Ether Lord question

What is the benefit of using the spell Ether Lord? As I see it, you have only 2 benifits from the spell, neither of which is standout alone, but perhaps combined makes this spell viable.

At maximum the spell will cause -3 degen to foe, and +3 regen to you for energy. Since it uses all your remaining energy, the spell is limited to use only when you are at or just above 10 energy to begin with.

Benefit number one: you cause a degen to your opponent.
Warrior: (2 regen normally) you actually cause a net -1 degen, or a loss of (.33x9) ~3 energy lost over 9 seconds.
Ranger: Push. The ranger will not gain or loss any energy from the spell, but it will cause an effective loss of 9 energy that would have been regained in that time.
Caster: creates a +1 regen (+4-3) or a regen of only ~3 energy over the 9 seconds.

Benefit two is your energy pool.
You will not gain any net energy from the spell, in fact you lose some that you would have regained had you not cast the spell.
Example: You cast at 10 energy, dropping you down to 0. With a now +7 regen, you gain back (.33X7)(9)~20.79 energy after the 9 seconds, leaving you at just under 21 energy.
Had you NOT cast the spell, you would have regained (4X.33)(9)~ 11.88 energy, leaving you at 10+11.88 or 21.88 energy. So, you are little behind what you would have been at, had you never cast the spell.

So, what is the only benefit I see for your energy? The ability to regain energy faster, and therefore cast more spells in the 9 seconds than you would have been able to do otherwise.
Under EL, you will gain back energy at a rate of 2.31 points/sec. So, you get 5 energy every 2.2 seconds, meaning you can get four 5 energy spells off under the duration. 10 points every 4.3 secs, so two 10 point spells, and 15 energy ever 6.5 secs, so you get 1 spell.

Without EL, you regain energy at 1.3 points/sec. You get 5 points every 3.8 secs, or 2 spells etc...

Therefore, you will be able to cast off (approximately) twice as many spells under the 9 sec duration of Ether Lord. However, you will do so under very taxing energy concerns, of at or near zero.

I can only see these 2 benefits from this particular spell, and again, that is only at the maximum settings of the spell.

Is it worth taking this spell when there are (on the surface) much cheaper energy stealing spells that will put you at a better energy advantage? Or is the (2x) spell casting worth taking this spell as one of eight?

The benefit of using Ether Lord is that if you see your opponent using it you'll know they're a fool and you're going to beat them.

Seriously, while not in the "laughable joke" catagory that is Unnatural Signet, Ether Lord is pretty darn poor. As you say, it wipes out your remaining energy and creates a swing of 9 energy between you and your opponent. At best. You get 9 more energy (in other words, not enough to even recast the darn thing) and they get 9 less over the course of the duration. It makes some sense on, say, a Warrior/Mesmer who's going to cast it at or around 10 energy anyway. But compare that to something like Energy Tap where you'll create a swing of 13 energy at that Inspiration 12 with that same recharge time, 5 less energy, and without sacrificing the rest of your energy pool. It's also not a hex so it can't be removed.

As for casting more spells, the problem there is not typically energy but the restraints of recharge and casting times. Granted, with Ether Lord you've created a problem because you'll start at 0 en. But the real question is how many skills you can pack into those 5~9 seconds. And Ether Lord does nothing to change that. Because you won't have enough energy to begin with you're stuck with low-cost skills. You'll need about 5 seconds before you can cast a 10 energy spell. 7 before you cast that 15 energy spell. Unles you're loading up on the forgettable spammable skills like Flare or Stone Daggers or whatever, those higher-cost skills are really what you want to sling...

Someday, someway, that might be a Good Thing. Just not today.

An important way to evaluate "over time" (OT) skills like Ether Lord is to look at its net present value. Basically, Ether Lord does (at most) 3*9 worth of energy drain, or 27 points of energy. However, this is not done immediately, so you must take this into account. In finance you have something called a "discount rate", which is in essense the interest someone would have to pay you to defer your gratification. Assuming a 10% discount rate, the maximum NPV of Ether Lord is 19.5 -- not 27.

3 + (3*0.9) + (3*0.9*0.9) + ... + (3*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9)

So, even on its face value, against Energy Tap (13 drain _now_ ), the energy damage per point expended is 13/5=2.6 vs 19.5/10=1.9 -- so without _any_ other considerations, Energy Trap is 30% more effective. Even if Ether Lord didn't have a penalty (your energy going to 0), it's still be worse off than Energy Trap. And this doesn't take into account the added risk of having an open Hex that can be shattered or removed; in reality the discount rate for EtherLord is probably closer to .3, giving you a NPV of 9.5, or 1 damage per point expended (compared to Energy Trap's 2.6).

