Request for more Aggressive Balancing

roflmao <--- and while at work, which got more than a few stares.



Btw, I figured it would be much quicker than that. Something closer to spontaneous combustion. Perhaps it was just slowed waaay down.

The video doesn't show the effect of putrid explosion itself, the video demonstrates the intricate skill required to optimally use putrid explosion in a Tombs environment, i.e. button mashing until you drop.

Slapping the elite tag on Nature's Renewal would be a start but I don't think it would actually fix the problem. I know that I, for one, would happily spend an elite slot on a skill that single-handedly destroys an enormous set of strategies. Dropping Nature's Renewal hoses one character on their team? It's already good. Hitting more than one member of their team is backbreaking. Eliting it would be good, sure, but all that would do is lead to less variety (1-2 elites per team taken instead of a few character slots) as builds destroyed by Nature's Renewal would still be marginalized. That skill needs a nerf until it really is a safety net type skill, not a generalized sledgehammer.

Putrid Explosion and Fertile Season are only really problems in Tombs and particularly the Hall of Heroes, to be sure. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be addressed. The Hall of Heroes, despite its random nature, is still an incredibly important map - it's the only area of the game that isn't instanced, it's the only source of Celestial Sigils in the game, and success there announces your guild to the entire world. It's not something that should be swept under the rug, balance-wise.


On general themes, there are a couple of things that need to be looked at. The first is enchantment removal, and how pathetic it is - it'll be impossible to pull Nature's Renewal out of builds until there are reasonable enchantment stripping options available. Shatter Enchantment isn't used as removal, but as a conditional nuke - Drain Enchantment is energy management. Rend Enchantments and Chilblains are the only options nearly good enough, and both of those are prohibitively expensive. We need a full spectrum of options.

Energy denial is the other problem. Thematically it's the strongest disruption in the game, and it's priced far too aggressively compared to the other options available. Granted most other options have been rendered obsolete by Nature's Renewal, but it is something to keep an eye on.

Peace,
-CxE

Nature's renewal is a reflection of the problem with enchantments, more specifically monk enchantments. While it does also help to address some of the more spamable hexes used to cover more important ones, the spamable hexes do not have as crippling effects as things found within healing ball and life bond strategies, which have littel to no recast time compared to the time that it is active. The biggest problem is having a wide variety of skills or methods to allow for the skill to last longer than the refresh rate causing the counter methods to be outpaced by simply reapplying it from one or more sources. In the worst cases the enchantments do not have any definable duration and have no re-use timer.

Calling for a nerf of natures renewal really means calling for a nerf to all enchantments, or at least a retooling in many instances, in addition to adjusting methods to reduce recast and make copies of skills, then rebalancing them to still have a usable and intended effect. Following that, enchantment removal would need to be re-examined and possibly added to 1 or 2 classes. Then the game would have to be re-examined again weighing defense versus offense options under the new limitations and most likely would lead towards more varied defensive, but self only, skills to counter balance the now large abscence of monk related spammable skills.

Nature's renewal, in its current form, screams of a safety net, in order to prevent unkillable setups and combinations. This is the pvp solution to the problem, while the pve solution has been to add widespread enchantment removal on large groups of enemies throughout the game. It is merely a bandaid and it would seem that the problem is outgrowing it finally.

Every combination is killable in a simple and effective manner. rend/linger+spike.

How's about echo/shatter enchant? the mes spikes for a huge amount, and the defences come down too.

Its not that simple. There are counters to the spike outside the defensive shell you are trying to work around. If rend and linger are your only choices for a work around, then you would need alot more than 1-2 people trying to do it. Even then, its not infalable. The problem is that by using those spells tips off who needs the spot coverage, just like how surge->spikes do. By the time you change targets and try again the first guy would very likely be back at the original capacity prior to the rend or curse.

If the first guy is bonding, he won't be up to speed for at least 60 seconds. If you identify the primary mode of defence, be it the spirit spammer dropping winter/conflag, or the prot monk, or whatever, taking that person down should NOT be a problem. Following up rend with strip and lingering for reactive defence keeps the target dead.

Having a mesmer offtarget defensive players also helps you whittle their defence down.

NR seriously effects enchantments everyones very quick to point it out. It's the only ranger orientated skill which removes enchantments. Amazingly it's also the most effective enchantment removal in the game, but anyway moving on.

NR does'nt only effect enchantments. It also seriously effects hexes. I'm going to use the Necromancer as the example, while both mesmer and hydromancer also have merit here i think it's important to show NR's effect on a necromancer.

In total a Necromancers 3 skill lines which contain skills have: 22 hexes. And a fact which may suprize you a total amount of enchantments numbering: 14.
So the number of skill NR directly effects for the necromancer is 36. That's bad right? But you're saying right now, i can work around that.. and it's true you can. When you consider a staggering 9 of the necromancers elite skills fall into the 36 skills effected you should start to worry. Leaving you a grand total of 6 elite skills not effected by it.

The necromancer has a nice AoE Enchantment strippers too, two of them infact. Actually of all the classes the necromancer has the most enchantment stripping capablities, yet nothing which rivals that of NR.

Examples:
Chilblains:
You become poisoned for 3-13 seconds. Nearby foes are struck for 10-37 cold damage and lose one "Enchantment".

Chilblains is a great skill, one of only 3 skills capable of stripping enchantments which dont allow you get targeted by spells. Such as Obsidian flesh and spell breaker. You pay considerable penalties for this ability, being poisoned is the very obvious one. The secound being a huge energy cost: 25 energy.

