Skill Balance: Revert Aegis

to quote myself:
"people who wanted to fight 8v8" - 8v8 being an 'option' not a necessity.

I dont feel that 8v8 has ever been considered a hinderance, but certainly there are other options which would nullify the need for aegis . I presume thats what u intended with that link(?), i have got to be honest but i cant specifically remember that match, although to an extent it only agrees with what i have already stated.

rawr brought along a rend enchants to no doubt counter the aegis chain (+ other prots) they expected, whereas sup just ran what i presume was a split build with lots of snares and heavy midline defence, as such not needing aegis to support them. Presumably they did not think they could beat rawr spike in 8v8, which is most likely true. Feel free to correct me if im wrong as i am merely making assumptions based on what i can see.

because the skill isn't broken and promoted skillful midline play of which the post-aegis meta has had zero of... like... literally.

Actually Aegis + DA + B-surge + Ward Against Melee created a massive block web. Aegis existed since prophecies dude. Learn2GuildWars Last I checked Aegis was fine until nightfall ruined it by introducing B-surge and DA. Now that DA and Ward Against Melee are dead, there is no more passive block web. It would just be Aegis. Also, nerf B-flash because the skill is retarded. Increase it's recharge to twice the duration or raise the energy cost. I don't care which. This isn't quantum field theory here... I would know.


You shouldn't be able to wipe teams without shutting anything down. I think that's the point. How completely brain dead is this game?! Right now teams already have only 2 options, run split or run pressure. Plus your conclusion is just damn false. Good pressure teams would still be able to win with triple melee because their ranger would shut down aegis. The ranger would have to not be bad. It would increase his responsibilities but that is what SHOULD HAPPEN when you remove a shutdown char for another frontline. You should be forced to give something up. There should be an opportunity cost associated with every decision. Right now there isn't. That's why GvG is dying.

Warriors and Dervishes have relatively the same macro-strat which makes talking about it completely irrelevant. Dervishes micro-strat is comparable to a paragon though.... so yes... it is piss easy.

If they have Divine as their prot monk and 1 person who knows what they are doing who can micromanage everybody's movements on the team, then yeah... they could. How sad is that? A couple experienced monks and 1 strat caller + a bunch of PvE players = gold trim right now.... you are defending that argument. Absolutely brilliant.

You know what? Having healers shouldn't be mandatory either.... and damage. Damage shouldn't be mandatory.

I hope you are trolling right now... I really do because I'm about to cry. Your asinine comments are so stupid I am literally going to be pushed to tears right now.

Some form of interrupt or enchant removal is already required for GvG at this point. Tell me ANY meta that didn't have either a rupt or enchant removal. This is joke. I hope everyone reading this sees how much of a joke this is.

There are only 10 mesmers left because they have been driven out and forced to run brainless crap!!! Is that even an argument though? Think about it for a second. Good players left the game because GvG sucks in this meta, therefore we shouldn't make it better because those players aren't there to play. Best logic I've heard all day. Plus, 2 second casts are not ping based!!! I'm done... Just go back to playing your mending warrior in RA please.

monking at present is harder than it was pre-aegis. I'd be interested to see why u think otherwise although ur perfectly entitled to an opinion there.

EDIT: ignore that comment, i didnt read ur post correctly, yes i agree with you MIDLINE was harder then. My apologies.

Im not sure what you are trying to imply here tbh. Your right that there was many factors that contributed to blockweb theory. But then again, bsurge and b flash are still around, and ward vs melee is still very functional. Particularly in the gimmicky spike builds with 5-6 invoke eles who run 3 copies of the ward. I can agree with you to a point that aegis if reverted right now would not be as bad as it used to be, but then there would also need to be a whole selection of other skill changes in order to accommodate it which is not the point of this discussion. If aegis was introduced RIGHT NOW, it would be a problem.

No ranger would ever get every aegis down. Non retarded monks would guardian themselves before casting so theres 50% block. Now include the ones that the ranger doesnt even see go up, or hes blind/blurred and misses. Its entirely possible 75%+ of aegis would get up, even vs a good ranger, just depends how shitty the monks are at positioning away from him, and actually bothering to guardian themself etc. This level of aegis, albeit not necessarily a "block-web" would certainly be enough to prevent 3 melee from dominating so much, not necessarily a bad thing, but then what do u drop a melee for? you either take a mesmer to deal with the aegis and provide general shutdown, except that 95% of mesmers suck, and domination magic is generally underpowered compared to other attribute lines at the moment (mind wrack and shit is OP but the actual shutdown skills is what im referring to) Ofc if aegis were to be reverted, and they reverted p leak and p block at the same time, then yeah np im all for it.


