Gaile, answer these questions please

Hello Gaile, how's it going ?

As a member of the PvP community I feel a little left out that you never really give solid replies to PvP questions and yet visit the threads that have Sorrow's Furnace and PvE related issues. Many members of the PvP community, myself included, would like to get a clear and definitive answer to the following questions:

- When will the fix to Nature's Renewal be made ? Not a number but would appreciate if you would tell us if it's going to be in a week, two weeks, a month or a few months
- Same reply in reference to Fertile Season
- Many skills in this game are incredibly useless and offer no strategic elements to the game. Bringing such skills only hampers one's build both in PvE and PvP. The best example is Rust. Who would bring such a skill ? There are other skills like this that once the numbers are crunched really aren't worth it at all. Will there be a rebalance of most skills in a forseable future ?
- What is the current state of the alpha test ? Have all efforts gone into PvE and PvP has taken a dive ? Are there All-Calls dedicated to testing PvP portions of thegame ?
- I hope the developpers realize that before implementing new skills they should rebalance the existing ones.

This isn't a flame bait of any sort and I don't want the thread to become a huge argument. Just some clear non-BS answers will suffice.

Thanks in advance

PvP only for faction unlocks.

Well if you read the latest update letter, that answers some of your questions.

Some of the others are an opinion. And I dont think I have ever seen a dev respond to a direct dev addressed topic. You could be a first if they respond .

I remember back when the build was W/mos and a few monks. It was all run in and take heavy damage. Now its all monks and eles, the run away and pray you dont chip a nail doing so. And then those groups started using enchants so they could hold up more. So a bunch of rangers flood in spreading spirits like rabbits that drain energy and kill enchants. And now the warriors are comming back to kill the rangers.

Every build has a weakness and for monks, its usualy NR. So if they did answer your first question it would most likely be no. I could be wrong though.

This is true, as thats the only real way that paper-rock-scissors game can work without it being total luck. However we hit a problem were the cycle can't advance. Hexes + enchantments beat warriors (argue somewhere else) but NR is the end all for them. So basically once something like this happens the meta game is largely stuck. The whole premise of GW is that this doesn't happen, so it would seem that it should be taken care of 'rather' soon.

I think this accurately sums up what has happened in PvP. The metagame seemed to be working nicely, as above posters elaborated on, until the NR/spirit spam build arrived. Now we have a build that is an order of magnitude more powerful than it's competition. So instead of rock/paper/scissors, we have "rock of friggin gibraltar"/"everything else". This is preventing the metagame from moving forward and evolving very much.

Hi! I'm Gaile's best friend, Leroy (ok, maybe not). Let me see if I can help you answer some of your questions.

The last 'State of the Game' letter implied that re-balance of skills will take place before a new season and will be announced so as not to scew up the current plans designed by teams. This may or may not include spirit adjustments. Additionally, it seems that NR and FS spamming hasn't stopped some non-Ranger teams from succedding (as rare a it is right now)... how about figuring out what they are doing tin against these skills?

One man's garbage is amother man's treasure. In energy draining builds that target monks, what do the healers do when the mana's near 0 to stay active? Signet rings. Mesmers have a number of Signet rings that might be combined to disrupt another team's plans as well.

Something like Rust is perfect in shutting down those strats, as it lasts for 35+ seconds (with high stats) in making them take 3x longer to cast something not affected by Nature's Renewal or other anti-cast time skills. Sure, it's not used NOW by many, but don't ask for a tool adjustment to something a select few may find to be awesome in their builds if/when Signet shutdown becomes more significant.

The last letter says they are doing internal testing with their new ideas. We have to wait for further announcements.

Maybe. Or maybe people are still slowly learning what beats what. We'll see because IMHO, if the answers are already in the game and not enough people are using it, then no major changes neew to be made. If it turns out that all the complaints are correct from what ANet knows of their system, they'll make some decisions on adjustments I'm sure.

The only adjustment I hope they finally wake up to realizing is that UAX in some form is an important part of serious competitive play, as in any serious competitive activity other than GW. Anything less takes away from skillful, fair competition by forcing PvE play mechanics into a mode where it doesn't fit. I can play for hundreds of hours in PvE mode without forced PvP elements, and only want the same when I'm in PvP mode.

