Guild Wars: Imbalanced as Ever!

Request: The original post is subject to change as ideas and criticisms are brought to my attention. i do not claim to be the authority on truth and I know many of you are incredibly wise. I would greatly appreciate any refutations or suggestions. Please rip this thread apart. Be brutally honest and speak with an open mind. If I'm really stupid, tell me. I encourage you to make fun of me because there's nothing wrong with having a few laughs at my expense.... but add substance too.

Note: I wrote this assuming the nerfs released earlier last week that will be occurring in the next balance by A-Net

Introduction

So I have been playing Guild Wars off and on (mostly on) for over 5 years. I can honestly say that the state of the game right now is the most imbalanced it has ever been in that time (excluding the time immediately after the release of a new campaign). I believe this is mostly due to attrition and the desire to appease PvE oriented players. I believe this ideology change occurred around the time of EoTN release. However, this is a topic for another time and place.

Philosophy

I mostly just wanted to talk about skill balances and what it would take to fix the issues we are seeing in GvG and all of PvP today. So the prudent question becomes, what makes PvP fun? My answer to that question, and presumably most of you as well, is the requirement of a firm reliance on strategy and skill, before and during a match, in order to win. This is accomplished by having a multitude of team builds and strategies being viable in any given meta. Let's look at how to approach this from a macro perspective.

As of right now, and the recent past, A-Net has balanced the game through the buffing of outdated and unused skills and then the nerfing of individualized builds that were unhealthy for the game. This mentality does not accomplish our overarching goal for fun PvP. I propose that A-Net's mentality needs to shift from individuals, to the collective.

So far I have been very vague and broad in focus. I wanted to establish a frame of reference for the remainder of this post. So with that in mind, I would like to focus my scope on individual skills that I believe will ultimately lead us to achieving these broad goals.

Shutdown

The first thing that needs to be brought back to the forefront of GvG is shutdown. Shutdown has been all but eliminated from the meta game. If we are to use A-Net's current model for skill balancing, that would mean buffing some Mesmer shutdown skills or Ranger interrupts to incentivise this play style. As I have already stated, this is ineffective and simply leads to more imbalance. In order to increase incentive to bring shutdown on your team, you need to increase incentive to bring skills that the other team would want to shut down. Here's what I mean.

EDIT: Everything in Bold has been changed 3/28/10

Aegis - Functionality change to: For 1...10...11 seconds, all nearby party members have a 10% chance to block attacks for every 3 attributes you have in divine favor

Ward Against Melee - Functionality change to: Ward Spell. You create a Ward Against Melee at your current location. For 5...20...30 seconds, non-spirit allies in this area have a 10% chance to block melee attacks for every 3 attributes you have in Energy Storage.

Mirror of Disenchantment - increase casting time to 2 seconds

By adding some passive defensive skills, you are increasing incentive to bring shutdown that can break the opposing team's defenses, exposing them to your front line. Obviously, mirror of disenchantment will become much more powerful when Aegis is a party-wide enchantment. To keep Mirror on Mesmers, I increased the cast time.

Monking

If we are increasing the strength of some passive defense skills, we must balance this by decreasing the strength of some active defense skills.

Patient Spirit - reduce heal by 15 hp.

Balanced Stance - for 12 seconds, the next 0... 1 (3 tactics)..2 (9 tactics)..3(14 tactics) times you would be knocked down, it fails and this stance ends. Reduce recharge to 20 seconds.

Healing Burst - reduce base heal to 120 hp with 14 healing prayers

Word of Healing - reduce primary and secondary heal by 15 hp

By reducing the power of heal monks, I hope to not only balance defense but also increase incentive to bring red bar push on the typical RC (gift of health) and thus eliminate some bar compression on that character. I wanted to tone down balanced stance because I understand the role that A-Nets want dervishes to play and under the current meta game, they simply outclass warriors in almost every way. By reducing the strength of balanced stance on monks, warriors instantly become more powerful as they specialize in KDs. Monks can still use it to keep from being KDed on a spike however KDs become much more powerful as a tool to pressure monks... which should be encouraged.

Offense

As of the most recent update, dervishes are ridiculously imbalanced. I don't think the update was bad though. I think a dervishes ability to apply cracked armor grants a lot of potential for it, once balanced, to be implemented in tandem with warriors (body blow) very effectively. I understand that A-Net is attempting to address the power of dervishes in the next balance however I don't believe they went far enough. Every time a melee class has been able to maintain an IAS and an IMS simultaneously, it has been imbalanced.

Heart of Fury - Flash Enchantment: While this enchantment is active, speed boosts have no effect. 10 second duration, 20 second recharge

I know this is possible in the game mechanics because it is essentially the same effect as Muddy Terrain. Warriors can be taken out of their IAS by putting damage on them (linebacking > Frenzy) or by anti-KD and kiting (Aura of Stability > Flail). The reason why I want to make it a flash enchantment is because then it can be removed like warrior's IAS. With 20% longer enchant mod, this IAS becomes very effective yet able to be shutdown with standard enchant strip.

Splitting

The best way to encourage splits is to make teams choose a maximum of two of the various functions on their flag runner: party heals, snare, damage, and active healing. As of right now I think flag runners are actually pretty balanced with exception to one skill.

Resilient Weapon - reduce armor bonus to +10

As of right now, this weapon spell allows a Ritualist to defend a base too well against a single ganker. This may need to be nerfed even further as i am incapable of testing.

Conclusion

I am fully aware that this balance is incomplete and will not solve all of our problems. I can already think of a possible flaw i.e. hexes becoming overpowered. I've never ran hex builds in GvG since I've always considered them to be degenerate to player skill (they make you stupid) so I'm not sure if the healing nerfs will make these builds superpowered. I'd definitely be open to suggestions regarding this topic.

Basically what I wanted to accomplish with this thread is to broaden the horizons of people on this forum to a new way of thinking. I wanted to widen the scope of how we look at skill balances and hopefully help some of you understand the implications of a skill balance. Now it's your turn. I look forward to being owned by all of you and hopefully I can learn something along the way.

I find the whole monking thing incredibly stupid. If you make balance stance such a useless skill, dual warrior such as a hammer + w/e else or another hammer war could just insta kill the monk. The monk will be completely shut down, and have no way to defend itself because all its skills would be rupted because of the KD... Just imagen against an assa then....

