Balancing PvE

A bit offtopic , I think Cryway is better than tank'n'spank because any caster proffesion can be a cryer.
On topic: no nerf will force players to use balanced builds , education will.

What's in a name? The idea of Cryway is an armour ignoring AoE spike - I've said this twice already - you could replace with one of the aforementioned skills and still run a reasonably effective AoE armour ignoring spike. Sure, it wouldn't be called cryway exactly but its doing exactly the same thing. If you want to be pedantic about build names then you should also comment on the fact it shouldn't be a -way at all due to the lack of I Will Avenge You.

I would argue that tank and spank does rely on several aspects of game mechanic, especially where the tanking is concerned. What has half range spells, bow lengths, touch spells, enemy AI, not enchanting pulling tanks, dealing with groups of foes which have several different max aggro ranges etc etc.


Also Tyla, if you wish to quote me to say things like this
Then try at least to make the quote relevent to what you're accusing me of.

A name is what's given to something. A definition, something for it to be known by. If you get a cover song, you're going to call it the same thing because it pretty much is - the only difference is how the other band played the song. Change the lyrics and the tune, you've got an all different song. And changing CoP (Hence, Cryway) will remove that tag.

Also, changing CoP also changes what's going to be in your build. You use FoC? Attribute points, runes, loss of an elite skill, extra recharge and energy and the need for a hex on every target comes into play. With Cry of Pain you've not got much to worry about. No spiking skill is as versatile as Cry of Pain and contains as much strength aswell.


You raise a good point, but what exclusive aspects does it rely on? Wherever you go, you're going to see all of the above in PvE - so I guess there's no such thing as a gimmick in that case considering you're going to see a lot of game mechanics everywhere.


Actually, I just couldn't be bothered shortening it down. I felt you knew what area I was talking about.

tank= a person that runs in takes aggro of foes so they are nice and clumped so casters can kill the mob. it doesnt matter if that tank is an ele terra, sf sin or ob tank.

tank and spank= u need a tank
cryway= U STILL NEED A TANK

i find it funny that some people say tank and spank is bad..when in a cryway group u still use a tank ( this is the part where you go " duh" like homer simpson )you still need a tank to gather foes so u can cast cop. unless you are godlike group where u have 8 people with solo cop builds that run around to different places to cop everything.

you cant really say 1 is better than the other cause i have done both (not that my skill matters ) and it depends on the skill level of the casters and the tank. sure u can have all cop skills but the person mashing buttons can suck at mashing or run into the tanks aggro..or the tanks mommy calls him for super..no tank no group..etc. if done correctly cop should kill mobs faster..however im sure that there are possible builds that could destroy a cop damage output as well. so imo it depends on the caster and tank using good coperation.

i just find it funny that people that call cryway group leet and tank and spank groups bad are unintelligent.

just a side note if u wanna be creative with cop just run all warriors with high energy staffs and use COP. yes even tanks can use cop..works well and tanks can take way more damage than a caster. 8 warriors with staffs using COP.. screw the tank and spank im going to call it Tank And Donkey Punch i said it first in fact im gonna copyright it. build to come next week after i perfect it ..lmfao.

Nerf CoP and "Cryway" dies. A week later, the next best build is spread. Maybe it contains FoC necros, E-surge mesmers, and RoJ smiters. Whatever the damage source, the style of playing will continue with matched, but slightly harder to use damage. Elite teams still get rediculously fast times. Pugs still use similar builds but much slower. PvE is still unbalanced. Nothing is fixed.


Tyla, how do you type so much without actually saying anything?

I lol'd at the title...

You are incorrect.

Nerf because you find it easy? This actually made me laugh. Try to remember that you are not the only person playing the game and if ANET balances a game for Hardcore players only = DEAD GAME. Not all people are created equal.


How long do you think it takes to get rank 9/10 in Norn? Those 3 principles were pretty much tossed out with Nightfall. Taken out in the field and shot with EotN. Kind of miss those days but ANET decided to favor the majority of their customers, instead of the minority that post on threads.


