A radical take on NERFING

I have no problems with nerfing at all, so long as it is an effort to balance. Nerf the 105 monks, buff everyone else so any profession can solo the UW, its all the same to me, but there should be balance in the force. Every profession ought to be equally viable, every skill ought to have its place in some circumstance. There should be regions that one profession dominates and others where some other profession or skill is critical.

The exploitimonk build must be fixed so that there is balance and everyone and their dog doesn't play an exploitimonk on the side and so that normal healing monks can occassionally buy a superior monk rune at the trader.

The most expensive items in the game are the ones with no penalty to offset their bonuses. Look at superior vigor, superior absorption, and superior monk runes. In the case of superior monk runes, they were supposed to have a penalty, but a shamelessly copied skill exploit turns that penalty into a second significant benefit.

Here is my list of nerf suggestions for the sake of better balance (flame away):

(1) Add penalties to vigor and absorption runes (not health like other runes, since that wouldn't make sense, but an energy penalty: no penalty for a minor rune, -2 energy for a major vigor rune, and -3 energy for a superior vigor rune; same with absorption)

(2) Fix broken skills - this is in the works and doesn't need to be belabored, but some skills are used by everyone (protective bond) to compensate for actual skill at the game, and other skills are never used by anyone under any circumstances and ought to be (and are being) improved.

(3) Add some farming dungeons intentionally for solo farmers. Soloing is great fun, and though team play is also great fun, most teams are terrible and it is time consuming when people want to just find a true challenge for 1 or 2 level 20 characters at the same time. As the game is now, party size in PvE only goes in one direction: it rachets to bigger and bigger party sizes until level 20 players have to play with parties of 8 to get a challenge. Couldn't there be some end game randomized dungeons that could be tackled by 2 ascended characters together with challenge and difficulty, but not in a way that requires one specific build? It would be great if there were a dozen different dungeons with entrances that only allowed parties of 1 to 3 people, and that favored different professions and that each had different, unique drops. Then every profession is viable in the "farmers' market," and the challenges are plentiful. And there would be an incentive to play the less popular professions, because the dungeons that can only be soloed by mesmers (or best soloed by them), would have drops worth a lot more because the supply would be lower.

Those are my radical suggestions. I think they would dramatically improve the PvE end game, and add some variety to the professions people play and the skills they use.

Definately a radical take. The normal take is somewhere along the lines of "OMFGZZZ SOLO MONKS RUIN MY LIFE AND KILL ALL MY CHILDREN!!!!!!!!" Thank You for posting a coherent and intelligent thread.

Now on to your idea. I love the idea of dungeons designed for 1,2 and 3 man teams. That would cut down on people getting free rides through areas and increase the ability of buddies to do missions together without griefers ruining a good time. I pretty much agree with everything in your post, not much for me to say.

(1)Interesting take, but most people already have at least a major in pvp, and superiors are fairly easy to get with faction. If everyone is using them there is no real balance issue IMO.

(2)They are working on that, nerfed the spirits hard, but hey now new team ideas will get a go at hoh, tired of spirit spam and spike teams personally.

(3)I like the idea of 1-2 people areas, it was fun to run around by yourself in presearing, be nice to be able to do that sometimes in the postsearing.

I think you have some great ideas here. I guess we will have to wait until the weekend to see what changes they are making and then move on from there. Since the support team and developers listens to the community ideas like these will be taken seriously. I can't wait to see what they are going to do with this weekend update as well as the summer update.

One question. What's nerfing mean? I'm kinda new to the forum and I see this term a lot.

Nerfing = one thing that was overpowered is made less-powerful (ie. spirit spammers can no longer spam as many spirits), or an area that was originally easy to farm for good items/gold is "nerfed" and no longer has as good of drops or is made harder.

Wow... that's a lot of really great ideas. I'm impressed with how well thought out that is and how much fun that sounds like. Don't know if I totally agree with the penalty for Vigor runes.... maybe absorption, but not Vigor. Anyway... loved the rest of it and I really hope this thread gets some more support so that Anet will take a look and consider it.