I find that the dumbest thing, even thought I understand where you're comming from. But making monks shitty isn't the way to go...

have you even carefully read patient spirit's description? Sorry but you don't really seem to know what you're talking about...

Hexway / Spiritway in GvG says hi. That lasted for about a year before it was nerfed.

Oh, and your first suggestion is to bring back mass amounts of passive defense that ANet spent a few balance updates taking out because it was ruining GvG? Yeah....no. There are too many potentially good passive defense skills in the game at this point; if even a few of them are buffed, they'll all be stacked together, and we'll be back to impenetrable defense nets of lame. Prophecies had one ward and Aegis, and that was it. We're a bit beyond that now, unfortunately, and there's no going back.

Old news dude.

Your suggestions, well, suck. Making monks weaker isn't going to solve anything.
I'm pretty sure the next thing on ArenaNet to do list is fixing dervish skills for PvP.
+1 before close.

Fix the flag and everything will be good again. Unfortunately, the collective imaginations of just about everyone with a brain who GvGs hasn't come up with a single good idea yet.

Also, Patient already doesn't heal when pulled prematurely.

That's assuming you have zero blind, zero ward against melee, zero aegis, zero pre-protting, zero dark escape, etc, etc, etc. You know monks did exist before they starting bringing balanced stance right?

I didn't make monks shitty. I buffed Aegis really hard and barely nerfed their healing potential.

Thank you for at least offering a suggestion, as vague as it is, because at least that is something I can use. Unfortunately, I hardly believe that fixing the flag (what does that mean?) will solve all the problems. Balance problems have existed since factions and progressively gotten worse for every expansion after that. So, other than the flag, you think GvG is perfect in its current form? I know this is not the case but you said it, not me.

Fixed patient. Been mulling vague ideas over for a few days and decided to make this post between classes so I'm actually going to be editting more too. I also wanted to mention that how I described Ward Against Melee is retardedly overpowered... but nobody seemed to have caught that so... I guess i caught it myself.

I wish there were actual maps where the party was split and couldn't rejoin each other and then once and if the timer got to a certain point you would rejoin each other for a match in a dome of death. If you didn't complete the objectives in say, 7 minutes, both teams just had to kill each other. It would add a cool layer to the game.

What are you talking about Hexway / Spiritway says hi? That sure is helpful. Also, I am not bringing back massive amounts of passive defense. I am bringing back 2 skills.... 2. Yes A-Net spent a few balance updates taking out ALL passive defense because they BELIEVED it was ruining GvG but THEY WERE WRONG! Ever since they took it out, GvG has withered away at an accelerated rate and is now in critical condition / death. You say there are already many potentially good passive defense skills in the game but you failed to mention even one. This is not what I consider to be substantive criticism.

Remember when midline used to be the most difficult position in Guild Wars to play? That has changed to monk. The reason is because midline is no longer used for shutdown at all and monk is soly responsible for keeping the party alive. Having skilled monks has always been important but now they are paramount to success. One mistake on monk can result in catastrophic failure of the entire team. A little passive defense corrects this. Why has GvG died? Because the learning curve is far too steep at key positions. That is just a fact.

^^ This is called a substantive reply. None of the replies by others thus far would i consider to be substantive. Just rash generalizations and strawman arguments.

"making monks bad won't solve anything!"... I didn't make them worse, just different and easier to play... because Aegis is good... and monks will actually have defensive midliners to help them.

I believe you all are very intelligent. Why don't you show me by forming actual arguments rather than just espousing baseless assertions and logical fallacies?

There's two problems wrong with GvG right now:

1. (almost) All your party healing is on your flagrunner.
2. Whoever is holding the flag when it needs to be capped is effectively a nonentity, meaning you're fighting 7v8.

The two combine to make the flag the most important thing in a match. Ponder it for a bit.

1. It doesn't need to be, but it's the best place to put it because you don't need to be in casting range to use it. I see no problem here.
2. Both teams are required to run flags... which makes it 7v7 by this logic. Again, I see no problem here.

Also, you still seem to be suggesting that GvG is perfect in its current state other than the flags... which it isn't by a long shot.

Hi there people long time; I randomly decided to post here on guru cuz idk im bored and killing time and regrettably know more about GW than i am socially proud of so i might as well contribute...

anyway to lemming can you move this to the pvp glad section? The last thing we need are pvers making pvp contributions that are overdebated and generally unconstructive towards a better MMORPG teambased competitive pvp experience.

to the OP im not entirely sure what you are trying to achieve by changing skills because GvG is the most complicated PvP format in guild wars; just allow more viable builds in the meta? The root of GvGs stagnant meta has to do with the entire format of it and the goals towards victory (Get ahead on flags and push theirs more but dont let anyone die and then contain, kill guild lord and if it somehow goes to 28 you are in a better position to win it + you should have less DP if not 10% cuz of flags)

That is the safest and most euro-reliable way to win because current skills and O shit stances allow that kind of strategy to be viable and also have been tested thoroughly

^ this is the problem why builds are so damn similar, because they all basically have this goal in mind.

Fixing skills isnt going to change how to play strategically teamwise because GvG has been balanced around 3 monk backline for so long its not even funny. I would love to see a GvG mAT final in which 1 team might have 3 monks and the other has 1 monk but you know what? that team with 1 monk cant make a single goddamn mistake or the 3 monk team can capitalize and they will never let up. In some cases the 1 monk team cant even beat the 3 monk team at all.

The amount of skill vs the amount of risks you take with your build is a huge problem in GvG.

What i mean by this is a team that wins the gw guru cup with 7 offense and 1backline (common structure of a BYOB, which is fun as shit if every1 is good) should be considered biblical legends because it takes extreme coordination and skill to win like that at the highest level as opposed to 5 offense and 3 defense because how pussy it is. You can always engauge 8v8 usually with the common 3 monk setup because you can always recover theoretically. You do that 1 time with BYOB and someone is gonna freaking die and then you snowball. Mistakes are so easily forgivable in GvG it almost pisses me off but that does allow a lot more tug-of-war style combat which is what makes GvG quite possibly the most unique form of pvp.