They are guilds out there that do things old school, they often need an extra to fill out a team. Just shop around and build up a relationship with these type of people.

Why would anyone care if it is against said suggestion? Some of my favorites UW/FoW runs involved 6 heroes and I, it is just FUN.

This thread is full of a despairing amount of stupidity. PvE will simply never be balanced. Yes, things can be make better and Anet could attempt to alleviate the problem, but they don't. Instead over a period of years they only added to the ongoing problem (i.e. PvE Only Skills).

There are three types of players in the game: those who can be viewed as the "experienced" and "veteran" players who run the closest thing to balanced one can find these days, those who like to use the easy way out and run whatever the current gimmick is, and those who just don't give a damn. The problem Anet faces is that it is impossible to cater to 100% of the aforementioned groups. If they remove the ability to run a gimmick build then players are going to be pissed because godmode is no longer viable. If gimmicks aren't removed, rather they are left alone and begin to grow in popularity, it is only natural the "experienced" players will be aggravated. There is no in between. One way or another it is likely that some of its player base will be loss. lol Ursan

I see two balances in pve , the monster vs player balance which can never be even because of the AI (this doesn't justify the idiotic enviroment effects and monster skills ANET introduced), and internal balance among the professions which is pretty even in NM , but the balance between the professions is ruined in HM and elite areas. Anet could at least try to make all professions more viable in a balanced setup (by this I mean no pve skills whatsoever). I guess pve skills tried to make all professions even but it didn't go quite as planned.

And yes , ANET can't please everybody.

What.

You have to be hardcore... for the game to be easy? No, you don't. You should see the bars that people managed to complete PvE with, the tactics used, everything. Normal mode is pretty much fine on its own, and hard mode is supposed to be for these "hardcore" players you speak of - it's a higher difficulty level. If you suck at hard mode get better or get the hell out, you don't see other games hurting the game difficulty simply because people moan that they can't complete a mode built for higher level players.

Funny, because the only area people were so uptight about your LB and SS was DoA. There were no skills, other than the Jujundu (which was only a small area of the game) which gave you a ready-made skill bar. Up until GW:EN, where you got 5 more heavy grind titles which as opposed to the Nightfall ones, were puny in comparison.

Also, when something's wrong you don't make the problem worse, you fix the problem.




I am completely aware of this, but I don't play anymore. I still argue for the game because I still believe it has a bit of potential left in it as long as the developers don't keep f*cking up.

"Fun" is a subjective term. Elite areas shouldn't allows hero passage, except for maybe one. Speed clears and solo farming are also dumb. Get rid of these, you should be finding players there. That is unless they're the type that think phat lewtz in an online game where money has minimal baring and overcompensate themselves with it.

i liked most of this changes just for the lulz

the only one that made me think WTF was the soul reaping change, you screwed it beyond the strenght attribute

Fun is a subjective term indeed, but that is rich statement coming from someone who enjoys dictating how everyone else should play the game and enjoy it.

EDIT: Disagreeing with aspects of the game within reason is not what I'm refering to. I refer to the taunting of players who choose to run the builds you personally deem as not kosher, who you instantly label inexperiened or bad at the game. This has nothing to do with other games or "customization".

Back to the topic, however, I have some suggestions for Cry of Pain that I posted elsewhere;

The Strength attribute isn't really all that bad at all.

Wait, what?

Just because I disagree with certain characteristics of the game and have arguments as to why or why not they should stay doesn't mean I'm telling people how to play their game. There's one way to replicate how to play it, but there are more games in the world that inhabit Tank'N'Spank play - WoW for example. Guild Wars isn't the only game out there.

If we had full customization on every single characteristic of said game, would that be alright too?

ZOMG HARD MODE IS FOR PROS GTFO WITH UR CRYWAY.

That's all I read. Learn to play or get out of your Hard Mode.

How other people play DOES NOT AFFECT YOUR PLAYING. Period, end of story, have a nice day.

One of Guild Wars' charms is that there are multiple ways of dealing with a problem and tank'n'spank is one of them. It would be a shame if physical-way would become the only solution to the toughest problems.

anet should balance pve around killing luxons

totally.

that is all.

