Skill Balance: Revert Aegis

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/