have to emulate human behavior and human thinking patterns exactly. I don't think that this feat is going to be achieved by a simple game company.

There wasn't any reason whatsoever to introduce PvE skills in the first place.

Resto may be so inherently flawed that nothing can fix it. There may never be a way to make the Rt/X healer an appealing top-tier build. Still, taking back the resto line from N/Rt is an incremental improvement. "Mo/X > Rt/X > N/Rt" is better than "Mo/X ~> N/Rt >>> Rt/X," even if it doesn't entirely solve the problem with rit healers being weak.

The next incremental step is to give the rit healer a curse removal and some useful damage-mitigation skills.

Overall effectiveness is a complex function of a huge number of variables that's essentially impossible to model. Sometimes you can take a variable that seems to have a strong weight in determining overall effectiveness and use it as a shorthand indicator for overall effectiveness. That's what you're doing whenever you measure builds by reference to DPS or energy gain per second or any other single variable. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. When you've got something that appears overpowered on the basis of excelling with regard to the variable you're using as a shorthand indicator, but it's not manifesting overpowered builds in-game, then that means you've found a case where your indicator isn't accurate. If you're a curious sort, you can try to figure out why something that looks overpowered actually isn't. If you're not a curious sort, you can just accept that the indicator was wrong and move on. But what you shouldn't do is go around shouting "nerf! nerf! nerf! oh please nerf!" merely because your chosen indicator says something should be too powerful, while ignoring what's actually happening in-game.

An ability doesn't have to produce a large number of overpowered builds to be considered overpowered, but it does have to produce at least one. Right now we are looking at precisely one overpowered build, the N/Rt healer, and we are disagreeing about which mechanic makes it overpowered. You think it's SR, and I think it's resto not being balanced against monk heals with DF-like mechanic.

Assume for a moment that I'm right. In that case, SR has produced precisely zero overpowered builds. There's no reason to go nerfing SR, no matter how good it looks on paper, if it can't make any overpowered builds.

Assume for a moment that you're right. In that case, SR has produced exactly one overpowered build. What then? There's two options: The option that you seem to favor is hammering the crap out of SR as a whole, and damn the consequences for the not-overpowered builds that take a hit. The option that I favor is a narrowly-targeted nerf directly to the one overpowered build so that there will be zero overpowered builds left. My way is better. Here's why: We want a diversity of top-tier builds. The more good builds there are, the better. Smashing SR across-the-board will get the N/Rt alright, but it will also hurt the curse and minion builds. We don't want to do that because it will, at best, reduce the diversity of viable top-tier variants within those builds, and, at worst, totally remove one or both of those builds from the top-tier. (I think that human-run MM's are right on the border of falling out of the top-tier, and nerfing SR across-the-board would probably spell the end for them.)


I agree. That's what I meant when I said that the builds lack robustness. Now, let's try to look at the implications of this: Having a huge amount of energy is not as important as other things ("elite slot, requires another maintainable enchantment as fuel, Glyph of Swiftness to upkeep and a high spec in Energy Storage"). Energy isn't that important after all. It isn't that good of an indicator for the overall effectiveness of a build.

When we are able to be aware of the foes - they are aware of us!
The random event would be that when you enter the area - a certain number of groups are randomly assigned with aggressive behavior.
That means that random teams would attack you - rather then waiting to be attacked, or they could be more aggressive in terms of following you ...
(This would of course require some testing - so that the mandatory part of the game would be a bit less random - otherwise you might get really bad random spawns all the time - which could prevent people from completing the game. Because it wouldn't be fun if you'd spawn into a map - only to be greeted by 5 teams attacking you!)

The problem of creating human like AI - is that could create teams that would be "impossible" to beat. I mean - if you create human like AI - then some will be bad (like certain people) and some will be godly (once again - like certain people). And that kind of a game might have problems reaching the masses - especially the way GW PvE is designed. Since it's not like PvP - where if you run into a group that you can't beat - you lose, and try again.
In PvE this would mean that you can't advance. Imagine having a team that would resemble a Top10 PvP guild. Who's going to beat that?
There is challenging - and there is stupidly hard.

You want foes that are semi-dumb. Because you want the people to get through. But I don't feel that they need to be THIS dumb.

Touché.
(But this should also mean that there should be no reason to introduce monster skills. It just doesn't go with the concept of GW. There is a reason why Orison heals for the amount it does. It's because of the cost, recharge, activation time, ... of the skill itself and other skills. And then you can't just bring in skills that completely bypass this balance process. And it doesn't matter if they are skills used by players or by foes. Otherwise Orison might as well heal for what Heal Other does. But still keep it's current cost.)

