Skill Balancing

... What?

For one, kiting is a smart tactic. Anyone decent knows this is the most widely used tactic. The only skills capable of removing the aspect of positioning defensively are Return, Shadow Meld and some other skill, otherwise using an offensive shadowstep means you are attacking someone, not kiting as a main tactic and even then if you're at low health you want to be AWAY from melee, not shadowstepping INTO them.

For two, I've noted that you haven't gave me counters beyond the two I noted earlier. Even then, Shadow Walk still allows this to happen with no counters except shoddy stance removal skills. Any good team brings anti-melee, by the way.

For three, please look at my post again. If positioning wasn't a key aspect why do we have so many skills that require positional skill to use? With skills like Bull's Strike, you need to hit a moving enemy, with snares and speed boosts, you're helping targets kite and helping targets die. There is also dodging projectiles, keeping away from melee and using certain positions to your advantage, such as scythes, Fire AoE, things like Blurred Vision and so on.

I can care less about people running or kiting. That is smart play, other than running which entirely depends on the situation.

GW, unlike Magic, had 2 components operating: PvP and PvE. Skills that were imba in 1 weren't necessarily OP in the other. But, nerfing (or buffing) affected both.

Until, that is, they realized "Oh, hey! We're messing up PvE by nerfing skills that are seeing too much use/are OP in PvP! Maybe we should treat them separately?" A little late - but, better late than never.

And, like Magic, with each new chapter, part of the appeal was new skills. Skills that would only be available in that campaign/deck. As with Magic, there were unforeseen synergies, and the team had to say, "Whoa! Okay- what do we do now? We can't very well take away a skill..." So, the attempt to "skill balance" is born. How (un)successfully is a matter of opinion, and varies based on the skill and the player's use of it.

Both Magic and GW have certain rules to attend to in the same game. Dreamwind gave some pretty good examples.

The problem with shadowstepping, as with many other new skill mechanics introduced in Factions/NF/EOTN are the lack additional counters to it directly.

In order to stop speed buffs we have stance breaking as well as cripple via condition or hex.

What is a direct counter or prevention to shadowstepping? Like a ward or condition or hex or shout?

Well, like we were discussing, the would not apply to ALL PvP. (like in magic, people can still play type 1.5 or type 1 pvp) It it proposes that it be used for competitive PvP for example, the GvG Tournaments. (like how all internation/national level Magic Tournaments are Type2)

This may not be the best list (as I didn't put too much thought into it), but lets just throw things down: it'll be a starting point and a point we can edit/evolve from.

GvG Unrated: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)
GvG Rated: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)
GvG AT: Last Chapter + Core Only (Type 2)
GvG Monthly: Last Chapter + Core Only (Type 2)
HA: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)
AB: Factions + Core Only (type 1 kinda)
Fort Aspenwood: Prophecies+Faction+Core (type 1.5)
RA: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)
TA: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)
PvE: Prophecies+Faction+Nightfall+Gwen+Core (type 1.5)


In the first chapter, classes had their own unique "jobs". certain jobs (skill lines) were created with powerful unique utilities. These jobs usually had some sort of trade off, less damage, longer cast, high energy consumption. Over time and consecutive releases, these low damage utility job skill lines were given more damage, better cast, better energy management, and a more diverse set of utility. ie snares > better snares, more damage, better energy management, blind utility, etc.

Retiring will allow the games to try new things, direct the evolution of jobs without making them too versatile. It can also give them new angles to an old job. (they could make Factions competitive GvG have more hex focus, while Nightfall competitive GvG have more enchantment focus). Shadowstep imo is very powerful, not just for the offensive positioning and low counterability as discussed above, but also because of it's defensive aspect, which in gvg it's exploited for. Additionally, Factions introduced too many shadowsteps, instead of limiting. IMO this was good for factions. It introduced a new mechanic to the game. It was fresh, it was fun. But when Nightfall rolled around, and certain support skills and more shadowsteps were introduced, it become even more powerful.

but again, as mentioned above, this isn't a battle of shadowstepping needs nerfing or not. Rotating the skills will allow shadowstepping to still be viable, but not play up such a large focus. If for nightfall there were only one or two shadowsteps (with limitations just like they currently do, like only targets enchanted foe or foes with a chant/shout), they might still be usable without it being used for everything. offensively, defensively, snare, positioning.

Water magic is another good one. Sometimes Water can possess rich warm healing properties. Sometimes, cleaning or enchanting properties. And other times water can be poisonous and spread/carry disease. In vapor form it can burn and cause visible bodily harm. Frozen water has been used to protect humans from adverse conditions, and offer preservation effects. Frozen water can also cause damage whether through slow freezing or mechanical damage.