So before i continue my rant i need to know what you truly want from "more viable builds" Do you want more viable 5 offensive and 3 defense builds in GvG? or do you really want viability and do you want 1, 3 and even the fabled 2 monk backlines possible at high level? (with respect to offense)

Because my contributions to this discussion are very reliant on the answer to that question. One leads to skills balances and the other leads to changing the GvG format/structure, powercreep and more theories. Im the god damn Emu King bitch!

Awesome post by the way. The answer to your question is actually quite tricky. What exactly do you mean by 5 offense and 3 defense builds? Is a B-surge elementalist an offensive build? What I want is GvG to be fun again. What is fun? When there are a multitude of strategies being used by various builds. The standard 2 warrior, 1 ranger, 1 mesmer, 1 ele, 2 monks, 1 flagger could do many different things well. This is why it was traditionally called "balanced". I absolutely want BYOB to be viable. Some of the most fun I have ever had in GvG is while playing (and winning) using BYOB with one monk.

Honestly, at the same time, I have no real issue with the three monk backline because there are a lot of different play styles you can make viable using the standard two monks and rit flagger. [dR] balance is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. That was a dedicated split and collapse build that was very fun to play.

You are absolutely correct about the structure of GvG and I was actually debating with myself whether or not I wanted to add to the OP that VoD should be restored. It's been so long that I can't even remember why it was taken out. I think it was due to defense webs and just holding until VoD before you actually are able to spike people out. Anyways, it was still a far superior game mechanic than what we have now so I don't see how it could hurt.

The overarching goal of this thread was intended to get people to think outside of the box and come up with ways to make GvG accessible to newer players as well as make it more fun for everybody. Afterall, waiting 30 minutes in town for a GvG isn't fun for anyone. Unfortunately for most, it has simply been a place for them to arbitrarily shoot down ideas without giving them a second thought.

By "build" i mean teamwise. All "serious" GvG has some 5 guys (Ex: 2 wars, 1 r, 1 me, 1 ele) and the standard 3 "monk" backline. This setup of damg dealers (that would include that Bsurge) and defense (talking straight red barring/protting/weapon spells/pots) has a very specific response to everything the opposing enemy can do and it basically can handle it pretty well because in GvG its all about "trades." If 1 monk is somehow capable of holding off 3 damg dealers in a base thats a 7v5 situation on the other end of the field and you better be making some freaking progress over there faster than the 3 in your base are.

With less monks you can't always respond to splits by sending healing back; what you have to do is kill their split before they kill any NPCs; (Ex: they split a war, you send an invoke w/ bflash back).

What happened to me one game was a sin kept splitting into our base and kill an NPC but then i would kill him because i was the response as opposed to a flagger and he would res and repeat until the retard got 60ed. Sure he accomplished a lot (In total it was an archer in a knight actually), but now it was 7v8 and he wasn't gonna get ressed in our base w/o a severe penalty and we basically won it from there because you should always be winning a fight if you are outnumbering the opponent.

This is way riskier than sending a healer back because what if i didnt catch him and he got away with a free kill? This is experience and tactical position come into play because i knew exactly once he went a certain distance backdoor (isle of solitude) i was gonna be in a position to kill him once he commits.

Anything less than 3 monks basically puts you in a fight no flight situation. Once you are in a position you can't really switch without taking too much damage so you really got to know what you are doing before those gates open. 3 monks allows people to run around so much it employs different tactics as opposed to BYOB because you just can't respond with redbar if they split; you need damage responses or you just base race if you are in a good position already. Fun is subjective. Sticking it in the butt is fun.

I hope that explains what i mean by 5-3 GvG builds. 7-1 is generally anything byob (and not competitive because of its risky nature) and 6-2 is uncharted territory for almost everyone. 8-0 is retarded

Honestly, being a player from Prophecies GvG, the biggest issue is damage. Who needs to shut anything down when you can 3,2,1 wtfexplode every target with massive overkill. Follow me for a second here.

The new skills they added each expansion were too strong. Shutdown started taking a backseat because it's only useful relative to the damage that can be done. Why do I need to EBurn a Monk's energy when I can run up, hit 2 skills (that recharge in 5 seconds) on a random target and do 200 damage? More damage started making itself present on teams in place of Shutdown. To compensate for this damage, more monks were needed, an example being the Party-Heals Flagrunner to mop up the random 200 damage being done here and there.

Then they buffed Healing and Passive Defense. Oops. This resulted in 14 players bringing tents to camp the Flag and 2 bringing running shoes to marathon flags. This was extremely boring, so they killed Passive Defense and focused on upping Healing to fight the damage instead. Now we are here, where your Monks screw up once, a target explodes into a fine bloody mist, and your team is forced to resign because you just lost your entire base's defense in 1 resurrection.

There's plenty of evidence to prove it:
- Flagrunners (E/Mo Ether Prodigy) used to have Heal Party for a party heal, Healing Breeze for a self-heal, and Mending Touch to take care of conditions. The rest were snares or supports. Now the entire Flagrunner's bar is dedicated to combating the ridiculous damage of today's Meta.

- I recall telling the team to WAND the enemy for more damage some spikes were so close. WAND DAMAGE was important.

- You used to be able to have a WoH get DShotted or RC Diverted and not have to hug the Guild Lord. Good luck with that now.

- Balanced stance wasn't necessary before because you couldn't burn down 3 players while the Monk was KD'ed. Knockdowns happened, it stressed the other Monk's energy for a bit (or caused them to lose a skill from Diversion), and then the other Monk got up. You get knocked down now and you stand a good change of having a team member die.

- Falling back into the base might've resulted in losing 2 archers before. You can usually count on losing an entire side now.

In general, the game has moved from slowly overcoming the other team through smart/skilled gameplay to trying to spike more targets faster than the other team. Tone the damage down, tone the healing down. Slow the game down so one mistake doesn't trash the efforts of the entire round.

Heals and damage got super-powercreep in Factions.

If you note, in prophecies Mo/Me was popular with Boon prot. Now Mo/W is meta and we also have a fully defensive flag runner, rather than spike support E/Mo with Mind blast or Ether prodigy+ blinding flash + Heal party.

Look at mesmers. They are now damage powerhouses, rather than shutdown.

