Request for more Aggressive Balancing

Who's crying? We love these skills. They make it horrible easy to win HoH and GvG if used properly which isn't that hard. I can get a group together that can win HoH at least once 70% of the time in less than 30 miniutes. Our complaint is that... (read the thread). Read what the iQ people have said they freely admit that they use these builds to win, but at the same time we all know that they remove a lot of stragetic depth from the game.

people have...

look at the current meta game. its either smite or spirit spam with a few rogues here and there.

that is what nature's renewal has done. you dont see hex heavy builds, no enchantment heavy builds. you killed 60% of elementalist, necro, and mesmer skill lines. i mean, how much more do you need to see that NR is utterly broken.

450 skills and so little variety in builds.

Yeah! Because if they remove some of the effetiveness of Nature's Renewal, they obviously can't make any of the other enchantment and/or hex removal skills in the game any stronger! That would just be way too much work.

[/sarcasm]

They can't maintain this stance for very long without experiencing some bad effects. The gameplay is just degenerating quickly; tombs is pretty pitiful at the moment and anyone with half a brain can see that if this keeps up the future for the pvp community and the longetivity factor for gw (anet cannot produce enough new content faster than the pvers will chew through it at the current rate of grind; pvp offers best longetivity at least amount of effort) is very bleak.

About changing them, well personally I think everyone decent is using a build or some sort to adapt to NR spam etc (by adapting I mean trashing things like water eles in one's team build) and if it is nerfed not a big deal, everyone is on even grounds. On other imbalanced skills, teams who abuse them are going to get hit hard yes, but they should be able to form a new build that works unless they are one trick ponies who don't deserve to win anything anyway. This was more of a big issue in the bwes because people would find out their skills got nerfed and have only 3 days to change their build, test it, and compete with it; that's no longer an issue.

If anet does make significant balance changes, even very good ones, people will still complain. Though those who would complain about balance for the better are going to be the stupid ones who shouldn't be listened to anyway about changes like this so that hopefully is not an issue at all.

I honestly don't have any idea why anet is ignoring balance issues like this (renewal and fertile affecting spirits seem to be the worst); granted implementing some way of reducing pve grind would be a very high priority in order to keep more people from leaving but that crisis seems to be over.

As for suggesting that Zrave and the other iq members backing him, are doing this to improve the builds iq uses, good lord, before you put on your troll costume you should actually do some research on it. The iq folks are among the most helpful people on this forum for advanced pvp advice. I've seen countless posts by them about how certain things are broken (enchants vs removal for example) and when they advocate things to hurt the builds that they openly say that they use it's really nigh impossible to believe that people actually think these suggestions are selfish.

So basically your guild didn't care about making the game better or didn't trust the devs to do so and gave up. That's nice. What you said is simply dumb and either don't understand the core issue here (it's not about adapting its about degenerative gameplay) or don't care; and yes, if you would read people's posts it quite obvious that they don't have trouble adapting. With balth aura being fixed I don't think smiting is that much of a problem but you have to be stupider than Marie Antoinette to see that fertile, enchants, and renewal are way out of control.

Alpha testers are simply a cross section of the gaming public - a given alpha tester understands about as much about balance as a random member of the player community. I find it rather disturbing to see such alpha arrogance continue in the face of their own failure to catch serious gameplay imbalances.

I raise bloody hell about the state of enchantment removal for months. Alpha testers defend the enchantment removal as 'good enough'. I proceed to work with my guild to sit in an enchantment stacked, buff-busting abuse of a build for several hours every night, making KOR and WAR quit in disgust after they can't break it despite their aggressive use of 'good enough' removal.

Or energy denial. I remember clearly people singing the praises of Backfire, or even utter trash like Mind Wrack and Shatter Delusions as the peak of Mesmer builds and play. Mentioning that energy denial was perhaps a *touch* overpowered was met with utter contempt. Alpha testers even demonstrated conclusively how out of touch they were with the game by greeting a ridiculous buff to Energy Drain with complete indifference.

Ask me again how many copies of Energy Drain are run in a typical GvG build.

No, I think I can say with authority now that the vast majority of alpha testers have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. The only difference between a typical tester and a forum random is that an alpha tester spews his ignorance with an air of authority. Should we expect alpha testers to identify and abuse the most broken of skills? Look at their track record, from Ether Renewal to Energy Drain to Oath Shot to Quickening Zephyr, and tell me.