Fair statement to make. I still maintain dervishes are not as "easy" to play as many ppl think, you still have to actually hit the right targets in order to achieve any kind of pressure, and many frontliners fail to do this which is precisely why there were only about 5 teams who could play triple dervish well and everyone else got stomped.

Ur comment is not flawed, but the point i made is still valid. Bad frontliners on dervish are still bad and do not kill stuff.


Is ur comment related to what i wrote at all? Also D9's teams dont even play triple melee, so where did ur point come from.
I said that almost none of the guilds abusing triple dervish had a realistic chance at gold, therefore if ppl are not good at the build, it cant be as easy as ppl think? I do actually disagree with ur comments though that divine and the caller (skittles?) can just carry a team to gold. [WHAT] has an extremely good lineup who play split far better than anyone else in the game, and due to the nature of split its very very difficult for trip melee teams to accomplish much as they are running flags on a frontliner all game, but excuses aside, WHAT are by far the best guild around, claiming that their players get carried i feel is doing them a dis-service cos everyone on that team is pretty dam smart at their given role.

Ur point about carrying to gold cape is perhaps justified though, they did have an extremely inexperienced flagger, and a backline that many would consider not gold cape material. As such they ran super defensive builds because they couldnt play anything else. The first round of the mat [cake] won goldcape, we beat them in triple melee v triple melee, they were never gna achieve greatness at that rate, so switched to A/P spike and quad nec. Not flaming or criticising for this, but those build choices significantly reduce the impact ur backline has on the game, provided ur offence is producing kills which they were.

Healers are recomended, you can get top 100 with byob as kaon has proved with only 1 monk. Having a full backline is by no means compulsory.

Damage is also optional, say what you like but quad necro has won 3 gold capes in the last 6 months, [cake] [LaG] [yawn], and the build is entirely based around defensive hexes and degen. I dont see a whole lot of damage there.

I wasnt, but even if i was, no need to get upset <3

I never said it wasnt required, but you would certainly require MORE enchant removals than at present.

Also for the record, the first 6 months of 2010 where everyone was running around playing quad ele, had either no enchant removal at all, or extremely limited amounts depending on the team playing it, and 0 interupts. Ofc the point of the build was to stall and win at 28, but thats irelevant, still a build that functions without enchant removal. Most invoke spike teams also play without any enchant strips or rupts. And the current split build that [WHAT] have been implementing so well, also has no enchant removals and i think just 1 interupt on the illusion mesmer.

Im not necessarily claiming that this is a good thing for the game, but its fair to say ur comments about it being a mandatory feature are wide of the mark.

U are right in the sense a lot of mesmers quit, as a result of mesmers losing their role through power creep, or the game simply being old. But this is a game wide problem, not specific to just mesmers.

Even since 2008, there have been relatively few mesmers competent at the top level, and post 2008/early 2009 there have been virtually none. Right now if you do not have 1 of the few remaining good mesmers, there is no reason to bring one since other characters, particularly melee are far more efficient. Unless shutdown received a buff of some form, which would allow mesmers to compete at the same level as other professions again, and also allow more average mesmers to be effective, will u see them return to serious top play.

Could you also explain your 2 second cast statement, that was somewhat lost on me. Aegis reverted would be a 2 second cast, but other than that there are very very few skills with longer than 1s cast in circulation. If you simply wanted aegis down, you could bring mirror of disenchant, and not bother with a mesmer. So if you bring a mesmer ofc its ping based, how could it not be?


Thankyou for ur in depth reply though, i dont agree with everything u posted, but was an interesting read nonetheless. I'm off to go play mending in RA now, so catch you later.

hugs and kisses
xoxoxox

What I'm saying is that, "people who want to fight 8v8" are at a disadvantage(build-choice-wise) in that they are forced to bring certain skills to counter aegis. Instead, be smart; adapt and you have the freedom to bring whatever build you think will work.

A whole load of crap needs nerfing before bringing aegis back would make any sense to me, even then i don't want it either.

If monks had old Aegis (in todays meta) I just see them getting curbstomped vs trip derv. I'd wager blood necs just taking 2 strips and your monks getting trained down since they then have nothing else to relieve pressure on themselves.

To put "midline skill" back into the game (or to actually make them worth brining outside of spikes), doesn't require a change to Aegis, it just needs a tone down on stuff like hammers/dervishes as a whole/ele's/hexes/domination straight damage/blood nec that took people into stupid playstyle build such as trip melee/quad ele (at the time)/quad nec.