Is a Shield or Regen E/Mo considered a healer? What about the old E-prod runner? I mean... runner's have always had party heals because they are so easy to use when away from the team but does that make them a full blown monk? If so, why is a ritualist with Caretaker's not considered a damage dealer? They do the same amount of damage as a B-surge elementalist. The point is flaggers are used for basically 4 purposes... which I listed in the OP. The trick is to figure out what the build needs and use that on your runner. Party healing is usually a great choice for runners... for obvious reasons. many times people will bring damage, snares, or extra healing for base defense. The problem with runners is when they can do ALL OF THESE at the same time. A healthy meta is when a team is limited to two of the four options.

A lot of what was in your last post I already knew and it wasn't that helpful. I mean, how does it apply to skill balances? Sometimes I just want to say, "Where is the chase... and how do I cut to it.?"

Not quite. If defense is able to mitigate a lot of that damage relatively easily, shutdown is also useful.
Again, this is assuming that defensive characters are completely incapable to of mitigating this damage potential.
People ran party heals on E/Mo flaggers well before factions.

Not quite. A-Net came out with these things called Paragons that could put out a ton of passive defense. Before paragons, there was no real issue with passive defense. A little passive defense is very good for the game. Too much and you get defense webs like you said. Too little and you get what we have today. There is a happy medium and that is what I was trying to do in the OP. They call it skill "balance" for a reason.

Correlation does not imply causation. Runners today don't have snares or damage like runners of old. Why? Because ritualist party heals are more powerful than monk party heals. So if you bring a ritualist flag runner, are they better suited to snare and deal damage or to support heal? If heal party was buffed up to the level of ritualist party healing (or rit party heals were nerfed down) you would see more E/Mo runners that snared and dealt damage.

In the remainder of your post you talked about how damage increased significantly which is true. The problem with your argument is that you don't take into consideration insignias, which were never possible pre-nightfall (I believe). Insignias do a great job mitigating damage. If there was a little passive defense available to monks and midline support, you would see a huge shift from the spiky bull crap today.

Yes heals and damage got super-powercreep in Factions (and in nightfall and in EoTN) but that's not why we have fully defensive flag runners or why we have mesmers that aren't shutdown. The reason why we have defensive flag runners is because Ritualists are the best profession for party healing and they specialize more in active heals than in damage or snares.

The reason why mesmers no longer run shutdown is because there is literally NOTHING to shut down. What's a mesmer going to do in this meta? Camp a necromancer all game? If a build serves no purpose, then you shouldn't bring it. In the current meta, shutdown serves no purpose, so it is not being brought. I am attempting to correct that.

There is plenty to shut down, there is just no point in doing it. Burning down a Monk's Energy used to be nice because they didn't used to have these ridiculous levels of healing. Five energy goes a lot farther now then it used to, meaning they get more out of less energy.

Shatter Enchantment used to be important because spiking took effort and build-up time. Now you just 3,2,1 spike another target when you see the giant Buddha-thingy pop over top someone's head.

Diversion would still be nice, but has since been invalidated due to Magebane, DShot, SShot rangers camping the crap outta the Mesmers. Aegis (Defensive Anthem) and Wards were really the only other things the Ranger had to worry about. These provided so much defense it stalemated things, proving that blanket defense was a bad thing. Paragons had Defensive Anthem, Energizing Finale, and Mending Refrain. Two of these have been nerfed. The paragon is screwed as far as defense goes, so they won't be coming back (this is a good thing).

The game just needs to be slowed down. Damage and Healing are too high. Degen pressure really doesn't even exist anymore because it's so inferior. It's now a side effect of skills like Aura of Thorns. Without WTFDamage, you don't need defense webs. Mesmers will come back because Monks are going to lose efficiency. Spikes won't be able to happen every 5 seconds, making Shutdown even more necessary. Mistakes will add up until one side starts losing. It's the way it used to be in Prophesies when GvGing was a freakin' blast.

Also, I know that Party Heals were run on (E/Mo) flaggers before Factions, it wasn't until the super damage creep that the whole bar started becoming dedicated to it out of necessity.

Besides, adding Aegis and Ward back into the game isn't going to help the fact that Monk's are still the biggest and most nerve-wrecking class to play because the entire match relies on them. Some pressure needs to be taken off of them and placed onto the midline, which is basically entirely offensive now. BSurge? Water Snares? All gone. The game is currently 5 offensive classes beating on 3 healers. The "midliner" role by standard definition doesn't currently exist, and this is one of the biggest issues.

Edit: Might have to eat my own words. Saw a Water snare and Dom Mesmer today.

Is this in response to the OP... because I'm pretty sure that's reducing the power of monk healing is EXACTLY what I tried to fix. You say there is plenty to shut down but no point in doing it. That is a contradiction as far as I am concerned. When I say there is nothing to shut down, that means there is nothing that anyone considers NEEDING of shut down. I am attempting to correct this. If you think I am doing a poor job, please by all means make a suggestion. That's what the thread is for. If it is a good suggestion, I will add it to the OP.

Adding Aegis and Ward Against Melee will increase the amount of time it takes to build-up a spike. That is its entire purpose. Why do you think I want them buffed?

I am definitely not suggesting bringing back DA but Aegis would decrease the ability for a ranger to camp a mesmer, both because it wont hit through the 50% block half the time and because it will be responsible for shutting that down as well. This is another reason why Aegis is important to have back in the meta game.

Agreed although I believe "Go For The Eyes!" Should be un-nerfed because scythes no longer have the massive crit like they used to and it would make Paragons much more viable as damage support characters.

You are correct about the speed of the game. It is too high. Supplemental passive defense should, in theory, correct this. I will probably refer to passive defense as "supplemental" from now on to demonstrate that is should be passive defense light compared to the defense webs of the past. Unfortunately, you are wrong about degen pressure. Hexway is extremely powerful and the Barbs Necromancer and poison spread Ranger are used almost exclusively for degen pressure.

I really don't know what you are talking about. The E-Prod Runner had an elite skill dedicated to feeding his party heals. The current runner basically has an open elite slot that can be filled with anything he wants. The current dervish meta obviously is stupid damage but that's why Dervishes need to be nerfed further than A-Net did in the most recent update.

This is a complete contradiction. Of course Aegis and Ward will make monking less nerve-wracking. That's what all forms of passive defense does.