Well of the Profane:
Exploit nearest corpse to create a Well of the Profane at its location. For 8-18 seconds, foes in that area are stripped of all Enchantments and cannot be the target of further Enchantments. (50% failure chance with Death Magic 4 or less)

Well of the profane is for obvious reasons quite powerful. It's drawbacks are yet again 25 energy, and the obvious fact you can simply walk outside its AoE and continue fighting without going too far. Neither are true for NR. It also has a failure rate for anyone foolish enough to use it without high attributes in that skill set. Unlike NR. Then again... This skill was placed in a unlikly PvP skill set possibly to draw people too it, again.. unlike NR since a rangers healing is in the same skill set.

Please do not take this post as a 'Necromancers are gimped help!' moan, because it is'nt intended as that. It's a very, very good case against NR. I'm not doubting the fact there are a lack of decent enchantment strippers in the game, but by having a skill like NR, you're drawing players away from a distinctly enchantment stripping class, the necromancer. I say this as the Necro is the only class in the game with 1 enchantment stripper in each and every skill set they have.

A very significant number of the hex spells a necromancer uses have 2+ secounds of cast time. NR doubles that. It makes those skills unplayable. I'd say that was fine if it was a direct skill against these types of game plans, but it is'nt. It's a broad spectrum anti-hex anti-enchantment long lasting easily recasted skill. It not only strips but doubles the cast times on those skill of the same type to follow. Even on paper you have to realize how rediculas this sounds.

Well my take on it is that NR is an answer to a possible problem, that problem being enchantments and hexes. Since it has a rather omnipotent effect, then the effect of enchantments unhindered also has an omipotent effect, due to some not having a definable duration.

Well you did leave out the obvious ranger example, that can remove enchantments, hexes, and some conditions from himself. This is in addition to creating a beneficial effect when hexed and under the effect of conditions. In my mind i was thinking something along the lines of a water element spell that had some kind of aoe with an enchantment removal effect, being targeted, yet simliar to chillblains. Most classes that have ways of applying conditions, enchantments or hexes also have the ability to counter them.

I made that suggestion, due to the fact that under the current model, the enchantment removal options can only really keep up with removing one spell from one person and even then is outpaced by the recast times on many enchantments. The only real exception to this would be lingering curse, well of the profane, and nature's renewal. This is due to the multi-layered stripping and being available every 10 seconds, but unfortunatly they have 3-5 second casting times and both lingering curse and well of the profane are conditional, while nature's renewal is not. Also nature's renewal is also 1/5th the casting cost of either of the other 2 methods and its effect is global.

Unless you are suggesting knocking down the cast time to 1s (or less)and removing the recast time on enchantment removal, then it would never catch up to the pace that monks are able to apply enchantments. Then you would also have to take it a step further and begin reducing the energy cost, so that the spells could actually be cast at that rate and sustained, matching the 5-10 energy cost of many of the spells they are removing.

No matter what happens, alot needs to change, but i feel it would help the game more by going back to the root of the problem instead of trying to work around it.

NR is imbalanced because it removes an two entire classes of spells from the game for all practical purposes. As if that were not enough it also is cheap, and hard to interrupt permanently thanks to oath shot and possibly QZ/Serpents too. If you cannot see the balance issues caused by that, I don't think you are qualified to take part in this conversation. However on the flip side, enchantments would likely become too powerful again without NR, so its a tough nut to crack.

Lets assume the effect of the new nature's renewal didn't take place until the old one dies and that casting times for enchants & hexes is 25% longer rather than 100% longer. NR could have a set life of 60 seconds. NR is still extremely powerful and in the mean time until they come up with other fixes it can in a way counter the healing ball, but it does not completely nullify enchant and condition builds. With 25% longer recast many builds are still playable and they have 60 seconds to work. Once your team notices all of their hexes & enchants were removed they know the exact time when the next removal is coming and work within those boundaries.

What if Nature's Renewal didn't strip all enchancements/hexes immediately, but did its work over time. Every N seconds, a random creature would be chosen, and exactly one hex and one enchantment would be stripped (the top one). The N seconds can start out at 10 seconds or so, and then decrease to about 3 seconds with very high Wilderness. Further, if there are N spirits active, the one with the most frequent stripping rate is the only one that works (so it cannot be stacked).

The advantage of this nerf is that it keeps the spirit of the ritual -- stripping of hexes and enchantments -- but moves this action over the life of the spirt. In effect, giving the spirit something to do. So, if someone doesn't like the spirit, they can kill it to stop the random stripping. As a correlary Fertile Season would have to be fixed so that it doesn't effect spirits (and possibly undead). This makes sense, of course, since a Spirit isn't exactly living.

I left out rend intentionally due to its 30s cooldown. Comparing it against things with a 0s cooldown or the more reasonable 4-10s cooldowns is not really a fair comparison. Sure you can alpha strike it in use, but there is also the window for reaction time from multiple monks and other characters tuned for support/enchant builds. Communication is the key as per normal, so in essence the rend option is only truly an option within the pug realm. Rend also requires a fair amount of attribute points thrown at it to get the most from it, even though the high end enchantment count becomes impractical and potentially dangerous on the hp count.

Conversly lingering and well of the profane can be stopped by more indirect means, but considering the state of rend enchantments as the *only* means for multiple layers to be removed, it is beyond inadequate and laughable. This would be assuming of course that NR is removed from its current role to strip all enchantments. Changing nature's renewal to only do 1 layer globally, would also render chillblains just as obscelete considering how the ranger can cycle NR currently. Suggesting for other new means for removal seemed to be reasonable and having something being targeted versus pbaoe didnt seem too unreasonable, as it would share the weaknesses from all other targeted spells.

