Feedback talk:User/Ph03n1x/Put a Leash on Enchantment Removal

Just one thing for PvE: How often do you see shadow form get removed in like say (using the speed clear build that utilizes shadow form in) Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Domain of Anguish, Shards of Orr, Kath, etc.? Unless they make most of the enchantment removal skills to be non-spells (Disenchantments are not widely used outside factions and eotn dungeons, Hex eater vortex requires the enemy being hexed, and winds of disenchantment are not widely used at all. I have yet to see non-boss using assault enchantments, or they never survive long enough for the dual attack.), Shadow form will not be easily removed. Same goes for Spell breaker,Obsidian flesh and Vow of Silence. If enchantment removal is such a big deal maybe bringing spell breaker to buy you 12-17 sec to do whatever you (or your teammates, in case elite enchantments are needed) like with enchantments seems appropriate. K61824 22:35, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

They don't get removed, but that's because Anet intended for that to be nigh-impossible to do with those enchantments. My beef isn't with the frequency of removal anti-spell-targeting enchantments have, it's the frequency of removal for other enchantments. Many enchantments don't see use just because their removal (an easy task) cripples the entire build. I say this mostly with PvP in mind, since most PvE mobs aren't built for enchantment stripping. An Ele in RA is basically useless if, near the start of the match, his attunement(s) is/are stripped, leaving him without energy management. No Assassin in his right mind would use Aura of Displacement, because he's likely to get sent right back to where he came from. Mesmers don't use Illusionary Weaponry or Lyssa's Aura, even though both are quite useful. Several defensive enchantments in Earth Magic only see use in niche farming builds. I just feel it's far too easy to remove an enchantment, to the point where builds utilizing ones that last a long time or are somewhat expensive aren't even considered. Reworking the system would open up some options and require some more thought behind building than 'eh, throw in Rip Enchantment for utility.'--Ph03n1x 05:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

In PvP it works good as it is, every class needs it's counter, it's annoying for all melee to have a b-surge blinding bitch in enemies team, same as elementalist hates mesmers and necromancers that rupts or get their enchs out. --Kali Shin Shivara 21:34, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

LOL. enchantment removal is honestly great as it is. you forget that elementalists make up for their weakness by doing SHITLOADS of damage. everything needs a counter, and I must say that enchantment removal is one of the more balanced things in this game.

You also fail to realize two things:

1. Monk enchantments are absolutely fine. In PvP, powerful, long-lived monk enchantments (Mark of Protection, etc etc) never see use because people can simply not attack the enchanted person. In addition, their recharge times are horrendous, making you useless for half a minute or more after you cast a powerful enchantment. That is why monks in PvP focus on short lived, quick recharging enchantments for maximum effectiveness. The reason long-term protective enchantments are plain stupid for PvP has absolutely nothing to do with enchantment removal.

As for general long-term enchantments, they're also absolutely balanced. A 10 energy, 1 second skill that basically cuts the cost of spells in half for elementalists? Is that not insanely powerful? Yes, it is. Is that also not relatively easy to remove? Yes, it is. AoD is also perfectly balanced, by the way. AoD used to be THE meta for sins. It used to be ran everywhere. It provided great maneuverability, it had basically THE most versatile assassin attack chain and was very well balanced. Sure, it had a unique weakness to enchantment removal in addition to standard antimelee, but so what? It's not like every character an AoD sin faces in a split situation will have enchantment removal. And that brings me to my next point:

2. Your post seems to be working under the assumption that every person you face is going to have enchantment removal and all of your party's enchantments are going to be stripped in a matter of seconds. That is so wrong in many ways. First off, look at the skills you listed for enchantment removal. Where are they from? Mostly necromancer and mesmer. What's wrong with that? The whole point of the Necromancer and Mesmer classes is to FUCK with people. They're specifically designed to counter other classes. It's not like every person will carry enchantment removal and render all of your team's enchantments useless in a matter of seconds.