I've seen the rise of Cryway when Uber and his guild were perfecting their Deep runs.
You won't hear me complain about anything those guys (and others on their level of play) did and do, they have showed a lot of dedication and innovation. And knowing their playing-skill a tweak to CoP would not put them out of business.
One of the things they did was showing that a skilled team could beat Ursan, which was THE type of play back then.

But, let's be honest.
Deep in about 20 mins. That's overpowered, even when playing with a very experienced team.
We knew it back then, now Guru knows it and starts complaining about it.
Or .... since the introduction there have been arguments about the PvE skills.

Nowadays, as long as your tank doesn't fail, a team can finish everything.
I don't mind that. It was like that in SF with the gear-farm and later in DoA with Kaiz' build. Being able to join such a group with almost any profession isn't bad. So yay for unlinked CoP
What is bad in my opinion is the speed in which such a team can do things.
The old builds had a huge disadvantage, they lacked speed.

Let's revert time to the UW speed contest DVDF organised a while ago. No PvE skills allowed. Except one specific guild the time was roughly an hour. In Normal Mode. That's skilled players who somewhat know their way around in the area. And most probably played together before (since the contest was aimed at guilds).
If a SC takes 20 mins in HM, and 20 mins to form a team and has a chance of 50% fail it would on average be about as fast as a balanced team.
Not bad, since you get more gold drops, more cash and double loot at the end!

I think something is wrong with certain skills. Some have had problems for ages and are almost impossible to fix without huge impact (like PS). Others were introduced to ease nerfs or give players better skill options (PvE skills).
And some became overpowered by 'recent' skill changes.
And it's hard for A-net to balance them, because there will always be players who find a way to abuse them.
But that does not mean we shouldn't have a discussion on why certain skills might be / are overpowered and how to tweek them.

Why shouldn't the deep be able to be completed in 20minutes? Who sticks labels on elite areas and says "because i used a xxxxx build concept and got this time, any more than this is broken". Yes it did used to take longer, in NM, but people have been running the elite mission daily since then and as a consequence tactics have significantly improved and made way for the faster times. Had we known then what we know now, runs could have been just as fast a year or two ago (similar arguments can be used for DoA and Urgoz).

Consider how the deep build evolved. Go back to the time when steel wall had been established - there was NM and renewal nukers. With the introduction of NF these nukers quickly became Searing Flames, and shortly after people were attempting HM with just the same build as NM, eventually getting down to ~25minute with SF in HM. Not to mention everything moves faster in HM, so the dps of skills like SS rapidly increases and pulling time decreases.

If cryway were to be nerfed into oblivion, we would not go back to SF eles but look for another armour-ignoring alturnative. At the time, the effectiveness of an armour-ignoring spike was just unknown to the deep and therefore quicker times were not being achieved.

It's true that UW times have fallen significantly but UW is a slight exception - for 8 solo farmers to complete an area seems genuinly broken (although I have nothing against solo farming in general). The "one specific guild" you mention there comprises of many of the people still making records today - which leads back to my argument that although people can be very successful with cryway, this generally is not the case. A lot of the decreases in run times are due to Shadow Forms maintainability - that's the real enemy here.

The thing is, if someone will view Tank 'N' Spank and a heavy physical build the only viable alternatives (which it isn't, you could use a bit of creativity and your own knowledge to apply to it if you're unhappy with a certain playstyle - you don't always need tanks and physical for casters to be efficient at PvE, and I think Discord is something to keep in mind there as an example), then they're obviously not trying enough. Remember the Mantra of Frost build? B/P? There's lots of still viable alternatives, you just have to look.

Did you miss the "Online" and "Co-operative" part of the game? If something is overly dominant, someone will lose out because they don't find it fun. Ursan is one example of this.

So, because people will use the next best build all of the time the game can't be balanced? That is not the reason.

Alternatives should at least be kept on par with each other. Even if my desire for all "dat dude get agro den hedbut keybaord" isn't fulfilled, that should happen anyway. How? Tone things down, don't just push them up in the ranks of strength, or you'll just end up with a button that says "complete the game" and you're already done.

