User:Dark Morphon/Balance stuff/PrimaryVsSecondary

Primary vs Secondary skills
Primary attributes are often abused with secondary skills to create builds such as the Rampage as One Thumper/Axe, Ranger/Assassin Dagger spammers and Fast Casting Elementalists. These builds generally take less skill than their counterparts with similar skills. A RaO with Axe doesn't have to bother with canceling his Stance to catch up with a target or prevent damage as he permanently moves and attacks faster anyway. A FC Water Magic Mesmer has to deal with interrupts far less than a conventional Elementalist does as the cast times are reduced to roughly .5/.6, which is pretty much impossible to interrupt even for a really good player. There are two possible ways to deal with gimmicks like these:


 * 1) Limit the effect of primary attributes to skills from that profession
 * 2) Keep it working for any profession and decrease the effectiveness of said primary attribute while also decreasing the downside it affects for skills in the primary profession (which is Energy cost for Expertise and cast time for Fast Casting).

There are two things to consider when deciding which of these two options is the best:
 * 1) Whether or not any new uses featuring skills from the changed profession arise when the change is implemented.
 * 2) Whether or not the change closes off balanced options.

So which of the two is the best way? The second way seemingly allows for more secondary profession skill use, but is this really the case? To find out, we'll have to determine what skills can lead to good use of the secondary profession and what skills can't. As an example, I'll start with Savage Shot.

Savage Shot currently has a 10 energy cost which is negated mostly by Expertise, making it affordable for primary Rangers but generally not for non-Rangers. So what would happen if it had its cost reduced to, say, 5 Energy and what if Expertise didn't affect that new cost? Would we really be seeing good use of it on secondaries? Probably not.

Savage Shot is an interrupt that has a low recharge and a mehdecent effect. It's powerful because besides being an interrupt, it's a fast activation skill that also spreads your Poison. In other words, removing Apply Poison or removing spec in Marksmanship will take away these big advantages. The short recharge is also a major pain in the rear end for secondary play: a player using it will have to be in a bow set most of the time so he can reliably interrupt, meaning he won't be in his defensive, 40/40 or weapon set most of the time. The bow directly benefits from Savage Shot and its gameplay is largely defined by it, unlike a skill like Distracting Shot, which only requires the user to be in his bow set every once in a while. For that reason, using only Savage Shot without any spec into it isn't an option. After all, Distracting Shot is a skill that retains most of its power unspecced yet doesn't see serious use outside of Codex Arena on secondaries, why would Savage Shot, which has more downsides on a secondary profession, see any use at all?

But of course, Apply Poison would be changed in the same way at the same time. So you could just spec into that and benefit from the fast activation on Savage Shot, right? And while you're at it, you could take Distracting Shot and Natural Stride as well, after all, you're speccing into Wilderness Survival, it would be a waste to not use that spec and Dshot is a freebie. But in that case, what difference is there with a Ranger, really? Why would you do all this if you could just take a Ranger and benefit from their superior armor against Elemental damage? That would really only happen if another profession had skills to abuse it with.

Savage Shot is a skill that requires dedicated speccing, weapon use AND support skills to be as powerful as it is on a Ranger. It's not a skill that would see much use on a secondary profession on its own (if any at all) even if the cost was somewhat reduced. It's a good thing this skill is limited to Rangers: on any other profession, it would only be useful in total Ranger copies that use some abusive shit from their own profession to make it broken.

And there are many more skills for which this is the case: Dismember won't be useful on a Sword or Hammer bar and especially not useful on a midliner or backliner. Most skills that require a specific weapon are bad on others because another weapon usually has skills that do the same. Dismiss Condition is best used on a Monk and has such a low recharge that the lack of Divine Favor and the need to frequently use this skill to put it to full effect (low recharge) makes it pretty much worthless on a secondary. Even if Divine Favor would be inherent in the skill, the user would be hampered by the low recharge (which forces frequent use or means a waste of skill) and attribute spread. Most low cost low recharge skills are bad on non-Monks because they require the user to be using his Monk skills oftenly, pretty much turning him into a bad Monk.