Now, look at the skills you listed for enchantment removal again. Are any of them really overpowered? Most support characters, if they wish to bring antienchantment for utility, will bring one or two enchantment removal skills (because it's pointless to bring a whole bar just to remove enchantments). Are any of those enchantment removal skills REALLY overpowered in a utility context? Skills that remove many enchantments (rend, profane, contempt, etc.) generally have some major cost, such as long recharge, long casting time, or big energy cost. Now you have standard utility enchantment removal skills, such as rip enchantment. These remove one enchantment and recharge relatively quicker. Honestly, what is wrong with that? Removing one enchantment here and there does not make or break a team (generally speaking). If you strip a powerful enchantment, then that's good - you're countering it. You forget that powerful enchantments are POWERFUL. They need a counter, or else they would be too powerful.

So, to conclude: If your suggestion was implemented, basically what it would be doing is changing a whole bunch of enchantment removal skills so that they can't remove THE MOST POWERFUL enchantments. So basically, what you want to do is make enchantment stacking overpowered. That's not balance. Sorry. --Acuity 23:51, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I find it interesting that you seem to think you know exactly how I would implement this change, were I to have my way. No where did I say that 'THE MOST POWERFUL' enchantments should not have counters. I suggested a tool that would allow the devs to balance enchantment removal/stacking more precisely, rather than it being so binary. I didn't presume to know the best way to use the system - I know I'm not qualified to balance the entire spell-casting side of the game. Evidently you didn't read my feedback further than a sentence in before making your judgment, though. In some ways, you proved my point valid by arguing that the staple short lived, quick recharging enchantments are the way to go. Monks have a good number of other enchantments, yet there's only a handful that see legitimate usage. Instead, they resort to stances and skills from other professions because their own skills are under-powered. Is combat really that dynamic when you'd be booted from your team because you chose outside the handful of enchantments people use because all the rest are useless? If skills like Mark of Protection are so damn overpowered, why don't they see use? Because, in the blink of an eye, it's gone and your teammate's a sitting duck again. And you're caught with your pants down and your prot skills disabled. Yes, clearly Mark of Protection needs to be toned down.

If you're on a team that has no enchantment removal and wins, it's clearly a gimmick. Enchantment removal is balance, yes, and if a team can win without having any (enchantment removal skills, not enchantments themselves), they're using some lame spike-faster-than-you-can-cast build or relying on some game mechanic exploit. My main is a Mesmer and I have years of experience with the Necromancer. I'm not some disgruntled monk who's pissed about how hard it is to keep my team alive.

You argue that multi-removal skills have a high price attached - Gaze of Contempt is cheap, recharges reasonably quickly for what it does, and takes the same amount of time to cast as many Necromancer spells do. Where's the high cost? The target just has to be above 50% health, and how often do teams need to organize a spike on a foe who is below 50%? At that point, snare him, degen him and you're good. Rend Enchantments can have a high price, I'll admit - if you don't know what the hell you're doing. Use that on a dual-enchant Ele and he's out for a good 30 seconds or so because he was relying on those for his spells, and this is at no cost to you - not even attribute points, since it removes 5 at rank 0. If you were to leave those enchantments on him, he probably won't get most of his spells off, anyway. For this reason, Eles generally stick with the cheaper spells. What, then, is all their energy management for? Might as well just drop the skills from the game altogether. Energy storage can get out, too, since GvGs go on for awhile and no sensible player would bring a build that required him to sit out of the game for a bit.