Peace,
-CxE

1) Nature's Renewal:

There are some enchantments and hexes that are GOOD whenever they get removed.
Its not impossible to counter!
Sadly they require intelligence and more than basic skill understanding.

And still , i agree with the rest, natures is boring because it kills half of the games strategies while pushing the other half up.



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

Zealots fire and ether renewal is best for primary ele, nothing wrong with that.
strip it and see the ele suicide!

3) Ritual Spammer (Fertile Season, Oath Shot)

You dont interrupt rangers, you disease, malestorm, metheor and knock down them (or something like that).

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

There are reasonable strategies for armor types.
find them outyourself.
Its basically stone paper scissors between one classes skills/weapons and another classes armor.
Necros can have highest melee defense for a reason, because their (blood) skills ignore armor.

I think Ollj's above post qualifies for this suggestion:

What are you trying to say here? Certainly having all of your enchantments stripped by NR is not "GOOD."

Again, what the hell are you saying? Watch him suicide? What?

What would disease possibly do to counter NR? Maelstrom won't interrupt NR. Meteor is.... one interrupt that causes exhaustion.

What he was saying is that there is really no reason for using anything other than Gladiator's armor for pvp.

Again, what are you trying to say.

No, they can't.

Wow. Lots of angry pissed off IQ people....as usual.

Anyway, Isn't the problem with NR and other spirit spamming just in the fact that they're spammed constantly? Maybe making Oath Shot not work on spirits? Because I think nerfing any spirit would make them useless for anyone that isnt using skills like Oath Shot or Serpent's Quickness to spam them.

Fix the "loophole" not nerf the skill itself.

it's not really a loophole either. it's just annoying. I think the best fix would be, as someone stated, to only allow 2 or 3 copies on the field at once. Meaning you couldn't cast more than 1 extra spirit in the radius of another spirit. However, that sounds like a complicated solution to me. Nerfing Oath Shot, and nerfing the spirits themselves are not good ideas, however. Neither of these skills, when used in normal play (although, spirit spam has become normal) are abusive.

Oath definatly needs to get adjusted as well, but there is also a problem with the enchantments in general. Nature's renewal is a reflection upon that problem. Sadly the majority of problem enchantments also happen to lie within the monk lines, but that's probably swinging a bit wide off the topic of the nature's renewal issue. Sure you can fix serpents quickness as well, but then you would also have to fix quickening zephyr.

There is only one other example that can manipulate the skill bar to the extent that a ranger is able and that is a combination mesmer using signets.

Well, if you nerf renewal, you either have to nerf all enchantments and hexes, or buff enchantment and hex removal.

Well, if you removed the enchantment removal portion of nature's renewal and made it so that the enchantments werent as spammable as they are, then you would be alot closer to where it would need to be for the current enchantment removal options to work properly. Without adjusting serpents, oath, and zephyr, you would still risk ranger and monk combinations working around the adjustment to spamability.

Agreed. But there's a ripple effect. If you make enchantments like Protective Spirit un-spammable, then you just made Air Spike builds own again. And this time, it's not just people that don't know how to make a counter complaining, it would be ownage with no way to stop it - in other words, another thing that should get nerfed. But if you nerf them, then Air Ele's aren't all that useful when not grouping together and spike spamming.

Well, if ways to mitigate were more univeral rather than to one class, then it wouldnt be as much of an issue. Also more aggresive forms of damage prevention come into play as a byproduct. People seem to frown on the idea of being more self reliant, but meh whatever. The current model is a chicken and egg scenario which is comming to a close.

Signed.

I'm tired of seeing the same two build types all over the Tombs these days.

I love seeing people who understand nothing of game mechanics criticising those who understand a lot more, saying they're narrow minded, can't think up decent counters, or don't know how skills work, and then proceed to make themselves look utterly retarded, a la "use Maelstrom to interrupt Spirit casting."

Oh, for the record, do you try using Maelstrom to interrupt Stances, too? Winning strategy right there!

Vanquisher, as I said last night, TRY to stick to topic without name-calling. It IS possible, you know.

badger badger badger badger badger badger badger...


wait.... there's a topic?