Aegis being changed didn't result in this degenerative meta, the random buffs did. The PBlock balanced meta ran for months, and that was without aegis/passive defense.

But who are we kidding, ele's are getting buffed yaaaay.

Not to mention N/Me can take mirror of disenchantment...

Also, I'm pretty sure people ran pblock just to take out the over abundance of (back then even stronger) water ele's with a bazillion snares. At some point people even ran 2 water ele's.

Giant replies are best replies!

The OP suggests a nerf to B-flash. 2 copies of aegis and 1 copy of B-surge is not overpowered by any means and very capable of being shut down by just one player - if they are good. Ward vs Melee is a non-issue because if teams ball up in a ward, dervishes are going to rip them apart regardless... but of course, I'm not suggesting wards get buffed anyways.

Baseless assertion. If there are so many skills that would require balancing simply because Aegis was reverted, surely you could name a couple. I agree that there are skills that should be nerfed if Aegis was reverted however I still believe that if everything stayed the same except the Aegis revert, the game would still be leaps and bounds better than it is today.

Interrupt guardian, call for a strip, or use magebane. It's typical for triple melee to use magebane already anyways. Any ranger of moderate skill can disrupt an Aegis on a frequent basis. It is still a 2 sec cast spell that has a 30 second recharge.

Bad blind/blurred removal and bad ranger play should result in people losing the game. If a team fails to shutdown another teams defenses and they lose because of it, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, it ought to be encourage by anybody who loves GvG and wants to see it thrive again.

Baseless assertion. Domination shutdown is not underpowered at all. What other attribute lines are you comparing it to? There is no comparison to make. No other attribute line does anything remotely similar to domination. I don't know what you are talking about with regard to p-leak. The most recent nerf to p-leak was March 06, 2008. Aegis wasn't changed from passive defense until 14 months later. P-leak was perfectly fine at disrupting Aegis for over a year. Assuming Aegis does get reverted, if a monk gets P-leaked while casting aegis, that would result in a 31 point energy loss. That's massive by any standard. Assume he has mind wrack on him prior to casting the skill and now mesmers can output a good amount of pressure as well. With regards to P-block, the only change it has seen since 2007 is a decrease in the shutdown effect from 15 seconds to 11. P-Block was hugely overpowered back then and is now balanced. I don't see a problem with either skill.

Firstly, that is not why only five teams could play triple dervish well. The reason is because the build has very little defense and requires a very skilled backline. If you don't have one, you will get stomped by teams that do.
Secondly, the vast majority of players think that dervishes are less fun than warriors because they require less skill and don't promote a tactical and strategic game mechanic. Everything else is irrelevant. If players don't like it, then how do you justify its existence? I believe that unless this premise holds true, the argument is automatically invalid. It's all off topic anyways because this thread is not about Dervishes.

You opposed the view that any team using triple dervish could potential win trim. I responded to that by saying, if any team had a player that could micromanage all the bad kids by telling them where to go and guested good monks, like Divine, then yes.... any guild could contend for gold trim running triple dervish. Ranger is the only non-monk player on the triple dervish team build that actually requires more than an infinitesimal amount of skill.

Irrelevant. Divine is a good monk regardless of which team he is in.

I never said their players get carried. I said that their players could carry a bad guild to compete for gold trim. Do you oppose that view? Is necromancer really that hard where an elite player grants his team a distinct advantage over a bad one? I don't think so. It's really that easy to play. The same logic applies for an EDA or Balthazar Dervish.

For America [FA] is top 100. I really don't care. If 1 monk BYOB is your ground-breaking argument to keeping shutdown completely nonexistent in the GvG meta, then I don't even know why I am trying to have this conversation with you quite honestly. That refutation has more holes than a pound of Swiss cheese.

So are you advocating that quad necro is a productive and healthy play style for the GvG format? I honestly don't think you are even trying to be intelligent. That argument is self-defeating. Just like any build that has zero shutdown is bad for the game (all of the meta builds), builds that have zero damage are also bad for the game. Please let me know if you are seriously advocating that quad necro is good for the game... If you are not, which I presume is true, then this point is entirely invalid as it doesn't pertain to the topic of what is GOOD for the GvG format.

I'm not conceding that this is a true statement (I believe a ranger can fully shut down an aegis chain fairly easily if he devotes the resources to doing so), but for the sake of argument, let's assume it will require more enchant removals. How is that a bad thing? Why is having enchantment removals bad for the game?