Given these considerations, there is just no point in using Ether Lord. If the Devs wanted to make it better here are opportunities to ballance it:

- make it drain from _all_ nearby foes
- get rid of the penalty, and increase the decrease the max drain to 4
- make the casting time 0

Right now, it's just so underpowered that it only serves to indicate that the user is a fool...

Javascript code that implements this or use Excel's NPV.


function NPV(increment, duration, discount) {
accum = increment;
if(duration > 1) {
increment = increment * (1.0 - discount);
accum += NPV(increment, duration -1, discount);
}
return accum
}

Nice analysis cce. However, I must point out that a pip of energy regen is not equal to 1 energy. It's the equivalent of gaining 1 energy over 3 seconds. Therefore, Ether Lord's maximum of 3 pips for 9 seconds is 1 energy every 1 second for 9 seconds or 9 energy. Not 27.

So, if I understand things Ether Lord is far more abysmal than even you think it is.

The lose all energy penalty is really what kills Ether Lord. Without it you could use it for what Dayala suggests - supercharging your regen over a short period of time at the expense of the long term. I could see some uses for that. But since it kicks you in the nuts before it even gets started it's just extremely poor.

If I were to redo Ether Lord I'd make it something like "Drain 5...15 energy from target opponent. For every 5 points of energy drained you gain 1 regeneration for 3...12 seconds." Short casting time, long cooldown.

Correct, as I envisioned, it would only be used when you had ten (or just over) energy. Then, it might be useful to cast off any spammable 5 energy, short cooldown spells. Effectively, you would double your spam production over a 9 seconds window.

I am hopeful that this spell will be changed. As it stands now, it is several of 'near useless' spells.

Thanks for the input, and if anyone sees any other useful benefits that I am missing, please let me know. Otherwise, I will have to add this spell to my "only use when drunk" list.

does the ranger ritual Energizing Wind cause Ether Lord to only cost 10 no matter when you cast it?

Not that this would make it more usefull but its one thing you may be able to get around.

Looking at my numbers for my "improved" Ether Lord I realise it's not that much more worthwhile. Still, numbers can be played with. Maybe "steal 1...5 energy, you gain 1 regen for every point drained for x long". The point is, take some energy, get a quick boost to your regen. Forget this "Energy Siphon" idea they seem to be working towards...

Yeah, I've been puzzling over how to get a build that would make that worthwhile (It's part of my ongoing jealousy of all the fun Freyas has.) and the best I've come up with is a Mesmer/Elementalist to spam Water Trident but it's not all that good.

Fast Casting 10
Inspiration Magic 10
Water Magic 11

Water Trident {E} (Water)
Arcane Echo (Illusion)
Ether Lord (Inspiration)
Energy Drain (Inspiration)
Energy Tap (Inspiration)
Conjure Frost (Water)
Ice Spikes (Water)
Maelstrom (Water)

You could sub in Inspired Enchantment instead of Energy Drain, too. Maelstrom's a good thing to drop on grouped casters and Ice Spikes'll help you snare targets for the rest of your team, and Water Trident can be tossed in every ow and then, too for some added damage. Energy Tap and Energy Drain mean you're pretty good on both energy denial and management. But the general idea would be to cast until you started to run out of energy, say you hit 20 energy or so, then Echo your Water Trident, cast/wait to hit around 10 energy, cast Ether Lord, and spam away because the recharge times should match about the time you'd get 5 energy. Conjure Frost is there to give you some more damage while you're waiting for that first 5 energy. Once Ether Lord and/or Echo runs out Tap that energy and you should be able to repeat the process all over in a short bit of time.

The question is whether or not it's really worth it. You could get similar results from just Trident+Echo plus some better energy management techniques. With a few more points of energy here and there you could spam two Tridents as quickly as this build and have anoter slot for something else. Ether Lord's just there as a gimmick for when your energy pool gets blown. And with the right Tactics you could work it so you blew it your ownself in order to make EL work. Still, I'm not sold on any strategy that requires me to burn through my resources without a care in order to make it work.

Just as long as you don't use it with one hand down your pants...

Ouch. Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot. This skill is utterly useless then - the skill that removes nature rituals is at least more up-front about its uselessness.

Hey, now. Unnatural Signet is the perfect counter to rituals. Six months ago.

Now, of course, it's complete and utter trash. I don't think Ether Lord is that useless. But it's not that much better.