What do you think adding a powerful ward against melee that can only be used by elementalists will do? It will put more pressure on midline to maintain their monk support. It will also put more pressure on midline to try and shut those skills down. If monks on the other team aren't being tasked to keep red bars up, they will be stripping blinds and snares instead which allows for more damage on your team. Shutdown works both ways... which is why it is so vital to restore it to GvG.

Which is exactly what I am trying to do in the OP. I mean... if you have a suggestion let me hear it. I don't really see the point in saying a bunch of stuff that everybody already knows. I understand what is wrong with GvG. I need to know how to fix it. I put forth my attempt (I seem to be the only one trying) and all I've gotten in return is a bunch of whiners

You are proposing we keep current damage mostly the same, decrease heals a bit, and add a defense web in the form of Aegis and Ward Against Melee to compensate.

The Ranger, who is already camping the Monks (and making their life hell), just needs to hit Aegis and Ward Against Melee. Ward Against Melee has a giant visual telling you when it's going to be cast again. Aegis has a unique cast time on Monks due to the duration of the cast. Welp, now the web is down (entirely and easily possible, I ranger'ed once upon a time, during Paraway even). Lowered Heals are no longer able to keep up with WTFDamage. Game becomes "interrupt Aegis/WAM and push" again. Still probably better than what it is today, but not ideal.

What needs to happen is a large net nerf to Melee (frontline) damage, and a large net nerf to healing. Protting needs to remain active, not passive like Aegis and WAM. Balanced Stance needs a nerf. Monks NEED to be able to be shut down (Energy Denial, Diversion/Shame, Knockdown), facilitating a need for a partially defensive mid-line.

We are proposing nearly the same thing, I just don't agree with the defense web. It was never good.

Answers to your above post:
What's the point in burning a Monk's energy now when a 5 energy WoH is 1/2 a redbar and RC is nearly a full redbar? Five energy is a LOT stronger and more efficient now than it used to be. It's easier and more effective to just cleave another target's face in. At least this opens up more chances for the ranger to interrupt by having them cast more.

Spikes don't need to be built up anymore. They all consist of 5 energy skills on a stupidly short recharge.

What ever happened to calling for Guardian on the Mes for a window? Distortion? BSurge on the Ranger? Gale? So many other options. The team is supposed to work together. This generates "skill". Blanket "lolyoucanthitme" isn't helping anything. I don't think spamming 3 interrupts without energy worries was ever something that a Ranger was supposed to be able to do. Two should be the limit. The Ranger should need to bring something to help with spikes or otherwise provide offensive pressure (like Burning Arrow). They don't need to do that now because Melee damage is so high.

Degen pressure is gone. The Blood Necro that was just booted was the last of that, and I wouldn't even call that old-school degeneration. That was 3 Dervishes beat on things while the Necro and Ranger cause poison and bleeding. Old Degen was half your team's bars being purple and the other half green, with a light red here and here. Then depending which side of it your on, you're either giggling like a schoolgirl or screaming your head off for the Ranger to interrupt something (they are, but it doesn't matter!). I honestly have no idea how to fix Hexes (and Hexways). They are either too strong or useless.

The E-Prod Runner has E-Prod to fuel Heal Party, yes. They also had Blinding Surge, Healing Breeze Spam, Lightning Orb, and sometimes even Deep Freeze. Heal party wasn't they only thing they were fueling. The current runner is heals. Period. I don't even recall the last snare I saw on one.

Putting Aegis on the Monks isn't going to lessen the intensity of their job. It's going to become a heavy sigh every time it's interrupted because they know for 10-20 seconds somewhere, they are gonna have to fight against op damage with nerfed heals. The midline needs to be helping with snares, blind, kd, etc., not just blanket block trash. The midline needs to be ACTIVELY helping; this is both easier to balance and more fun to play. Otherwise you run into Aegis (blocking) up = can't do anything, Aegis (blocking) down = kill stuff, kind of game.

I put my suggestion a bit further up in this post. Essentially, we need to jump back to the Prophesies GvG template that everyone adored so much. Slow the game down, keep the game active and not reactive (or passive). Not trying to whine, we are both suggesting the same thing, mine just lacks the defense webs.

Are you bad? Have you ever run Aegis or Ward Against Melee? It's really easy to stop a ranger from rupting you. B-Surge him before you cast it, cancel cast it, ask for guardian, etc etc etc. There are plenty of skills that a team can bring to stop rangers from interrupting key spells. If you want a chance at shutting down a teams defensive capabilities, you need to bring a mesmer.

You are incorrect about nerfing frontline damage. Damage in recent metagames is being entirely unmitigated. That's why it is so powerful. The standard Shock Axe bar has existed since prophecies. Somehow it used to not be as good. Why is that? Of course Dervishes need to be toned down and I believe nerfing one skill on their bar will do that. If Dervishes are kitable, their damage potential drops significantly.

I'm not proposing a defense web either. Ward against melee can't stop a ranger interrupt. Only Aegis can. Aegis and Ward Against Melee have existed since early prophecies. The only reason defense webs were so powerful is because of Paragons... which are now nerfed and VoD... which is now dead.

Direct energy denial is the most degenerate form of shutdown. A better, more fun, and more skillful shutdown scheme is interruption and disablement.

Care to cite an example? What spikes have you been playing? A/P spike? Yeah... that should be gone... and it doesn't use 5 energy skills either.

Oh my goodness. This is the most naive comment I have read thus far. Why do you think mesmers needed guardians? Because they had to shut things down such as aegis, ward against melee, and B-surge and couldn't accomplish that with a ranger trying to prevent them from doing thier job. In the current meta, mesmers don't have this job. If you want to bring back defensive elementalists, you need to make them worthwhile in bringing. If you want to bring back shutdown mesmers, you have to make them worthwhile in bringing. That is the point. Talking to you is like talking to a wall. Seriously.

Wow... rangers aren't bringing three interrupts in the current meta. They are bringing two and... a spike assist called Point Black Shot... yeah... you aren't helpful at all.

So nerfing melee is going to incentivize anti-melee midline? Wow... gotta love that logic. Frontline damage, with exception to dervishes, is not overpowered. The lack of any and all frontline mitigation is what makes them powerful. Why is there a lack of any and all frontline mitigation? Because it currently isn't useful.