By contrast to making the ER extreemly low cooldown, they could just give a high cooldown to the enchantments balancing it out on the other end of the scale. Think about it this way, consider how silly it would be if unyielding aura or vengence had no cooldown time. Instead of no one every staying dead, you can create situations where no one really dies. Both are just as problematic.

I don't think that Nature's Renewal is being used to fight hexes, at all. I always thought there was a decent balance between power hexes and removal anyway. Nature's Renewal came into builds to fight enchantments - that it viciously hates out hexes as well is just splash damage.

Not that the fact that it destroys hexes as well should be glossed over - the majority of good Warrior or Ranger hate is hex based and Nature's Renewal polarizes that battle further. But hex removal is a side effect, plain and simple.


Not neccessarily a nerf to enchantments, but it is calling for a re-examination of enchantment / enchantment removal balance. Players need to have tools available for cracking enchantment based builds besides having to pull out the sledgehammer.


Unless, of course, the team you're trying to kill recognizes your strategy and sticks a Mesmer on your Necro. 3 second cast times are trivial to interrupt. If there's one thing we learned about elemental spike builds while running our healing ball, it's that if they don't get their Rend or Linger off, they don't have a build. It's fairly trivial to beat a team if you only have to interrupt one guy casting 3 second spells to shut down their entire offense.


Well enchantment removal is decent if you want to use it "strategically". Strip Enchantment is ok if all you want is for it to remove one long recharge enchantment, like Illusionary Weaponry. Perfectly reasonable strategic use. Inspired Enchantment can be used much the same way, but it gives information instead of health. Drain Enchantment is really a conditional energy management skill - Shatter Enchantment is really a conditional nuke. Whatever.

Rend Enchantments and Lingering Curse are decent if you want to buy a couple seconds of soft target to pair with a damage spike. Perfectly reasonable "strategic" use there.

So, yeah, if their goal was to make "strategically interesting" enchantment removal, they succeeded.

Of course the problem is that I can run a power enchantment build that'll stack buffs ten deep and *laugh* at all of your "strategic" removal. Because "strategic" removal, while interesting in spot circumstances, isn't terribly efficient and certainly isn't powerful enough to get into a slugfest with a strong strategy. Strategic enchantments are countered by strategic spot removal, sure. But power enchantments need power removal, and the only skills even approaching that are Chilblains and Nature's Renewal. (Well of the Profane would be interesting if it could actually be cast over Putrid in situations where it would be called for). The other problem is that power enchantments is a fundamentally strong strategy, particularly for defensive or hall holding builds, making power removal something that every build is going to want to have available - and, right now, the options simply are not there.

Besides, you know, the sledgehammer.

Peace,
-CxE

Natures Renewal is the devs solution for a counter to mass enchantments (and hexes). The problem is that it also conveniently counters smaller amounts of these spells as well, so theres no point in using them at all. The skills that should have been the counter to mass enchanting is alredy in the game:

Desecrate Enchantments - Spell
Target foe and all nearby foes take 6-49 shadow damage and 4-17 shadow damage for each enchantment on them.

Melandru's Arrows {Elite} - Preparation
For 18 seconds, whenever your arrows hit, they cause Bleeding for 3-21 seconds and do +8-24 damage if they hit a target who is under an "Enchantment".

If only the devs would be smart enough to do the obvious and change Desecrate Enchantments to do no base dmg and 10-66dmg for each enchantment instead. Melandrus arrows to do 8-24 for EACH enchantment on the target. Then maybe change the numbers around a bit to balance it out.

Hmmm I dont know if that would work out. What if I hit someone who had protective spirit, life bond, life barrier or any other enchantment that reduced damage done drastically? It would still render those two above skills useless. Or would have those skills completely ignore effects of enchantments on the target?

To clarify, i meant those 2 skills could be used to counter lots of enchantments but would be inneficient if there were only a few around. Protective spirit, healing seed, shielding hands etc to reduce or even negate the extra damage, not really sure how to balance that one out. I guess you could add in a mesmer spell draining energy for each enchantment on since you can't really defend agains energy drain. The point is to let you turn their huge number of enchants to your advantage instead of removing them all. Since just a "remove all enchants" (NR) spell ruins the game.

Yes melandrus arrows is a decent skill alredy, but do you think it is capable of cracking a healing ball? Not really, and why shouldn't it? Right now i think its just another "you may do decent damage IF" spell. Not a hard counter to enchanted enemies. I forgot about this skill that could be made more useful:

Melandru's Assault - Pet Attack
Your animal companion attempts a Melandru's Assault that deals +5-17 damage. If that attack strikes a foe "Enchantment" that foe and all adjacent foes takes additional +5-17 damage.

Adding to my thoughts on how you would get at them behind protective spirit + healing seed + shielding hands wich would both cut down on a big single dmg and many small bits of dmg, there could be one spell that disabled all skills 1s for every enchantment they have on. To crack a healing ball, you could use that to disable all their skills, then drain all their energy with the energy drain for each enchantment spell. Then they couldn't easily recast enchantments you strip with normal means. If they are not using huge amounts of enchants, these skills would be sub-par to the other energy draining and shutdown skills, of course. And it would be better to just use the "strategic" disenchants.

What it is used for and what it is accomplishing are two different things. I mentioned spammable hexes specifically for the near snap casting and low recast time hexes being disrupted, opposed to being tottally removed. This is different from NR disrupting and removing the 0s refresh time, near permenant duration enchantments.