Well, Ether Lord is not complete trash, but given that there are better skills to use that do the same thing, it's not worth bringing into a battle. It's more focused around shutting down your opponents energy, rather than gaining energy yourself. Once you've used skills like Energy Tap, Power Leak, etc to empty your opponents energy pool, you can use Ether Lord to keep them from getting energy to use a skill. The biggest problem I have with the skill is the "Lose all your energy" part. That's what makes it worse than Malaise, Panic, or other skills that provide similar energy degeneration effects. With -3 pips of regeneration, it has the potential to be very powerful for shutdown, but the cost of the skill is not worth the benefit that it provides.

As for the energy swing in comparison to Energy Tap, they're useful for different situations- Energy Tap is nice when the opponent has energy- Ether Lord is best when they have no energy, to prevent them from being able to get any back. Once you have them at 0, waiting for them to get enough energy to achieve your gain via Energy Tap, they'll be able to use their skills, whereas you get the swing with Ether Lord even if they aren't able to do anything.

It's like hitting the taunt button. The goal is to do something so ridiculous that your opponent goes into a blind rage and starts making mistakes.


This is just flat out wrong - you cast spells *slower* by using Ether Lord, not faster. Why? The 10 energy cost up front.

Don't make this more complicated than it is. With Ether Lord up, you'll regen 21 energy in 9 seconds. Without it you regen 12 and save the 10 energy that you would have spent to cast Ether Lord. That means that after 9 seconds you'll have more energy not casting Ether Lord.

What about at the beginning? If you cast Ether Lord, you will have 0 energy to regen from - so you won't be casting anything. Without casting Ether Lord, you'll have at *least* 10 energy at the beginning of the 9 second period. So you'll have more energy at the beginning and more energy at the end, with linear energy per second returns. What does that mean? It means that at any point in time during those nine seconds when Ether Lord might be up, you would have *more* energy if you had not cast Ether Lord. Every instant.

So you cannot cast more spells because of Ether Lord - in fact, you lose the ability to cast spells by using it, not just by denying yourself energy but by denying yourself energy *now*.


Given that the assumptions that you made to conclude that Ether Lord actually helps you cast spells are illogical, and that the net result of such analysis is just plain wrong, I think it's safe to say that Ether Lord is complete and utter drek that you should never play in any serious contest.


Ah, now this is an actually useful topic - how much the value of energy depreciates over time. It should be obvious that getting energy *now* is more valuable than getting energy later - you want to cast spells when they're needed and not several seconds too late - but the question is *how much* does energy depreciate?

To figure out the discount rate on energy, you need to know just what a pip of energy regen is worth, in raw energy up front. Basically, what should the value of X on a +1 energy regen, -X max energy mod be?

Part of this question is just how long you expect the relevant part of a battle to last. The longer the battle, the more valuable the pip and the lower the discount rate. The faster the battle, the more energy you'd like to have up front. Given that you have two minutes between respawns, that's a reasonable max on the length of a battle - most are much shorter, being around the 1 minute mark. This puts a limit on the value of a pip, since you certainly don't want to be giving up 20 energy on a pip that won't return that much before the battle ends.

Combine something like this with some experience with the game and what the tradeoffs are, and you'll get a figure of around 15 energy as the break point on a pip - some characters will be willing to give up a pip for 12 energy, others would need 20 up front to give up the pip, but in general 15 is about where the tradeoff is.

From there it's trivial to figure out the discount rate - it's just the inverse of the breakeven time. It takes you 45 seconds for a pip to generate 15 energy, so the discount rate on energy regeneration is 1/45, or .0222-

So the value of three pips of regeneration, over the course of nine seconds, is around (45/46 * (45/46)^2 * ... * (45/46)^9) = 8.08 energy. Over short timeframes the value of energy isn't going to depreciate much - but that's to be expected. But since we know the discount rate - 1/45 - we can figure out the actual, current value of a bunch of future energy management options.

Peace,
-CxE

Ensign, after review, I agree with your assessment. I was incorrect in my calculations, and I thank you for pointing it out to me. I am truly appriciative at the help and attention that I recieved from this post, and I understand the game mechanics more because of it. I am again convinced that this is not a useful spell, and should not be used. Moreover, my question about benefits stands: there are not really any viable benefits as the spell currently stands.


Thanks for the comments. You really know how to make a new poster feel welcomed, and not intimidated to post here. I know that I will strive to find more "useful topics" that are deserving of time and attention.

No. Energizing Winds lowers the cost to cast a skill to a maximum/minimum of 10 energy. It doesn't do anything about side effects. When you cast Ether Lord under Energizing Winds you'd pay 10 energy, Ether Lords would go off, and you'd lose all your remaining energy. Energizing Winds isn't going to do anything about that.

