Skill Balance: Revert Aegis

So I was having a discussion in the most recent game update thread in the general game discussion section and I suggested an Aegis revert and I got a few replies, some pro some con. I replied to them all and my post was a super huge hijacking of the original thread so I decided I am going to delete that post and start fresh here. Here is how the conversation went down:

"Hopefully the next major skill update will be to Aegis... yep.... one skill that solves about half the problems we are seeing in PvP today and will probably be the most drastic skill balance of the past year.

Removing Aegis PvP split = guilds can no longer run stupid shit. Doing this will move all builds towards the center. No more Triple Melee. No more Dervish trains and brainless C-spacing. It forces people to communicate. It forces people to bring shutdown. Having additional shutdown Makes A/P spike and true spike less strong. It makes builds more diverse and splittable thus making Cake split less strong. It forces people to actually play the game.

Also, increase recharge on B-flash... kk"

I got some responses and this was my massive reply to them:

"So a number of people have commented on my comment regarding an Aegis revert. I figure I should probably respond to those comments with an opinion i.e. if any of you even care but whatever.

I agree that psychologically A-Net will have a hard time accepting my philosophical views but that doesn't mean I shouldn't voice them, ya know? With regards to ping and off server players, I really don't see how Aegis makes the game based in ping. Aegis would be a 2 second, 15 energy cast, 30 sec recharge. You could have 500 ping and still get it, plus you still have mirror of disenchantment. What it forces you to do is think and keep track of time while trying to micro everything else on your bar. Interrupts like Aegis is what the mesmer was meant to do quite honestly. interrupting powerful, slow casting spells while letting the weaker faster casting spells go. If it were up to me, there wouldn't be a powerful skill in this game that had a faster casting time than one second, including WoH and RC....

Actually, I was thinking an Aegis that had spec in both divine favor and prot similarly to lions comfort for the warrior (tactics and strength). Having the duration be protection and the % chance to block be based in divine favor. This weakens Aegis on Heal monks and raises it's power on the prot monk (where it is most vulnerable to P-Block). I think it balances the skill nicely. Overall, I agree with everything you said though.

I actually completely agree with you on the premise, but not on the conclusion. You said that Aegis slows down the game and you gave a bunch of examples of why this happens. i completely agree with you. However, you said that this makes it stale. I completely disagree. Having a fast-paced game does not make for a better game. Guild Wars is based on the card game, "Magic: The Gathering". That is what makes it so fun. Is that game fast paced? Of course not. It required thinking and careful strategy. Thus too should Guild Wars. Don't get it twisted, I think the game should be active and reactive, but having melee go balls to the walls just makes monking twitchy and annoying and midline boring and brainless. Your conclusions are just simply not true. Slowing the game down a little, and making it more strategic from a micro-perspective is what the game needs.

So let me get your argument straight. Because A-Net is implementing a powercreep bad for the game, the game should remain the way it is bad for the game. I have an idea. How about we just stop doing things that are bad for the game. Yes, that means revert Aegis and eliminate powercreep. I thought that was obvious. I know I didn't mention all of this in the original post but that's because I didn't want to write a huge giant comment like this one, thus hijacking somebody else's thread, where i would have been better off just writing my own. But obviously, A-Net should nerf 5e "on demand" monk spells that heal for 150hp.... that's just absurd.

There is a reason why GvG has been systematically dying to the point where nobody is playing anymore since NF... Of course this is all moot because I'm not arguing to revert everything back to how it was in NF, but honestly, it was a lot better then than it is now. That is indisputable.

When I said, "No more triple melee" all I meant was that it wouldn't be imbalanced like today. I think it would be brought back to the center like everything else. But what I found most interresting about your comment is that you feel the same way as I do regarding the state of GvG. People keep saying that how A-Net nerfed all passive defense for a reason, but what is that reason? To make the game less fun? Like you said, GvG was most fun when? When there was some passive defense. Again, I'm not advocating for defense webs. I'm advocating for balance.

That is what I want. Right now mesmers aren't even in the current meta at all (outside of PI cake split which is irrelevant). No shutdown actually exists. Aegis forces (or makes it useful for) people to bring builds devoted to shutdown. We need monks to depend on midline support as well. I haven't worked out exactly how to do this but probably eliminating the "fire and forget" heals to a certain extent would do this too.

