Request for more Aggressive Balancing

I don't usually make posts like this, mostly because I think its a waste of time. However, the situation is getting to the point where it has become warranted.

Arenanet has confined itself to making very subtle adjustments to the skills, sometimes even in a hidden way. Some of these may have been bugs detracting from their intentions, like hammer bash charging a strike with its own hit - it did a little while into retail, but more recently it does not.

While I respect the view of an evolving metagame and how it brings elegance to the strategy of the game, there has to be more consideration to how successful you are by trying to fight a popular strategy than just using it yourself and clobbering people with unbalanced skills - a converging evolution towards stagnation.

Here are some specific examples which I believe warrant attention:

1) Nature's Renewal:

This skill is not a fotm by any means. It wasn't being used before because it was bugged, removing only a few enchantments and hexes instead of all of them. I think it is poorly implemented for two reasons:

First, the effect is too broad and too powerful. In an environment where you can expect to see it every other match if not more often, several strategies are just unviable; Maintenance enchantments, hexes and enchantments with long casting times, or simply reliance on enchantments of any kind. This causes a decrease in diversity, the primary sign of a healthy "environment". I'm not contesting that these strategies need counters, but not one that is this efficient and effective.

Second, it is impossible to counter because most of the damage has been done by the time it is cast. Replacing the enchantments/hexes is hard because of its secondary effect, considering you'd need at least a few seconds to take down the spirit. Interrupting the ranger is not a particularly viable strategy due to its very long range, the fact that it is not a spell, and that there are stances available to force it through. The fact that it can be spammed with oath shot just adds insult to injury.

2) E/Mo Smiter (Zealot's Fire, Ether Renewal)

Virtually every organized team in tombs runs 1 or 2 of these guys at the moment. They are resilient, deal a lot of damage, and have pretty much infinite energy. Unless NR is being spammed, they can usually shrug off enchantment removal. While this strategy is relatively easy to counter with diversion, I am upset that you *need* to bring diversion and be so consciously aware of them in order to negate them. They simply do too much, and even after you divert draw conditions to stop zealot's fire, they can still do a character worth's of effort using other skills, like smiting with balthazar's aura, putting down wards, etc. I have been saying for months now that both zealot's fire and ether renewal are too powerful, and here is the proof.

3) Ritual Spammer (Fertile Season, Oath Shot)

Many teams bring a ritual spammer to their tombs expeditions, mostly because its only strategy currently available that has any hope of defending against two teams at the Hall of Heroes and KotH maps (after nature's renewal eliminated any such enchantment-based strategies). Is it interesting to have a strategy that can hold off two teams? Perhaps, but I think it should take a concerted effort of the entire team rather than one character clogging up the match on his own. Two problems are evident here, the first is that oath shot allows for rituals to be cast too often, and the second is that fertile season makes spirits entirely too hard to kill, at least in comparison to how often they are recasted. Interrupting the ranger is a hard task especially since you need to keep at it for basically the whole match, and that he has stances available to mitigate your efforts - more than once I've faced rangers with balanced stance to stop gale and hammers.

4) Balance between different types of armors (warriors in particular)

Is it really for the good of the game that we have an obviously superior armor and some obviously inferior ones? Some reasonable strategic choices in armor would be interesting, to say the least.

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In conclusion, I want to make it clear that this is not a whine, that I am perfectly willing to continue play and dominance in the current environment, but that I think that we are sacrificing two things that what in my mind are critical for a successful strategy game: Fun and Strategic Depth.

I also want to reiterate that I am less concerned about these examples in particular, but rather with the approach taken towards balancing that is currently in place. I am certain that Arenanet is already aware of all these issues I have brought up, and all thats missing is the willingness to do something about it. We need to finally learn the lesson that the particularities of the alpha test prevented it from being able to make accurate assessments of every aspect of the game, and act accordingly.

Zrave,I think this is more appropriate to the Sardelac Sanitarium forum. (Ideas and such). I will move it there and, unless I hear otherwise, will leave it.

Any other suggestions of builds/skills/spells that need further balancing, everyone?

yo dude, dude! if your predicaton is for it to be a successful strategy game, go play Rome: Total War. if however you wish it to be more "Fun and Strategic", then please refrain from requesting more nerfs. this is afterall a game about skill. everything has a counter, go figure one out and leave things be.