You suggested that as an alternative to trying to fight through those 'overpowered' enchantments, however, which is ludicrous since PvP requires constant action. You're moving, you're fighting, or you're supporting. Standing idly isn't a strategy, it's suicide. Sorry.--Ph03n1x 02:09, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

The problem isn't the removal by itself but the massive quantity of enchantment removals there is in the game and thehuge variety of effects that come with it. Having enchantment removal isn't a bad thing but a reduction in the ammount of them would be nice. Changing some of them into Chant removal would be nice as it makes balancing the Paragon easier for later on. The tier system also seems interresting dividing enchantments into a certain level of power and needing an enchantment removal of an equal level of power. But what i would like to see first is a change in function of all enchantment removal skills that do NOT have enchantment or disenchantment in their name, if you do that then you can take a look at the tier system. But first try to make a list of all of the enchantment removals and pick out the ones that do not have an anti-enchantment name. Da Mystic Reaper 16:55, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

1. I read your arguments thoroughly. I can't bs off of one sentence.

2. My point with the monk enchantments is that enchantment removal is not the reason why long-duration, powerful enchantments don't see any use. They don't see any use because they're useless. I'm saying enchantment removal has nothing to do with it. Since you're gonna yell at me for not reading your posts thoroughly enough, I'm gonna have to bold my quote from my first post: The reason long-term protective enchantments are plain stupid for PvP has absolutely nothing to do with enchantment removal.

3. In terms of the attunement argument, I must say that realistically, you're only having to live for around ~15 seconds without attunes if your attune gets stripped because a) it's likely not getting stripped as soon as it's casted, b) 4040 sets. And with skills such as MB and gole, there's no problem with living for 15 seconds... hell, I sometimes just powercast right through without attune and then gole all my shit with the attune up afterwards. Anyways, attunes are already fine and it's great that they're powerful + there's removal for them. If anything, enchantment removal should be made even more powerful in the argument of attunements.

4. You don't seem to get a key point that I've been making, and that is that not every character on a team has enchantment removal. How many characters use enchantments? I'd say the midline + backline, a good 5 or 6 people... eles, rits, monks, etc etc, hell count conjure warriors if you want too. But how many characters have enchantment removal? One or two generally, the mesmer and/or the necro. How many stripping skills do they take usually? Necros, one (rend in srs pvp, rip otherwise). Mesmers, one or two (generally shatter + drain). These characters have to choose between three-quarters of the enchanted enemy team to strip. Holy shit man, what about that can't you get? You can rip the spirit channeling but what are you gonna do about the other attunements, channelings, guardians, and so on and so forth? You can rend on a spike but how are you gonna rend the covered attunements off the eles now? You're talking like every person with an enchantment is facing up against some guy with enchantment removal. If that were the case, I would completely agree with you - removal is overpowered. However, it's impractical and stupid to take eight copies of enchantment removal across your team and as such it is NOT overpowered, and enchantments are absolutely just fine.

Honestly, if you've played an ounce of high end pvp - or even AB, for fucks sake - you'd know enchantment removal is anything but overpowered. Invoke spike is so fucking strong, even in higher leagues with good mesmers, because it's so damn hard to get those covered attunements off of five or six entire eles. In AB, how many times have you seen the tank dervish who solos a cap point and four people and brag about how leet he is? Honestly. You can bring your rip enchantment and it's not gonna do shit.

k im done --Acuity 02:58, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't get it, then. If you read my suggestion thoroughly, how is it you still don't understand it? You're telling me I'm wrong (and, if I may read between the lines, stupid, as well) about something I'm not even arguing.

Think beyond one dimension for a second. My hope isn't to leave enchantments as they are and just make it harder to remove them. I'm not saying enchantment removal skills need to be weakened so that they can't remove enchantments as they are. Many enchantments would need to be weakened, as well, so they're not as potent. Ele attunements might need to return less energy while other skills would evolve into ones that help them directly recoup their energy, like GoLE. Your suggestion of Glyph of Lesser Energy and Mind Blast as a solution for attunement-stripping, by the way, is 100% the reason I made this feedback page. They shouldn't be nearly the only option when there are a ton of other active and passive energy management skills out there. In addition to the system of tiers for the enchantments and the spells that remove them, many enchantments would need reworking, as well. For instance, Mark of Protection would need a completely different functionality.