In each chapter, Water can play different roles, for example, a chapter on sylvari can focus water's cleansing and healing properties. In the desert chapter it could play up the vapor and disease/poison properties. then in the shiverpeak chapter it could play up the ice focus. Water could be given different characteristics and alter it's role according to the personality of the chapter. different mechanics. keep it fresh. but you can quickly see how if water could do all of that at any one time (accumulation of many many chapters), it could easily become overpowering, broken for competitive play.

Uh...that is definately not the problem. More counters means the game is decided before the gate ever opens if you didn't bring the counter. The problem is shadowstepping (and just about every other mechanic post Prophecies) should have never been put into the game.

The first problem was in trying to use the same skill sets for both PvE and PvP. The styles of play are so dissimilar that it has failed. Then PvP has been catered to on every skill adjustment, even including PvE skill changes to meet the expections of PvP players who want to use their PvP builds in PvE play.

The next was in trying to make so many different effects out of only a few. Everything boils down to Damage per Second versus Prevention per Second. After all, degen vs regen amounts to the same thing. Instead of focussing on various visual effects (summoning minions but with different visuals in each class: warriors = recruits, ele's = various imps, mesmers = chaos imps, etc.). In having equal expression in different visualizations they could have been balanced. They failed to express each skill effect and concept equitably across the classes and that was the seed for all the other problems in skill management.

GW2 will apparently be entirely based around 1 core game + expansions, so arguments for affecting the tournaments based on chapters begin to fall down a bit.

Also, one other consideration with Magic that hasn't really been brought up in this comparison: WOTC pretty much HAS to use the Type 2 system for competitive play unless they want to lock out newer players altogether. With the earlier releases out of print and the prices for cards from those sets rising exponentially, if they hadn't been culled from the serious tournaments the entry cost would be in the thousands of dollars by now. By contrast, content for GW and GW2 will probably be available for as long as servers for that game stay up - even with the official prices remaining steady, at the very least the barrier to entry will only increase linearly with time rather than exponentially.

There's also a cap to the entry barrier - if the skillbar remains limited to 8, than any competitive build is going to be limited to requiring eight releases, so a player who decides what build they want to start with can simply pick the releases they need for the build they're looking for (about the same as buying cards for a specific deck for Magic instead of randomly buying boosters). In the chapter system, this would set the cap at $400 - which, admittedly, is a pretty steep cost of entry, but I'd be surprised if in such a situation it wasn't possible to find a starting build that used less chapters. If the expansions to GW are cheaper - say, $25 each - then the maximum height of the barrier would be the core game plus eight expansions, or $250. I'd still be willing to bet it would be possible to make top-rate builds with only two or three expansions in this scenario, though, which would set the barrier to entry at around half that - not much more than the $90 you cite, and probably more convenient than chasing around specific cards on the market.

Moving away from this topic, I have a comment on the Assassin issue:

People have suggested that Assassins should be removed entirely due to shadowstepping influencing the 'positional' aspect of the game. What if shadowstepping was removed for GW2, but replaced by a wider variety of stances and enchantments granting faster move speed, the ability to ignore bodyblocking, and providing other mobility advantages?

GW is far to twisted to balance at this point.

Our only hope is that in GW2 they take the time to balance each class both internally and externally and not allow new skills into the game that break that balance.

Having 2 skills that deal equal damage but with different delivery is balanced.
Having 2 skills where one costs more and deals less damage is not balanced.

It sounds so very simple, yet Anet just cant seam to figure this out.

Even with the linear increase, most of the people I knew that were interested in this game ended up not getting it for price reasons.

That all depends on how new skills are implemented. you can see from factions, nightfall, gwen that they promoted those chapters by implementing overpowered skills. you can see how it's possible for it to quickly make you buy many of the expansions to put together one solid build. then add in the complexity of being able to quickly nerf and buff skills. Even if it was 2 expansions, 100$ was still pretty steep for my peers. (at least those that didn't get gw:P during release).

This also makes the game difficult to keep fresh. and balanced over long periods of time. and accumulate overpowered skills and mechanics into stagnation. gw1 lasted for 3 years, does that mean gw2 will last 4 years before having to switch over to gw3?

not to throw a wrench into the shadowstep issue... i should probably create a new thread for this, but as an asside, it still surprises me that mesmers and possibly necros still don't have skills to remove weapon spells, shouts, and chants (though interrupts now work on chants)

Not any, there were restrictions involving walls and doors and such, at least from what I recall of using [aura of displacement] in Fort Aspenwood...