Fix Snowball

Welcome to this year's edition of the "Fix Snowball" thread. Here we summarize what issues exist in Snowball today and make suggestions on how to fix them.

General Snowball


Dwayna vs. Grenth - Avalanche vs. Yellow Snow

Avalanche vs. Yellow Snow is a debate that's carried on for years now. Simply put though, Avalanche overpowers Yellow Snow. It's a fact. While it may not be the determining factor of who wins or loses, it proves itself to matter in struggles between teams of similar power. The following are ways to shorten this gap:

• Reduce Yellow Snow to a 1 second cast time -OR- increase Avalanche to a 2 second cast time.
• Hidden Rock's functionality changes to a Preparation/Skill with similar cast time and effect -OR- Yellow Snow's functionality changes to a Preparation/Skill with similar cast time and effect.
• Put players under a Effect/Disguise that gives players of each side separate creature types -OR- change Yellow Snow to inflict Poison for an increased duration (15-20 seconds).

-OR-

• Avalanche affects all creatures in the target's area.

Cast Times

As it stands now, the cast times for Avalanche and Yellow Snow are a second apart. Given how this works, a few scenarios can happen, like these:

a) A person begins to cast Avalanche. The target notices and begins to cast Yellow Snow. The caster can cancel Avalanche with a hope that the target will waste their Yellow Snow, eliminating a possible Hidden Rock and ensuring that their Avalanche will stick for a while.
b) A person casts Avalanche. The target casts Yellow Snow. By the time they're done using Yellow Snow, the first caster will have gained a second's movement on their target and eliminated a possible Hidden Rock.
c) A person casts Avalanche. Their target simply moves forward. The caster will more than likely catch up to their enemy.

Whatever situation takes place, the person using Avalanche will catch up with their target, and has a potential of eliminating a KD. The solution would be to even up the cast times. It would be preferable to drop Yellow Snow down to 1 second, because boosting Avalanche to two might make it too weak in the face of Dazed or a watchful Mesmer.

Glyph Status

The fact that Yellow Snow and Hidden Rock are both Glyphs that overwrite each other makes Yellow Snow a very undesirable option when in a pinch situation that could have that person losing their bundle. Switching either skill to something else would remove the danger of writing over the KD, making it a much more viable option.

Conditions

Disease isn't a great tool in comparison to Cripple, because this arena is about running presents to an "altar" and not about kills. It becomes especially annoying when you realize that Disease can spread, which causes it to be worth anywhere from helpful to disastrous. Giving each team different Creature Types so that Disease doesn't backfire to Grenth would solve this. Similarly, changing this condition to Poison would make it a little safer, yet weaker, so buff the duration.

On a more extreme side, one solution to the argument would be to make Avalanche affect all players on the field. This isn't exactly a serious suggestion, but I feel that it would be a condition to force Dwayna players to consider when and where to use their Avalanche as to not affect their own team.


Player Professions Skills

While there isn't any skill in this category that would be so powerful that it would make or break a game, there are certainly skills that are more desirable than others for how they work. For example, I find the Ranger's, Dervish's, Paragon's, and Assassin's skills to be mostly useless in either format. Necromancer would be ineffective in 4v4 and effective in 8v8 for similar reasons that the Ritualist would be effective in 4v4 and ineffective in 8v8.

The four professions that dominate both formats for their skills are the Warrior, Elementalist, Monk, and Mesmer, because they provide the effects most useful for moving, stopping, or protecting presents going from A to B.

There aren't any specific suggestions I have for any profession on how to "fix" them, because they all have their strategic use. There are just some skills that are better to use than others, given the style of play.


Rewards

Costume Brawl saw the first of the consecutive point system. This was something that I and a few others had hoped would appear again.

• Victories in Snowball award 9 Gamer points and an additional Gamer point for each consecutive victory in the arena. The most Gamer points to be gained per match is 50.

Plain and simple. Would be nice for the Dragon Arena too, but that's not our focus here.


Automated Snowball Tournaments - 8v8 Snowball


Victory Conditions

Recently, it was discovered that the way Snowball Tournaments are played somewhat different from the 4v4 arena. Both teams, given ten minutes of play, are to collect ten gifts. However, there's an extra condition that makes this arena imbalanced: If either team fails to reach ten points, Dwayna becomes the automatic victor. This more or less turns these matches in to a game of keep-away from Grenth, and Dwayna gets the easy win. Coupled with having Avalanche, this is a broken condition.

• At the end of ten minutes, if both teams fail to reach ten points, the team with the most points wins.
• In the case of a tie between points, the match ends in a draw -OR- in the case of a tie between points, Grenth wins.

Plain and simple fix. The last suggestion, although by no means serious, is simply on the basis that if two teams tie in points and switched places for a rematch, the team that was first Grenth would be the victor because they would then have the more powerful of the two faction skills in their arsenal.


Observer Mode

• A separate section for Snowball matches is added during the hours of a tournament.
• All finals matches will be available for viewing.