I think that is the point. I don't want Aegis to be "so powerful". I want it to be balanced. I want it to be a skill that makes people say, "We need some form of shutdown in this team build". Right now, people don't need to consider it. Shutdown has become irrelevant."

So this is where I left off and hopefully we can get some discussion in here. I really want to see this implemented (more than anything else in the whole game) so if you like the idea, please say so and attract attention to it. If you don't like the idea, please state why an aegis revert would be bad for the game. Thanks!

Na, leave Aegis as is, there's enough melee hate.

/1 Star (Pass on your idea)

The idea is to buff aegis and slightly tone down some of the non-elite, cheap, active prots (such as healing hands and guardian) as well as patient spirit. I also called for B-flash being nerfed. I don't think you really took the time to read the OP.

I like the idea of reverting aegis just a bit, but I would hate to see it becoming one of those fire and forget skills.
It should promote skillfull play.
I am not sure how to do that yet, but several options are possible, tweaks to duration/recharge/energy cost, or perhaps even more/less block chance when certain condition are met/not met.

The thing is, while the effect of Aegis may not seem like it, the skill actually does promote skillfull play. When Aegis was in its old form, if you couldn't get it up but the other team was chaining it, you would lose the game. It required the players to properly weapon swap and even cancel cast to try and get a Half cast in order to not get interrupted. It required the team to be extremely vocal and observant on who used Aegis when, and to count the duration and recharges to make sure you can stop the next one from getting up. It made monks think about pre-positioning themselves in order to block a rangers line of sight so they could freely get the skill off.

There was a whole lot going on just to stop one single skill from going off. So that is the whole point of the OP, to bring that style of play back. My original concern with his idea was simply that I don't think the effect an Aegis revert will have will be enough all by itself to promote this kind of play. I believe people will simply just continue playing triple melee builds and will just bring a dom mes with mirror of disenchant and instead of spending time focusing on shutting down aegis, they will just tear it off and continue facerolling. So while there will be an increase focus in shutdown a little bit, I don't see it being big enough and other changes will obviously have to come along with it.

That said, I like the idea, and was against the Aegis change in the first place.

I dont see much harm in reverting Aegis. Mirror of disenchantment is basically unlinked. And every physical profession has its own share of unblockable skills.

At this point, this makes the most sense to me. Passive defenses were so boring for so long that we flung the pendulum the other way, and this is no good either.

Also, Aegis was if I remember correctly being abused in HA with ghostly hero and claim resources. Its been so long.

Yes. This is perfectly and eloquently stated. Thank you.

You may be right but if you bring two copies of Aegis on each monk, then you will need 2 copies of mirror just to shut it down. Mirror and Aegis would both be 15 energy casts so it would be balanced at that point. The way you can make Aegis worth your time in shutting down is if you bring interrupts (presumably p-leak). That way you spend way less energy to shut down a skill that costs significantly more. Even if people run 3 melee with a dom mesmer, that still makes their build significantly less powerful because they lose the SoS Necro or the Apply Poison spread. I don't want triple melee to disappear. I just want it to be balanced with other builds.

I was talking with a guy on the test crew regarding an Aegis revert and he had a few things to say about it.

1) They have been discussing it for a while now and they are mixed regarding those who think it is a good idea and those who do not.

2) He agreed with the reasons that were brought up in this thread of why it is a good idea to revert Aegis.

3) Those opposing the idea say that the old Aegis reduces build diversity, in so much that teams are forced to spec against that one skill. Basically, any one skill that forcibly changes the viability of an entire team build is inherently overpowered.

for that last point, I really have no defense. Is it overpowered? Yes... it is. Aegis would basically be the most powerful monk skill in the game. The only thing I could possibly respond with is that this overpowered skill promotes fun play styles that people enjoy. Every profession becomes instantly more fun to play (assuming active prots take a small hit in their efficiency).

NOTE:

What if Aegis' skill description read, "Enchantment Spell. For 5...10...11 seconds, all party members within earshot have a 50% chance to gain _____ health when hit with an attack."?

Well, aegis was good & bad imo. The chance part inherent in the skill is really bad for competitive pvp, specially if it's so (party)-widely active. You can switch off a guardianed target, but aegis is global so you just have to roll the dice till someone gets it down.