My comments and suggestions mainly focus along the lines that the sledge hammer is currently needed and trying to have some foresight in what also would be needed in order to complete the balance. I believe that making the recast times of the long duration monk enchantments reflect their potential durations, but based more around average times within normal play, similar to how vengence and unyielding aura were balanced, then it would be alot closer to harmony in the long run for the game.

That is the main reason why the enchantments need to get changed if any change comes to nature's renewal. Even with longer refresh times, it will still require many different efficient forms of removal and that does not exist currently. There is one overly efficient means and many sub-par means that really only work if there is only one character specializing in protective enchantments, much like instances found within pve. The difference is that pve can throw numbers at the group, while the group gets to focus on one or two unique characters that may use said enchantments.

I'm not bringing up melandrus arrow becouse I think it is a weak skill that needs to be buffed. I'm more interested in the idea itself of a skill that doesn't remove enchantments, but turns the enchantment into a disadvantage for the user, in this case, more damage received. The devs just didn't take the concept far enough I think. The problem with healing ball is that it uses a bunch of enchantments that make you more or less invulnerable. Then put on 10 cover enchants so that no matter how much enchantment removal the other team brings they cant touch those enchantments. So if they take away NRs ability to counter this by removing all enchants, they need to do something like:

1-Nerf all enchants so they dont do much even if you can't remove them.
or
2-Remove all spammable enchants from the game. No more chaff enchants.
or
3-Make enchantment removal spammable.

They all just sound like decreasing the strategic depth of the game. Most people want nr 3 i guess. Spam removal to counter spamming extra layers of enchants. Under this system, if you don't run extra layers, forget about using enchants. I don't think it's any good, so:

4-Introduce skills that are effective against targets with lots of enchants so that there's a drawback to using too many.

Enchantments are going to have to be easier to put on than they are to remove. If it is the other way around (like is is now) almost nobody will use heavy enchantments because they will all be wisped away. Things like healing ball shouldn't be a factor in decide this but rather be a different discussion all together. You can't balance enchant removal and healing ball at the same time (easily). Nerf NR, buff other enchant removal, nerf healing ball is going to be the easiest way to get this game back in shape. I think the best way to nerf overpowered builds is to put limiters on them such as have healing seed only heal the 3 nearest instead of everyone people or only allow for X number of life bonds etc.

edit: I think this can be solved without introducing any new skills, just fix what we have.

Yeah, nerf the enchants so they don't do much, sounds easy? How much should healing seed and bonds be nerfed so you can just brute force it? Any other skills? Balanced around the fact that you can't really remove them if the owner wants to keep them, since "Enchantments are going to have to be easier to put on than they are to remove."

I wan't to have a system where you can choose between a balance of:

A: Add more cover enchantments if you wish, but risk getting more owned by a skill vs mass enchants.

B: Don't add covers, risk getting the precious enchant ripped by a disenchant. But the anti-mass enchant skills wont have much effect.

Anyone get this? I know it's not going to happen and that you would usually go for the easy answer. But I don't think that answer leads anywhere in this case.

@GrindWarrior: I think Melandru's Arrows is a powerful skill and does not need to be made any more powerful. Melandru's Assault, though, I agree is pretty laughable. A whopping 17 damage AoE. You're better off letting the pet die and pressing the putrid button, will do more damage than about 8 of these attacks (which have a prohibitively high recharge time).

Holy shit, I know I haven't been on in a long time.. but weren't these problems evident like back in November?

With that I mean completely lopsided enchantment stacking and the lack of removal.. and then we had all these alpha players come on saying everything was fine.

And in January/Feb or something (can't remember) we did some ritual spamming with like 8490214 spirits around the map and thought the alphas would catch it and the devs would fix it. WTF?

When NR is nerfed people will start cross stacking their monks left and right with enchants and heavily buffed Warrior or Ranger based offenses will be the way to go (especially rangers because they're so hard to counter).

Removal should be powerful enough to make significant punch but it should not be nearly so bad as to make enchant-heavy teams obselete. It was the former when NR was bugged and now it is the latter. Two opposite extremes with both being unpleasant situations. People should not have to resort to switching targets when enchants are placed on them, but should also have the option of removing them on command.

Single strip enchants still have too large of recharges to be of much use generally. They are not here for power removal but 'strategic use' as has been said but the current strategic use (before NR) is a joke. Shatter Enchant is 15/1/25. That's a heavy energy requirement and absurdly long recharge for a conditional nuke/single enchant strip. Recharge on all of these is pretty much too long.

Rend, Chillbains, Lingering Curse, and Well of the Profane are the mass enchant removal options. Two AoE based, two single target based. They should be able to break through any enchant based setup but with some cost and effort; Lingering being elite, Rend for the damage (may seem not much but when you rend someone with loads of chafe it can take out a good 60-80% of your life), Chillbains with energy/poison, and WotP for it's conditional nature.

Lingering Curse energy requirement is too high. The effect is powerful for it's elite tag but still too pricey so it's use is prohitibive at best. That cost needs to be lowered to perhaps 15.

Rend doesn't eat through enough enchants without heavy amounts of curses; 4 in curses for 4 broken is nice vs general teams but it wont cut it vs teams who are just layered in enchants. And of course the recharge is terrible. Even with a low recharge if you have to eat 200-300 damage when using it it's not some auto-enchant breaker and can be used against you (rather than interurpt it wait for it to finish and then spike); lower recharge does offer more freedom though which is the way it should be.

WotP seems okay except for the cast time. It gets beaten by too many things to matter. If it matched the rest of them besides Nec transveral at 1 s it would be solid.

Chillbains is the wierd one. Imo it should have a greater aoe to make it useful outside of dais maps but retain the cost/poison to make it's uses powerful but very sparingly.