From the letter, apparently more faction adjustments will be made eventually - if skills icons, equipment, and other related gear costs 90% less and our faction earnings are doubled, that would take care of this problem. Best thing is to eliminate it altogether and give PvE members tons of gameplay rewards that don't involve things needed during the planning stages of PvP so they can feel their adventuring will still offer valuable goodies at the end.

It was either here or at tgh where Gaile said she was going to ask the devs and NR imbalances. I wonder what responce she got.

What do you mean rust is useless? Every proffesion has several signets, and wouldn't it be nice to kill that last person in PvP before they get their rez signet off on their monk with light of dwayna? Yes it would. I've only seen a couple skills that are useless in PvP but always have a use in PvE like winter. It has little use in PvP (accept to cancel aeromancer armor if using a spiker build) but it is almost essential to beat the missions in the Ring or Fire missions.

Or you could take an extra damage skill for the same affect.

^^Uh... Mantra of Frost, anyone?

Yes, beware of the Monk with Light of Dwayna... Those pesky DW healers are really a nuisance.

There are not enough signet to make rust usefull in any build atm really... Putting rust on somene at the end so he doesnt res wont be "usefull" as u most likely alrdy won...Its just a wasted slot.

Winter is FAR from useless in pvp... and far from necesary in RoF also

I think the problem is. If you do anything to NR. Smiters wouldnt have much of a counter. Maybe a team of necros, or mesmers.

Appearantly NR is causing a stop in the constant circle of changing builds. I still dont understand it, and im not going to go read a 33 page flame war to figure out what it is.

All I know, is theres probably an ingame solution to the problem and nobody has figured it out yet.

Come to think of it, theres nothing you can do about shouts and stances.

Wild blow for stances, but its not like the stances affect multiple characters. Of course only one shout is offensive in nature and even that can be limited in a number of ways by denying the adrenalin gain. Other shouts dont really have a counter, but many of them either suck so bad that having a counter to them would cause many people to laugh, or are very situational in nature and defensive in addition to having small areas of effect. In some instances the shout effects are duplicated in other areas with a more potent and more sustainable effect.

Enlighten me about pvp

I would imagine it has to do with the fact few people wear armour with a bonus vs cold attacks. Aeromancer seems to be the most common among Elementalists; rarely do I see a Ranger in Frostbound. Add to it a Mantra of Frost and you take very little damage from the enemy's elemental attacks as well.

If you use Greater Conflag+Winter, I am pretty sure that then ALL damage would be cold damage

This is the topic. Stay on it.

Many of us would like something beyond vague indications that ArenaNet is doing something about it. Many of us would also like for those of you who want to debate Winter in a thread that has nothing to do with Winter to go post it somewhere else.

As I said a while ago, maybe there isn't anything wrong with Nature's Renewal. Maybe the devs intended it that way. Maybe it's not so powerful, but we idiots just haven't found a counter to it and the devs are laughing it up over it.

OK I have cleaned out flames and useless doo doo from this thread and will reopen it on the condition that everyone stays on topic. If you want to flame or add comments that are not on topic, this will be closed faster than someone's mouth when the dentist hits a raw nerve. OddSock has posted a decent thread that deserves attention, not a flame war. Take it to PMs if you can't be civil and ON TOPIC.

In case anyone's forgotten the topic:

Well, I don't really think there are that many useless skills. Rust, for example could be combined with Primal Echo to pretty much stop any res signets while you use your damage skills to take down the res-attempting foe.

Perhaps at some point there would be an HoH build for a bunch of monks running around spamming signet smites.

I don't really think there are any worthless spells, just the way you calculate and use them.

Hmm...I have never used Rust. Seems that Spell has been used on me over the years on a few of my automobiles.

Maybe that spell will work on that big metal robot looking thing in Sorrow's Furnace coming out soon. Watch him fall to dust.

I could know I'm facing a team with a pair of signet Mesmers, three Monks with Signet of Devotion and Signet of Judgement, and an assorted offense all with Ressigs, and I still wouldn't bring Rust. That skill is bad beyond words.