It's good because it kept builds that are now meta in check. Three frontliners should not be a good build without sacrificing 'something' (utility, splitablity, etc), they have too much armor, making for a really strong team, even without defensive skills.

Should Aegis come back, I would definitely prefer a more party-wide shielding hands like skill then a party wide guardian, just because of the randomness in 50% block...

It can't be hard to come up with a concept that punishes melee and ranged attacks like block does but doesn't have the random factor.

I like that suggestion best with the insanely high damage that casters can dish out now.

Aegis:

Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (5...10...11 seconds). 50% less damage from attacks.

Seems a bit overpowered too.

would be op, its like the old incoming

I think Aegis should only affect melee attacks and ranged physical attacks. Casters should not be affected by Aegis as it would be too effective in defensive builds.
Could probably get away with affecting only melee attacks since paragons and rangers aren't that much of an OP dmg threat atm.

Would be kind of hard to implement though. Only way I can think of it is like...

Aegis:

Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (insert duration). (Insert defensive buff). No effect if that party member doesn't have (an) (1 or 2?) attack skill(s).

I ment it this way;

Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (insert duration). Take # (probably around 15 at max spec) less damage or life steal from melee attacks.

Another option would be to make it a melee attack only party wide prot spirit

Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (insert duration). Incoming melee attack damage is reduced to 10% of target ally's maximum Health.


Fun/not serious option, combined with removal of dervishes from the game;

Enchantment Spell. Enchants all party members within earshot (insert duration). Whenever target ally takes damage while knocked down, the damage is negated and hits the source for that same amount.

/notserious

Anyway yes, it very much has to be in Divine Favor. Preferably add a disables your Smiting Prayers for 20 seconds clause aswell. Facing 4 monks is not fun.

Note; coincidentally this buffs Paragons in (high-end) PvP. It might just be enough for them to see some play again. (Mirror of Disenchantment is easy to bring on a Paragon and Paragon damage is not affected by Aegis.)

Have you considered making Wards viable instead of Aegis as a solution? Wards are bound to a location so they are much easier to counter implicitly (positioning, splitting, AoE), but leave enough room for direct shutdown to work wonders.

However if you're idea is to make dom mesmers a necessity, then an Aegis revert would be the better solution. As much as I love dom mesmers, I just don't think teams should be forced to bring one so they can be competitive.

You don't need a dom mesmer in Aegis meta. People brought Cruel Spear P/Me and a ranger to shut down chains too. All it did was force teams to bring two people with shutdown capabilities honestly.

I'm not against buffing Ward Against Melee either...

With the retarded amount of damage casters are able to put out right now, I think earshot range shielding hands would go a long way towards balancing it out a bit. If you want block then it should just go back to how it was, no reason at all to make it only affect melee.

A parry wide shielding hands would be quite interesting but would become a staple in almost every team build. They just need to nerf the derv a lot harder to bring it down to the warrior level. A block aegis would just make a balanced profession(warrior) suffer even more. Best thing to do is nerf the derv into a balanced state like the warrior.


@OP

Buffing a single skill to supplement a team against a single class is not the right way to balance out a profession. Your suggestion is pretty much the same as Anet buffing b-flash. I'm sure that when they applied the b-flash band-aid other skills such as aegis crossed their minds but they remembered what it did to the format. Yes I agree it does promote skillful play but not in the right way. Having your team make it or break it from a single skill is not what pvp is about(in any game). I remember watching matches and when a team couldn't get a single aegis up due to rupts or w/e the game was over. Hopefully a bigger derv nerf comes along soon.

/notsigned

It would be helpful for the monk then with signet of mystic speed vs mesmers to prevent spell rupts and make sure that the aegis itself goes of (unless rupted by ranger). Hmm the skills have changed a lot since those days so it could take some rebalancing to make way to aegis (not only active defense but utilities too).

Whateva im not the one to speak of balance matters since i lack experience enough.

Except it's not just dervishes that are the problem. Trip front(be it with R/A's, Hammer Warriors or Dervishes) has been the best build for many, many months now.

Also, shutdown is a big part of guild wars. If your defense gets shut down, you should not be able to stay alive for long. That's what PvP (used to be) all about.

With Triple Aegis, that would mean AI damage players dominate the battlefield now.

...What are you on about?

AI Damage dealer = bypass blocking = More useful than Assassin = more useful than physicals. What are you on about?