That's one approach anyway. There are a number of good/optimal ones, just as long as we keep enchant vs enchant removal compared to hex vs hex removal before renewal: strong but not making one style completely prohitive like it is now and was before in the opposite way.

The one problem I don't agree on is Smite - I mean how bad is something with 22-37 damage a hit? Seeds almost completely negate it, and even if the seed is found and carefully stripped without NR (haha right, that'll happen these days), everybody in the vicinity is healed up already.

As someone mentioned, the only reason we use Elmos in the first place is because they can bring other helpful skills and run them with near infinite energy - even the teambonus that a dedicated drawconner brings is pretty hefty (who needs martyr ?).

Other than that, yeah Natures is to put it mildly, whack. I've been resorting to team arenas simply because the Natures spam is controllable there, and its an interesting alternate metagame (albeit choke full of scrubs even worse than me).

The problem really ends up being a range so huge, with a good spammer you can't even walk in and hope to keep an enchant up - that alone is a bit annoying, but the fact that it for no good reason hits hexes and their cast time too is just queer and seems to remove alot of skills from viability, simply because you can't monkey around casting for 4 seconds.

Guess thats the main problem. Natures Renewal does it all in one - Hex removal, enchant removal and Migraines for everyone using them. Its more like 2 or 3 skills in one.

Colour Commentary: Skip if you hate long stuff.

No they weren't, people just didn't use them in tombs because of all the "abusive" strategies like Air Gank, Smite, a bit of Aftershock, and at the very beginning Warrior Monks.

Personally, I think none of the examples listed even NR is invincible, even including halls. I believe 1v1, 2 equally skilled teams will have equal chance to win, BUT the attacking team vs spirit holding team must be done in such a way that it significantly hinders it vs any other team, which then loses holding power, which then makes it rather useless other then by teams who go "ok I'm tired of xxx noobs holding halls for so long cuz of spirits".

But back on topic, I agree that Anet is very slow on these things, and while I'm not going to upright complain because after all, this game is free, and their probably trying to make an expansion to get more cash, so whatever. But, it'd be very assuring plus markettably effective to show that they understand how to balance out huge issues within a smaller time frame, or at least give some Gaile Gray messages that go "yeah we know NR is teh sux and no one likes 10 min HoH matches where no one dies, and yes we know gvg is the only thing thats worth playing in pvp", I mean, the PVE updates are nice and all, but even then, that's not saying much. From a gamers POV, I see "look kiddies, two more areas too explore, it took the whole damn summer, but we made two more areas for you to underworld/fow again!, not that its suitable for casual players or caters to more then one type of audience!"

But hey, like I said, the great thing about this game, is that ultimately, no one can say they didn't get their bang for their buck. If you stop looking at it like a game that's suppose to entertain you for years and years, it's a damn good deal. Coupled with the fact that you can play it anytime you want, come back to it anytime you want, and you got a better version of D2 and a game a league behind Starcrafts status. Not too shabby for games these days.

You want me to complain about PVE? Because as a player who plays both and cares about both, I can make a rant thread big enough to fill at least 2 pages alone with 1 post if it's allowed. But hey, my rants would be so insane, they'd have to make a new engine for this already flawed game, because after all, Anet lied during their hypes about guild wars completely. Instance advantages? Where are they? I thought one of the advantages they were going to do is make the world interactable, and since it's instanced, any big changes won't affect other players. So how come my meteor doesn't destroy a wall or even make a crater? Where do I chop down trees and use them as a bridge in case my own bridge falls? This and that, blah blah blah, you realize PVE has PHAILED so badly even PVE players think it sux? Not even suck, like SUX, EBONICS STYLE. That's right folks, even the noobs at GAMEFAQS can figure this one out, and their still using war monks for tombs.

Liez, look at how much Alpha guilds dominate GvG......

Ok, WAR, their sorta still around, but I can understand how you killed their core guys, but KOR? Man this is worse then that Bridget thing couple weeks ago Ensign, respect -8 >=(

Wrong, yeah I know crazy but even I got caught when I fell behind and didn't realize they fixed Knights and now it stacks with Runes (That's if your actually right Ensign). So no, it's the weapon helmet, gladiators everything but knights boots =p ho ho ho.

Do you take me for a newbie? Obviously it doesn't interrupt stances, it ENDS them =D

That is a lie, all your examples besides spirits were countered by any real team. Air Gank? Sorry, I can confidently say that I know Air Gank almost like the back of my hand, and even I know there were counters when we started abusing it 2 weeks before the mid-card players started using it. The most important part about Air Gank is the team's skill, when used by very skilled teamwork, it'll be amazing, and it still is to a point. Just that 90% of the players can't be in a team that "clicks".

Smite? No sir, I've seen rangers beat it back when it was unpopular a fair amount of times, the almighty chilblains, and well, sadly, the good Air Gankers never lost to smite teams , heck, guys like Union can use their GvG build and whoop Smiters in Hoh.

Spirits though? Not so sure. Unlike the other two, no one has figured out a real counter to it in a fairly long time. I said it before but, I think it's counterable, but it has a much higher requirement to beat, and that's just too much advantage in the spirit holders courtyard. You don't want this game to turn "balanced" like Warcraft 3 do you? Where every god damn UD uses fiends, every Hu uses Roffles, Every Orc solo BMs, every NE rushing? That game is basically what GW will look like if this is allowed to continue, instead of a open varietied legend like Starcraft, you get the failed child called Warcraft 3. It's not about "can it be beat" it's about how much it affects meta-game, balance wise, variety wise, everything wise. That is true balance.