Even if it did, it's still trash as even without losing all your energy it's a poor comparison to things like Energy Tap, as cce's pointing out.

Hey, now. Chuck is a jerk. But he's our jerk. I don't believe he was trying to insult you or anyone else because he knows if he was he'd be out of here on his ear. There's a separation between attacking someone's argument and attacking them personally, after all, and while he, and others, will vigorously attempt to combat someone's facts that doesn't mean they object to the person who stated them or are trying to belittle them in some way.

See, he has this hang up where there's low strategy and high strategy, where knowledge is hierarchical rather than cumulative, and he doesn't care to bother with the low-end of the pool. Some of us happen to disagree and would point out, for example, that without your asking a quote unquote basic question that he and cce wouldn't have had the excuse to break out their sliderules and make our heads spin and our eyes bleed. It's a cliche, but the stupid, the unworthy questions are the ones that don't get asked (Or, from my point of view, the ones that get asked fifteen times a day without bothering to check if they've already been answered by doing something like running a simple search. But that's another issue). All of us here had to find our knowledge somewhere. All of us had to start by asking the basic questions to further our understanding. That's what this site is all about. We're all benefited when we can share and grow our knowledge and that all starts when we try and question and teach each other. And while Ensign might consider a topic beneath him or uninteresting, let me assure you that although he's a site contributor and although he's certainly aided this site very much, he's not a member of our staff nor does he speak for this site. He's not the one who gets to decide what's "useful" and what's not. You are. You, nor anyone else, should post what you feel is going to benefit you the most. If other people don't like it, they're free to ignore it.

We, at this site, don't segregate our knowledge, our expertice into ranks and levels and say some of it is worthwhile and some isn't. We just don't know. Sometimes it's that basic question that sparks the wheels that comes up with the newest innovation. Sometimes what someone thinks is basic and simple is actually something no one else's thought of. We're here to try and let things like that happen. To let everyone gain more knowledge and more understanding of the game we love. So don't let Ensign or anyone else intimidate you from posting. And if you feel intimidated by someone talk to me or another mod or admin here and we'll set things straight. This is a place where people can talk openly and honestly about the facts and about the issues. As long as things stay within our guidelines which hopefully create a safe place for such discussion. Debate can get heated, discussion can get passionate, but that's okay - if it wasn't worth getting excited about it wouldn't be worth talking about - as long as things aren't personal. When, and only when, they are, that's when the staff of this site steps in to correct things and give everyone a gentle nudge in the right direction. Discuss the facts, not your fellow poster, and everything's fine.

Alternately, it gives you an opportunity to kill them while they're busy rolling around on the floor laughing.

Dayala: Now you know why Ensign is called the Stark Fist of Reality.

Thanks for the feedback, and clarifications. I am not sure if I am alone in being intimidated by the overwhelming knowledge that is presented here, and I know that I have a hefty amount of learning before me (with respect to GW). Therefore, I do truly appriciate the help and understanding...and yes, the corrections to my incorrect posts/thoughts/conclusions.

Never meant to infer that. I just meant to infer that it was rather intimidating, and unwelcoming. Sorry if I came across differently.

If I made you feel unwelcome I apologize - that certainly was not my intention. There is nothing wrong, or 'beneath me', with this topic - I'm actually happy that this was posted, because it's an important topic.

The goal was simply to analyze the facts, in a cold, objective, impersonal manner. If you don't get the fundamentals right, then all of the discussion that follows from those fundamentals ends up being null, void, and a waste of everyone's time. Your train of thought was generally heading in the right direction, it just needed to be put back on track.

One thing to keep in mind is that when I'm replying, I'm not just replying to you, but to everyone who is reading the thread. When Saus writes his novels it's because he expects that everyone reading doesn't have a clue about the topic at hand - so everything has to be spelled out in exasperating detail. When I post an argument I'm not just trying to convince you, but everyone who's reading the thread and who will ever read it - and I'd rather have everyone understand the argument in question, to get it right, than to have everyone like me.

So, by all means, post whatever you think would be useful to discuss, and I'll help however I can. I just ask that you not take comments and criticisms of your ideas personally.

Peace,
-CxE

I know some of you will groan when I post this. It is not my intention to ressurect this thread after all the beating Ether Lord has taken. But here's my speal;

It IS useful in one singular tactic (which was touched on but not explored enough). Once you get an opponent to zero and want to keep them there, while you are at the bottom of your pool, it is a viable option that should allow you to spam mind wrack without having to worry about them jumping past Zero. Malaise and panic will not prevent them from gaining slowly at -2. As long as there regen is stalled completely you can effectively spam a skill like mind wrack (which is great in cost and recharge). In fact, with high levels of fast cast a quick succession of mind wrack, getting them to zero (through many different ways) and then using Ether Lord to hold them, signet of weariness to clear to zero( or channelling might work in conjuction with wrack *not sure about this) and wrack again, all within the 9 seconds spell duration.

