PvE Balance - Part 2

You miss the point entirely. The point is not to show that Me/Rt is strictly better than N/Rt. (It's not.) The point is to show that they're both overpowered. X/Rt is overpowered even without SR. Therefore, resto is the root cause of N/Rt being overpowered, not SR.

This leads to the point that both Carinae and draxynnic make: N/Rt is overpowered, but not because of SR. So take N/Rt out of the equation. What's left? There are ZERO overpowered PvE builds because of SR. Zero. You disagree? OK, then please point to a specific overpowered build that relies on SR. Bet you can't. No matter how good SR looks on paper, it's not resulting in any actual overpowered builds appearing in-game. Thus, there's no empirical basis whatsoever for saying that SR needs a nerf.

You are confusing energy supply with overall build effectiveness. While energy supply looks like it should be a good indicator of overall build effectiveness, actually it's not. Energy is like money -- the more you have, the less valuable a little bit more is. (See Marginal Utility; Actually I find this link a bit more informative; Example for those too lazy to follow the links: Family income going from $20,000/yr to $40,000/yr means a very big change in one's quality of life; but going from $100,000/yr to $120,000/yr or even $200,000/yr does not result in nearly so big a change.) What Carinae's test shows for resto (and what I suspect is true for almost all worthwhile builds across the board) is that some modicum of e-management -- inspiration interrupts -- is enough to run the build, and the marginal utility of having more energy beyond that level -- Soul Reaping -- is very low. Simply put: If you have enough energy to do what you want to do, then having extra energy on top of that is pretty much worthless. And it turns out that, for resto healers (and I suspect most other worthwhile builds), "enough energy" is pretty easy to come by. That's why energy supply is actually not a good indicator of overall build effectiveness. It's also why SR fails to deliver in-game the overpoweredness it promises on paper.

You can spam an entire bar of 10e skills on charge.

What's not ridiculous about that?

So you want to nerf group play and buff solo play?

What in Balthazar's name are you talking about?

The ONLY reason N/Rt and N/Mo's are excellent healers is because of soul reaping. Soul reaping, as long as your party doesn't suck and manages to kill things, equals major energy management. Why do you think people go necro to go pure healing/resto, and not monk or rit? Because monks and rits can't spam the skills like necros can. I mean really, if monks and rits had the amount of energy management as necros did, do you really think they wouldn't go monk or rit?

In fact, the main reason why necros are so good is because of soul reaping. They have the best energy management in the game, and can spam skills all they want because of it.

You seriously need to go back and read the last two pages. Go, read them. Don't skim, but actually read. Your questions will be answered and you will learn something.

Because those skills are balanced by Anet on the idea of being spammed on recharge. I guarantee that they aren't balanced around the idea that you might or might not have the energy to cast them. They are balanced around the idea that you DO (and will always) have the energy.

That why SR doesn't break things. The skillset is balanced around the idea of energy always being available. It's necessarily balanced around the strongest case scenario.

The special ability of Necros is that they can push a build to its fullest potential. (Blue bar stays full)

The special ability of Warriors is that they are really hard to kill. (Red bar stays full)

The special ability of Monks is that they can outheal/mitigate damage from multiple (dedicated) damage-dealers simultaneously. You can't actually argue that character-for-character that a Monk is BALANCED. They aren't, obviously, in terms of their healing potential vs ANYONES damage-dealing potential. And yet the game doesn't collapse into a writhing mass of IMBA. Because it's not so simple as a direct comparison between healing and damage-dealing.

The same is true for SR. (If it was, the effects would be OBVIOUS in-game. EVERYONE would just run N/*)

Heh. The almighty Blood-nuker. I found a screenshot of that the other day. That was September '05. I imagine we all have screenshots taken when we first started, that we now look at and think WTF?!?! Talk about an embarrassing noobcakes build. (Savio will tell ya the screenshot was taken yesterday)

Admittedly there is a fundamental incompatability here. One is built around the idea of powering very expensive, low-to-moderate efficiency spells, the other is built around the idea of very cheap, hyper-efficient spells. Mixing the two breaks things.

That's why you provide a strong incentive to run spells on it's corresponding primary. Rits fails this test badly.

You guys are pretty dumb if you think you can compare ACTIVE energy management skills to Soul Reaping.