The current way that Snowball matches are viewed isn't quite right, as you can only watch guilds in the top 100 play, and it is mixed in with any guilds doing the normal GvG tournaments. Split them up and adjust the system to show matches not restricted to simply top 100 guilds.


Rewards

For a team that manages to win all of their games, the total Gamer points they would receive is 90 points over 90 minutes + waiting time, which may extend to over two hours. 90 points per two hours is a horrible progression in that title, especially with the introduction of consecutive point gains.

I won't name a number for how many points should be earned per match or at the end of the tournament for team, but I do believe it needs a boost.

This is not such an important suggestion, given that the players in the tournament are already receiving normal tournament rewards. I just feel that a higher level competition of a festival game would have a higher level reward in that respective title track. If such a reward boost were to take place, there may need to be a reduction in the normal rewards from the tournament for sake of fairness/balance/etc.


tl;dr

Avalanche and Yellow Snow are imbalanced, so fix that. The tournament has glitches, so fix them. Ways to improve, balance, and fix this arena should be looked into before next year. The elimination of equipment effects was a good start.

inb4 someone tells me "It's a game, why so serious?" I don't remember anything about not being allowed to take something seriously just because it's a game.

Agreed
12 chars

looks good and well laid out,
/agree

/signed with 12 chars

It doesnt matter how well you explain it. Its been QQ'ed about every year, why would they care now all of a sudden?

Because this year, they added something new. I figure that as long as they're gonna work on fixing their 8v8, they may as well look at a long-standing balance issue.

Yes...this would be nice.
/sign

/signed they need to either buff somethings or nerf another.

/after loosing the Snowball Finale vs Dom because the had a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing imba snare made me qq,/SIGNED!

/signed

Snowball needs to be fixed.

Thoughts on adjusting useless professions:

- Paragon's chant should be adrenal based (4? 6? 8?), and up snowball speed by 200% if possible. Dodging is a relevant trick so the ability itself isn't bad, just needs stronger numbers. This is another way-better-in-8v8 ability though.

- Let flurry build adrenaline, give it a recharge (4s?), maybe up to 50 damage. It can build for mega slightly faster vs single target, or you can punish people who bunch up with extra KDs.

- Sin gets a targeted shadowstep to target foe. Remove the heal, give it a long recharge, or half range if you have to. Then they can insta-snow down the shirt (lulz) or catch up with present carriers. OR Change side step to move you to target ally, adjust recharge as needed. That free mobility will pay off over the course of a match.

- While in derv avatar form, your "god" skill gets appropriately buffed. EG: Avalanche recharge to 20s, yellow snow transfers all conditions from self to snowball target on use, or other variations.

Boosting the numbers would certainly help make it more useful, but it would still be underpowered. As for its effectiveness in 8v8, this skill really doesn't improve, because chances are that a person will be intercepting more attacks and won't have the chance to dodge them all. Attacks will still make it through to a person, and KDs will still strike.

Yay to the adrenal build, nay to the recharge or damage buff. As a whole, it's an improvement that doesn't sound too strong. For that in an 8v8 format, it's more likely that it will strike multiple foes for faster Megas, so it would become a profession worth trying.

Changing the skill to a simple shadowstep-to-enemy skill seems like an interesting move. I agree that the mobility will be effective, but I can't figure how much so. If such a change was made, I'd also like to see a KD or snare added to it, along with a long recharge, but that might be extremely overpowered.

I'll leave your suggestion as is because I feel I'm underestimating the power of a shadowstep in Snowball.

With there already being an imbalance between the two faction skills, I'm not going to support any idea of a "temporary buff" to either skill while in a specific mode. Your suggestion, however, makes me think that a sort of condition transfer mechanic on using Yellow Snow would be an interesting buff/change.

/signed
Well written.

I see nothing I disagree with, so:

/sign

Agree with most of the suggestions
Suggesting that Avalanche not be AoE and Yellow Snow with a decreased casting time. Hidden Rock is used often, and if youre hit with it you can kinda forget even trying to use Yellow Snow to try to remove dazed lol a 4 second cast wtf o.o

YS is glyph, not spell.. so still 2 secs under dazed.

On topic: I've played 3 ATs with my guild already, and fights (like 90% of) in top8 are won by Dwayna.

Dwayna's advantage is less visible on typical random 4v4 (where I often win being Grenth) or on "lower levels" of AT but in AT finals Dwayna just owns and creates real advantage for very good players.

/signed

/unsigned It's good as it is already.

Would you like to share a reason to that extremely empty comment?

/signed
12chars

Lol, numerous people, including myself, have given easy and good solutions to fix this problem 1 year ago, 2 years ago and this year. Nobody listens to us, so who cares?

But, of course, I /sign this

Oops. Shows you how long it feels to use it lol 2 seconds is still a while to remove a single condition. Still signed

I like how you outline everything specifically and state the imbalance in terms of avanlanche/yellow snow and among the different class specific snowball skills.

I agree

/signed

12 char

why would anet care about balancing an event that lasts 2 weeks at most when they dont care about balancing the game to begin with

Nobody wants to use disease on someone since they know it can effect themselves. Either remake disease or make yellow snow be a snowball taht does 50 damage and poisons I would say.

obvious stuff is obvious.