The problem is that NR has NO EFFECTIVE COUNTER. It's most powerful effect occurs as soon as it is used (the enchant stripping). It is spammable when combined with Oath Shot and even without oath shot it is effectivly a map wide enchant stripper. This is true with even 0 WS as the spirit might dye in 8-10 seconds but by the time the team could reapply all their enchants NR could be placed again wiping them. As for interrupting the ranger this is difficult and can be stopped with the right build by using skills that make arrows miss (no distracting shot anymore) make you impossible to knock down, make targetd spells fail when used on you (called spellbreaker, even when it only last 8 seconds thats long enough to drop the spirit). There is a dicussiong going on in another thread ATM that goes in to more depth on this issue.

Aniewiel,

My intention was not to change the game per se, but to contribute to a change in Arenanet and how they deal with game balancing in general. The specific issues addressed in my post are merely examples to support my view. As such, I believe it belongs more in the community discussion forum than bundled together with new skill suggestions and "ideas" for the expansion.

However, I can see how it might be in guru's interest to keep it here, so I will not protest.

Tell you what: I'll leave it here, Zrave. I'll let my "SUPERIORS" *chuckles, snorts, wheezes* figure out its best placement.

ironic isn't it. a couple of months ago rangers were the most worthless professions in GW. . . now they're the most envied because of their ability to spam spirits. i see more rangers now in PvP then ever before. so of course, what's the new prevailing attitude among the envious? why nerf, and nerf some more. next, we will see that the exhaustion times for air eles are increased. or maybe whenever a warrior knocks down a caster he gets penalized 10 dp. oh yes, the days of orwellian nerfing are around the corner - beware if you have the slightest advantage over another.

Jason, I don't think that that's what Zrave meant at all. Read:

He's talking about general balancing tweaks that need to be examined, not specific. He used the ranger spirits as an example. The idea here is that -balance- is the issue, not any one specific class/skill/spell.

Rangers were orginaly way to powerful so they were nerfed. Then they were really weak. NR was also broken for awhile so that it would only remove the top hex and enchant from each player. After rangers were rebalanced and NR was fixed they became a lot more viable.

I always love when people like the OP come out and boldly state;
HERE is what is broken in the game. I demand you fix it or else!
Yeah nobody else plays a ranger dork...or knows how to "counter" NR.

lol...

Tal

Good lord, Tal. He used the ranger as an example! What he's looking for are other examples of imbalance in the game and/or between the classes. Sheesh.

He also gave examples of the warrior's armor and E/Mo imbalance. Don't just take the ranger portion out of the context of the entire message.

I understand that you enjoy being an obnoxious little shit and want to cast this as yet another 'they hosed my strategy nerf please' post, but it's starting to seriously piss me off. There are some serious game balance issues at the moment, and turning any attempted discussion of them into a combination whine and flamefest is incredibly destructive.

Are we 'whining' because Nature's Renewal destroys our strategy? No. My guild has been running that particular spirit since shortly after the skill was fixed. Oftentimes we're running multiple copies of that spirit. The only concievable reason to not run Nature's Renewal is because you think that Nature's Renewal is *so* prevalent that you can count on every team you face to run it, meaning that you can drop it from your own Renewal build and claim the extra spots as an advantage in the Nature's Renewal mirror.

If you want to cast this as a whine about Renewal, feel free to make it so. But the whine is "I'm sick and tired of making Renewal builds, of playing in a degenerate environment that's completely dominated by one skill, and would like you to put 450 skills worth of strategic depth back into the game." Like Zrave, I'm perfectly winning to continue to play and win in this environment. There are still interesting strategic elements, such as what strategies not only work but are effective under Nature's Renewal, what effective counters are there to builds that work under Nature's Renewal, how can we make our Nature's Renewal casters more effective and productive members of the team. There are still tactical issues, such as figuring out which team in any matchup wants to be aggressively casting Nature's Renewal and which team wants to keep it down (yes, even if both teams are running Nature's Renewal builds one of the teams is going to want to be using it and the other one not.) But is that what this game, a self-proclaimed "Competitive Online Roleplaying Game" is supposed to be?


<rant>

People questioning my agenda are starting to piss me off. I have a long history, dating back over a year, of being extremely open about what I thought was good, what I thought was bad, what needed buffing or nerfing, all said in hopes of creating a balanced, strategically deep game. If you think I'm arrogant or an asshole I'll agree with you as those are perfectly valid assessments. But if you want to accuse me of having anything but the best interests of the game in mind when making my criticisms, you're not just wrong, you're insulting me.