Personally, I hate playing with 8 people. As a mesmer primary it is a chore to get into a group in the first place, and when I do, I pretty much have to take what I can get with the other players (not always a good thing). I miss being able to run around by myself, like in pre-searing, or the fun of grabbing one other person and going beyond the wall to hunt charr. That was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, after lvl20 unless you are an "uber" build character, which not all of want to be, it's pretty much impossible to go through areas to get stuff without a larger group.

I'm totally behind you on this one.

The idea of small group areas is fantastic!

I can understand why ANet has upped the group size progressively through the game, but to be honest the requirement for a full team of 6 or 8 people just to pass some missions can be a real pain. It's currently much easier to get a runner to do the mission for you at a cost of 2p than it is to put together a decent group of 6-8 people to attempt a mission. Even worse, an experienced solo runner probably has a better chance of pulling it off!

I'm not sure how easy it would be to scale the difficulty of a mission to the size of the group, but since this game is heavy into instanced adventuring so I'm sure it could be done.

I play in a very small guild and generally only have one or two of my friends on at a time. An 8 player mission is great if you're in a big guild, but several times I've turned the game off because my only option was a PUG. Anyone who has played a PUG has experienced the joy that comes from watching a group that took 15 minutes to form destroy itself in a mere 5 minutes. One person drops in the first couple fights, and the rest of us realize that we're missing a key ingredient like a competant nuker or healer. Go back to town, rinse, repeat.

Henchmen would be a good solution if they were a little tougher, or at least did competent damage. Right now I'd take one player over 3 henchies.

But I digress... woo hoo small group areas!

Koroh

nerf = fix, repair, total screw things up j/k on last comment

I don't agree with the absorption/vigor ideas.

They would only hinder warriors and to some extent rangers. Bad enough playing as a warrior with 20 energy, but knowing that unless I strap on the gladiator's set I'm limited to skills with a 10 energy cost. That or I use an offhand with +energy but the sacrifice of 16 armor for -3 damage? Ditto for +50 health, just not worth it in the end.

Many will argue that a warrior should be wearing gladiator's regardless but I prefer the extra AL against spells provided by my wyvern ensemble. Even still for +50 health and -3 damage, I would have 22 energy at my disposal. Not enough to use some skills from the only secondary that warriors have.

I particularly like the 3rd idea, and the second one is being implemented this weekend which we informed of through an IGN interview.

I think that you have some very good ideas here, The alternate types of dungeons is a great idea as I'm sure everyone will agree that a required team of 8 players that all know what they are doing and will all get along can be more challenging to come up with than the actual battles in fow. I think as you can already see in some of the previous posts here that you will never get people to agree on the rune penalties because if it doesn't directly affect the current build they are useing it's ok to change and if it does well you just can't change that. And on that note the superior absorbtion already carries a bit of a penalty 80k to 100k a peice. In the spirit of full disclosure I play a Warrior that is struggling to get all the extra energy that I can "so you just can't change that".. LOL

This is exactly my point: I think there should have to be some consideration as to whether or not you want to use a superior absorption or a superior vigor. A penalty to balance it out and add some variety. You have to weigh the option. Maybe you want to use both and heavy armor and go with only adrenaline skills? Maybe you want to use minor absorption and vigor so you have more energy for a few energy skills, including some with high energy requirements. It makes the gameplay deeper if there are less options that are "no brainers." There shouldn't be any "no brainers." Right now, if you can afford those two runes, you would be a fool not to use them. But if they had penalties like everything else, there would be situations to use them and situations to not use them.

No skill should be a no brainer, no profession or build should be a no brainer, and no rune should be a no brainer.

I don't agree with 1 like a lot of us..but the rest are good. Warriors have low enough energy as is, no need to kill that too.

Exploiti-monks exist in your head.

Stupid.

1, Faction for sup monk runes. 2, its not an exploit. 3, I didnt know dogs played guild wars. Maybe we should have GuildWarsChewbones instead of guru? Not.