I too would like to know *when* we can expect to see this game fixed. All the promises are nice and all, but every single day that goes by I see more players getting sick of the grind for PvP, more competitive players running off to Battlefield 2 or Counterstrike or even to WoW, where the grind is at least accompanied by the carrot. I'd like to know if you're going to keep on 'working on it', or actually fix this game while there are still people playing it, while I still have a guild that's interested in playing the gem that you've buried in 3,000 hours of grind.

You have an amazing PvP community here that is *begging* you to make this the competitive game that you promised it to be, that you envisioned when you set out to make it years ago. The potential is still there. I merely hope that you choose to realize it before the game is written off entirely.

Peace,
-CxE

I guess it's just me, and perhaps my opinion doesn't mean much as I rarely visit Tombs (although I PvP daily, either at Droknar Team or Kryta Random), but "nerfing" ANY of the skills that are already in place on this game seems a bit unfair to players who have utilised certain skills to their maximum effects.

An example of the foolishness I see in nerfing the skills we currently have...

If you had a team of 8 warriors, all using Sever Artery on 8 different foes, causing massive bleeding to an entire team, would any of you be justified in coming to this forum and whining about the fact that Sever Artery was being abused? I would say no. Why would I say no?

That's simple... Sever Artery is an easily-negated skill, just like EVERY OTHER SKILL on Guild Wars, if properly countered. Throw a mend ailment on any player currently bleeding, and the skill is properly countered, no major damage done.

Why are people complaining about spirit spamming? Because it makes it difficult to use skills you have taken for granted the entire time? And if this build is so invincible, why not run it against the team, using the same build, using the same skills, and hopefully better strategy, to counter?

Until Arena Net tells me that only a select 8 players can run a spirit-spamming build, and that I cannot run my own, I will never complain about the notion that it seems over-powered. Hey, some people consider Elite Skills to be overpowered, especially when they are brought to the Level 1-10 Ascalon Arenas for PvP. Yet, I don't see anyone (if they have spoken up, I apologize for not noticing) asking for hard-to-find elite skills to be removed from PvP altogether...

"Beating them at their own game" is a tactic that has been useful in just about any competitive video game ever made. If you are a better player then the opponent whoring you with a particular build, then use his build and beat him with it. The better player will win in that scenario, 9 times out of 10, with the one loss being credited to chance.

And, before any of you tell me that EVERYONE running a spirit-spamming build will make the game boring and repetitive, keep in mind that the current opinion of what's going on in HoH seems to be that spirit spams are being destroyed by Warrior builds that overpower them, while running on lower energy.

Stick to the topic ExDeity. This isn't about wether or not the complaints are viable. We've all been through this argument before, and anyone with half a brain would know that your logic and anyone else attempting to defend A.net in this way, is flawed.

On-topic:
Hi Gaile/Alex. Please don't run from the criticism. It doesn't bite that hard.

I was soloing UW today and wow.. Rust really does alot to stop my build. I gain almost no energy whille fighting Coldfire Nights unless smites are hitting me at the same time.

It's never really been a useless skills for the ENEMY to use in PvE. I was thinking another thing would be people healing themself using Signet of Devotion and Blessed Signet would be pretty ineffective.

I'de say it's about as useful as "Cleave" even

I wish there were some news or acknowledgement on the state of PVP too... It's getting to be stagnant, boring and monotonous if it keeps going the way it is.

First off, Gaile is NOT a dev (thank god for small favors). She has responded to direct posts in the past, but unfortunatly seems less inclined to respond to any that don't gush with love over all things herself and GW. I'm not certain which she is more likely to respond to, but expect it's the ones directed more toward her. She's also a bit of a twit, and has been guilty of flaming people who disagree with her. I'd put her down as one of the all time worst customer service reps I've ever directly dealt with. Right up there with the White House Press Secretary now that things aren't quite going Carl Rove's way ATM.

The OP asked direct questions, and you refered him to the vague hints of progress in that update note. That's hardly an effective answer. In an unrelated direct answer to the OP (getting rid of Rust would be a mistake. MGT had artifact removal, one of them actualy named Rust btw, that was "useless" for years. Artifacts sucked. Then they didn't, artifact decks sprang up, and suddenly EVERYBODY needed artifact removal.)