There are a lot of flaws in this argument. I already know that quad ele had no enchantment removals but again, you completely ignore the obvious. Even with the Aegis revert, quad ele would still need no enchantment removals so it is entirely irrelevant. Do those eles need to get more wand damage through?

Invoke Spike teams have no enchantment removals? Really? Again, how is this relevant to the discussion? Aegis does nothing to these team builds. I honestly believe that you are arguing for the sake of arguing and you have no intention of persuading anybody. How could you? Are people reading this going to say, "Invoke spike and quad ele have no enchant removals or rupts... I guess an aegis revert would be bad. What a terrific argument floor made by saying that."... yeah...

[WHAT]'s build devotes an elite skill to interruption on their mesmer so this is not an argument for your position.


I never made that claim. I said that damage, shutdown, and healing SHOULD be mandatory for any build. It's in text so really there is no reason for you to misinterpret that. It's right there in black and white.

No, mesmers leaving the game is a symptom of the game-wide problem. The reason why GvG is dying is not because it's old. It's dying because A-Net ran it into the ground with piss poor skill balance that promote unhealthy, skilless play styles.

Wait wait wait... You mean to tell me that when all passive defense was systematically eliminated from the game, mesmers stopped being good and left the game in droves? I'm not going to continue this train of thought because you already knoe exactly where it is going.

Why are melee more efficient? It's not like mesmers and melee are interchangeable and can perform the same fundamental tasks. Mesmers shut things down over time. Melee deal damage and can only shutdown to allow bursts of damage through a teams defenses. The reason why mesmers are inefficient is because they have nothing to do. There is nothing of value to shutdown for any extended period of time. Blind/Blurred and Snares can be removed faster than they can be shutdown and melee can put out more damage than a mesmer can mitigate healing. That's just what this game has come to. And you are arguing that this is a good thing. If you fail to see the fundamental flaws in this mentality, then I have nothing to say to you.

It's not like playing mesmer was something people were born to do. You learn to play mesmer well... and that's how it should be for all professions. The problem today is that the skills don't require players to be anything more than mediocre.

Buffing shutdown would be the worst thing A-Net could do. If anything, they should nerf some of the active defensive skills i.e. 5e heals and the spammable blinds/snares. Why would you advocate for more powercreap?!?!?!

An Aegis revert is all I'm advocating for. I fail to see the relevance of other spells in this discussion that have a shorter cast time. Whether we revert Aegis or not, those spells will have a shorter cast time which makes talking about them entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Like you said, people don't need to bring a mesmer to shutdown aegis and I'm not advocating that people should. The only argument I am making is that Aegis promoted skillful midline play because of the fact that the midline was responsible for shutting something down in order for the team to accomplish their specific goals. People used to shutdown Aegis chains with a paragon that had one interrupt and Mirror of Disenchantment. I don't see anything wrong with that. It made Paragon more fun to play and made it's role more important than simply pressing buttons on called targets.

I think we may be at a stalemate here. Nothing I am saying seams to be getting through to you and it is a point of fact that nothing you are saying is getting through to me.

Baseless Assertion. You failed to name even one thing that would need to be nerfed in order to bring Aegis back. I certainly can't think of anything. Assuming everything else is exactly the same as it is now, an Aegis revert is still better than the current meta.

Monks would still have 2 copies of guardian and shielding hands. The necro can only strip one target every 15 seconds which is exactly how frequently aegis is being applied if no shutdown is occurring. This comment is just ignorant honestly. I can't possibly understand how Aegis would harm a team that is fighting against three melee and a ranger. That's just absurd.

That's just not true. Triple melee is only useful because shutdown isn't. Balancing passive defense with active defense is the fastest, easiest, and most efficient way to make this game fun for every level of play. I aimed to do this by suggesting an Aegis revert. There are obviously many other options to doing this but I chose one that would be easy to implement and would grant the best net benefit. The reason why Aegis would work best at balancing passive and active defense is because monks are pretty much the only profession that almost every build has. It would allow teams to bring a small amount of passive defense on virtually every team build they decide to play.

I'm glad you mentioned that. Here's 4 reasons why this is a good thing:

1) If N/Me takes mirror of disenchantment, then that is eliminating a lot of bar compression. The necromancer will have to get rid of something in order to bring that skill.

2) Mirror of Disenchantment is a 15 energy spell so the necromancer would have to manage energy better resulting in the bar being less forgiving to bad players.

3) The other team is going to be looking to disrupt Mirror of Disenchant, which creates another layer of tactical play as a result of the Aegis revert.