They were called "elite areas" for a reason. Even the best players shouldn't get times like that. 40 minutes, fair enough, but 20 minutes for full completion in hard mode? Taking it a bit too far up the ranks of stupidity there.

That is pretty true, but it's not like the old "agro den hedbut" crap isn't a tag team partner is it?

It's a lesser evil, but it's still something that should be dealt with, much like Shadow Form.

Disagreeing with aspects of the game and customization of their characteristics and "taunting" of other players will go hand in hand. If X player was inexperienced, but he was moaning and whining about how hard hard mode is, or why they can't do an elite area, then they should either improve or get off that mode because it wasn't for them, not ask for super powerful crap - they're asking for that customization I was talking about. That is, in a way, dictating how people should play the game, but at the same time, it makes sense. If you heard a game was challenging and you bought it, but moan that it's too hard, why the f*ck did you buy that game?

Maybe pay a little more attention to my previous post. At the time of release these missions were elite - when we didn't know any better - we're now two and a half years wiser. Funnily enough, after doing the same thing for two and a half years progress has been made and we have refined quicker ways of doing things. The times don't only reflect skill changes, but increase in understanding of the areas and tactics therefore more fitted for purpose.

I don't see why my comment is stupid. It's more stupid to assume that elite missions must be time stamped. What makes 40 minutes perfectly acceptable but 20 minutes not? Who has the divine right to decide at what point timing stops being fine and when something somehow must be overpowered or even glitchy? Current completion time, especially in the older elite missions, just reflects the progress we have made.

Just nerf [cry of pain], [shadow form], and ["save yourselves!"], and PvE will be balanced.

As long as all 3 are nerfed to oblivion I agree. Nerfing one while leaving the others the way they are is hypocritical.

I agree with randy agreeing with snow.

P.S. I want joo both in my pantz NAO

What do you want to happen? Make Tank'n'spank so uneffective its no faster than balanced builds? They are two totally different play styles. Different people enjoy different things, differet people enjoy different games. Pug runs seem to accept almost any profession in cryway. Same as ursan - almost all professiosn are accepted to a build. They do it incredibly slowly and it must be boring as hell. Just because certain guilds run elite missions in amazing time with a build doesn't mean pugs get anywhere near that time. Theres no way the game can be totally balanced - SS is amazingly overpowed in The Deep because the majority of enemies are melee and Kanaxai, Aspects & Oni all hit extreamly fast with 100% double strike rate. This doesn't mean its any good in DoA where you need a spike to be under 3 seconds or you start dying. In deep, Wandering eye has about 99% chance of triggering unless your dumb, making it very useful. Whereas in DoA, Esurge is more useful, dispite its elite status and long recharge. Theres is no way to balance all these skills so they are only effective as the next one in each area. What you are saying is rediculous.

If you bought a game, kinda enjoyed it but found it way too hard, so you gave up before long, your not gonna go to your friend (if you have them) "yeah gws is funfun you should buy it!". Anet needs to please as many people as possible to keep their sales up, and pleasing many is very important especially with so many people un-sure of wether to buy GW2. Why do you think they kept ursan how it was for so long? - People started playing, enjoyed it but couldn't do anything without ursan, so bought EotN.

Nerfing every effective build will knock their player count to the ground, whenever something is nerfed, the next best thing will come up, and Anet can't destroy it without losing another load of potential GW2 customers.

Lets say The Deep is made much harder, ohnoes we can't get as fast as we could before. Now a good deep run is 40 minuets not 20 minutes. Every other run is also 20 minutes longer. The build that gets the 40 minute runs are still unbalanced compared to the ones that get hour runs. Whatever happens, things will always be unbalanced and people will always be here to argue about it. The fact that you don't play gws, yet still come here just to argue, I think is very sad.

Also, even with 20 minute runs, you still only looking at about 3k an hour, with the occasinal gold thats worth something. Might be fast, but its not worthwhile for money - people do it for fun. Doesn't afftect the economy much, just gives some people who enjoy it something to do.

Can I go first??

I got the irish accent mate....