If anything, Rit healers - while not as versatile as Monks - they are fine as-is. It just so happens that N/Rt provides far superior energy management.

Soul Reaping provides too much energy too easily - this is the point I addressed to Carinae earlier and I'm addressing it to you now. In a sense you could say that I'm arguing all Necro builds are overpowered, but that's missing the point since I'm taking about the mechanic that powers these builds. SR is overpowered and N/Rts are the most obvious symptom because of its easy comparison with Rt/X healers. Again this goes back to SR giving too much for what you put in.

I want to encourage the use of active, more interesting forms of energy management. An example would be the use of Signet of Lost Souls on human players. SR should be toned down to provide an amount of energy representative of its passive nature, and SoLS should fill in the gap. Heavy users of energy will have to actually do something to fill up their energy, rewarding active play as opposed to "wand this until it dies so I get energy." This change also removes the crutch for bad players who don't have the awareness or the timing that better players do, and will not be able to consistently regain energy.

While other professions' e-management will still be viable, the Necros' core e-management - the combined effects of passive and active skills - can be tuned as to provide slightly more than the alternatives. This, combined with the ability to use runes, remains as incentives to play as N/ primary with N/ energy management.

The goal of this is to remove Soul Reaping itself as a crutch for bad players. Active sources of energy management should be encouraged, skillful play should be rewarded. While pointing at a low target and pushing a button might not be the most skillful thing in the greater scheme of things, at least it's a lot more active than the current model of waiting around for something to die.

I'd settle for adequate pathing. All the fancy target choosing logic in the world isn't going to help them as much as the basic ablility to walk around a body block would.

I've spent all day toying with builds and genuinely trying hard not to be biased towards SR and give a fair evaluation. I can, however, conclusively state that SR is NOT responsible for the effectiveness of the Restoration-secondary builds.

Introducing Carway: (Me/Rt healers)

Norgu:
[Weapon of Remedy][Vengeful Weapon][Mend Body and Soul][Spirit Light][Protective Was Kaolai][Power Drain][Leech Signet][Death Pact Signet]

Gwen:
[Weapon of Remedy][Vengeful Weapon][Mend Body and Soul][Spirit Light][Life][Power Drain][Leech Signet][Death Pact Signet]

Restoration: 12
Inspiration: 14
Fast Cast: 4

Add any two damage dealers, and any hench you want. Healers not needed. I added a pure Necro SS and MM, but Splinter-Barragers would work, or any damage sources. Henchmen can be anything you want, but you DON'T need ANY additional healing. That's right Me/Rt! Finally those Mesmer heroes can get some exercise!

I then took these Me/Rt healers, went into Hard Mode and vanquished Pongmei Valley in 34 minutes with shitty henchmen...with NO deaths. Not convinced that was a sufficient demonstration, I took these guys to the Realm of Torment, again in Hard Mode, and proceeded to crush the crap out of mobs in Nightfallen Jahai. A friend then PMed me for help in Eternal Grove, so I went to help. I dropped the Mesmer with PWK and kept the Lifer. We did the normal 4-4 split and I easily held my side with ONLY little Gwen as a healer.

Neither Me/Rt was properly runed-out. Gwen had 13 Inspiration. They also had Illusion wands/focii. A correct rune set and a Restoration staff would further boost performance.

Next, I returned to Pongmei Valley (HM) and dropped the Me/Rts, instead using E/Rts with NO e-management at all. No monk healers, or ANY other healing. Furthermore, I intentionally played bad. I ran from mob to mob as fast as possible, didn't even pick up loot. Did not to rest unless absolutely necessary. We vanquished the zone easily.

NEVER, not once, with either build did we die because the healers ran out of energy. We did die a few times, but the healers ALWAYS had lots of energy when that happened. So, what's this say:

1) The MM isn't crucial to the Sabway in terms of e-management. (Sab was right)
2) Neither is SR. (Carinae was right)
3) The Restoration-secondary healing build is really, really strong.

Running it on an Ele primary with NO E-MANAGEMENT AT ALL or additional healing and we VQ'd a zone. There was some struggle with the Eles. Then I went back out and VQ'd it again with BloodRit enabled, not exactly strong e-management. Yawn, easy VQ. I didn't even try to add Ether Renewal, obviously it'll work great.