Idiot Savants had a ton of success in the first few months of this game by simply camping ourselves on the dais in the Hall of Heroes and sitting in a healing ball. Our build was powered by the degenerate interactions between Essence/Life Bond and Balthazar's Spirit, the even more degenerate interaction between Life Bond and Healing Seed, and the complete lack of adaquate enchantment removal solutions. Absolutely none of this was a secret, and we had been 'whining' about these very things on fansite forums for several months before retail while smashing people with it to a top 10 appearance on the February BWE ladder. Even once the game was live and we were sitting on that dais for hours on end, giving the finger to every shred of alpha arrogance that told us we were wrong, I was personally PMing the developers with exactly what we were doing, why it worked, and what needed to be changed to fix it. What we were doing was downright unfair and should not have been in the game, and our only recourse was to rub it in people's faces.

After Nature's Renewal started working and any enchantment based strategy went down the toilet, we toyed with fighting it for a week or so with various different builds before abandoning that, and holding the Hall of Heroes for long periods of time, in favor of just smashing teams, Hall holds be damned. What were we using for that? Why, a build that anyone who plays Tombs frequently should be familiar with, a revamped and more robust version of a stupid El/Mo Smiter that I wanted nerfed seven months ago. Screw the prototype, we now have Draw Conditions, superior runes, 20% enchanting staves, an inexplicibly buffed up Ether Renewal, and with it an energy engine to pump out Balthazar's Aura in the face of Nature's Renewal. Boo hoo, smiting elmos destroy my build - oh wait.

What are we going to be running in GvG when we start doing that in a week? Giving details before the fact is pure foolishness, but I can guarantee you it'll be more of the same stuff that we've been trying to get nerfed for months - and, from what I hear, what experienced GvG players are already getting sick of facing.

So when you see me make a post saying that Nature's Renewal is retarded, that it's degenerative and destroying the strategic depth of the game, don't even think of questioning my agenda. I'm saying that skill is broken because it is. Deal with it.

</rant>

Peace,
-CxE

with all due respect Aniewiel we both know that now that "the cat is out of the bag" it is almost a certainty that if there is a "balancing" issue addressed, the rangers will be the first to be hit with it. what you are really asking for is parity. fine. let every profession feel the sting of nerfing. if spirits are nerfed then warrior knockdowns don't interrupt. fair is fair.
i think you're flaming, and this post should be disallowed

I much rather play against teams that spam NR every 10 seconds than facing 2 teams with Spirit spam and healing ball on a 10 min alter map. We sB have our own version of healing ball which is simply invnisible without NR spam. Unless there are more skills introduced to remove enchantments in a fast and efficient way NR should stay as it is.

As far as smitters go its rather easy to disable them.

JasonJLore is the same guy who thinks faction is for turning his PvP character into a roleplayer so he obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

Thread here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=37173

enough said about that.


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As for all the people that think Zrave and Ensign are just trying to get the game changed to help iQ win etc. etc. you're so far from the truth it's not even funny. iQ and all the top guilds for that matter are currently abusing the hell out of everything we just said should be fixed. The people that are really suffering are the newcomers to PvP that can't understand why their PUG just got smashed into the ground. As people have said countless times before, when it comes to broken skills, if you aren't using it you're loosing to it. And amazingly the people that know what skills are broken also happen to be the same people that are clamoring for them to be fixed for the sake of the game. How in anyway is that whining? You tell me cause I'm at a loss.

/signed

NR is a problem. Don't deny it.

If you think a ranger without NR sucks, you need to stop playing. GG

The lack of solid enchantment removal was a big issue before Nature's Renewal got fixed, and is an issue waiting to reoccur the moment Nature's Renewal gets toned down. But that doesn't mean the current form of Nature's Renewal is justified. It goes above and beyond the need for solid enchantment removal, and screws most hexes over as an afterthought.

And it is not just the most powerful form of enchantment removal by far, it is a no-brains, untargeted effect: every other enchantment removal requires either positioning (chillblains) or targeting (the rest) to work. The only skill aspect when using it is timing (although this usually boils down to 'as often as you can') and avoiding counters (which as noted is relatively easy since it is not a spell, which severely limits the interruption options).

you're incorrectly paraphrasing my basic comments. furthermore 2 guildmates ganging up on someone who is simply expressing his opinions is wrong. we'll see what the high council decides to do.