/me glances at location of previous poster, sighs, nods knowingly.

1 N/Mo > 2 Me/Rt

I run a half-build without a primary in a party of 7 with henchmen (so don't say that it was my build, or my heroes build). When minions/mob started to die Master's energy regeneration (due to SR=15) was equivalent to ~10-15pips so he was spamming 10-15 energy heals with ease. Master was N/Mo and not N/Rt (not the "godlike" Rt skills: monk heals without divine favor!).
As I said Pongmei is not a good place to test at all, but then again, no need to test anything: ~13pips of e-regen just when you need it.

That's not the point here. I know what I'm talking about, I don't just say things for the sake of saying them. Energy management is something that I have used for a long time, specifically Leech Sig and Power Drain, because the interrupts + energy management allows the heroes to keep up with spamming spells. That is not the issue here. Soul Reaping is BETTER energy management, without having to bring a single skill. And if you bring Signet of Lost Souls, then it's even better.

To compare the two is a very poor example, because of COURSE energy management is going to be successful (if you're only just finding that out now, I feel bad for you), but Soul Reaping is PASSIVE energy management, not ACTIVE. Also, yeah, 8 skill on a bar is a lot different to 6.

um fenix i think ur missing 1 important thing.. what if ur not a necro????????

Bring energy management, or use/make a Necro. They're overpowered enough that it's silly NOT using them.

You clearly are out of touch with how things actually work. If Restoration were made less playable, players would immediately change all of their N/Rt templates to N/Mo and never even miss a beat. People ran N/Mo's in HA effectively for a year+ before I started seeing N/Rt's being exploited, and the only reason these were used at the first was to abuse (drum roll please...) the Soul Reaping that N/Rt's could gain back from their own Rt spirits. In fact, those N/Mo's rely heavily on Soul Reaping also, with Necro power teams (hexes, spiking, etc.) often running at least one copy of Animate Bone Minions and usually also a R/x spirit spammer whose job was providing free energy to the rest of the team almost as much as it was to have the spirits up in the first place.

Now, it's the same story it was then, except in this chapter, we're in PvE, and we're running minions instead of spirits for SR fuel. This imbalance is going to continue to be exploited until it is adjusted.

I'm not sure you can say that... the entire energy mechanic wouldn't have even been included in the game if they assumed that you would always have it available. I would say just the opposite; many skills are balanced around the idea that you probably WON'T always have the energy to cast them. Exhaustion anyone?

The primary focus of the discussion is how to address Sabway, as it is listed in the OP as a problem build. It's considered a problem build due to it's extreme popularity and ease-of-use. We've ruled out the MM and SS as the problematic elements of Sabway, leaving us with the N/Rt as the cornerstone character.

There have been two schools of thought on ways to address the power of the N/Rt healer.

• Address Soul Reaping. This seems to be the most popular suggestion, as it is known to be (and no one has argued otherwise) an extremely strong form of e-management. It is also passive, which is an additional advantage for two reasons: 1) SR doesn't take up a skill slot and 2) It has excellent synergy with heroes.
  
  However, there is another school that does not believe that any changes to Soul Reaping will change the situation in any meaningful way. The situation, again, being the overuse of the N/Rt healer in Sabway. For the sake of the discussion, lets assume that Soul Reaping is entirely deleted from Guild Wars. Let us imagine what the consequences would be for Sabway.
  
  Quite a few people have posted that it would solve the problem entirely. I disagree. Furthermore, I have actually demonstrated that the complete removal of Soul Reaping would actually do nothing. The proof of this is that the Me/Rt build I posted, doesn't have Soul Reaping (obviously) and yet is easily able to clear entire zones in the Realm of Torment on Hard Mode. The build walks through RoT with little-to-no-effort.
  
  What this proves is that Ritualist-secondary builds using Restoration can be powered using e-management far inferior to Soul Reaping. Power Drain, Leech Signet, Blood Ritual, Ether Renewal were all tested and they all worked just fine, even in advanced zones on Hard Mode.
  
  Has it dawned on people why I chose to use Me/Rt? Because it has (obviously) no Soul Reaping and it has no inherent benefit from it's primary attribute. Fast Casting brings nothing to the build. Basically I took the unarguably-worst PvE class and turned it into a replacement for the N/Rt in Sabway. Is it a direct replacement? No, but it's more than sufficient. Furthermore, the E/Rt Ether Renewal build is every bit as strong as the N/Rt build.
  