I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.

Addressing the OP, don't most meta builds have a cripshot ranger with at least one interrupt?
Plus mesmers are still popular, just not in a solely shutdown role.
I don't play much GvG, but I know in any PvP format, it's a drag on a team to have one player completely devoted to stopping the monks. Reminds me too much of TA back in the day.

It is curious that the Anet team has taken such an aggressive stance on passive defense, while devoting an entire class to the concept in GW2; but I'm digressing.

The developers clearly favor a hex-based/direct damage meta where redbar and hex/condition removal are the primary roles for team support. Focus on interrupting key skills seemed to go out the window the same time EotN was released and the entire balance philosophy got turned on it's head for all formats.

Any changes like the one suggested would involve a change in skill balance philosophy and I don't think the Live Team's remaining attention span can take a PvP redesign until they've collected all the data they are getting from the Flux.

Dervs are far more OP than hammer warriors. At least with hammer warriors their IAS skills come with a big drawback and if an attack skill is rupted they got to start their chain all over(same could be said for R/A). Hammer warriors also depend on normal adrenaline gain unlike AoB and with AoB a derv is a warrior on steroids. triple melee was fine before derv update bc it took some amount of skill to use. Now its mindless button mashing.

Did I even mention dervishes once in the OP? These types of false assumptions are the reason having a rational discussion with people like you is so frustrating. When people shutdown the opposing teams ability to mitigate damage passively, they won? Wow... what a terrible play style! Sorry to get so cynical but I just can't take this comment seriously.

To answer your question, yes. Most builds have a ranger with at least one interrupt. Those interrupts are primarily used to interrupt res and to be spammed ad nausium on the prot monk. If that's not promoting skillfull play, I don't know what is!!! Shutdown is a huge part of guild wars that has been completely abandoned, not because it isn't powerful, but because there is litterally nothing to shutdown in the current meta. If people aren't bringing skills that teams are willing and able to shutdown, then people will simply not bring shutdown. This is what we are currently observing today and what needs to change.

Because the smart kids are working on GW2 and the ignorant PvE ones are left on the live team. Ok, so that was a joke but it's funny because there is a kernel of truth there. It's no disrespect to the live team, but none of them are PvP players.

So the live team favors the "push button - do damage" philosophy? Well isn't that swell. I'm bored at the mere premise... This philosophy has destroyed GvG, HA, and all PvP in general. The evidence is insurmountable

P.S. flux is stupid.

lolololololololololololololololol

One of the funniest (and most clueless posts) i've read in a while. How can people still not know the basic mechanics of gw after 6 years...

some people haven't been playing for 6 years, and there are people still joining the game... also, i believe his point is based on heroes, so i think he's talking about pve. lurn to read before you troll, this isn't QQ



on topic...

i liked the old aegis, maybe cause back then gvg was actually fun to play, and people had to talk to each other, rather than the current meta of 1 dervish macroing their team and telling everyone what to do, which is piss easy to do.

also, as long as they make it aggro range, and not compass range again, i'll be happy :3

The post regarding AI damage dealers being unblockable was a troll, not the guy making fun of it. Heroes still aren't unblockable... so whether he is talking about heroes or not is irrelevant. If he is a PvE player, he probably should be talking about Skill balances regarding PvP. Removing the PvP split with aegis would have zero effect on PvE so it should be none of his concern anyways. That is why he is a troll.

lol what?? almost the entire thread has been discussing the effects of aegis on pvp, GvG specifically. His particular post was referencing triple aegis chain (presumably in gvg else why would u want it?) also how long he specifically has been playing doesnt change the fact that this is a 6 year old game. All the basic game mechanics are now common knowledge, there are wiki pages, guides or the tried and trusted method of copying good ppl on observe mode. After you have played for like 3 months, u have almost no excuse to NOT know this stuff. Trying to be a smartass doesnt suit you rob...

The second part of your post is also wrong in several ways. How can you claim that aegis made gvg more fun as a general statement? The fact was that aegis chain provided a massive blockweb (it also got twinned with bsurge, DA, and ward vs melee if u remember) reducing adrenaline gain to virtually 0. If you introduced aegis now, imagine how many games will go to 28.... You would have 2 options, bring shutdown and take down aegis, but then probably not do pressure cos mesmers arent particularly good, or not bring shutdown, and play for 28. Not ideal either way.