You know how gimped you'd be as a mesmer staying purely on one target? You can't exactly have that many shutdowners and be considered a well balanced team. Specific teams can beat any "overpowered' strat so far, but that's it. Specific teams. Purely made to whoop that one team off the Dias, provided they can even get there.

Not enough to predict the Druids/Gladiator 15k set graphics....err wait..off topic...

I'm being lame, and repetitive, but, Starcraft. Even Boxer can't beat "everyone".

Secondly, some games, well sadly, strive on "lameless" and "overpoweredness". But that's because their goal, their audience, their catered aim, is fueled by that. Lineage 2? WoW? All about character status, you go up to any brainwashed WoW player and ask for PVP balance? Pssh, everyone just brings up times where they "pwn" noobs. No one can even dare say they won organized battle with two nearly equalled teams with one wearing merchant crap while the other has epic crap. Lineage 2? All about graphics baby, and it literally caters to the grind. It's about being lame, about PK, but hey, that has it's satisfactions too, despite what you think.

Guild Wars? Sorry, this game's core design was relatively interpreted by many to be the refined "magic:the gathering" game. Oh wait, it clicks to me now, seeing as how Magic sucks now with all these crazy cards just overlapping each other and making the old ones useless. No wait, Guild Wars didn't even have an expansion, does that mean the game itself makes it's own original "card deck" void before new ones even come out? Woah My God, HAX.

I dunno man, PANK seems to still get some wins with ganking...seems to........maybe War Machine fell for it a 5th time?

Another thing that differentiates that game from GW is the amount of micro factor or twitch factor involved in that game compared to GW. Does GW have micro/twitch factor? Hell yeah, enough to seperate top 10 to top 20 to top etc etc, but enough to compare with a shooter? Please.

Silly Weezer, their catering to their PVE/Farmer crowd. It's supposedly much easier then PVP crowd.

Hacks have nothing to do with game balance. It's outside interference. That's like saying a Sport is imbalanced because some people take Steroids. WTF?

If you can even read those patches, you'd see almost all the patches since 1.07 or so have no data tweakage. No number adjust. What does this mean? All bug/hack problems, meaning the balance itself is perfect. And it damn sure is. There's a reason the games nearly a decade old and still lives in WCG as a top draw. The game was near balanced within 4 patches, and while that's unrealistic in todays world, it sure is still doable. The only REAL excuse is because Anet seperated from Bnet and also the other seperate group of Flagship Studios. The dream team would come back if all 3 would just get off their asses with get rich quick schemes and make Starcraft 2 for god sakes. But alas, not even they have the balls to try it out, because screwing it up would be like Armageddon.

Yeah, go ask the top 5 if they still actively play tombs, oh wait no, the first one doesn't even play, Union doesn't play tombs, Sissy Boys has played about one GvG these past weeks and heck even they agree, and uh War Machine knows the two words "Spirit Spam". Sorry, you phailed.

Doesn't work, debil+more shutdown+Primal Echos > All signets. Course, you can HOPE the spirit teams suck, because hey, let's face it, most of them do, but you'll cry if you face a spirit team that knows what their doing. But meh, most of the players capable either quit or got bored of the game because of it. So sure! The strategy works!

Because none of the players capable want to win in such a boring fashion. Most of them have at least that much integrity.

Aegis spamming vs Natures Renewel? What? Secondly, you do realize that the build is not meant to kill you, but to stall. Most matches end with a sigil digit number of people dieing. Heck, even if you somehow get past the noobs defenses, they can gank with EoE if your unsuspecting. I mean no ones going to put it down right from the get go unless their so dumb, they don't deserve it what so ever, but yeah. Point being, the thing gives way too big of an advantage.

Skill not spell, and yes, I agree, though I already made up my mind, it's still fair to wait half a month to a month. It's definately counterable, but the aftermath of the match will be so pathetic, a 8 man air ele team can whoop you.

You mean ZPZG vs Union? Their practically the same last I fought em.

For the benefit of those like me who don't have that big of a vocabularly and do not want to process all that K-D and Mac and get a heart attack, can you simplify it? All I read is that no one's looking for a counter or something among those lines, or that your looking at it from a Rock Paper Scissors effect, where Mirror vs Adapted Mirror and eventually Adapted Mirror takes over then Adapted Adapted Mirror takes over and then Mirror wins again. No man, we don't want to play the meta-game known as Pokemon, where a few teams and builds work simply because there's no way some worm is ever going to beat a overpowered alien even if the type class is in the advantage of the worm. The thing you aren't getting, is that while it doesn't break down balance "you cant beat me" wise, it breaks down balance variety wise, aka "yeah, if you dont use fire, you cant win biatch" I mean come on, even Pokemon has more counters to it's rigged stuff then Guild Wars has to Natures Renewel. POKEMON DAMNIT.

Technically Bush is a politician, and he won based on pure cluelessness and thick-headedness or something. I mean come on, "YOUR EITHER WITH US OR YOUR A TERRORIST"? The man's a saint to get away with that.

They've announced Grenths basement and Frowny Furnace for about a month. They promised it in summer time for god sakes, summers almost over. Hell it is over sun wise. Fact is, a whole summer nearly dedicated to 2 EAs which probably will give you some puney satisfaction and probably won't create drawing power to casual masses is a dumb idea over balancing PVP or PVE.

Let me be very blunt with this example. If your friends quit guild wars for the reasons this forum has given so far, would you realistically be able to make him play again by going "HEY DUDE, 2 EAS OUT, THEIR SO COOL, LETS GO PLAY AGAIN!"...uhhh NO? I can play WoW or Lineage 2 or something.