4) One mirror of disenchantment can not possibly take down an aegis chain forever. It would require communication on the part of the ranger and the necromancer to keep it down entirely. If they succeed in doing that, I have no problem with triple melee winning matches. They used skillful play to shutdown the other teams defense which allowed their damage to get through unmitigated resulting in them winning the game. That is a good thing.

Putting in "must counter", "must take" skills kills build diversity. You need look no further than Halls after the multiple win condition change for proof. Certain secondaries are forced and non-cap-point matches revolve around executing your "must" skills and countering those of the opponent. (Debatably, even the cap point matches revolve around AoE on the central altar and counters, assuming that all three teams are competent.)

Since caster spike got nerfed into oblivion during Factions, GvG has revolved around physical damage and means to prevent it. That makes the original version of Aegis a "must" on both fronts, and makes reverting it a terrible idea.

There already is no build diversity... just a bunch of gimicks. If you eliminate all of the "must counter" skills in the game, then nobody will look to counter ANY skills. That is what we have now. This isn't fun. That's why people are quitting (looking past the recent influx of players who are just here for the newly implemented rewards and not because they actually find GvG enjoyable).

I simply do not understand anybody who takes the position that the current state of GvG is a good thing. The evidence is insurmountable. The format is dying. Using HA as an example is self-defeating because that format is dead and has been dead for a while now. The "must take" skills in HA did not promote skillful play at all... that's why it failed. Those skills did not encourage communication or skillful play. Those skills encouraged the grab 8 and go face roll mentality. That does not even remotely pertain to Aegis and, quite honestly, it's insulting to my intelligence for anybody to actually claim it does.

When was GvG not dying? Was there actually a point in time when the amount of teams was increasing instead of decreasing?

I'd say the beginning of the end of GvG was after the nightfall powercreap where virtually every build was altered and compressed to be able to do much more with much less. The rate of decline in GvG was much faster during the block-web meta and again once all of the passive defense skills were systematically removed from the game though... It's pretty apparent honestly. That's just the nature of my philosophy though. The best of GvG occurred when there was a balance between passive and active defense in the meta, both of which being equally important in keeping red bars up.

Just so you know, i'm not defending the current meta as being good. I don't much like it, although it's great that pressure spike and split are all seeing play. I'm also not saying reintroducing aegis would be a bad thing, i just don't see it doing much with things as they are.

The tone downs i listed in my post are my reasoning, so no i didn't. I never said they would need to be nerfed in order to bring Aegis back, i said to me it wouldn't make any sense until they did. This is because I believe if Aegis were reverted, with the meta as it is, people would remain to use stances and return. My reasoning:

You've said In the current meta, monks require stances/return for when they get stripped due to the massive melee damage that can hit them in that time (not only from trip melee builds). They need them to survive, regardless of build.

If they took aegis, dervishes converging on a stripped guardian/aegis (if it's up) would apply massive pressure/deaths since there's no secondary defence. Interupting Aegis was not hard as you've said, and even easier in the current meta. Since rangers can pretty much push all they want and survive with LR, then leech sig so no using obstructions. It doesn't take much skill to do that with a 2 sec cast.

I did not mean to say aegis would potentially harm any team facing trip melee, but most people i know would keep running stances/return until the damage was nerfed. I mean if we look back at the Para/Dom Mes/Stand rit rawrspike that dominated for months during the late aegis meta aegis was a pretty moot point and the dom mes was only taken to shutdown the opposing teams dom mes, this isn't entirely relevant as it wasn't frontline that had too much damage but rits.

Granted people could run aegis off monks and keep stances, but noone really did that once Aegis was toned down a bit. Then you also have to balance how much interupt based shutdown is actually good for the game, pingwars.

In your opinion that's not true, i disagree. Trip melee became useful because they buffed the damage of frontliners, initially through PRage warriors, R/A's somewhere in between, then hammers with the introduction of blood nec, and now dervishes. This resulted in teams having so much damage, you simply don't need shutdown to win. Dshot RC and things die.

Aegis would simply be a bandaid on this much deeper problem, and i don't believe it would even be efficient. Damage simply needs nerfing, then consequently so does healing which leads onto the other point as to why shutdown isn't taken so much:

Monks are just so powerful. Shutdown was all good and dandy, but monk bars as they are (theorycrap for a point if you'll allow) if someone gets their woh diverted they can still hold a team up on patient and rejuv. Shutdown on a monk is simply much less effective because of the individual skill numbers. RC is a different matter, but a ranger is all you need for that.

I recognise i've pretty much ignored the rest of the bars that your team may carry, be it Bsurge or MoI etc. This is just my opinion of it not doing a whole lot.