I'm suprised this still isn't addressed ... (then again, ok, i'm not realy suprised, this is still anet after all)

argh - hate when I lose a post...

the abridged version:

I'm sure this has been suggested in the long history of snowball suggestions but why not:

a) give both teams the same skill during that particular match (both have Avalanche or Yellow Snow for the match)

-or-

b) get rid of one of the skills and make a uniform bar for every player minus the class based skill (I'll let others baulk about the power of class based skills). So; for example, dump Yellow Snow all together and everyone gets Avalanche.

Again, assuming it's been suggested before so I'm adding my /signed here.


elk

This is actually not a great suggestion at all. If both teams had a ten-second unstrippable snare on every player, matches would slow down drastically. With the way 8v8 works now, or even in very compacted 4v4 battles, the AoE cripple effect would allow for teams to be permanently grounded to their location.

Similarly, with Yellow Snow, you're still competing for usage with Hidden Rock. This would only be useful then for removing Dazed, other Disease (wut), or attempting to slowly degen teams to death. Also, Eles would then become an absolute necessity for any team, because they would have the only snare in the arena.

The only place this suggestion could go is to remove both Avalanche and Yellow Snow in favor of a skill (or two) that both sides could use effectively, but that's not really necessary either if we can fix what we currently have.

/signed


efuiefhesiufhes

No problem on my end. /sign. Don't forget that if you're really serious about this, send this to anet.

Because all they have to do is balance at most 2 skills (avalanche+yellow snow) to make it balanced enough to play. Profession skills could use some balance but it's not crucial since people actually have control of which profession they play.

Make yellow snow give -15 health degeneration for 10 seconds.

/signed

As if Anet Cares

Although Avalanche IS better, in the 4v4 game it is hardly important. A good, competitent teams are always few and far between. The odds that 2 top tier teams will meet up where avalanche will provide the difference maker between a win and a loss is rare.

But, when a good team shows up, they will ALWAYS win against bad teams, regardless of being grenth or dwayna.

Good teams only lose via bad luck with the spawn locations, somebody leaves, or when they face off against another good team.

Bad snowball arena teams don't even know what the heck the objectives of the game are. They don't care about snares.


Balance really only matters when its two good teams against each other (like the ATS). And that does not happen that often in the 4v4. "Balance" doesn't matter because it only effects the outcome of like 1 in 15 games (number pulled out of my ass). Every other time the game is decided by people being able to time kds and auto target presents with the ";" key. The snares just slow down/speed up the inevitable when a good team rolls a bad one.
Just play the minigame to have fun. It's Christmas. It should not be taken so dang seriously. Its a mini game where you THROW SNOWBALLS at people. It is meant to be fun, not "competitive."

Makes me wonder why they haven't implemented Ice Skates, if just for the ATS. It's been buried in the dat for at least a year. Let it replace both Yellow Snow and Avalanche.

(For 10 seconds, you move 33% faster.)

I disagree Hawk. I've gotten in a number of really good teams this Wintersday in 4v4, and every time, we are eventually defeated by another good team when we're playing as Grenth. Good team + good team = Dwayna wins, and that's not a fun thought to have hanging over your head every time you load and see Yellow Snow on your bar.

/Signed and strongly agree.

Dwayna side is severrely advantaged as Avalanche is an excellent skill that's very useful in both 4v4 and highly competetive 8v8. It's fast and AoE to add more imba to it. Yellow Snow is a poor joke compared to it, with a weak effect of removing just 1 condition and Disease equally spreading on both teams as the format is all about close fights for presents. It has a horrible casting time, is almost useless as a Cripple remover vs Avalanche and it's a Glyph that cancels your hidden rock. Shortly: it sucks.

I've played a ton of random 4v4 and a few 8v8 ATs and I can easily feel the difference - a team has to be much worse to lose when on Dwayna side. Many Grenth teams playing finals in the ATs don't use Yellow Snow at all! So it's like 8 skills vs 7 skills, on 8 players it's 64 vs 56 skills on all bars - a big difference.

Considering the power of that skill for this arena, that would be something that I'd only want to see on both teams, or on one profession. Even if substituted for Yellow Snow, that skill pitted vs. Avalanche would probably still lose. A person carrying a bundle with that might just move at the same speed as a normal person, and once that person is snared, the boost would be near useless.

At least, I don't think a skill like that would necessarily make the Warrior skill useless, as the Warrior can still get a free KD every ~30 seconds.

I'm not sure what you disagree with me on at all there.

Whoops, HawkofStorms, not you.

Yes, I'm "Hawk", you are "Hawke"

Thoery craft aside, winning as Grenth is still very possible. While it may be somewhat imbalanced, it is not an auto win key (there is, after all, still a lot of luck about where and when the presents spawn, what teams pick up fakes, etc). It will never be balanced as a lot of it isn't skill based.

At least it is better and more fair then rollerbettle with the random box powerups.