I still don't know how you can use a small paragraph to express a couple of pages worth of posts. Your obviously overpowered. Nerf please.

I won't get into suggestion posts because their suggestions, and are technically off topic, but that's a bit silly, you'd need to change NRs duration properties in the first place, or else no ones going to pump wilderness survival, and while it'll help balance it out in a way a bit ( HoHish, but even then..not by much ) so it'll work faster.

The thing about Putrid, is that while it is broken, it's broken in a smaller extent. It doesn't insta-kill you, nor can 1 necro effectively kill if your not bunched up ( that is not overpowered, since after all you chose to bunch up ), and while it cuts down most skills and completely makes them void like the necrotics and wells, that's a small small selection of skills which only come from necro, while uh, Natures cuts down a giant fat selection of skills.

But, if your getting specific, Putrid is indeed "broken" a bit. Teamed up with EoE, this makes the whole "griefing" strat in HoH very popular, though that is still not broken completely since after all, you can always have the perma rezer fall back with the ghost. It just makes the meta-game at halls fun, and is a very cool "last minute" strategy that can be countered.

Because it's solid gold?

Pssh, No Turbo Key like the SNes? Your joking right? You call yourself a Guild Wars PLAYER? =p

Should be, would be, hey lets look at reality, oh wait, 3rd rate teams can now win HoH, heck, I really think Holy Buddhas gonna win it this time, just needs 3 other people then leave on him, and he'll be fine. Just gotta wait for that golden moment baby.

Yeah, even the "elite" mantra of recall is not even in league with Energy Denial. I mean, the supposed elite counter is pathetic vs energy denial, you know that's got to be sad.

Personal interest, was this on the alpha board then or something? If not restricted, link would make my day, I need a good laugh =)

Yeah, too bad aegis and prot spirit and guardian and all those other enchantments that mostly work by reducing damage doesn't exactly help out the move. Rather, it's not worth the elite slot IMO. Most enchantments are protective, and stuff like Prot Spirit basically negates your power to spike with Melandrus in the first place while Aegis and Guardian force you to Rigor Mortis. Is it a good skill? Yep. Worthy of Elite? Yep. Good enough to be taken over Poison Arrow, Quick Shot, Oath Shot, and some other great ones? Eh, not really. Plus it's a preperation, I'd rather go QS/Kindle for damage over that thing. Not versatile enough for an elite, but too powerful individually to not be. Another tweener. I mean, most enchantments are monk, gotta admit that, so..........................

Anyways end of the gigantic commentary. Hope this doesn't get deleted, or an hour of reading/typing just got keeled >=( over little jokes that didn't intentionally lash out at anyone.

To everyone who keeps saying healball is invincible, one chillblains topples it.

Its not an elite counter to E denial. Its just a battery of energy for hex flinging mesmers. Illusion/Inspiration in particular will enjoy its added energy. If you're specced in inspiration and are getting E drained, why not use energy drain instead?

I've used it plenty, and its a very useful skill in pve or in pvp when you aren't using anything else from the inspiration line. Signets are counters to E denial. Trying to drop my enegy? oh well, i'll stay with signet of devotion and retain some of my usefulness.

1 chillblains, no, but 8-16 chillblains every 10s maybe, just like in PvE.

Of course dying like the scarabs that use that strategy wouldnt be the most fun thing ever though.

Chillblains works VERY well. if you're dropping chaff enchants on each player that means everyone is running some form of chaff to cover up their bonds, because the prot can't drop 16 enchants; if that's the case, their dmg output is severely reduced, and you can still punch a hole in their def by using e-denial to strip ~4 bonds by dropping the prot to 0, or by just linger/spiking him.

The purpose of a healing ball isn't exactly optimal damage output, now is it?

Read the sentence. If they can't kill you, you can set up a dual rend spike.

N/Me rend, chillblains, arcane echo, malaise, ether lord + whatever you want. Perfectly viable build, and can punch through 16 enchants, as well as rending a target twice in a row, not only that, it can hold monks with 0 energy regen for... as long as it wants. More importantly, you've got another 2 skills + res sig to customize with. Want lingering too? bring it! want to bring energy drain? Why not! i specifically left out the elite slot because there are so many options. Not only that, this one character, the necro debuffer, wrecks the entire ball build. Isn't overpowered in the least.

Please, don't tell me chillblains can't punch through a heal ball, because it does, and it does fairly well. All you need to strip is one heal seed. then while the heal monks scramble to put it back on, you drop the chillblains to remove the seed as well as all the unprotected bonds. Not only that, but chillblains is the only Non NR spell that can drop a SB to allow you to rend without needing a corpse.

Then again, always a favorite alternative is getting someone to kill themselves while you well, but doing that requires you to have mantra of concentration and a decent amount of body blocking.

Unprotected bonds? What did you use to uncover them then? If they were uncovered in the first place, why the need to remove healing seed first? As noted, we're talking stacked bonds here. To remove the entire setup using Chillblains, you need many successive casts to wear down the layers until you get to the enchantments that matter. Ofcourse Rend is far more suited for this, but noone is disputing that, same with Chillblains being the only viable skill-based answer to Spell Breaker.

About your energy denial setup, do a little math on Ether Lord, and calculate how much energy you're really taking away from your target over that 9 second period after you've successfully depleted your own energy supply (kindly assuming you went with 12 inspiration magic on a N/Me, and that the hex doesn't get removed during that period).
Optimal efficiency can only be attained when your target has 0 energy which makes it a very conditional skill, so why not go with a far less conditional and more potent energy stealing skill such as energy tap that won't shaft your own energy, and since it's not a hex can't simply be removed?