  Several further comments stated that these e-management options took up two skill slots, potentially an elite slot. That is irrelevant. The Ritualist-secondary healing builds do not rely on the elite skill - Weapon of Remedy. Losing two slots, or even the elite slot does not affect the potency of the build in any meaningful way.
  
  So, even if Soul Reaping is entirely deleted, we are still in the situation of people using X/Rt builds to walk through any zone in the game, even in Hard Mode. This is the situation we set out to resolve. Even deleting Soul Reaping changes nothing, we must keep looking for solutions.
  
  This doesn't take changes to Soul Reaping off the table, that is a perfectly acceptable topic to discuss, but it does not resolve the potency of Ritualist-secondary builds.

• Directly address the potency of Ritualist-secondary builds. Since I have demonstrated that Ritualist-secondary builds are more-or-less equally effective regardless of the primary on which they are equipped, we must address the following questions:
  
  
  • Why can any caster primary run Ritualist-secondary spells so effectively?
    
    
  • Why are Ritualist-primary builds not even equally effective, let alone superior, as is the case with every other profession.
    
    
  • What changes can be made to reduce the effectiveness of Ritualist-secondary healing builds?
    
    
  • What changes can be made to increase the effectiveness of Ritualist-primary healing builds?

These are the questions that need to be addressed if the conversation is to continue. Soul Reaping, is a valid, but totally separate discussion. I want to hear peoples thoughts on changes to Ritualists that can achieve the desired results.

This is bad logic.

Overpowered (Soul Reaping) + overpowered (Resto) = overpowered.
Overpowered (Resto) + active e-management = overpowered.

One of these two things is more overpowered because of something called SR. SR provides you with (in the case of the 2 builds posted) 2 extra slots of utility for free. SR out performs every e-management skill in the game with only 9 in it.

N/Rt that has 8 slots of skills that rely on 0 active e-management, and ergo has an assload more utility and less blue bar pampering.

that was easy.

N/Rt is overpowered because of SR. Take 0 soul reaping, and take 0 e-management skills to keep your utility. oh look, you fail badly under pressure.

Resto is only barely imbalanced, and in general you can go N/Mo and do the same job nearly as well because of WoH. So it isn't the line.

EDIT:
also skills are not balanced around the idea of you being able to spam them forever and ever and ever.

This isn't Fury. There's an energy system for a reason.

The effects of the skills are balanced around the idea of being activated on recharge. Whatever the skill does, it's recharge rate, and it's cast time ARE balanced on the assumption that they will be used as fast as possible.

The costs of the skills are balanced around trying to prevent that from happening to varying degrees. The more it costs, the harder they are trying to make it to be used-on-recharge, as well as reflecting an approximate value of the effects. Exhaustion is a good example of an additional penalty to repeatedly using a skill, eventually reaching a fixed limit.

Notice that they don't prevent it from being used again. That's built in to the recycle time. The effects though ARE balanced on the use-on-recharge model by necessity.

Ahh, yes you could say that skills must be partially balanced based on the assumption that players will attempt to take advantage of the effect every time it is available. This is how skill's energy costs are determined... more powerful effects cost more specifically to prevent them from being used on recharge without additionally synergistic skills being added to the build.

Guys - since we are obviously INSANELY bored (evident from the fact that we are actually entertaining the idea that SR isn't godmode) - I have a challenge:
I dare you to create builds that necro can do.
Create a build that you CAN run on a necro - but CAN'T run on the primary class. This means 8 identical skills.
The worse the builds - the better!

Since we REALLY need to nerf stuff like Illusion in PvE - because when you run it on a necro and it works and then you run the same build on a mesmer - and it doesn't - it MUST be illusion that is overpowered!

(Ohh and please - no resto builds. We already KNOW resto is obscenely overpowered.)

If restoration is overpowered why do people do N/Rt and not Rt/x?

Please answer me.

I guess I just can't stand to be ignored....so I'm posting here one more time.

The problem with SR is only partly due to its powerfull energy manegment.

As long as Damage and Healing of skills with attribute of 12 is so close to what you get at 14 or 16 ANY class can abuse secondary profession skills.