I guarntee any heal monk would definatly look at the sup healing rune's -75 hp as a penalty.

Then the warriors and other characters complain about it. Also, very stupid.

Actual skill? I dont think there is a build in this game that requires more skill than prot bond. Its just clicking your skillbar and timing it.

Least retarded thing said so far!

Nope, I dont see very many improvements... ggkthxs!

Legendary Battousai ; That was very insightful and well thought out thanks for your input. There is an old saying that comes to mind " It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt" But thanks again for your contribution to this discusion.

Very appropriate quote, and you beat me to commenting on his post. Nice job.


Personally, I don't have any comments for issues #1 or #2... but #3 would be great. I'd love even more areas to go and be challenged along with a friend or two. That's a really great idea.

Mark Twain.

Warriors have a hard enough time getting into groups, let alone adding yet another problem with them. The -energy on vigor would only hinder warriors and I don't see how that is fair. Prehaps if warriors had 3 pips of regen I wouldn't mind.

I'm really feeling this solo play area idea. Just you, maybe your pet, and a whole lotta soon to be dead baddies! Not that I have anything against playing with a team or with henchies (actually, I hate henchies), but sometimes it's nice to witness the awesome power of your character by itself. Not have to rely on your team so much, and just have fun looting and killing.

Rock on dude! Y'got some awesome ideas there!

I don't know about the - energy for warriors, but it is a good reason. Warrior runes as they are are very overpowerful. Maybe some other penalty could be implemented besides the energy. With the other two, I agree wholeheartedly. Great ideas! Devs need to look at this thread.

That Mark Twain quote was very apt.

LOL! Nobody is buying their Superior Monk runes to unlock for PvP! Faction doesn't have anything to do with this.

Very well said.

I agree with you completely.

Thank you Blue Steel for your inciteful and well written post.

I would love to see some special dungeons for solo or small teams. I think it would be rather easy to set these up. One way would be to set up areas similar to the ones already in existance. Relatively static amounts of monsters all in a certain level range. After exploring a few times you'll figure out you want to partner with an interrupt mesmer because there are many casters in the area, or your healing monk really needs a tank to take all that melee damage. Another way A.Net could provide this would be to set up a formula for an instanced dungeon. For example: Monk is lvl 20. Warrior is lvl 16. 20+16=36 lvls worth of players. 36 lvls / 2 players = 18 average. Most of the monsters should spawn around level 18 for a decent challenge. Also since there are only two players, monsters should only appear in groups of two to four. More then that could prove overkill (too deadly and probably not worth farming).

As far as certain zones where one class outshines the rest... I'm not too sure about that. I like the idea; really I do. Right now areas full of casters should be a warrior's dream -- low HP + low AL = quick kills. Just have to make sure Mr. Warrior stays alive long enough to complete the kills. Likewise, areas full of melee monsters make elementalists happy. Just have a tank out front absorbing the damage and feel free to Firestorm/Chain/etc everything to death. Special zones set up with one class in mind seems like a good idea as long as they all have the same drops. Otherwise all the warriors will complain "Hey the monk area has more ecto drops NERF IT!!!". And we don't need more of that....

As far as the runes carrying an offset of -energy, I must disagree. Yes, I play a warrior/monk. Yes, I'm wearing major vig/abs until I save up for the sup runes. But as a W/Mo I know my job... take all the damage and keep the monks alive so they can concentrate on the rest of the party. Part of my survival depends on my ability to self heal when necessary. (Yep... I carry around Mending or Live Vic all the time.) Also, I play a Necro and an E/Mo. I surely want the tanks in the group to have as much AL, absorption, and HP as they possibly can. Again, if the tank takes all the hits and can survive, the monk can concentrate healing where it is needed, and I can concentrate on keeping the monk happy or nuking. That makes for a more effecient party. I don't think the warrior runes are overpowering. Any good necro/mesmer can tell you that degen will ruin any warrior's day.

Again, thanks for your post. I hope some of the devs will take this to heart and give us some nice, small-party dungeons.