Solution: Make spirits spells, cost 15 energy, decrease the radius by 1/2, and cause exhaustion. The end. This way, you can still cast them; just not spam them.

Spirit spam could probably be fixed with DP the way it used to be back in the betas.

Rome:Totalwar is a let down, they don't even attempt to balance anything. Let me just shut up because I could start now ranting about R:TW and never stop.

If you want to nerf rituals to the point of uselessness, sure. I guarantee you would never see a ritual used in PvP if all those changes were implemented. If you only increased the energy cost, or only made them cause exhaustion (kind of like the old DP way, but somewhat less permanent), maybe you'd be on to something. The range of a spirit is necessary, and would become even more necessary if the rate of spirit-laying were limited in the above ways.

What they really need to do is bring back the 100 damage edge of extinction that made all arena battles end up as draws

Earlier it only stripped top enchants/hexes right? Would making the depth it strips depend on attribute work as a nerf?
0: only make casting twice as long
4: strip one level
8: strip two levels
12: strip three...

or something?

Actually I was just being bitter with a hint of sarcasm. Seriously though, the simple act of making all spirits interruptable spells would solve a lot of the problems.

Bring back DP for spirits?

Not really. Most groups will have the important spirits laid before the other team even gets in range, and may even have multiple copies of the more vital ones like Renewal.

Making them spells prevents the ranger from spamming them. He'll still be able to throw one or two down in the beginning of the match, but it'll be much, much harder to maintain them, and make all the anti-spirit strats work 100% better.

How so? I see people spamming spells all the time (like RoF, Wastel's, etc). I'm not saying that spamming spells is a good idea, but I do see it happen constantly.

[quote]
He'll still be able to throw one or two down in the beginning of the match, but it'll be much, much harder to maintain them, and make all the anti-spirit strats work 100% better.[quote]

I still don't see why it'd be harder to maintain them. Just put down another. Oh did you get interrupted? Oath shot and try again.

I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, you might have a good idea, but I just don't see it, can you elaborate?

-Diomedes

RoF has a 0.25 second cast time. Spirits have 5 second "cast" times.

5 seconds is a LONGGGG time to cast, and against any decent team, you won't have that 5 second window. And when you finally find that 5 second window, chances are the match is decided already.

Yes but.... If people can be considered to /spam/ it now, why will making it into a spell change people from spamming it?

And may I add, since you just made it into a spell, now I can glyph of concentration it, or heck, glyph of sacrifice + oath shot it. Why not?

-Diomedes

There are a heck of a lot of ways to interrupt spells.

[/quote]

Then you're more restricive, and you STILL won't be able to spam it, like slamming down spirits every 5 seconds.

Interesting. I think that this could be looked at and may work.

I'm just throwing this out there but maybe NR could be made so that when it ENDS normaly (not killed but time runs out on it's life) the enchant/hex stripping effect takes effect. That would be at least 30 seconds to deal with the spirit or get the effect of your already used enchants/hexes somewhat.

I'm not in iQ and I'm angry and pissed off as well.

Hard to tell, I've heard worse suggestions for spirit balance from people that were serious about it

Rituals as spells just plain doesn't fit, and simply broadening the range of interrupts and counters seems to miss the point. Rituals can be interrupted already by rangers, warriors, and mesmers that are equipped to do so. Isn't that how it should be? Shouldn't a team, seeing rituals as dominant in the metagame, come prepared with counters to rituals? I'm not saying the rituals are balanced, but I'm quite sure that people aren't making full use of the available interrupts. Wild blow == GG balanced stance/mantra of resolve.

But is interrupting/stopping the ritualist really the solution to ritual balance? It won't stop oath shot's insane effect on spirit-laying rate. Fertile season and a full set of spirits can be in place before you're even close enough to engage, in any PvP scenario. It only takes about 25 seconds to block one entrance entirely at the temple of grenth. I think it just needs to become impractical to lay multiple flavors of spirits at the silly rate they're being laid in tombs.

I like that tiered approach to renewal, just make it work like rend, 0-4 enchants removed at attribute 16. Then change the enchant removers to ~15 second recharge except for rend. Maybe add a 1-2 point dp for spirits to prevent spam but allowing some use without major penalty. Then take the healing off ether renewal, make zealots fire last 30 seconds instead of 60, and it will be playable at least. Still a lot of other skills that could use tweaking, and tons that are worthless that should be buffed. But the changes to enchantment removal are the most vital.