Every build in the current meta is entirely one-dimensional. That is not a great thing.

1) You never listed any "tone downs" in your other post. Go reread it. There is nothing in it even remotely similar to a list of "tone downs".

2) You absolute said that there are skills that would need to be nerfed. I quoted you. I used your own language in context. Don't say things IN TEXT and then say you never said them.

3. Aegis would be powerful enough in this meta to reward monks that bring it. Monks brought it before the Aegis nerf and the current meta is more melee-centric than it was back then, so the incentive to bring it would be even greater. There is absolutely nothing about the current meta that suggests monks wouldn't bring Aegis if it were reverted.


Monks don't need stances if they are bringing aegis because when monks bring aegis, the game necessarily slows down enough where monks aren't required to have a "panic button" a.k.a. stance.

Weapon of Warding, Blinding Flash, Blurred Vision, water snares and kiting, two copies of Guardian, Shielding Hands, and RC... take your pick. Any time melee converges on targets, it becomes that much easier to defend if you are a midline support role. If an Aegis chain is being used, the game necessarily slows down allowing support characters and prot monks to follow damage easier and prot key targets. If the support defense is being shutdown, and warriors converge and train out a target, that is a good thing because it means that the team as a whole used skillful play to score kills.

1) Monk calls for blind/blurred on the ranger, monk casts Aegis.
2) Monk calls for KD on interrupter, monk casts Aegis.
3) Monk cancel casts using GoLE, monk casts Aegis.
4) Monk retreats further back where only its midline is in range, monk casts Aegis.

No... not at all. The dom mesmer was used for many things... not just mesmer wars. Plus, the rit didn't have much damage at all anyways. It was mainly used to keep people alive at stand.

2 second casts are not "pingwars". People need to stop saying this until somebody actually makes an argument that somehow adding one skill to the game that has a 2 second cast time can possibly result in the game being "pingwars" more-so than it already is today. Until that argument is made, I will not accept it as a valid opposition to an Aegis revert. It just doesn't make any sense. "Pingwars" is a result of 3/4 second casts spells... because those are the skills that people with good ping can interrupt and people with bad ping can not. Those skills are the ones that create the problem, not Aegis.

Ignorant comment. Shutdown stopped being useful when all passive defense was systematically eradicated from the game. That is what shutdown was useful for. People didn't use shutdown just for the sake of shutdown. It has never been that way. People have always brought shutdown to stop people from using passive defense i.e. Ward against Melee, Aegis, B-Surge, and party healing. Since Ward against Melee and Aegis were killed, teams decided to bring draw conditions on their monk to counter blinds and then trade in their shutdown for more damage instead. That is the only explanation.

Honestly, damage doesn't need nerfing, just skills that enable damage to be more powerful than it should. Things like flail + enraging charge, anything that allows Dervishes to maintain IAS + IMS, Av of Balth (adrenaline gain), Invoke Lightning + B-Flash (bar compression), MOI (armor ignoring), Mind Wrack + E-Surge + Shatter Delusions (armor ignoring), etc. It's not the fact that skills do a certain amount of damage. It's the fact that there are skills that enable people to use those skills more frequently, or use those skills without sacrificing anything in doing so.

Monk skills got buffed tremendously to account for the lack of passive defense and the additional damage people take since shutdown is now useless. Ultimately, the reverting of Aegis would lead to the nerfing of the 5e heal skills and the "fire and forget" active prots. When you have some passive defense in the game, you have to create a situation where monks are punished for misusing thier active prots (by increasing their energy cost or recharge time). Without passive defense, monks are punished for misusing prots by being crushed with a wall of DPS. This DPS exists because, if it didn't, the good monks would be unbeatable. Don't you see! Without passive defense, there is no alternative to this. It's either "roll or be rolled" or "lord race at 28". When you have a balance between active and passive defense, the game becomes much more dynamic.

I didn't read the whole thing because of the huge wall of text it was, so from skimming I have a point or two to make.

I know there are good players in Guild Wars who are capable of shutting down 2 players at once without a second thought, but I feel that it is kind of a lot to ask for such perfect play from a team, especially with how desolate GvG is nowadays. I'd personally rather see 100 guild GvGing and have some noob/inexperienced players than having 20 great guilds GvGing and no one else.

Also, do you really feel that if Team A is filled with mediocre players and Team B is filled with good players except for one noob ranger, Team A deserves to win purely because they had the foresight to bring an Aegis chain?