Someone in this town
Is trying to burn the playhouse down
They want to stop the ones who want
Prosthetic foreheads on their heads
But everybody wants prosthetic
Foreheads on their real heads

there is nothing wrong with PvE. the problem is the community (everyone wants the fastest cheepest way to make the most $). The solution is to stop blaming anet on what the community is doing and change what small bit of the community you have influence over.

So lets go play... and play well --with whatever chars we want... im more than willing to play (but dont tell me what must be/not be on my bar)

bumping my idea

making mental notes to self

A) please god dont let Tyla join anet her ideas..whacked
B)i believe tyla likes to debate till the cows come home
c) i dont even bother reading tyla posts 2 long, 2 bitchy, 2 boring
D) did some say party?
E) close the thread Unless u rename it tylas bitchbox..press here for entry.

i think to balance all of pve u need to Nerf the Res Signet and all forms of res
and i also take great offense to the fact that instead of koolaid anet used beer and its a teen game..isnt that against the law? bring back the koolaid title..and nerf the drunkard title

last note to self->>>>>>>>> and to tyla---......?>>>> make tea not love

Simply Put//PVE is ok as it is


Far too many whinners wanting ...there way to suit there gameplay

Its not your game ..its everyones game not the few on this community

If you dont like it dont play it..ohh i forgot the whinners are the Farmers who just want more and more

PVP is here for guys who dont like it also Pve that is


Anet your doing a good job for a game ...that is free to play...keep up the good work and ignore the small group who continusly moan ..just for the sake of moaning

All I can add to this conversation past my initial post is - Tyla is male. Also, he is right far, far more often than wrong.

tyla he/she him/her wasnt my point... and you thinking HE is more right than wrong is an opinion not an actual fact. if it was a fact than when tyla spoke people would listen ( for all u EF Hutton fans ). and then there would be far less posts.

IMO i tihnk anet is doing a fine job and should not listen to people that just wanna bitch cause a skill gets nerfed and that cant be creative enuff to find another way. instead come on here bitch and cry my build got nerfed, grow up, take a laxative, have a smoke or whatever. move on. if those people spent 1/2 the time bitching and actually find another elite skill....well u get the point.

I love anet and im the #1 fan open your eyes ..cant you see the humor anet does? oh wait you cant cause you dont realise its just a game.

They are still labelled "elite" areas. They should have always been "elite", and hard mode should have always been "hard".

Without Consumables, SY, SF or CoP? Those times we see today won't even be met. Consumables only make a small area of that though, at least in my opinion.

Your comment wasn't the part I called stupid, it was the time. 20 minutes for an "elite" area is just stupid outside of games with obscenely high leveling (understandable), but 40 minutes should be the maximum for one of the "best" teams who do the area.

If you could now complete it in 1 minute, would you view that as dumb for an elite area clear time? If not then your view of "elite" is pretty off side to me.

Actually, it's false or true depending on whether I am right or wrong - if it was 100% opinion based, then you'd have a point.

B is entirely true, my posts aren't really very long or bitchy, and by the time I join ANet they'll probably be out because I'm not even 20 yet, or have any computer-based knowledge outside of the basic areas.

You're telling me my ideas are crap, then you come up with this in the wrong thread?

The "posh" age of Britain died long ago.

You've completely lost the plot. It's not "crying 'cause a skill gets nerfed", it's, to put it in your perspective, "crying for skill nerfs". I don't even remember the last time I got into a debate where I was complaining about a skill being nerfed. Please try to stay on topic and understand what it is about before you respond.

You do know that criticism is the beginning point of improvement, right?

You are also aware that the majority of the people who are "whining" aren't even farmers, at least from my sources.

The things ANet do have major influence on people. Who wouldn't use the best method (determined by their playstyle) to get what they want? The only exception is running old school bars for the "buzz" of it.

There is also the fact that people choosing the best method possible are doing what the common thing is; you can't blame people for being human.

You do know what "on par" means, right?

Either way, before Cryway it already was less effective than physical builds.