You remember way back to when it was W/Mo's? Which time? On release, or during Beta's? Gosh.

You're arguement of the "never ending circle of builds" is the company line, sure. It's also demonstrably crap. There is no way the cycle will go on forever unless:

1: The dev's make a concerted effort to rebalance skills just for the hell of it, and continue to rebalance them EVERY time the metagame dies down.

2: They add new skills, thus shaking up the metagame, faster than it can settle down.

This game is often compared to magic the gathering. Much of that comparison is valid, as far as the skills go. So how's about we learn from the several years of metagame, in several different formats, to get a clue about what we are in for?

There exists one build that is superior to all others. This is not my opinion, it is statistical fact. It will be found, by those who care enough to go through every skill, thinking of their interactions with every other skill, both on their own team as well as all opponents. Magic shows us this.

In the metagame, for every skill set, baring changes to that skill set (either new skills or rebalancing existing ones), there will be 1 dominant build. This build might not be apparent at first, and may take time to turn up, but once it does the metagame ALWAYS boils down to the dominant build vs. one or more counter builds. Occasionaly, the counter builds, if they are very good at countering the dominant, can open up the metagame for a third build, but this only happens once out of perhaps every 5th or so season. As Magic seasons are historicaly much shorter than GW seasons (we don't know how long a GW season will turn out to be, but MTG seasons are on average 4 months long), the metagame will be stagnant for a greater period of time.

What we do have going for us is this:

We have a vastly smaller community of dedicated players willing to invest the effort in finding that dominant build. There exists no person in GW that I have run across with the Finkel brand of obsession with his game.

It's also much easier for this game to be rebalanced in the event of a rediculously dominant build that can't be countered (as happened in MTG a couple of times, Tolarian Academy anyone?), because the computer skills can be theoreticaly rebalanced overnight, as opposed to the Magic cards being reprinted. That's why MTG has usualy resorted to bannings of broken skills. So there is some reason for hope, but the current state of affairs, with rebalancing seemingly far off, leaves doubt as to just how much hope.

With a stable environment, with no rebalancing and no new skills added, there WILL be a single dominant build, that much I guarantee. It's simple math. There will be a single best counter build to that dominant build as well. And those 2 builds will comprise the vast majority of teams playing, limited only by availability of the necessary skills. The exact percentages depends on how good the second build is at countering the dominant, and how vulnerable it is to other builds itself. If the counter is very vulnerable to other builds, but also very good at beating the dominant, it MAY open up the way for a third.

Example:

Rath cycle only, Pro Tour qualifier rounds.

Dominant: Recur/Survival. Beats just about everything, is very good overall, in fact so good that it's engine will later be banned to open up the metagame.

Counter: Sligh. Beats Recur much of the time just because it's fast. It runs out of steam fast too, so if there's any show down it's toast.

Third: Counter Phoenix. Slower than Sligh, but can usualy take it by massive removal, followed by control and slow beatdown. Faster than Survival, and the control can counter key spells that Survival needs to run its engine. (Just braging rights, I am the first person to attempt to use this deck in Rath cycle. I lose badly, but a better player takes it 2 weeks later and dominates with it.

Results: Recur/Survival starts out as dominant, but as long as Sligh remains in the mix Survival has to compromise its build, which allows Counter Phoenix to win overall. Sligh then drops out, leaving a head to head matchup, which Survival wins as it no longer has to worry about facing Sligh.

Counter Phoenix dominates the first few weeks, Survival dominates the next year or so. Sligh never makes the expected impact.

As I said, unless there is constant attention from the devs (highly unlikely given their near total lack of interest in PvP to date), something similar to this IS GUARANTEED to happen to Guildwars.

Not responding to the community's critical questions (which is her job, believe it or not) because someone who has shown how unsatisfied in the service he is in the past is viewing the subject aswell, would be an obvious childish display of unprofessionalism. However that wouldn't surprise me, because she has shown such actions in the past. Either way, with people she dislikes in this topic or not, it should never get in the way of doing one's job.