I think part of the PvP-only community has this feeling that if you're not a perfect player, you don't deserve to even be on the same screen as them. I personally primarily play GvG, and almost 100% of the time play PvP, but I never require that everyone be spot-on perfect ALL THE TIME when it comes to rupting or blind removal or whatever else. Dealing with missed rupts and late blind draws are just part of the game, not some call for someone to be blacklisted and deserve to never win.

I agree meta, anti meta style of playing does not promote skill and diversity, the solution either be limiting the skills usefulness that are specifically used for countering certain kind of other skill, such as prot, interruption, mantra of elements, kd, blind, etc, down to a level that it is not absolutely necessary to bring a counter even if other teams have got it; or increase the amount of styles or method of countering a skill, to make countering a specific counter impossible, which leads to a giant rock/paper/scissor game.

for example in magic the gathering, a white deck vs a black deck, if the white deck bring a circle of protection of black, then the black deck will certainly lose or he has to bring something to strip the "copB", while the white deck don't want the black deck to strip the "copB" to ensure a win , the white deck, bring more circle of protection or try to anti whatever that black can strip off the "copB", it becomes a cycle of anti-war, but not about the synergy of the cards/skills in the deck, that can actually promote differentiated diversities.

When skill bars are extremely easy to play and don't require a player to think, "when should I use this skill to be most effective" then they end up leaving the game because it is BORING. Does balancing the game in favor of making people think create a clear difference between bad players and good ones? Of course. What you described however is a false dilemma. Balancing the game in the way that I described would create a more fun game experience whether you are elite or not, thus increasing the amount of people willing to play.

Yes. A team should only be as good as it's weakest link and good teams will find ways to exploit the teams weakest link. Right now this exists for monks x100 though. A mediocre team with mediocre monks will decimate a superpowered team with a complete novice monk, so your argument is entirely moot.

I can't speak for the entire PvP community but I have play with some of the people from [LaG] and [WHAT] and those people are very friendly and very helpful to less skilled players. I have never come across any "elite" PvPers that are like you described. Mid-ranged American players used to be that way until they figured out that they were just bad and stupid.

Did I ever say this should happen? Please tell me when I said people shouldn't be able to make mistakes and still win games? I think I said the exact opposite actually. Aegis allows monks to recover from messing up. As it is now, if monks make a single mistake, it leads to a team wipe and the rest of the team has zero responsibilities other than spamming skills on recharge. That's not good for the game. An Aegis revert would help correct this problem and put more responsibility on people other than monks.

I disagree, with the current situation, a team wipe is a team responsibility, blaming on a specific profession, or player doesn't shift everything from 8 people to 1.....

there can be whole lot of other reasons that the monk need to make that single mistake, perhaps is the team's damage not enough, perhaps other teammates made more mistake, perhaps there are too many possible mistakes for the monk to handle, etc....

reverting aegis doesn't and cannot help to correct this team problem, this has always been negated, and focusing on the superficial fact that when a person die in the team must be the problem of monks and blaming on him, thats why when a player can't see this, they can never make a good build.

instead of nerf aegis, i say to nerf melee (dervs)!

So on a team of 3 dervishes, 1 ranger, 1 necro, and 3 healers, a team wipe is the fault of... the necro? did he not spam Sig of Suffering enough thus causing the team wipe? The ranger? Did he not spread poison enough or not spam interrupts on the prot monk enough? The dervishes? Did they not train targets enough? The monks are the only position of real skill in the entire team build! I'm at a loss how you could possibly make an argument that the team is still contributing as a unified group under these conditions. I've played trip derv matches where nobody said anything on voice chat for over 5 minutes outside of "target flag runner" and "pushing a flag", yet we still won the game rather easily. This meta is a joke.

What? Vague much? Are you having a stroke? lol... I have no idea what you are saying at this point.

I don't even know what you are saying here. It's one giant sentence with no clear point that simply runs on forever. So what you are saying is reverting aegis wont make bad teams good? Yeah... and that's a problem why? This comment is so ambiguous I don't know how to respond. What are you even saying?

you just have to learn theorycrafting on skills and builds are not the solution, but creating a suitable build for the players you got.

Define what you mean by one dimensional as i don't fully understand what that encompasses as i'm imagining shutdown is your other dimension?

I said it, though fair enough i didn't make clear relevance to aegis in my first post, but with reference to putting back midline skill "it just needs a tone down on stuff like hammers/dervishes as a whole/ele's/hexes/domination straight damage/blood nec that took people into stupid playstyle build such as trip melee/quad ele (at the time)/quad nec. "

If that's the case fair enough, i cba to reread it all.

Frontline damage just was not as powerful then as it is now.

