Flux -- Lone Wolf

So, it appears that this may be the first "Flux" effect.

Lone Wolf: "If you are not within earshot of an ally, you deal 10% additional damage and take 10% more damage."

Discuss.

Pointless. Makes splits in GvG a little more fragile and is useless in every other PvP format.

bad news for flaggers.

owait now it doesnt matter as you cant pick them up anyway, wheeee!

Degen isn't damage, so those mindblasters and assassins are getting buffed more than the necs and IoPs. (albeit, likely not enough to matter vs. blood opness...) Still it's a 20% buff if you and your target are alone, the front-loaded spike guy will have a huge advantage there.

Solo-capping or carrier assassination happens alot in JQ, and vs the low HP NPCs there, I can see this making a difference.

Would not be surprised if we see more "lone wolf" behavior in RA even though it's generally a bad idea.

I had written four pages about how fluxes were going to be ruinous for the game, but I'm glad to see that they took the Test Krewe's input about how mutations should seek to promote different styles of play, instead of specific builds.

This one's isn't amazing - it'll probably exacerbate the extant problem of flag pushing in addition to making instagib assassins instagibbier. Still, though, it's a lot better than some of the proposed ideas.

I'm still pretty dubious; I'm not convinced the game will be better off with them.
And will they stay in for MATs?

That was one of the issues I was concerned about and people are bringing up on QQ forums. Fluxes are pretty obviously patterned after L4D's mutations, but there, mutations are only offered as an option to experience new styles of gameplay, instead of force-fed meta shifts.

Ideally, when the Live Team stops working on PvP for good, the game would be left in a state of balance like that of Starcraft: Brood War, where there's enough robustness and depth in the skills that the metagame will be able to evolve for years without outside input to promote variation. Unfortunately, it seems like they aren't planning on taking that path.

Changing anything two days before the MAT is usually a bad idea; we can only hope that the monthly cycle will begin in the first week or so starting next month.

I like the idea of change. I'll have to test it out myself to figure out whether I like it or not. For the moment, I welcome this mechanic.

Feels like a Berserker effect - you give and take more damage.

Normally I'd agree, but loldervs. Hopefully this will be implemented well before future mATs however. (Unless they're also loldervs.)

The effect when playing a collapsesin in JQ is very apparent.

Edit: seems NPCs don't have the effect on themselves.

Flux is good in my opinion, because it weakens the meta for those who take advantage of it.

Maybe one day Flux will cause enchantments to expire 30% faster, and you'll see 3 rit backline in GvG, you never know.

It keeps things interesting and potentially allows for exotic builds without the risk of tweaking skills.

i really wish anet would sort out their utterly shit dervdates before they add rubbish like this, my will to play gws is seeping away

Hehehe, Flux is fun in FA.

I've never seen the Kurzicks lose so fast. One guy gets behind the line and goes crazy on the Green Gate

Broodwar balance comes more from the mechanics requirement, micro requirement to fight the game engine shortcomings (like path finding, lack of workers waypoint into mineral line, etc) and UI shortcomings than balance of units and/or abilities.

Units like the defiler, science vessel and bw psystorm would be very overpowered in Starcraft 2 with its smarter AI, intelligent casting, etc.

Additionally you have tons of different maps.

I'm not sure GW work like that.

A flux that reduces enchantment duration by 30% would be equivalent to a skill balance that reduces the duration of all enchantments by 30% with a guarantee that it'll be gone next month. There's not any difference there.

Anyway, I'm curious as to this hatred of a metagame that seems to emanate from the PvE/low end PvP demographic. What's the reasoning behind it, and is this dislike backed by sufficient understanding of what brings it about?

Every BW metagame which was imbalanced eventually corrected itself, sometimes through the introduction of new maps, but more often through the incorporation of builds which directly or indirectly counter them.

In principle, something like the last pre-derv update metagame functioned something like that. You had around ten or so builds that were more than viable divided between the three major build archetypes, none of which were incredibly overpowered relative to the others. Unfortunately, the introduction of dervishes has brought genuine format-warping bars to the metagame, bars that you're basically forced to run against opponents of similar skill, just because they're so grossly overpowered that there exist no real counters to them.

I'm very much against this change - balance should be achieved by balance updates, not global environmental effects. Flux will change the meta, but it does so in a brute-force fashion I simply don't like.

Oh and Lemming, Monks have been Mo/W with RC + WoH since forever - something "you're basically forced to run against opponents of similar skill". Although I do agree that Dervishes are bad for build variety, see also [RETRACT forgot in Guru cup you could only run one Dervish max].

But see also ... um ... I don't remember which mAT it was, but I think it was the one immediately after the Dervish update when mass hexes won gold.

Lone Wolf works in Ascalon Academy

I do believe that cent would have lost if og had ran their normal split game, they were winning every game with splits(including cent on swiss I believe)..

The difference between starcraft builds "correcting" themselves and whats possible in guild wars, is that you can go over to the person's base in starcraft, look at what they're doing, and make educated guesses. You can feasibly change your build on the go and make changes based on what you've scouted of the enemy.

In guild wars you can't exactly scout out your enemy before the fight, see their build, then change your build to compensate for theirs.


So comparing the guild wars metagame, and striving for something similar to the starcraft metagame doesn't exactly work out.