This isn't how the game was EVER played when aegis was good. When the other team did a good job shutting it down, monks would communicate with their midline and frontline that they needed help with the mesmer or ranger. Then the warriors shifted thier role and start training mesmers and elementalists would start harassing rangers. This is the point. My ward buff would incentivize defensive elementalists again. My Aegis buff would incentivize dom mesmers again. How can you be so naive?

Ok... The prophesies GvG template that everyone adored so much HAD AEGIS AND WARD AGAINST MELEE. This is ridiculous.

There is no such thing as a fully active defense meta that also has a bunch of shutdown necessity. Sorry. Active defense is almost impossible to shut down. That's what makes it active. Are you going to bring a dom mesmer on your team to shut down those guardians and shielding hands? No, you are going to bring a damage dealer and tell him to change targets when an active prot hits and stop being bad. That's the point!!! This is why I keep saying you are naive. You want people to stop acting with accords to their best interest which isn't going to happen.

Since you appear to be getting upset, I'll just tell you outright: Blanket passive defense isn't coming back. The Dev's already stated it was terrible for the game. Your suggestions aren't going to happen because of this. So, I suggested using the Prophesies TEMPLATE to jump back to, without all the passive crap since they won't be adding it back in. I called it a template for a reason.

Why do you think Aegis and WAM are the only things that need to be shut down? Diverting BSurge was one of the most gamebreaking things you could've done in early GvG. You can still Power Leak other monk spells. Guardian is ENTIRELY disruptable. Energy Denial was always good and it helped with spikes. Enchantments always need to be shattered/removed. Having your Ranger Dshot Cripshot was also a huge advantage. Watching for Gale during spikes and interrupting it. All of this is active. Passive Defense is BAD. Period.

Let me add an intellectual hatchet to the thinking here.
Both Kaida and Brian agree that power creep in spiking and over emphasis on spamming heals(for monks) is killing GvG

Brian has suggested some, truly mild sounding, passive defense skills be implemented.

Just about every response is a big bash on passive defense because of how it was abused by monks in the past.

Why not a compromise and suggest it for players other than monks?

It sounds like a call for flexibility in teams. Not a bad idea, only it goes against the entire Anet development philosophy at this time.

In both PvE and PvP there is a continuing trend towards single profession usage. Other than monks bringing /A or /W for defense options, how many builds actually use secondary profession regularly?
Yes Shock Axe says hi, but not before you can say it's a freaking institution.


To wrap up long-windedness, it used to be that spiking was a gimmick that would win matches but lose championships. Now it's the entirety of the game.

Thie biggest issue is that what I am suggesting is first and foremost NOT a defense web. Anyone who replies trying to refute the defense webs of the past is not only ignorant but their argument is logically fallacious. Aegis doesn't not mesh with Ward Against Melee in the same way it did with multiple DA and Aegis prevented rangers from doing anything productive. Without DA, there is no issue. If we implement supplemental passive defense, the winning 8 man team will be the one that is most effective at shutting down the other teams defense as well as keeping your own defense up.

"Aegis has long been a concern in the balance of competitive play and has seen numerous adjustments over the years. It has continued to be a problem because of both the overpowered nature of Aegis's basic functionality and the ability of teams to work around attempts to balance this skill by bringing multiple copies. So we've taken a different approach this time and hit the reset button by changing Aegis's functionality."

http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/de...l_balances.php

You can "refute" the devs. Aegis is not coming back. Passive Defense is bad because it's lazy, boring, and promotes stale, skill less gameplay. What is hard to understand about this?

Passive Defense is not supplemental, it's the forefront of mitigation. Rangers will go back to camping Aegis (WAM) and Diversion only (boring). Monk's get to play patty-cake for 10 seconds every time Aegis is successfully cast. The opposing frontline has to autoattack until it wears off because a spike isn't getting through, even with dual removals. It's bad. You are applying a bandaid to the overall issue of damage, not fixing it.

If this still isn't enough, how about:
Find a new way to balance the game that isn't around Aegis because its gone.

It's hard to understand how somebody could possibly be short sighted enough to honestly believe this. Passive defense is thought to promote lazy, boring, and skilless gameplay because executing an aegis chain doesn't require skill. To the naive, short sighted individual, this would be the extent of their knowledge and thus they would form false conclusions. However, when one examines the type of play aegis promoted, they couldn't be more wrong.

Aegis didn't just impact monk bars and monk gameplay. It effected entire team composition as well as the gameplay of every other role on the battlefield. Warriors played differently, Rangers played differently, Mesmers played differently, etc. How can I explain this in a way that you can understand?

Aegis created an atmosphere for monks that was much less nerve wracking and twitchy than the current metagame. This is what you correctly pointed out above. But is this a bad thing? I believe this is missing from GvG and is the largest reason why it is so difficult for people new to GvG to have an enjoyable experience. Monks require too much skill to play. The gap between an experienced monk and an inexperienced one is simply too large for GvG to be sustainable. We are witnessing the effects of this now and I really don't think I need any more proof than that.

Removing Aegis also had unintended consequences. It completely shifted the responsibility of midline support characters from shutdown of the opposing defense, to buffing and contribution to the allied offense. This fact is supported by literally every metagame build since the aegis nerf. It is nearly indisputable.

Summary: Aegis nerf resulted in the monk role increasing in difficulty (requiring more skill) and the midline role decreasing in difficulty (requiring less skill). That is just the facts. The theory is how we can go about correcting this. Is there a way without reinstituting a healthy dose of passive defense? I am open to any and all suggestions.

Not only is this entirely unprecedented, but it is factually inaccurate and a sweeping generalization. Firstly, passive defense can be supplemental. It had been for years (Prophecies). Secondly, it is not the forefront of mitigation as it is completely absent in the current metagame (which sucks if you haven't noticed). Lasty, Rangers never simply camped aegis, WAM, and Diversion. They were always used in many different ways throughout the course of the match. They weren't referred to as the team toolbox for no reason. If anything, rangers are more stuck in a single role now, than ever before.