The Me/Rts performed so strongly I am going to use them on a regular basis from now on. They walked through HM ROT like butter, with the exception of the bosses. We needed Prot for the bosses. The Mesmers didn't run out of energy, but they couldn't keep up with the damage. I took one hit for 254 damage with Dark Bond up! (No, it wasn't stripped)

That should dispell any doubt that SR is NOT responsible for the strength of the N/Rts, although it does synergize well. The Restoration skills can be easily powered from ANY e-management source. In fact, the 4x interrupts on the Me/Rts give you something SR doesn't...actual offensive capability on top of everything else. (Because two Mesmers supporting the whole team in HM ROT isn't enough )

Previously, it was stated that there was exactly one SR supported uber-build. Now there are Zero. People can point to ZERO SR DEPENDENT uber-builds, despite it being "godmode". Give me a break. If it was so abuseable, it would be everywhere. It would drive every other class out of business. Despite it looking so good on paper, it doesn't actually translate to that in real gameplay.

The only real solution (if one is wanted) would be to implement a cap on the number of secondary skills that can be used. Just like PvE skills, only allow 3 secondary skills on a bar at the same time. This has the added advantage that it stops ALL secondary abuse across the board. It also enforces the concept that secondary skills are meant to augment a build, rather than BE the build. Having 6-8 skills from your secondary necessarily introduces problems, especially when dealing with hyper-efficient healing spells.

You could also simply make Restoration the primary attribute for Rits. That also breaks secondary abuse here, but it doesn't address other e-management forms. It might introduce Spawning abuse. (I don't know off the top of my head)

I think the 3-skill limit might be the best option. The situation is really a symptom of power-creep. It's clear to me though that nerfing SR would do nothing but push he whole build to another e-management form and the situation would repeat. ...or we could leave it alone.

Difference is you actually have to bring Emanagement skills whereas a necro just invests in SR, which they all do, and have 8 free skill slots.

The restoration line is no doubt very effective but what makes necros so effective at healing with them is that they can run the same exact bar as a rit primary, but they can carry one using skills a lot longer.

Like, for instance, using Diving Favor and Healing Prayers to make something that resembles a healing monk really, really closely?

My suggestion would still give them that healing power - the actual Rt would probably have MORE healing power under my suggestion. Splitting 12/12 Rest/SP, or 11/11/10 Chan or Comm/Res/SP should give a decent amount of utility and healing... and is there really any problem with making members of a profession actually want to use their primary attribute?

Besides, Ritualists do have a few damage mitigation abilities. Resiliant Weapon, Weapon of Warding, and Weapon of Shadow can all reduce damage just from the Restoration line. Communing used to be infamous for the party protection it could provide with Union, Displacement and Shelter, and maybe with skills being split into PvP and PvE versions, it soon may be again.

The gripping hand is that by making SP actually important to Ritualist healing, you can nerf not only Sabway but Carway as well, encourage primary Ritualists, and actually make what many call the worst primary attribute actually worth something. From a balance perspective, I don't see the downside.

(All that said, though, I propose a test for Carway: Replace those Me/Rts with Rt/Mes with identical bars and attribute allocations (put the points in FC into SP. It might make a tiny difference somewhere) and see if that build works as well.)

I know I keep repeating myself...but every time I read posts in this thread it keeps coming back to the fact that secondary profession skills are far to powerfull.

I also still believe that changing the break point for skills(not all skills just those that we know for certain are being abused) will create some balance in professions once more.

Some examples of what I mean:

[weapon of remedy] change the Vamp aspect to 15...45...85 where 45 is at 12 Restoration and 85 at 16. The same for [vengeful weapon]

[mend body and soul] change too 20..60..135 again 60 is at 12 Restoration.

these changes would greatly reduce the effectiveness of RT secondary healing but would leave primary rits with 13+ in Restoration as very powerfull healers.

My numbers are certainly not perfectly balanced, just off the top of my head, but they do give a good example of how to better balance these skills.

If your argument that SR isn't overpowered because you took 2 e-management skills to make up for it then freaking L-O-L. There's a pretty big difference between having a 6 skill skill bar and an 8 skill skill bar with passive e-management that is very fire and forget. The N/Rt is far superior to the Rt/Me builds you posted, simply because it has more room for versatile utility.