You are also 100% wrong about dervishes. Yes they are boring, yes they require less skill on a micro level than a warrior to play optimally. This doesnt make them "piss easy" to use, and to win with. Just because they are on a dervish, does not suddenly make bad players good, they still have no macro ability and bad tactics so they lose every game. You make it sound like any guild who uses triple dervish could potentially win a gold cape, when its not the case. The build is broken and OP, but bad players are still bad, otherwise mAT would have 50 teams challenging for gold cape, instead of about 3.

It should also be noted, that if a meta requires shutdown, then its a bad meta. Many people prefer shutdown to not having it, but it should never be mandatory, and aegis would pretty much enforce the use of a mesmer. (or at the very least a copy of mirror disenchantment somewhere for pressure, or some big rends for spikes) Having an entire meta of ping based euro honor revolving around mesmers is stupid. The good guilds get better, and the bad guilds get worse as there are probably less than 10 mesmers left in the game, so all the guilds without one of these 10, are forced to bring someone who cannot optimally play the bar and are immediately at a huge disadvantage.

i still don't know half the mechanics in GW, i only learend how to abuse the z-axis 2 weeks ago

the point i was making was that it was fun for me, cause i actually got to hear people talk, rather than the current GW where nobody talks, and you learn about things when messages pop up on the screen.

I'd rather play 28 minute games off ladder than play 4 minute games, no offence, but in the meta you either get stomped, or you stomp on someone, and to me, that is rather boring. I've played maybe 2 games in the past 3 months where the games being "balanced" and actually kinda fun to play

rawrspike (the proper one, not the crappy esurge 1)... ofc mesmers would become meta again... pblocking aegis won games but maybe paragons, rend, stand rits etc. would come back into the game, instead of 40 obs games with 3 dervishes, a ranger and a necro. Just saying

Na... AI = Armor Ignoring

Which is strange, and probably still utterly retarded, seeing as how in pve, enemies won't aegis chain, and in pvp, there won't be more than 2 aegis in a team, and even if there was, it would just mean that pain of disenchantment would be making a comeback.

I think you somewhat missed the point i was trying to make. If aegis came back, mesmers in their current form would not be particularly beneficial.They would need their shutdown buffed in order to deal with the new passive defence, and as a result their damage would have to be nerfed to create balance (lol gw). So as i previously stated people who wanted to fight 8v8 would essentially have 2 options, running spike builds making extensive use of rend enchantments, or you are forced to run a ping based euro dom mesmer. Both of these 2 options might make the game more "balanced" in the eyes of many european players, but it actually hinders build choice far more than you see at present.

3 melee was not the only viable option before dervishes came into existence, there were actually several possible builds. (fire ele and necro, a variety of split builds, a variety of spikes, 3 melee, or dom mesmers could be used if u had one of the 10 mesmers in game who are actually good) .

Forcing people to counter aegis actually reduces variation imo, and anet would be better served just nerfing the stuff that makes 3 melee tick. Wild throw, yeti smash, blood necros possibly, and dervishes.

It might seem that i am anti aegis/mesmer here, believe me im not and i love mesmers, i think shutdown is one of the best designed concepts in the game, but its also fair to say that it should never be forced upon you to bring interupt based characters, and re-introduction of passive defence pretty much goes against this. So for this reason i would be against an aegis revert and would much rather see the things i highlighted in bold above.

@ floor

What you say makes alot of sense. Some 'Euros' have been wanting to see their playstyle with passive defense and spike damage come back but like you said, it doesn't neccaserily make the game better at this point. Forcing a certain meta to come back does't seem beneficial to me; That meta has come and gone, maybe we should just leave at that.
I mean you can still run those kinds of builds. It's just they are no more THE best meta build.

You could argue that at this moment the game is relatively balanced. There's many splits on obs, pressure builds everywhere (albeit very many of the same variety) and on favorable maps, we see spikes aswell. Heck, even a lost paragon made it to the semi's of the mAT.

(For the record; I wouldn't mind no longer seeing trip front, but that's my opinion. I don't think game balance should be done around personal preference)

You're hindering your own build choice by preferring an 8v8 build in the first place. You're supposed to adapt like what these usual 8v8ers did: http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mA...September/193/