Whilst i get your point that it'll slow the game down somewhat, all of these things exist in the current gamestate and stances are still required for those times when defense is stripped/shutdown. Hence the dual ele/mes spike doesn't stand up very well to trip derv at an equal skill level. Whilst the effectiveness of those skills will increase with Aegis i still don't them stopping kills.

I don't mean to say that it won't be run, that it won't be effective, i just believe stances will remain superior.

Too much theorycraft for me, you already stated in the other side of the argument yourself and i know you understand it yourself. But i will add, rangers can push up on monks easy enough on your 4) pretty much untouched with the power of LR. Also the bug on cancelling with GoLE was fixed so it's not that effective a counter.

Yes it was used for other things, stripping conjures, HEV to clean wars/spike and div etc (i recognise i said only used, i meant primarily, i took it you wouldn't take me literally and i'm shit at english), however rawr said themselves it was primarily taken as a counter for the opposing teams dom mes/diversion, prots were just rended and a monk KD'd. I don't know if you're serious on the rit comment, but ~150dmg from ARage and Caretakers potentially every spike as well as Splinter and Rend from what was essentially a support character is pretty big imo.

Hell, [rawr] among others even ran stances over of Aegis at times (http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2008/October/208/). Granted nearly everyone was spiking, but today nearly every build essentially has access to near the same amount of damage that spikes did then.

Sure, i agree it was pretty stupid to bring that up here, my bad. I just meant to say that turning the game more towards interupts in my eyes isn't necessarily a great thing.

I don't remember enjoying playing warrior hitting blocks/misses half my attacks all game because my shutdown was having an off day as being fun. As much as this was a result of less skilled play on team members part, i hated the fact that this then cancelled out any skill on the frontlines part.

I understand it's your opinion that this is the way things should be, but for me this balance was just too off. I'd much prefer a situation without passive defence, where individual skill levels obviously complement/detract from each other, but not to the level they did. I don't see a way round that with Aegis as it was.

As retarded as todays meta is, for me the game is funnest when things die a lot, not as a roll or be rolled situation, but just when things die a lot.

Except that's not entirely true at all. The PBlock eurobalance meta ran for months (maybe even a year+ my memory doesn't serve), without passive defence. Granted it was with an arguably OP PBlock, but to say shutdown disappeared with passive defence is just wrong.

Builds without shutdown such as trip melee did not come into play until some skills were stupidly buffed, prage, strength and honor and smiters boon standout (as i remember) and consequently hammer/blood necro/derv etc.

I meant to encompass skills that enable to do more damage (as you mention) as a whole when i said damage, i didn't mean auto attacks or staples like eviscerate etc be nerfed. I entirely agree on this.

If i had the confidence in Anet being able to do this all at the same time then i'd perhaps agree with you that it might be fun to have that playstyle come back. However i don't believe they'd be able to get that right.

There was an alternative to it after they nerfed passive defence, before they buffed damage. I hate to keep referencing it but i can only think of the PBlock meta as my memory isn't great and i'm not gonna go look stuff up. That meta existed without passive defence, and was far from roll/be rolled or lord racing, the game definitely still had dynamics. To me it was the random 40 elite buff and consequent buffs that really did the damage.

In any case, i don't see us agreeing anytime soon so i'll back out of this now as i've made my opinion, and it won't affect balance posting here anyway.

(I'm not entirely sure what i just wrote as i'm pretty tired so i may edit this)

Your opinion: all damage and all healing/protecting needs to be nerfed

My opinion: inject a small amount of passive defense in the game

The net result of both of these solutions is exactly the same but one solution is far more expedient. Do you really think A-Net should nerf every popular skill combination in the entire game just to accomplish the same goal that reverting one skill (Aegis) would also accomplish? I would love if A-Net did as you suggest, however not only is it impractical, it may be impossible. That really is the fundamental flaw in your argument and I don't think I need to say anything further. My suggestion is something that A-Net can actually do, whereas yours is a pipe dream. My suggestion is something A-Net can do to make the game better right now whereas yours is something that could take years to accomplish.

Agreed, i do recognise that most/if not all the things i've posted will likely never happen to the game, and that as you say it's a bit of a pipe dream.

I just don't see Aegis making a big difference, so felt to post what i'd really love to see happen to everything i believe is wrong in the game. However, sadly, unrealistic it is.

The sad thing is Anet have been told over and over again exactly which problem skills they've needed to nerf/buff to accomplish the things i've described, but they just go a different direction nearly everytime.

Some form of middle ground would be nice but who knows.