The beauty is that they are doing nothing with skills during this time, and high levels of dom will yield close to 200 damage within a time frame of less than 5 secs. Now that they are low in pool and ether lord is still running, gaining 5 energy for another Wrack and another 5 for tapping them to zero before they surpass 13 should be cake. Another 94 dmg. Whee!

Just a thought

btw I did make a build around this and I am waiting for beta to test my theory

I'm not groaning. Maybe now Chuckles and Dayala will take their newly founded mutual admiration society outside.

The problem wth using Ether Lord to deny someone their energy regeneration once you've dropped them to the zero state is that it's not worth much. You've denied them their energy, you've won. Slapping them with degeneration at that point is a "win more" move. It's not helping you get to the win point, it's helping you stay there. It's better to concentrate on getting to that win state because it's pretty darn hard to get to.

Okay, let's say you've got a Ranger/Mesmer. You're running Debilitating Shot to hammer away at someone's energy and you decide to take Ether Lord, too, to deny them their regeneration. You drop them to 0 and then you tag them with Lord. Nice. Why couldn't you just keep firing Debilitating Shot at them? Wasn't it working before? It'll rob them the fruits of their regen out of the zero state and a lot more effectively and efficiently than Ether Lord will, won't it? Why waste a slot on a skill that's not adding that much when you only have so few?

Even if your target is getting BiPed or running Ether Prodigy that's only a regeneration of 6 or 7, at best, that's around 2 energy every second. Ether Lord will deny 1 energy every second. Debilitating Shot will deny about 3, depending on the bow you use. You won't be able to out-regen that Deb Shot. It's a lot bigger a hammer to energy than Ether Lord and it cost a lot less, can be used a lot more frequently, and on and on...

I see your point. I merely was thinking of something to keep them from attaining 5 energy skills which they could activate if I was hammering with debilitaing shot. For 9 seconds my energy would be growing while theirs is not (unless they happen to be using what you mentioned). I think that safety net is the whole point of this skill, useless or not. I am not sure what other skills offer this protection, where you could be right next to any foe and not worry about what they will do for a period of time (except perhaps signet rings or other allies but I wanted to keep it simple).

Since there is no skill I know of that says "target cannot regain energy for * seconds" this would be the closest to it. I agree that this needs to be tweaked a little as well.

btw you guessed my profession! how astute! Debil is in the build, so we must be on some sort of the same level.

That is interesting. The skill text is obviously misleading for it reads like this:

So by this definition, the skill would activate regardless. But if you have tried it out I would take gameplay over text.

Never trust skill descriptions. They lie.

Peace,
-CxE

A very good strategy in keeping one caster close to 0 with a skill like Malaise or Ether Lord. You can proceed in harassing a 2nd caster with your debilitating shot. With that strategy you can harass two casters at the same time.

This would work, except that Ether Lord takes ALL of your energy, doesn't it? So you couldn't shoot Debilitating shot for a little while, therefore, unable to shut down another caster.

Aye, but the point Rex was trying to get across is that using a skill that will keep a caster close to 0 is not a very good strategy when you can just keep using Debilitating Shot on the mentioned target. I disagree with him and that's why I posted the above post. The specific skill that you actually use to give your enemy energy degeneration is trivial.

I think the biggest problem with Ether Lord is that it's greatest effect can be achieved much more easily and much better by Malaise. The only reason I can see to use Ether Lord is if you're shutting down an enemy with energy denial skills, and need to keep them from regenerating enough to use any of their skills. However, you can get pretty much the exact same effect from Malaise, without the stupid "Lose all your energy" penalty, for a much longer duration. You do stop an extra pip with Ether Lord, but really- that's 1 energy every 3 seconds difference.... save yourself the energy up front and use it for something more worthwhile.

The only time I would use Ether Lord is if I was running an energy denial build that did not have Necromancer as my secondary, and needed my elite for something other than Panic. Even then, I think I could find skills I'd prefer to take along.

Hmm. I was just looking at Malaise 29 sec max duration is nice. But with energy degen of -2 most characters are gaining energy (albiet slowly). I am not sure I like the health degen of that skill but thats give and take. Those people could potentially fire off 5 energy skills still.

My point with the -3 degen is that is should keep most characters from gaining energy at all, so their energy bar effectively stopped. If you ran this with a companion who had blood is power, it would work very well to keep any caster shut down and debilitating shot could harass another caster. All good ideas, I agree the skill is not the greatest, but I still think it has its uses.