The economy and ingame cash means f*ck all to me. Pretty much the least thing I care about ever. 20 minutes for an elite area though? You're kidding.

You're getting riddiculous here. It's been a while since both elite areas and hard mode was introduced. Do you know what 'progress' is? Or perhaps 'game evolution' ?

You really want us to move backwards? Or stay in one place? Running the same old primitive builds that were in use ages ago? (i'm not neglecting their usefullness, they still sometimes are more than decent). Oh be serious. We're given the tools. So we use them.

It's not like i'm a huge fan of cryway, cause i am not. For me it's just another imba skill, but the whole idea, of doing huge amounts of damage that would hit mobs with 100% effectivity is quite good.

You really want everyone in the world to play with:
lure->dmg->heal->wait_for_everyone_regen->run_back (cause someone aggroed)-> lure->dmg-> run_back (someone aggroed) rinse and repeat?

It's not only skills that got buffed, we've worked our skills, we know spawns, we know mob skillsets, we know patrols and spots to tank, we know how to lure mobs and how to kill mobs efficiently. You want everyone to abandon that? In name of what?




And last thing.
How on earth you want to balance something, that consists of dozens of scripted mobs, with imba high attributes and up to three classes against 1-12 human players, with brains (usually), thinking, usually prepared (cause when you do something over and over, and even keep failing you'll learn something), and with thought over build-sets, with knowledge?

It's not like mobs know you'll run cryway and start to scatter and rubberband all over the place....

thought i'd put my 0.05$, don't take it too serious;

cheers,
kielus


p.s.
i love this thread so much


edit:
oh side-note: do you always clear 100% of an elite area when you do it? I mean, every pop-up, every mob and critter, basically anything that can be killed? If no, you're making it easy, you're killing the idea of elite area being 'elite' and hard. No? *forced sarcasm tag, just in case*

Interesting discussion (if discussion and not skill bashing/hating it can be called) so far. Most of the ppl against the argued skills object because they allow fast/perceived to be easy clears of elite areas while the people for them argue that there are many other alternatives which can achieve similar results but use Cop/SY/SF because its the fastest and hence more practical choice of skill sets available to them.

SF is a bit silly i agree with but lets be honest, for those who don't farm its a bit of fun. Its nice to be able to run about areas with shear immunity to most damage

CoP; its a great skill. However, what is mind boggling is when everyone in the party can take it AND do the same if not more damage than a mesmer with it. As has been suggested previously, tying it to fast casting would again make it practical. Nerfing instead of changing it, and by nerf i mean 'weaken' so its nothing like what it was created as, is like cutting off a hand for stealing an apple, a complete over reaction.

Tyla, a quick comment. Isn't it slightly hypocritical to say that the 'posh' age of britain (said as an insult) is over when u said earlier u no longer play the game but want to improve it for others because you care? how terribly....noble...

Think about it - an elite area being done in 20 minutes. That's not player skill, that's overpowered skill abuse.

Actually, DE is right. Player skill is important, but not when you have:

Overpowered PvE only skills
Consets (essentially cheats for the game)

It cannot be hidden under some veil of "experience". Essentially, those who attempt to veil the delusion that their skill is somehow above a conset are exactly that, delusional. Consets alone make you nearly invulnerable. Just yesterday, I intentionally aggroed 30+ enemies in NF HM (In Wilderness of Bazhah or whatever it is called) Not only did they all die in short order, no one died or even came close [no one dropped below 33% HP] That is SILLY. To deny this is to deny fact. Denying fact is bad... period.

However, personal insults are not tolerated. The next person to throw one out will be given an infraction, and this thread will be closed (if it already isn't going to be). Act like adults and behave yourselves; I know you have it in you.

Some people suggest that using other armor-ignoring AoE skills would allow for similar times, and thus that CoP isn't overpowered.

While Jesusbeam does need to be fixed (have AI recognize it as AoE), it (along with FoC, Esurge, etc) wouldn't be able to get similar times due to Cry of Pain having a much bigger Area of Effect than them. Not to point out that FoC is dependent on hexes, Esurge dependent on energy pools, and RoJ having a very small AoE where it hits.