That's entirely incorrect. Mirror of Disenchantment is still an incredibly strong counter to aegis even when the skill was executed. There are also much better forms of single target enchantment removal now than in the past. Aegis feeds shatter enchantment on spikes. How is two enchantment removals not enough to remove a single enchantment on a single target? You are not making any sense.

Feel free to give specific examples of ways to do this. Otherwise you are completely useless to me. Aegis is honestly the best and easiest way to emphasize and incentivize healthy gameplay in GvG. Like I've already said, I gave this a lot of thought and it is the best solution I have been able to come up with. If you have a better one, by all means.

Because two removals will break combinations of Spirit Bond, Protective Spirit, Guardian, Aegis, Reversal of Fortune (yes, entirely possible to remove this, it happens more often than you think, and it's annoying as hell), and Shield of Absorption (depending on if the monk is running it). It's not just Aegis.

What else is a Ranger going to hit? Aegis is the primary interrupt target. With it up, it cuts your efficiency in half. Diversion/WAM is(are) your next priority, or other key skill in the enemy line up. Then comes occasionally hitting something key (res's) when your team is getting spiked if your team needs it. Anything else, and you run the risk of missing an Aegis or running out of energy, and that's a no-no. This is also assuming you don't get juked into a wasted interrupt. The only other usefulness the Ranger had was splitting. They were locked into shutting down 2-3 of the same skills match after match with OCCASIONALLY helping with a split or random interrupt.

Furthermore, there is no mitigation at the moment because it's more efficient to run damage because it's so high. Defense ain't gonna win you anything when you don't have enough damage to spike against the Monk's super-heals. You HAVE to run damage right now. I've said this like 20 times.

Furthermore, you are limiting the Metagame. Every team will have to run Aegis, Mirror of Disenchantment, and massive interrupts (Ranger) or they will be unable to break the web, however tangle it might be. This stagnates the meta game.

Finally, I've said it fifty times: Nerf Melee damage. Nerf Healing. Problem solved. I'm not explaining why this fixes it again. You can go back and read what I've already written.

i think i know how to fix gvg problem but im not 100% sure because i may be overlooking something, even though i dont think so right now.

I'm writing shorthand because it would take about 30 pages of typing to go into the details because i have numbers in mind.

and kaida is right btw brian, with your update to aegis the meta changes but then it hits a wall again after everyone figures out the optimal build. The tactics for those builds might be arguably skillful, but builds will become stale; not to mention if disruption is a key aspect to winning then the whole 206/216 server becomes an issue again at the highest level of GvG.. which is the point where it gets fun. The closest time we had to some diversity was several months ago people ran
3 wars ranger nec
war war ele nec ranger
war war ele ele ranger
a/p spike
war war ele mes rt <- this was rare
etc other mixed types of eles necros rangers and mesmers...

( i think this was around the time of the mesmer buff and everyone was pissed about mindwrack)

The build diversity was pretty great but then the dervs got buffed and necros got buffed and everything became war war war ranger nec for the longest time and now its dervs.


Anyway to fix gvg you have to go beyond skill balances and look at the final product
Here we go

(update in this order)
1. Kill paragons and necros completely for gvg to avoid any unforseen variables, im sure no one is gonna be mad they cant play paragon or necro anymore in gvg for a lil while for now and make dervs and wars same power level. I dont care if paragons arent being used right now i dont want them being used at all yet.
2. Decrease damg output (wars less, ranger psn duration maybe less if it get to that point, mesmers less damg more importance on rupts/removals to do that damg, etc..) and monking healing output proportionally so neither overshadow the other. This means wars dont get debuffed too hard so monks healing is too strong and vice versa
3. Imagine what this looks like.. (same thing but 1 thing has changed.. npcs are still the same!)
4. The power level of damage must be somewhat near the npcs of the Guild halls level so that they become seriously significant.
---> this is where the 30 pages mostly fill up
5. change some goddamn npcs! seriously can you imagine if archers were like water eles instead with blurred etc or something instead of... ARCHERS?? A fire ele can kill basically everything and a hammer war can too, what if a hammer war couldnt beat the water ele npc but the fire ele could? or maybe a different npc like a mesmer npc so a fire ele cant kill it or w/e (i hope you get the picture im creating). NEW MAPS AND NPC TYPES/POSITONING ON THE NPCS should be what changes the meta, not skill updates.
6. slowly bring the necro and paragon back into gvg if possible, these classes are weird.

Final product should have some maps that flag pushing is still normal, split maps exist but the npcs will affect what kinds of splits you can really do and straight up 8v8 maps where you fall back into npcs and keep the tug of war feel of gvg.

I've considered the whole "but if maps help determine victory then gvg laddering isnt fair and might be buildwars because you don't know what map you will fight on." Yes it will, but AT GvG and mAT are what GvG updates should be about for pvp, not GvG ladder and i dont think people considered this.

Thats basically it i can clarify a little more on the shorthand but if you want a seriously interesting meta this is how you do it. Victory or death was removed August 7th 2008... We've had that long to perfect the art of flag pushing. Spikes usually become meta if its an OP spike otherwise its flag pushing.

So the problem with this is it will require new maps for gvg and new NPC builds as to opposed to the NPCs that have had the same builds for God knows how long... However imagine if a new npc build comes out and that one is in the mat. You dont have 3 years to learn how to abuse it (if its even possible) you got a few weeks and then its mAT time, and at that point GvG mat might look interesting...

Hexbuilds are not fun, if i had to pick 4 classes in gw if i could only have 4 i would prob do the warrior, ranger, mesmer, and monk so you need to make that the meta with all these skill updates, bring the powerlevel down proportionally for all those but let it still be meta and go from there.

There are a LOT more details i have to add but seeing how anet probably doesnt want help from an emu i dont want to actually type up that 30 pages of exact updates required (to the tee) because i feel like my idea will never be implemented. Anet or NCsoft or whoever if you really care, I'll MS Word document e-mail it to you otherwise its not worth my time.






The only few examples of a GvG ive seen that was close to this idea was

1) Tommy Equals Ftw's 1 monk + 1 bonder monk gvg build (Inadequatly Retired [GoLd] vs [vR] maybe? i forget) that only worked on Imperial Isle because of the map shape and the earth damage Acid Traps to power heal party spam. No one had enchant strips because everyone just followed the stupid meta.
2) perma sin hits the guild lord like 1 time (before entourage update; might've been [GoLd] again) and then they turtle bodyblock the chokes on map and wait for 28 while keeping their human shield alive.