Thank you I'll fix my post. I don't play rangers much. (Have all the skills but don't use them in PvP or GvG alot)

Maelstrom + disenchants? You are of course right that healing balls are a pita to fight if you're not prepared to do so.

Also, I am in complete agreement with iQ.

Agreed entirely. If Nature's Renewal simply ceased to exist we'd go right back into healing ball mode as though nothing happened - none of the problems that made healing ball work have been addressed. Any nerf to Nature's Renewal will *require* a buff to enchantment removal, in addition to nerfs to abusive healing ball skills, if they don't want the game to simply degenerate back to a war of buff stacking.

Peace,
-CxE

I am hesitant to step into this conversation since there is some meaningful discourse going on. However, there are a few posts that are crossing the name-calling line. You can easily make your point without verbage such as "tard" and "asshat". Try to keep within the guidelines.

Thanks.

That's why I posted a link to the thread so people could make up their own mind.

Ganging up? We're just expressing our opinions. It just so happens that we have the same opinion.

^^
Happens to agree with their opinion.

Natures renewal is indeed out of hand. However I don't see arena.net addressing the problem until it gets way out of hand (with any skill/build.)

I'm not sure I agree on what should and should not be nerfed/buffed, but I do agree that Arena.Net should not be afraid to nerf/buff just because a bunch of immature people will whine that their godly build got turned to "trash", while it's really just balanced.

Now, changing the game entirely, that's a different story.

To be fair to Ensign, he definitely has been extremely vocal in terms of what skills might be potentially, and are, abusive. This includes every single build that he used to dominate in tombs. In terms of the healing ball/life bond strategy, a few alpha testers did pass along the word to the devs for Ensign fairly early -- back before the game was released.

My question ends up being that in by nerfing/buffing something to "fix" PvP they end breaking PvE.

Every time I see a complain it seen to be comming from PvP players, I dont see people saying "nerf Tengu" or "reduce the putrid explosion mobs" ...

Maybe because PvE doesn't matter?

Well this will obviously be the case for skill balancing. After all, do you think the mobs go and complain to the devs when they get slaughtered by some unbalanced PvE skill? In PvE everything is one way. If something is broken real people abuse it against other real ... no wait computer code. Computer code has no feelings

How dare you talk about computer code that way.


Come here C++, they won't talk about you like that any more...

I'm curious, is the "no active balancing" a stated policy by anet, or have they merely refrained from doing it since release, without actually saying anything about whether they ever will/wont?

There is no such thing as a formal "no active balancing" stance. The devs are still there, and working quite hard. Gaile did mention sometime in the past that after release, there is a team working on maintaining the current release, while a separate team focuses on Chapter two.

In other words, changes and updates are always on the way, as you can undoubtedly tell from the update notes.

Clearly, I mean, look at last week's update. "Closed equipment exploit.". Obviously, something as big as that takes 9 days, no doubt.

bugs are actually harder to fix than you think. Figuring out what is causing the bug isn't always trivial, then you have to figure out how to fix it, then you have to make sure you didn't break anything else while doing the fixing. It can eat up a lot of resources.

In regards to Anet's position on skill balancing, I think they know what skills are broken. However, they are cautious about changing them because they don't want to upset the balance of any tournaments currently going on. I think they figure as long as everyone knows it's broken it doesn't really matter for the time being.

Maybe ANet could say how the skills are going to be rebalanced like a week before it happens o that people know what is coming skill wise and arn't all the sudden stuck with NR or the like being drastically nerfed.

The complaints will be too opinionated and selfish. the general public dont know how to balance skills, best leave it to the alpha testers; they will know how to abuse it if it is still abusable.

oh I know my point was just to let the community know what was coming so that it wasn't a huge suprise when all the sunnden NR's enchant stripping is wiped out (just an example).

I just don't see why people can't adapt. Sick of natures, run a dedicated warder instead of a prot monk. Sick of rangers, you would be surprised what ward against harm does to their attacks.

And I really don't see how smite is so over powered. If anything smite has to be one of the easiest things in the game to counter. One healing seed almost completely nullifies it. Diversion draw conditions and it is also gg... It isn't like these are uncommon spells that no one has to go out of their way to bring too (infact I wouldn't even play with a monk that didn't bring seed).

My entire guild moved on to other games because of certain aspects in this game that they did not like. But, you didn't see a single one of them come on these forums and ever cry about it. Grow up....

true natures renewal is a great skill, but think if they did nerf it we would have nothing againsted smite builds