User talk:Dark Morphon/Balance stuff/SkillComparisons


 * I applaud your attempt to do the opposite of my experiment, but your skills don't change very much when you do this. Infuse health if the only skill that would become insane if it did damage.
 * Enervating charge is a very, very good skill. 66% damage reduction is huge, and so is 66% extra damage (actually, the inverse of this would be 200% extra damage). Your version, however, does not provide an easy means to remove it as enervating charge does. Condition removals have 2 second recharges, whereas enchantment removals have 10+. If enervating charge were a hex, this would be fine.
 * Your healing breeze opposite is just conjure phantasm with a lower recharge. Nothing special here.
 * Cure Hex is overpowered, so it's natural its opposite would be too.
 * The inverse of blackout is itself, not what you have. It's already balanced for both sides.
 * Health Blast is the best example you've given, but due to how powerful infuse health normally is, it's hard to say whether or not this one is any worse. Infuse counters 6-man spikes for only 10 energy on no recharge - it's a lot more powerful that people generally give it credit for. Health Blast would be powerful for different reasons, obviously. I wouldn't say you've "debunked" what I did, but you're on the right track for doing so. Let me know if you can think of any more. ~Shard  [[Image:User Shard Sig Icon.png]] 19:24, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did this myself a while back, it's funny what kind of skills you can come up with using ones that are ordinarily weak. A Healing Prayers Lava Font would be kind of fun on a KotH map or whatever.  I think Assassin's Failure was my favorite, since the only way to not get a kill in 15 seconds with an assassin is to sit there waiting for your skills to recharge.  –Jette 21:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. It's true that there isn't an obvious inverse of Conditions. While this means that my example doesn't work, it also shows that your Mending Wave example doesn't. Even with the cover Condition, removing the Deep Wound is much easier than removing the Enchantment.
 * The inverted Healing Breeze is practically Conjure Nightmare with one more degen, 2 recharge and 10 energy cost. I'm surprised that you don't think this would be overpowered considering it can maximize degeneration on its own while also providing a cover for other Hexes.
 * Concerning Cure Hex, I kind of expected this commentary. If you take an inverted Remove Hex (5e 1c 8r, remove an enchantment) or Convert Hexes (15e 1c 12r, remove all Enchantments, -10 armor for every Monk enchantment removed or something similar) it becomes clear that even changing Hex removal skills that are balanced or even underpowered following general concensus become overpowered when they are inverted. Hex removal and Enchantment removal are unequal in power and have never been equal, which means you can't properly compare them. At any rate, I'll change it to Remove Hex.
 * Concerning Blackout, you are right, but if I invert it the same way you did for Wail of Doom, I get my version, that is, if I make it like this: "Touch Skill. All creatures within earshot except for you and target foe have their skills disabled (2-6 seconds)". So either both our examples or wrong, or both are right. I think we can agree that both are wrong.
 * Infuse Health: Hard to say, really, but there is a big difference between dealing damage and undoing it. This skill was meant to demonstrate that and to show that you really can't just turn the two around. That's the issue I have with all your comparisons: turning around the skill means completely changing it to the point where they just aren't comparable anymore. More importantly, even if the skill it compares is overpowered, it doesn't explain why it is whatsoever. I'll change a few things around, but I think my main point remains. Morphy 11:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Infuse Cannon is overpowered because it takes timing out of the equation. Damage is always useful, healing is only helpful when someone is taking damage.  Infuse is like the monk's Power Block.  You're certainly right that some skills don't equate to each other when reversed, but many of the examples Shard was giving do.  I think his example of Wail of Doom was probably hyperbole (shutting down all 8 enemies isn't quite the inverse of shutting down one), but VoR, Faintheartedness, GigaMending and others all bring up valid points.  Some of them were even weaker than their real versions, like Xinrae's Rage, which notably doesn't prevent damage to your own team.  –Jette 15:07, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Why, yes, a few of these skill actually were less powerful than their real counterparts: Mend Hex and Rend Hexes are both actually weaker than many of the things Monks have in their arsenal right now. Changing Enchantment removal to Hex removal automatically weakens the skill if you leave everything else as is. Xinrae's Rage's inferiority is arguable: Xinrae's Weapon deals damage to a random opponent and heals a specific ally, Xinrae's Rage only gives health to the user and deals damage to a specific opponent. In general, defensive skills are supposed to be more powerful than offensive skills. I recreated Divine Fervor by inverting Sum of All Fears in a similar way. The problem with Divine Fervor is that an IAS outside of a stance automatically decreases game complexity while active (it provides IAS+IMS, taking away the need to switch between stances), which is unforgivable. The mere existance of an IAS that can target allies is broken. Faint is a defensive skill that is overpowered, but certainly not broken. One can decrease its duration and increase its recharge to match Blurred Vision, which results in a rather balanced skill. Greater Boon would be used completely differently. People would want to spam skills like a maniac as opposed to avoid using skills if possible. Similar, but not entirely the same. Spamming is always bad, forcing people to cast less isn't. GigaMending is a number problem, like IoP was. I admit that it works for that skill. Morphy 15:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd kill for rend hexes, actually. Especially if it went up to 9 like real rend does.  Actually, just being able to put that on a secondary character would almost &mdash; not quite, but almost &mdash; bring hexes into line.  I don't think the point here is to prove that reversals work for every skill, merely that a lot of the skills where you go "holy crap I'd kill for something like this" when you reverse it probably have issues.  –Jette 18:27, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is that if an inverted skill is overpowered that a) you can't make up from that fact alone whether the uninverted skill is overpowered/borkened or not and b) even if the uninverted skill is known to be overpowered, the inverted version rarely (if ever) shows why. It simply can't be used as a reliable algorithm and therefore only has curiosity value. Morphy 11:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is something that's been bothering me for a bit, ever since Tycn first told me that a skill was "broken". What is the definition of this anyway? I've been leaning more towards "this skill does something the description doesn't say" but I hear a lot of "this skill is so overpowered it's game breaking", but which is it? I can understand the point of it having a mechanic that it's not supposed to have and being called broken, like your skill that is an IAS outside a stance. Is there an official word on what broken is? -- Tha Reckoning 20:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's kind of an ambiguous. Usually, "broken" refers to something that's just fundamentally problematic.  The old shadow form was broken, it was either "you're invincible all the time" or "you die after X seconds."  Usually, the difference between overpowered and broken is that overpowered can be fixed by playing with the numbers, where broken can't.  –Jette 21:21, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I tend to stick to the "it does something it shouldn't/the skill description doesn't contain, like Divine Fervor and Hypochondria, respectively. I just wanted to see some other opinions on it. -- Tha Reckoning 21:25, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That's usually referred to as a bug, but I can see where the confusion comes from.
 * Reckoning, when I use the term broken it always has the meaning "imbalanced by function", like Jette described it. There are many things that can cause a skill to be broken, my concept of inferior gameplay quality is used to search for functions that are broken because they require less skill but have mostly the same function as another function to take them out. Morphy 06:53, 4 June 2010 (UTC)