[insert Mentat the Mind-taker noise....here]

Debilitating Shot has about a 5 second recharge now, assuming you're not monkying with it in any way, that means with the average bow you can slam a target with it about once every 7 seconds, some bows will be quicker, some bows will be slower, but that's a good estimate of the recycle time.

During that time your opponent will have, obviously, 7 seconds to regenerate. With 3 pips, that's 7 energy. With 4 pips that's just over 9. With 2 that's 5. And so on. So, yes, they can cast the very least expensive skills that they have, the 5 or 0 energy skills, but they'll need to be very quick about it. For the 4 pip characters they won't have 5 energy until they wait about 4 seconds, that gives them 3 seconds to start casting their 5 energy skill. That's not a lot of time. 3 pip characters will take 5 seconds. 2 pip characters the full 7.

So, Malaise will work very well there to prevent any of them from regenerating quickly enough (And 2 pips of health degen is 4 health per second, ouch, that's really going to disuade me from using it...) but even without draining any energy you're in a very good spot as they won't have a lot of opportunity to use anything of any worth.

Is there any movement by Alphas to actually balance these things out rather than categorize them as junky spells?
I see everyone seems to be in agreement that a particular spell is unbalanced or useless, to the point that you would say someone using that spell is stupid. If that is so, why isn't the spell being changed? Isn't that what Alphas are supposed to be helping Arena Net do? Instead it seems all this time is being spent learning what spells to use and what ones to avoid rather than making the game better by trying to make all spells useful under the right circumstances. Is Anet ignoring you guys and you are actually trying to get these changed, or are all the alphas just using that time to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the game as it currently stands so they will have a bigger advantage at release? Maybe the NDA keeps you from answering that question, I don't know.

Also, why isn't that Mind Wrack information publicly available? Forcing someone to hit zero vs keeping them at zero to use the spell is a huge difference. What is the point of people who are not alphas even trying to put a build together when the descriptions are so far off.

And why is running with skills from a single class a disadvantage?
Why is Me/Ne or Ne/Me a bad class selection?

I don't want the actual answers to those 2 questions above. I want to know why the game is in such a state where this is true, and thousands of new customers can end up creating such characters upon release, only to later find out they are considered stupid by "those in the know". From the outside looking in, it really appears there are a lot of people more concerned with knowing where strengths and weaknesses stand within the game, rather than trying to balance out the classes so everyone can run an effective build regardless of their class selections.

Since I am neither an Alpha or "in the know" I can only make one point about junky spells. This game has been described as inspired by Magic the Gathering on numerous occassions by the ArenaNet folks. Using that analogy, there were many 'junky cards' that came out at various times in that game. However, as luck would have it, in some expansion a new set of cards would suddenly trigger the usefullness of previously 'annoying and useless' cards. Perhaps some of these skills will have the same fate, who knows? Maybe there is no hope for them? Perhaps the real challenge and fun is using them and still whooping your enemy. Thats mud in the eye for you. lol

I'm not an alpha, which perhaps lets me answer these questions more honestly than a tester could.

The focus of skill balancing starts at the top. They're primarily looking at knocking off the overpowered skills, the broken ones that degenerate the game into single strategies trying to win a mirror. Something like Debilitating Shot being overpowered and showing up in every build is a much bigger deal than Ether Lord being unplayable. Or even Unnatural Signet - sure, everyone knows the skill is unplayable, but that just means that it has zero impact. It might as well just not exist. Thus it doesn't jump out as a 'fix me' target, and when there's a whole lot of balancing that needs to be done it just gets pushed into a corner.


Beyond the reasons above, even amongst the useless skills there's a heirarchy. Something like Ether Lord may be awful, but the entire Beastmastery / pet mechanic is awful. Fixing up the large issues like Beastmastery is a much higher priority than tweaking individual skills. There are thematic problems that need to be addressed, and when the developers can focus on underpowered skills the big issues get tackled first.

The other issue is that, bluntly, there are stupid alpha testers. Remember that testers are culled from the various fansites and thus are fairly representative of the fan base - some are knowledgable and understand the game very well, while others don't have the slightest clue about game balance - and both are extremely vocal about their opinions. I guarantee you that if the topic ever came up for debate in the test there would be some very vocal supporters of Ether Lord. Having to sort through all of that dreck makes figuring out what's going on all the more difficult.


Ostensibly, sure, that's what they're supposed to be doing, but:

1) There's no requirement that one actually helps beyond minimal participation. Some players are trying to explore the limits of the game and find something broken - others are more than content to just bring their PvE characters to every all call. I can tell you that the latter group is far larger than the former group.