Look at Malaise, and notice how it ends once energy reaches 0. Then imagine someone cycling through focii to artificially lower his energy level for a full second, and Malaise ending right there.

Someone killing himself to provide a corpse for Well of Profane... check the casttime for Well of Profane. Then check the casttime for Putrid Explosion. One of them will finish sooner, removing the corpse, and your team is one man down.

You have 8 people on your team, enchants have a finite period of length, unless more than 1 of your characters is maintaining enchants on everyone using blessed signet. Spamming enchants that cost 5 and last 30 seconds (vig spirit, the best cover, imho) is great, but it means 1 of your healers is running very thin on energy and can't spam heal seed. Since you need constant seed (every 15 seconds or every 20 seconds, normally) so that the seed doesn't become unprotected, this is unfeasible without some form of necro energy buffing.

So, this means 1 or 2 of the bonds drop to a chillblains. A quick tab through the group finds said people, and blam, you start your spike. Being forced to use another bond or lose a player, the prot monk becomes a viable target for any form of interuption. As i said previously, you can drop an easy -4 regen on him (i'll explain why there's -4 and not -5 there), keeping him unable to rebond without using blessed, which adds yet more time of vulnerability. Rending the prot monk, then waiting for the next seed and rending again is almost an assured break in the ball.

Why would you go for 12 insp for that build? 5 degen doesn't help you. 4 does. You're supposed to echo the ether lord, since it should have around 8-9 seconds of uptime.

More importantly, your entire analysis is flawed: once a prot monk reaches 0 energy, the heal ball is over. 4 bonds drop, if he was smart and kept balth's spirit in his top 4, meaning you have half a team vulnerable now. Not only does the prot monk have 0 energy, but

a) you can keep him there
b) he needs 40 energy worth of bonds up... yesterday
c) he's gaining 12 less energy from blessed.

I'd LOVE for someone to cycle focii to drop themselves to 0, but the fact of the matter is the hub of the ball normally keeps the +15 energy focii in reserve, thus he'd be gaining energy. Then again, dropping to 0 cancels 4 of his maintained enchants, as i stated above.

So you're counting on a team using a single-monk healing ball with no counter to energy denial, no hex removal?

So you're counting on the offensive team having no mesmers or disruption?

The point he made, which you missed, is that you will need to be man to man or better than the monk ratio within the healing ball with your team's mesmers. My earlier point was that it was impractical to impossible to build out a team using anything else other than NR to punch through it effectivly. This is mainly due to the number of sources casting enchantments and the number of targets completely covered by them.

Ether lord and malaise as energy denial? Are you joking? If you want to reduce one guy to 0 energy fast just debil spam him over and over. Then again I doubt that e-denying one person will break the whole build.

Chilly won't be able to break a healing ball on it's own unless you have multiple copies, good energy regen, and lots of energy denial and you won't get that with a waste of a character using ether lord/malaise.

If I wanted to crack a healing ball I'd go for heavy energy denial with select rends; 2 fear me warriors, qz, and a ranger who is able to constantly debil the warder/bonder/symp visager(s). You wear them down with constant rends and energy denial and sooner or later they won't be able to keep up the chafe and it breaks. How long that would take I don't know but it would have a much better shot at cracking it then using an echoed ether lord.

Disruption is never going to be the counter to anything, its a strategy in itself. It can counter everything but in limited amounts. Every skill in the game can be "countered" by being interrupted. Some more easily then others of course. You can't argue that something is balanced if interrupting it is the only way to counter it. Say there was a skill that killed everyone on the other team within casting range. You could interrupt it yes, but it's still overpowered.

It's exactly the same with NR as with healing ball, you can interrupt one guy doing it but a whole team doing it isnt going to be easy.

no, you don't. you have to have enough disruption to keep seed off once it drops, or be able to drop it multiple times. That's it. Keeping a caster perma kded with multiple warriors using frenzy, backbreaker and for great justice works just as well. Using one maelstrom works just as well. power blocking the seed works as well.

Disruption should be something that EVERY person on the team does. Monks disrupt people's pure dmg by giving people back hp. They disrupt the first level of strategy (kill people). pure dmg dealers do the same. They disrupt the enemies first strategy by getting there first (we kill you faster than you can kill us)

The game gets interesting when people play on 2-4th level strategies.

2nd
I'll stop their dmg before it happens with enchants
I'll stop their dmg before it happens with hexes
I'll stop their healing with hexes

3rd
I'll stop their enchant's effects with strips
I'll stop their hexes with removal

4th
I'll use energy denial to prevent them from lowering our defence.
I'll knockdown their mesmers and keep them occupied.

I can keep listing options, but therein lies my point: there ARE options. healing ball HAS counters. NR on the other hand, does not. There's no anti spirit ability. something that negates spirits in area X. Enchants, however, ARE counterable. Inspired, shatter, rend, chillblains, profane, strip, lingering. Enchants can be proactively stopped by toploading dmg on undefended targets (omg, they're spiking a warrior? idiots! oh, wait, we have no defence on him and he's using frenzy...).

If anything, enchant removal is fine, a toning down on rend's dmg cost, a 20 or 15 cost for chillblains is all that's really required. Spellbreaker, however, should be completely revamped, because there are only 2 skills in the game which can strip enchants when its on, and one of them requires dead people. Maybe 75% of spells fail on a SB enchanted person. Obsidian flesh, however, is fine as is, since it can't be chained, unless you're running an E/Me.

That might be it....for part of the problem...


ratatass