The problem is that healing monks - kinda aren't good.
The reason why resto works now is because you are able to run resto/channeling - which combines some pretty sweet healing with some pretty sweet offense.
You force people to run spawning - that means that channeling WILL be lowered - and then the guy isn't providing sweet offense any longer and has healing capabilities of a monky.
Which means that the rit performs worse offensively and can only reach the level of the worse monky option.
The rit dies.
The necro moves on to the /Mo secondary.

That's just plain rude!
Bad, bad, BAD DN!
BAD!
(Yeah you know I am laughing on the inside at the results of the "test". Well - on the outside also ...)

Having interrupts on heroes is useful. While they provide energy management as well, at least in some areas having two interrupts may even be more useful than whatever else you'd be replacing them with.

Car's point is that Ritualist secondaries are still powerful without needing to be fuelled by SR.

EDIT Since upier posted while I was posting:

Without needing Spawning Power, you could have 12 Channeling and 12 Restoration.

With needing Spawning Power, you can have 11-10-10. Or 11-11-8. You lose one, maybe two, ranks off your skill. To compensate, you have whatever bonus Spawning Power grants, which I'm sure can be tweaked to be at least as strong as the skill previously was. And note that I'd included the possibility in my original proposal of damaging skills being improved by Spawning Power.

I'm quite sure it's possible to make the proposed tweaks and leave Chan/Res Rits at least as powerful as they are now.

A good part of why Resto works now (besides Ritualists being Damage/Healing whilst Monks are Healing/Prot as hybrids) also has to do with them having a heal that is just 5-15 hp shy of a healing prayers elite too.

That's great, let me know when that negates SR being passive, fire and forget, providing superior flexible utility to N/Rt's that Rt/X won't have (hint: 2 interrupts is about as flexible as a piece of wood.).

If you can find me a Rt/X build that outdoes N/Rt and has all 8 skills free doing its job and not trying to make blue bar not run out, and does an equal if not better job, then I'll agree.

Until then, you're just trying to make up for not having SR, and in the process sacrificing way too much utility to do so. N/Rts > Rt/X.

Of course you can make Rt/X's "still powerful", but like hell if it's close to the same power. I could go into a huge rant about how its PvE yada yada yada and how you don't need the best thing obviously, but the topic of the thread is PvE Balance, and therefore I am applying balance processes and thoughts, and just because you found a way that is "still powerful" doesn't negate something else being "overpowered", and way better.

We're getting back to the question of looking at just how much difference it's actually making. The point has been made that if SR was really so powerful, we'd see other secondaries being powered by Soul Reaping. In general, we don't. Does that mean that the problem is with Soul Reaping, or that the problem is that the Ritualist primary is just so underpar, and other Rit skills so secondary-friendly that you might as well grab another primary instead, and that nerfing SR into the ground will just cause peaople to make, say, E/Rts instead.

Regarding the extra utility provided by classic Sabway - if you only use one of the Carway heroes, you replace a party heal and and a combined condition removal/energy management skill with two interrupts. There are plenty of locations where I'd make that trade.

On rebalancing Rit skills to be reinforced with Spawning Power: Let's say you reduce the power of affected skills by 15%, and had Spawning Power improve affected skills by 3% per point. Now, the nature of the maths involved means that it will take more than 5 ranks in Spawning Power to break even again, but at around 8-10 ranks you've probably made up for the one or two points you've lost in Channeling and Restoration.

Now run 13 Spawn / 14 Channeling with Destructive Was Glaive.

It would be interesting to see. I was just giving one example of a set of numbers, and it might turn out to be overbalanced when going fully offensive with that build. But maybe all that would be needed to prevent that is to tweak the numbers.

Or maybe you don't include damaging spells in there. Run 12/10/8 Channeling/Restoration/SP, with at least minor runes in each. Your healing skills still come out as being improved by 8% over what they were for 10 ranks before... which isn't quite enough to make up for not having 12, but it might be possible to tweak the numbers further so that it is.

I soo hope Ursan gets changed, it's really starting to annoy me, everywhere I go in EotN all I hear is....

"R10 Ursan lfg!"
"R9 Ursan lfg for Duncan"
"R10 Ursan lfg to go to the supermarket"
"R8 Ursan, lfg to put butter on my toast"

Sigh!

If you don't like the skills don't use them, it is really that simple!

o hai this is the balance thread if you want to ignore balance issues and not contribute anything to the topic you should probably go to the QQ thread.

ignoring stuff isn't balancing anything.

Yes, it would require a lot of testing: Being in the middle of fighting a group only to be greeted by another group can be more of a pain in the ass than a "challenge" as you've mentioned down below.