2) Not everyone can actually help, even if they wanted to. Remember that while the test itself is about, you know, testing the game, the selection process is a community relations tool. Sure, everyone invited can play the game and likely report obvious bugs, but what percentage of the community would you really trust when it comes to balance issues?

couple that with:

3) The test is a graveyard outside of all calls. There's no one in the tombs outside of the few specified hours - sometimes people even have trouble getting enough people around to play in the arena. Testers spend a lot of time running around with a team of henchies because that's all that's available.

So you have the pairing of a deserted test and not a whole lot of people you can trust to actually discuss balance. Couple that with a view that wants empirical data for changes and not just theory, and you have a recipe for slow change.


Because a lot of testers don't know, and even if they did know they couldn't tell us since even mentioning current skill descriptions is against the rules. The wordings are misleading, and unless a given tester has specifically tested a skill, they know about as much about how it works as we do.


Well, the two questions you didn't want answers to are answered the way they are for strategical reasons, not balance reasons. You don't use a single class character because all you're doing is excluding options - you don't use a Mesmer/Necro because it isn't as strategically deep as other options. That doesn't mean they're unplayable, they just aren't going to be competitive at the highest levels. I'm sure every class combination can be effective in PvE or whatever, even as things currently stand.

Peace,
-CxE

There are lots of changes that take place due to Alpha Feedback- but as it was pointed out, the focus is currently more on balancing overpowered skills or general problems. Rangers used to be rather underpowered- after some changes last month, they're quite useful now, so long as you don't look at the beast mastery line. I'm pretty sure that pets and their skills will see some changes before release, too.

A lot of the balancing issues are more to the order of general weaknesses and overpowered skills. It used to be possible to get about 3x your energy back when using an unattributed power drain.... that's been changed. There are lots of changes that take place in skill balancing- some I agree with, some I don't, but they're all intended to eventually bring all skills into a semblance of balance. Some skills will be better in PvE than PvP, some will be worse- for instance, disease is generally pretty safe to play with in PvE, as it only spreads among the same race... if you plague a Charr, it's not going to spread to your team. In PvP, if you plague someone on their team, you can expect it to be on pretty much every character in the match within a few seconds- including yourself and your teammates.

As for explaining what each skill does when they have inaccurate descriptions, that can be pretty hard. There's over 450 skills in the game, and for someone to know exactly how something works, like Mind Wrack, they have to have used that skill. With the sheer number of skills in the game, it's hard to get experience with each of them- heck, I've been a tester since October, and I'd only say I'm really knowlegeable enough in 2-3 professions to give good feedback on skill balance for those professions. When I first got into the alpha, I had serious problems with Backfire- I thought it was overpowered at the time. It's not really, once you're experienced in playing(of course it was nerfed some- it used to have no recharge), but if you don't have a good knowledge of the game and the professions, balance feedback you can give is not very helpful/reliable.

I'm sure that the underpowered skills will get looked at as well, but having a skill underpowered makes far less of a difference in the game than having an overpowered skill. The underpowered skill just won't get used, while overpowered skills will be used and abused until out of frustration, the devs nerf it into insensibility, just like what happens often in other games.

I would like to thank each of you for your replies. Everything said really makes sense. Also that is a great point about MTG Halfy, I hadn't thought of it, mainly because there are so few spells compared to Magic cards, but the same theory holds true. Also thank you very much for the point by point Charles, that cleared up pretty much everything I asked.

This is true for proactive skills - underpowered threats just don't get run - but the opposite is true for reactive skills. If your reactive skills - your counters, your removal, your 'safety valves' are underpowered, that's a huge deal because the appropriate threats are suddenly overpowered. You don't end up with the old threat / answer mold, where the answers increase in prevalence with the threats - instead you just end up in a feedback loop where the threats continue to become more and more common.

This isn't just theoretical. Guild Wars has a serious lack of enchantment and hex removal, and because of it those two skill types are running rampant. Is it because enchantments and hexes are overpowered? No. It's because there are zero viable solutions to those two skill types, and they dominate the game because of it. You can't choose to fight them, because that option isn't available - your only option is to use them yourself.

The solution to this, of course, is a wide variety of strong, diverse removal options. Funny how the solution to some problems is buffs, not nerfs, eh?

Peace,
-CxE

Ensign, are you saying that you or anyone could not come up with an effective Anti-Hex or Anti-Enchantment build? I'm just curious because the skills are there, but they seem to be unweildy... therefore they might need an entire build dedicated to it. Is this an option, in your opinion (or anyone's)? Or would it be an exercise in futility? Or would it simply waste a player's spot on a team that could be better replaced with another Anti-Monk build or whatever?