Infact one of the only classes that truely gains a benifit that is instanly usable by having MAX attributes is Necro Minion Masters.

Secondary skills were never meant to become a professions PRIMARY source of damage or healing. They were meant to SUPLIMENT the primary professions abilities.

I personally can accept only a drastical nerf of UB, when Anet gives us the possibility to play with 7 Heroes !!!

Thats the only point, that has to be done, when that would be done, only then I would find a nerf to UB absolutely fine, because casual gamers would receive with that change an wonderful alternative for UB.
Playing with 7 Heroes is by far not so powerful, like a 6 UB-2HB Team, but still alot more usefull, than retarded henchmen with their perma useless Skill Builds, where DumbNet thinks, their builds are good.

Plus also with such a change, Anet would have the chance to ultimately improve the Hero-Feature, by allowing us to take our own Characters of our Account as Heroes, when those Characters would have played through at least 1 Campaign.

What would be nicer, than to play with 8 Characters of your whole account at the same time ????? Right !! There's NOTHING nicer that Anet could give us for nerfing UB to uselessness.

Like you said - if that were true - then the skills would become insanely stronger at levels 13+.
They do not.

At best, a statement like that is out of touch with reality - otherwise, it's flat out wrong.

(Ohh and what you call "abuse of the secondary profession" is in fact abuse of the primary profession (or better yet - it's primary attribute!). That's the reason why when we talk abut N/Rt - SR is the bad guy rather then resto. Or when I run N/Me - it's not illusion that is to blame that I can spam Conjure Nightmare while keeping up Distortion (pretty much) constantly. It's SR once again.)

Because Spawning Power is widely regarded as being underpowered, especially for the Sabway-style build where it pretty much does nothing at all.

But why Necro.

Hint: it's probably because SR is overpowered.

1. I think it would be more accurate to say that I was out of touch with how things actually work. I seriously thought that soul-reaping-sharing was the culprit and the source of all the overpoweredness in Sabway. But I was wrong. I've seen those silly Me/Rt's at work. I can't deny that they are nearly as overpowered as the N/Rt's despite using what most people consider the worst PvE class in the game as their primary. I have wrapped my head around the fact that Resto skills are the real root of the N/Rt's overpoweredness, and I suggest you do the same.

2. To be perfectly clear, I am only suggesting making resto less playable for secondaries.

3. As for pushing people who want to heal with necros into N/Mo, OK, that's fine with me. I've played N/Mo, it's not very good. It's got very serious heal-per-second problems. Without DF or high attribute ranks, the healing per cast time just isn't high enough to keep pace with solid monster damage. It may be able to push out 80hp/sec forever and ever, but that doesn't do a bit of good if there's 120damage/sec coming in. Healer's Boon solved that problem for awhile by basically acting as a replacement for the missing DF. I haven't tried N/Mo healing much since HBoon was changed, but my impression is that it doesn't work too well now. And, if it did, then the fix is easy -- start HBoon's scale at zero benefit for zero DF. In short, I don't really find N/Mo healers overpowered, or even very good.

You still miss the point. It does not matter which is "more overpowered." The point is that they are both overpowered. X/Rt is overpowered. Because resto secondary is overpowered. Even if you put resto secondary on the worst primary out there (mesmer), it's still overpowered. (And you can go see that for yourself if you like since the builds are posted a page back or so.) That means, if we want to nerf N/Rt, then we are going to have to do something about resto. Nerfing SR, even completely deleting it, isn't going to solve the problem.

If you still don't get this, try reading post 335. That explains it more clearly than I think I have been.

A corollary to the fact that resto is the real reason behind the N/Rt's overpoweredness is that there's nothing left for which it is a cause of overpoweredness. Assume for a minute that resto gets fixed, what's left? Nothing. I asked you before to point to a specific build, N/Rt healer set aside because we're assuming resto gets fixed, that is overpowered thanks to SR. I don't think you can. (You couldn't in your previous post. In a roundabout troll-like way, Upier is sort of asking the same question (although he doesn't require that the build be overpowered, a fact I'm sure he's going to neglect when someone produces a build and he uses it as "proof" that SR is needs nerfed).) There's no justification for nerfing SR if it's not producing overpowered builds in-game, and I think that's the point we're at once we realize that resto is what's behind most of the N/Rt's strength.