Exactly. You want a boost to the AI, but no matter what you do the computer will still be at a disadvantage, hence the "overpowered crap". A fix here and there wouldn't hurt, but as such it won't help a whole lot either as shown below. That's why I suggest an easier and more flexible NM so players can experience the game without experiencing a whole lot of the "unfairness", as seen in most other successful games.

Granted, it would allow the players the opportunity to learn more from the monsters if they were better set up, but it's hard to determine if players learn anything from them at all. Players mostly learn from other players.

There would be no need to introduce monster skills if the monster AI were on a much more coherently fair level. But even then it would still leave a lot to be desired.

More than anything, more than the "thoughtful builds" we have gone up against or the better team compositions ANet's implemented, most of the difficulty and challenge in the current game lies in the monsters being "overpowered". While it's not as thoughtful as adding challenge through improved AI, there's still much to learn from it. Unless you start off on the exact right foot (which is very rare), more damage and health from the enemies means more consequences. When you reach a point where you're "getting toast", you look at what's killing you and what you can do to remedy it. When you've been cruising through pretty well and then reach a certain area where you're squashed, you look back and think "hm, how can I improve myself? Who's the biggest target here? What is it that ultimately lead to my downfall, and what can I do to prevent it?"

None of the overpowered facets possessed by monsters is "bad game design". It's the same formula most games have been following for years. Since it's been popular as of late, look at Diablo: You go up against a horde of monsters, all with infinite mana, and sometimes against a boss with a "totally *%#& you up" aura. Do people complain about it being unfair? Far from the contrary, because we as players know how to build our character, know what to do, what to encounter, and how to kick outrageous ass.

Another very good example is FEAR: the enemies possessed some of the most groundbreaking AI at the time of its release. Not only that but you were always outnumbered, going against bad guys who had the same health as you. But when people wanted more of a challenge, what did they do? They increased the difficulty multiplier so that enemy health and damage was increased. Even then, even with enemies being able to adapt and coordinate in a more sophisticated manner, did many people require a need to "even it out".

If you want a very popular example and since we mentioned Diablo, let's look at WoW: How are instances organized? Each group of monsters that you go against are set as "elites" (save for very few exceptions). They can kill clothies of equal level in just a couple hits and have much more health. While this is definitely "overpowered", it's not shunned: players do have to figure out ways around it, they have to figure out who to properly crowd control, and when it comes to the bosses how best to beat them. It's simply Blizzard following the standard method of presenting a challenge to the players and having them figure it out - and it's fun!

All in all, monsters having "overpowered junk" is the standard method of providing a challenge. Besides some professions not fitting in too well with this mold, a large part of the problem in GW is the curve of it at points in the game. But aside from that, all the "overpowered" monsters are doing their job: encouraging new builds and strategies, leading to people having to think about new ways to conquer and play.

Monk - Before the change to Healer's Boon, it was altogether common to see a N/Mo healer's boon necro, simply because they could maintain their energy with ease while the monk could not.

Mesmers - fast casting is a pretty sweet attribute, providing a crucial crutch as a hard-res in GvG/HA. You could make a necro mesmer if you wanted, the only thing is that so many mesmer skills are 2 seconds, and in any pvp setting, they get interrupted.

Elementalist - loaded with energy management spells, many of which provide damage. Not to mention that many necromancers (Including Carinae) back in the day used necros to power N/E nukers. Carinae used one for SF farming if I recall.

The rest are physicals and therefore not wholly dependent on energy, or they're built with a minimal energy management attribute which fuels the low costs they have.

The type of class that requires the most energy management traditionally, the healer, has been commonly supplanted by necromancers simply because of SR.

Exactly. There is no need to test this. You can easily calculate/estimate how much more energy the N/Rt has over the X/Rt and you have the answer: SR is a cheap (few attrib point) and powerful (passive) energy management: possibly 3-10 times stronger than any other elite e-management skill in the game.

Carine: at a certain point any X/Rt healer is going to be energy restricted: if you spam 5 ene skills on recharge you burn 40 energy in 27s. This means that if your fight does not even last 30-45s, it does not matter at all what kind of X/Rt you are bringing. If fight is long, very long, ...even longer, than your X/Rt will be depleted and your N/Rt will be still full: that's what overpowered energy management does. It gives you energy. If you dont need lots of energy you wont see a difference, but if you do...it makes all the difference.

Ya 3-10 times stronger if you're specced 9 in it maybe.

Let's not even go there if its 12 or above.