Oh, certainly I could. I'd use Nature's Renewal and center my entire build around that. As far as I can tell that is the only viable option at the moment, and Nature's Renewal puts a pretty big constraint on the kinds of builds you can run yourself.


Let me put it this way.

You have the choice between using the unwieldly answers that are there, and the very easy to wield, much stronger skills that also exist, which do you choose?

I'm saying that the skills most certainly are not there. Just because a skill says it removes an enchantment does not mean it is actually a solution to enchantments. If I cast a 5 energy, 1 second cast, 10 second recycle enchantment, and the best you can do is a 10 energy, 2 second cast, 20 second recycle 'answer', have you actually countered my enchantment? Or am I just draining your energy, locking out your skill bar, wasting your time, and building up an advantage in the process?

If I cast an enchantment, that puts me at an advantage. If you cast enchantment removal, and this is the key part, *I'm still at an advantage*. Given that enchantment removal is conditional and enchantments are not, the *only* sane solution is to not bother with enchantment removal and just run enchantments. If you do so, we both cast our enchantments, are are strategically even - better off than you'd be if you cast removal!


Take a character on a team who is dedicated to anti-enchantment or anti-hex. Now replace that character with one dedicated to enchantments or hexes. The second team, with the replacement, will win more often. You're fighting fire with fire, because you aren't going to put out a fire with the few drops of water available. You need a hose, and there just isn't one.

Except the aformentioned Nature's Renewal. Which, at this rate, I expect to get nerfed into uselessness.

Peace,
-CxE

What about the Monk? I've been looking at his skills and he seems to have a fair amount of Enchanment/Hex removal... albeit at a pretty lengthy cooldown.

I think the entire team would have to be built around Nature's Renewal, rather than just one build. You'd have to running a lot of Elementalists, I'd think. Is that the correct way of thinking? Building a team build that doesn't rely on enchantments or hexes but just some good old fashioned AOE and Physical Damage and using Nature's Renewal to continually Cancel the Hex's etc.

Perhaps:

1 Ranger/Monk (Nature's Renewal in the build)
1 Ranger/Elementalist (Nature's Renewal in the build)
2 Warrior/Elementalists
1 Elementalist Primary
1 Elementalist Primary
2 Healing Monk

I threw that together, with only a basic understanding of 8v8 combat, so it's most likely totally off... but the main point is that if you had 2 rangers both running with Nature's Renewal, you could spread out the DP between them... I dunno if that would work though, or even be needed.

Either way, I think that it could be done if you had a team build that didn't rely on Enchantments at all... or at least until they wanted to. At that point, they could essentially control when enchantments were going to be worth using... Or am I off on this?

BTW: I'm decently tired, so if the sentences are not jiving with one another, forgive me, :P

I like your idea of distributing the DP. One ranger plugging away with hexes flying would soon be at max DP. Of course, is there a range on renewal? You could keep one anti hexer back who basically leaves traps and anti-hexes. a miserable existance true, but it may work.

When you look at how many hexes and enchantments are in the various skill sets, your idea holds alot of weight. For example hexes and enchantments make up 43% of all the ele's skills. The downside is that energy storage skills are enchantments and you would also have to do without. Either way if the amount of hexes and enchantments hold true in other classes, that isn't a bad idea. Just keep your -60 lacky alive, or at least keep rezzing him, lol.

Here goes nothing.

Ether Lord is useful in an energy denial build when if is following power drain, energy tap or energy drain. Consider the anti-caster build where you need to keep the guy down for another 9 seconds. You can reduce the monk to zero life and keep him there while keeping about even on energy. You'll have 8secs between where Ether Lord ends and energy tap is recharged. You'll have the energy to drop any of the big hitters during this time(Backfire/Diversion). I haven't crunched all the energy flow numbers, but using 2 skill slots (ETap and ELord) you won't have to worry much about anything beyond 1 or 2 Orisons and devotion over 20 seconds.

Is there a better way to shut someone down...good question.

Maybe here's a solution to making Ether Lord less trashier. The idea would be to deprive several targets of energy. I won't go into the details since I'd prefer another solution to get to these goals but here goes:

1: Arcane Echo
2: Echo (elite)
3: Ether Lord

All you want is to be able to spam Ether Lord as often as possible. If I were to create an energy depriving character I'd do the same but take out Ether Lord for Energy Tap, which would give me some great returns instead.

P.S.: dont rip me up for this pseudo-build. It's just a way to make a monkey-stink spell smell like the inside of a sneaker .