Because Spawning Power brings absolutely nothing to a resto build. Nada. Zip. Zilch. That means the only incentive for being a rit primary is a couple extra attribute points. You can get something more useful than a couple of attribute points out of any other caster primary. E/Rt has the best energy management in the game (E.Renewal) plus a very deep energy pool for deficit spending when you need to. N/Rt has very good e-management that doesn't require skillslots (not that X/Rt is particularly skillslot hungry). Me/Rt has passable e-management skills and fast casting is marginally useful for a healer.

I think that it's not a good thing that other classes do better with resto than rit primaries. There's a few possible solutions:

• The idea I like is to make spawning power matter to resto builds, like DF matters to healing builds. Make the resto heals dual-attribute skills like the old lion's comfort. Set them so that the heal you get for X resto right now comes at X resto + 9 spawning. That would give the resto line back to the rit primaries.
• Another possibility is to change the scales to be non-linear. Make points 13-16 matter a whole bunch more than points 1-12. This could work as a way to fight secondary abuse across the board, not just in the X/Rt case. One potential downside is that it may be technically impossible. Ensign has notably remarked that he believes the game engine can only handle linear scales.
• Another solution is to cap secondary skills at three the same way PvE-only skills are capped. That would certainly end secondary abuse once and for all. However, I worry that this solution might also break secondary-heavy builds that aren't really abusive. For example, crit/barrage sins aren't really abusive or overpowered, but they often use 4+ ranger skills.

Because people are disinclined to deviate from what works. (Or, put less politely, we're sheep.) Sab put resto on a necro, and it worked very well, and no one ever bothered to venture beyond what they knew worked and try something different. As far as I know, yesterday was the first time anyone seriously tried E/Rt resto healers or Me/Rt resto healers. We thought we understood why N/Rt worked so well, but it turns out that none of us, not even Sab, really understood the relative impacts of resto and SR. And our sheepish nature kept us from investigating until now.

Not true.

People do N/Rt because they already have a necro and not a rit, and playing N/Rt means that they can get into groups.

In PVP, it was because of SR abuse yes, but that isnt the case in PVE.

Spawning prayers contain some very nice buffs for Resto rits - [skill]attuned was songkai[/skill][skill]energetic was lee sa[/skill][skill]wielder's remedy[/skill][skill]renewing memories[/skill]

Spawning's energy management skills are brilliant, particularly using both [skill]energetic was lee sa[/skill][skill]soothing memories[/skill] can rival N/Rt's energy management, plus it has better healing.

Rits are just as good, and IMO (I have a rit) better then N/Rt's. However, Rit heroes are a failure because they spam sefensive spirits on recharge anywhere, and drop their E management urns (Give Lee Sa to a hero rit - cast and drop, cast and drop, cast and drop).

Unfortunatly, heroes are great with N/Rt's because, they dont have the intelligence to use more advanced energy management methods that human players can use.

You didn't quite get this did you?
The point in asking for a shitty build is simple - it just proves even more how insanely overpowered SR is if it's able to run shitty builds. Because running shitty builds equals playing badly. And the necro enables bad play. (And by "bad play" I mean breaking all rules that should hold back casters.) Which is kinda the problem that people have with OTHER godmodes - it means that the mistakes you do just aren't punished.
Just look at the necro builds out there. They are so insanely energy intensive that no other class could run them in this form. But a necro - because of SR can.

If you don't think SR is overpowered - then you are bad at GW PvE.
End of discussion.

Your right, they do not become stronger at 13, and they should.

I am not talking about creating some insanely powerfull skills at rank 13, what I am talking about is decreasing the power of skills at 12 and under.

That's a quality troll right there. I like how you slid effortlessly from the "shitty builds" meaning of playing badly on the front end of your argument to the "bad at choosing what and when to cast/managing one's energy" meaning playing badly at the back end of your argument without even appearing the slightest bit self-conscious you were engaging in a deliberate equivocation fallacy. Grade-A quality trolling right there. No, it does not make the slightest bit of sense to say that anything that can power bad builds must be an overpowered energy source. "Oh, look, I can power flare spam with ether lord; flare spam is a shitty build; therefore ether lord is overpowered!!" Nice try, but go troll somewhere else.

Equivication is a fallacy... and this is a particularly poor attempt at even that. Perhaps you should retire to your own troll den.