Now let's take a look at an already existing skill that can be used on a secondary, Gale. Gale is an interesting skill that stops a foe from moving and makes him unable to use skills while potentially putting a lot of pressure on the user's Energy by inflicting Exhaustion, reducing the amount of energy a character can store. The downside is easier managable on an Elementalist, which has a higher amount of maximum Energy than other casters, but it's definitely useful and usable on others. Gale doesn't require much spec: it only requires the user to highen his Air Magic to 6 (5 is also possible but dangerous: Weakness can greatly hamper the skill). Gale doesn't require a dedicated Air Magic bar. Unlike Savage Shot, it can function very well on its own. This is a major difference and the reason why Gale is usable on secondaries and Savage Shot isn't and won't ever be.

This brings me to the definition of what I call primary and secondary skills:


 * A primary skill is a skill that requires so much dedication that it requires the user to build his skill bar around it.
 * A secondary skill is a skill that can be easily fitted in any other bar, but is usually somewhat more powerful on a dedicated skill bar.

Since primary skills will only ever be useful in skills functioning from a primary profession or a copy abusing dumb shit from his own class (a good example: the Rampage as One Axe), they will never ever be balanced for a secondary using it. They are broken on secondaries and should thus be limited to those with their primary attribute. Secondary skills should be balanced in such a way that running something that is dedicated to the profession/line it's in gets a slight advantage, making sure the user pays a price for potentially getting more versatility. This is a pretty clear guideline and this is also how it already works for Monks and Warriors: in general, most Monk skills aren't worth taking because they have a short recharge and low cost, which benefits from Divine Favor. As I explained earlier, these skills are primary skills anyway and wouldn't ever see proper use on a secondary.

Now let's get back to Expertise and Fast Casting. Like Axe Mastery (with the exception of Dchop in rare cases, even rarer than Distracting Shot), none of the Marksmanship skills are secondary skills. Expertise should limit use for these. Most of the spirits in Wilderness Survival are secondary skills, but since they suck it doesn't matter anyway. The few stances can also all be used by secondaries. Only Apply Poison and Barbed Trap could potentially be secondary skills with a more favorable cost. Apply Poison, besides working for the Bow, only works for the Spear, which is generally seen as a broken weapon anyway. It would only start to be relevant if the Paragon was less broken. Barbed Trap could have its cost reduced to 10 if we really wanted it to see serious use but I personally think it wouldn't change that much. If the user really wants to take the skill on someting like an Elementalist, the 15 energy cost isn't that much of an issue anyway. Beast Mastery is mostly rubbish, the only two skills that I see could be used on a secondary with change 2 are Tiger's Fury and Bestial Fury, but these skills require less skill than Frenzy and have no right to exist to begin with.

This really leaves no skills for the Ranger, meaning way 2 of changing Expertise will not create more balanced options. As a matter of fact, it's more likely to create new problems. It could potentially lead to crazy stuff like Seeping Wound Rangers. Add in some WotM for lolcriticals and stuff gets really dumb. Of course, these skills shouldn't even exist, but keeping these abusive options open really has no reason whatsoever.Since there are no real advantages to way 2 of changing and since way 1 actually fixes R/A, R/D and similar gimmicks while not taking much effort to implement I'd say way 1 is a far better way to fix the gimmicks.

Now, Mesmers are somewhat different. Not because any more of their skills would lead to good play with way 2 of changing it (skills that are good on secondaries tend to not be affected by their primary attribute much) but because there are many secondary skills that benefit from Fast Casting's bonus. Gale and the Resurrection skills are examples of that. Abuses mostly come from Mesmers using primary skills such as Freezing Gust (scaling snare, requires much spec) and other Water Magic skills, although it also works for skills in other Elementalist attributes. Why this works? Quite simple, because part of the energy management in this build comes from Water Attunement. Attunement skills are probably the most obvious examples of primary skills in the game. They start out being a waste of time and get better the more skills it affects are on the skill bar. It's impossible to benefit from them if you're not at least taking three skills from its line along with you. The solution is very simple: tie the energy gain to Energy Storage in such a way that it requires minimal spec to get the maximum benefits. No need for changes to Fast Casting this way, at least not to fix abuse coming from Mesmers using Elementalist skills. Necromancer skill abuse is much harder to fix because Necromancers don't currently have a balanced role in the game. Once they do, the same thing should be done to Soul Reaping as has been done to the other primary attributes.