Divine boon and draw conditions ought to have recharge times, for one thing. I don't think either will be any less effective at their intended role with a 1-2s cooldown. Zealot's fire at 60 seconds isn't the problem.. is it?

IIRC, cry of frustration has a recharge time that matches oath shot, hence you could keep NR down with it (although not all of the other spirits). However, far more learned people than I have apparently not been using it to interrupt NR as is.

I would guess that this is because it is typically a stronger position to be controlling game play than to be reacting to it. For the same reason, I do not think that making it into a spell will help the matter much.

As people seem to get flamed pretty easily for posting on this thread, I'll choose my words carefully here. I think that taking an very powerful ability and making a counter for it is not as good as nerfing it IMO. The problem (as I understand it from following the discussion) is that a single build is dominating the meta game. Changing it so that there is a counter means that the build is still dominating the meta game (although you now have more build options than before). Nerfing an ability that is too powerful is how I see fixing the meta, IMO.

-Diomedes

<*snip*>

I am going to let you all in on a little secret: The reason why you see the same FoTMs and people running the same thing over and over is because the builds take advantage of people basically not knowing how to play the game. It really is that simple. If you run one of these builds 75% of the people you come up against are going to lose before the match ever even started because they have no idea what to do from the start. Lets look at some examples:

Air gank. There were 3000000000 posts on these forums crying about nerfing airgank and blah blah blah. Most people ran it because there was a good chance that you were going to win right off the bat because the other group didn't know what they were doing. It played off the inexperience of everyone playing the game at the time. Most monks didn't have a clue what prot spirit was (or a prot monk for that matter), and god forbid you include a ward into your build. Now adays someone wants to make an airgank group and they are called utter noobs. And, look at that, THERE WAS NO NERFING DESPITE EVERYONE CONSTANTLY CRYING ABOUT IT.

Smite. I remember the first time I went into tombs with EA and we were running smite. This was about the same time airgank was becoming popular. It was so bad groups would literally just stand there and do absolutely nothing and just die. They had no idea what to do with themselves. Then of course we all would get one of two tells after the match was over (wow wtf was that, or I am reporting you to Anet for hacking). It wasn't even a challenge because most people didn't even have a clue of what was going on. As the months went by the new counter was to try and run away from the smiting. To this day, I still join PUGs, and even guild groups for that matter, whose only solution to smiting is to try and run away from it. I mean, you are kidding right? And then you wonder why you see it so much in tombs.

Spirits. This one is my absolute favorite. 95%-97% of spirit groups have absolutely no idea what they are doing. They rely on winning by basically spamming every spirit in the world in the hopes of annoying the other team to death I guess. My favorite team is the one who takes the alter, and then spams predatory season. How the hell do you expect to hold off 2 teams, even with fertile up, when you are gimping your healing capacity by 20%? You don't even need to attack the monks on this team it is so pathetic. Slap lingering curse on the hero and it is gg. Then of course the tells of "that is impossible" are soon to follow. There of course is another one of my personal favorites, which is the team that literally spams natures renewal every second they can, yet they run a bloody prot monk. They throw up aegis and and prot spirit and within 2 seconds it is down because they were spamming natures.

<*snip*>

WARNING: Do NOT troll on these forums. Next time, I will delete your entire post without hesitation. .. Aria

We do know how to play this game. I can make teams that NR doesn't bother. I was running Protective Spirit/Bond against air spike almost as soon as air spikeing came out. I can come up with a team that caan kill most any healing ball without resorting to NR but my teams attack power ain't the best but this didn't matter when about 70% of the teams in tombs were healing balls. For god sakes I played a all mesmer team the other day and one HoH 2 times withit at reasonable peak time for HoH.

And we all use NR and all of the various things that we are saying should be nerfed. We are saying that NR should be nerfed becausee it is unbalanced. Can you name 1 other skill, with all your lofy knowledge, that can disable all enchants and hexes in the game (combined that is at least 60% of all skills in the game) effectivily or even disable 1-2 other types of skills over the entire battle area?