Nice to see that more people are understanding this fact.

Wanna make the game harder? Make healers less effective. It's that simple. Make it harder to keep red bars up. Even at 4 SR the N/Rt kicks butt. I just mowed down Riven Earth HM with my N/Rt @ 4 SR and Mhenlo. My SS girl was also set to 4 SR.

You guys can control the rank of SR. Play around with low SR values on the N/Rt and decide what should be done with SR.

I'll admit that wasn't the best example, since flare spam is a cheap shitty build instead of an expensive shitty build. Still, insert your choice of expensive shitty build and my point still stands. The statement is still ridiculous. The ability to power shitty builds says NOTHING about whether an energy source is overpowered or not. The ability to power an overpowered build that will not run on a lesser power source is what makes a power source overpowered.


Edit: On an unrelated topic, I might add that I strongly suggest to anyone who thinks that SR is overpowered, or even might be overpowered, to take up Carinae's challenge. Try running N/X builds that you think are overpowered without SR. Run the same builds with low SR. Run them on an E/X with E.Renewal. Run them on an E/X with GoLE. Run them on a Me/X with P.Drain & LeechSig. See for yourself how much of the build's overpoweredness comes from SR and how much comes from other aspects of the build. I think you'll be surprised at how small SR's contribution to the overall effectiveness of these builds actually is.

If you really want to test then at least do it right: if you run X build and Y build in the same area and find out that they both work well, that does not mean that X is better, Y is better, or they are the same. It does not say anything about the builds. Create conditions where one of them fails, and that will be the weaker.

I'm afraid you miss the point. We're not after an "X>Y" result. We're starting from "X>>all" and trying to find out "why?"

Start with an overpowered build -- a build that works better than most anything else for a particular task. (In Carinae's tests, this was the N/Rt healer, which is commonly regarded as a better healer than a monk (or at least a hero monk) or a Rt/X healer.) This build is made up of various aspects, A, B, C, D, etc. The purpose of the test is to figure out which aspects are responsible for making the build overpowered. You do this by process of elimination. Take one aspect away -- start with aspect A -- and see if the build is still overpowered. Then repeat on down the line -- take away B, then C, then D, etc. In the end you can conclude that things where the build ceased being overpowered when you took them away are probably causative of the build being overpowered; and things where the build remained overpowered when you took them away are probably not causative of the build being overpowered.

Sounds like a plan Chton, but "Create conditions where one of them fails..." means something else. When Carine is telling us that her Me/Rts can heal her full hench/hero party here and there, it is entirely meaningless. Run bad builds on the party members, go with less henches, use just one healer, it does not matter: the build that you want to test has to fail, not succeed to see its limits. (+testing it in Nightfallen Jahai is just bad because the N/Rt is already cast time restricted (unlike the a regular X/Rt, which is energy restricted) so the "Edge of Reason" just makes the X/Rt healer even less energy dependent, +using broken e-management (ether renewal) on the E/Rt is obviously not going to create a contrast...so there are plenty of ways to mess this up)

I support this 100%. Phoenix Tears explains it perfectly.

I agree completely. You don't learn unless you fail.

However, those Me/Rts were supporting a piss-poor party composition. Random henchmen, over-aggro, not waiting between mobs. Bad hero builds. HM Realm of Torment. We still won.

We did wipe a few times...eventually. All that says is we were playing bad on purpose. Against the bosses, it says we needed Prot. We never ran then dry and then died because of it.

I've been testing the E/Rt builds today. It's better than N/Rt hands-down. N/Rt is really, really hard to run dry, but it's possible. E/Rt NEVER runs out of energy. He gains 3e when he uses any 5e spell. 10e spells cost him 2e. Oh, and every time he casts...he self-heals for 36-54hp.

It's also fire and forget. Heroes run it just fine, no micro needed at all. The energy is entirely frontloaded, so even when you run into a tough mob, he simply CAN'T be run dry. My only concern was enchantment stripping. It turns out even that isn't an issue. He has such an energy pool that he can keep running and he'll recast the enchant automatically when they recycle.

It's better than N/Rt.

Dont tell them. Let them go on believeing that Sabway is godmode. LEt them continue being the sheep they are. And we can sit back and laugh at them.

ER is indeed worse than SR (although you can't use elite). In my book it comes right after SY.