P.S. I originally got this idea after seeing Starcraft 2 metabuilds change based on map design. GW maps/npcs are probably harder to create than SC2 maps/doodads.

And also Brian, the old 1/2 damg (In this case im going to consider blind "damg" type of defense) + 1/2 heal flaggers (the e/mo builds and such) i would consider exactly that. Your team has 2.5 healers; so if you wanna get technical that would've been a 5.5-2.5 gvg build, which the closest thing in existence today would be rt/e with shackles.

Hey, you're the one trumpeting your own experience. If you need a detailed explanation for my comments, don't act like a know-it-all in your OP, because anyone who actually has been involved in GvG would have known what I was talking about.

Orly? Turtling for VoD was the meta for years.

I'd like you to prove this causation.

I said potentially, as in, there are more passive defense skills around now than there were when it was just Prophecies. Spirits, shouts, echoes, weapon spells, chants...basically the ritualist and paragon professions in their entirety amped up the number of passive defense skills from 3 (2 wards and Aegis) to way too many. And the more viable skills there are, the more effective a strategy it is to just pile them all on together and sit behind your turtle.

Again, this is something that anyone who actually knows about GvG strategy would know at this point.

Nope. Monk started as the hardest position, and it still is. Like I said before, passive defense was pretty sparse in Prophecies; monking was all about quick reflexes, catching spikes, and protting the right targets. That's gone down a lot now, since we have such good passive defense skills (not to mention the excellent party healing options available to us now. My old Ether Prodigy / Heal Party runner looks downright silly compared to the rit runners we have available now).

The game is different now, and there is no going back, without deleting entire professions or fundamentally overhauling the game. That's not happening. The point is, the game is way, way more balanced now than it was during the times when spiritway, or hexway, or sineptitude, or turtling for VoD, or any other of the gimmicky unfun BS we've seen in the past 5 years. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm just calling you out on your hyperbole, and saying that it's not going to get terribly much better. They can (and are) tone down individual builds that are too strong, like dervishes after the last update, but we're not seeing a rework of this magnitude. It won't revitalize the format, the path to GvG is just too difficult for most people, and it has been that way for years.

What did i have with this to do (quotation name)?

Whatever, its an interesting idea to implement powerful passive defenses but keeping them easily countered to promote shutdown and by toning down direct heal power maybe weaker pressures like condi spread (as bonuses not as focuses ofc) or stronger ones like LC would see more play.

Would be interesting to see it happen, but i won't hold responsibility!

Not sure though about whether the examples you made are the right one or not but the concept would be fun to try in the "test" crews sandbox.

Wards are a better form of passive defense because they are placed at smaller static locations, strengthening position-oriented defense. More mobile teams can outmanuever and punish teams that rely too much on a wards. Maybe the wards themselves were a bit too powerful though.
Ward against melee: 33% block, 10e, 20s recharge.
Ward against foes: 33% slow, 10e, 20s recharge.

I didn't understand the syntax when I wrote that. I literally hadn't been on a forum in about a year. I didn't know what it meant for something to say hi. Get over yourself. How did I come off as a know-it-all in my OP? Read it again idiot because I can cite a multitude of quotes from my OP that suggest the opposite.

This isn't true at all. Rawr was really the first team to do that and they only became prevalent post-nightfall while utilizing imba modigon and DA bull crap. If a team decides to turtle for vod now, they lose. You either gank their NPCs or you end up pushing their shit in and perma-boost.


Proved by process of elimination. Monking is too difficult for newer, less experienced players to succeed. The learning curve is too high at that position. Why is monking too difficult now than before all passive defense was nerfed out of existence? Take a guess. Am I opposed to decreasing damage and healing game-wide? Of course not... I agree that this, in theory, creates the absolute best game experience but that is not an easy thing to do. That is a completely new game. People say that A-net wont bring back Aegis... How likely are they to completely redo all of the damage and healing in the entire game? Think about that.


Sorry... I was unaware that "potentially good" was synonymous with "nerfed out of existence"... I don't know why I didn't catch that before you explained it. I must be a complete noob without any GvG experience... like you said. Now I have another question. What relevance does a bunch of "nerfed out of existence" skills have to our conversation? Just go away. you aren't helping anyone. You are just a troll.

Heal Party has been nerfed since the old E-prod runner. It heals a lot less. Passive defense was a lot less sparse in proph than it is now. It actually existed then. I don't know what you are talking about.

A fundamental overhauling of the game is exactly what you are calling for... If you don't believe it can happen, then why are you posting on here at all? Again, you are not helpful even in the slightest. Just go away.

Noted and taken into consideration. I'm changing both Aegis and Ward Against Melee in the OP. Thank you.

Its not an easy solution to completely overhaul the game damg/healing ratio because of the amount of time it takes, but its the correct thing to do in the long run.

As far as I see it anything else is a quick cheap fix, which is why i really am trying to refrain from suggesting skill updates without fixing the root problem because in my heart of hearts I know what I'm saying isn't the best solution and that just irks me.

On the plus side its nice to see them trying to make every profession have a role (Ex: Dervishs), but I don't think they see how the end result is going to look.

/agree

Honestly, I think everybody knows this to be true. I think we have to take what we can get. I would much appreciate a meta that is more fun than the current one. It wont be perfect but it is better than what we have and it is entirely tangible. I think that is the point.

What do you think about more conditional blocks? Block only if enchanted or block only if in stance, block only if moving, etc.

I don't really have an opinion on that. I don't know what problem this suggestion is attempting to solve. Assuming that what I have in the OP was to be implemented, after having seen the meta that came about due to the implementation of the supplemental passive defense, if that passive defense was deemed too strong, making them conditional based on movement might be a good idea. I don't believe making blocks conditional based on stances or enchantments is a good idea because that would encourage people to build their teams around the passive defense, rather than building the passive defense around the team i.e. we want this B-Surge elementalist to counter spikes and to assist on spikes. Why don't we put a ward on him as well to take pressure off our monks? By making the passive defense conditional to stances or enchantments, I am afraid people will bring throw away stances or enchantments just for the sake of being in a stance or an enchantment.