The overall idea is a lot like the introduction of weapon spells - Classifying enchantments by tier essentially makes them different skill types, and many skills would have the ability to remove multiple tiers, not just one. Attunements and many Dervish enchantments could be classified under the tier that's most common among enchantment-removal skills' descriptions, making them more easily removed than others, but still viable. But because of the tier system, if they are never used because it's too easy to remove them for the effect they offer, their tier classification could change. This would allow more fine-tuning among enchantments and enchantment-removal skills. Rather than an all-or-nothing situation, the developers could balance the more volatile enchantments like Shadow Form and Mark of Protection, leaving them viable but not omnipotent, while other skills that are fine as they are wouldn't be changed. In turn, with a larger pool of viable skills from which to choose, players would be more likely to weigh their options instead of choosing just for short-length/high potency. Anet didn't intend for just a handful of the skills introduced to see play, otherwise why create them in the first place? The change wouldn't be to one facet of the game. It would be a huge, multi-profession update that, while taking a significant amount of resources Anet most likely does not have, would benefit the game in the long-term because it'd slow the power creep and keep the game dynamic. It's a general concept, not a specific skill-rebalancing. Hopefully you understand it better now. --Ph03n1x 05:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I am quite curious where your hatred for enchantment removal comes from, seeing how you flame at counter arguments. Anyways changing enchantments in such a significant way is not worth the time or trouble doing. If you want to put a leash enchantment removal then decrease the power of those skills or alter them in function. There are also enchantment spells that can simply be changed in function for balance of have their skill type changed to skill instead of enchantment spell. Protection of the monk is generally fine as it's purpose is to reduce damage so no real problems in that. The ele attunements are the backbones of their respective elements, without them the ele is virtually useless within 15 sec because it will be completly depleted of energy. They actually could use a small buff reducing the energy cost by 30% +1 before the cast instead of returning 30% +1 energy after the cast and not a nerf as suggested above with those changes. If you want to have it nerfed than give the ele some serious non-elite energy managment, if not then don't even dare to think about nerfing the attunements. But truth to be told i have found enchantment removal nothing more than an annoyance trough all of my five and a half years of playing. Taking a cover enchantment effectively prevents removal of your key enchantments 90% of the time. What is troublesome is non elites removing more than one enchantment and the large pool of enchantment removal skills as it leaves the majority of them unused. So far i have only seen a few enchantment removals that are being used, Strip Enchantment, Rip Enchantment, Corrupt Enchantment, Shatter Enchantment and Drain Enchantment, sometimes i do encounter Pain of Disenchantment and Rend Enchantments but rarely. Drain, Rip and Shatter are the most seen and you see rarely more than 2 in a PvP team, on mesmers and Curse and Blood necros you will hardly see a bar without enchantment removal, on all other builds and professions you will hardly see enchantment removal. As for PvE having mobs with the same enemy who all have enchantment removal is a royal pain in the ass but easily countered by taking builds that don't rely on them. Taking a cover enchantments saves your enchantments 90% of the time, the other 10% is what you are now raging at...10% keep that between your ears please. But for me and many more enchantment removal is nothing more than an annoyance. Da Mystic Reaper 08:37, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't really know how to explain it any more clearly than I did in my last post...I don't have a 'hatred' for enchantment removal. I'm certainly not 'raging' at anything or anyone - if you'll notice, I'm not e-shouting or using profanity; I'm being quite civil. My ultimate goal is to make enchantments and their counterpart removal skills easier to balance and fine-tune. I am not in any way saying that all enchantments should be left alone while removal skills get nerfed. I'm saying some enchantments should become easier to remove, others should be come harder, and many should change functionality altogether. You expressed opposition to the hypothetical nerf of elemental attunements unless it was accompanied by 'serious non-elite energy management'. I quote from my previous post: Ele attunements might need to return less energy while other skills would evolve into ones that help them directly recoup their energy, like GoLE. Evidently you didn't read the whole sentence, because I suggested rebalancing other skills to function as energy management in their stead, as well.

To me, so far the opposition is all people who don't even understand what I'm advocating in the first place. You're fighting what isn't there. I'm not saying 'leave skill A alone and make skill B unable to remove it.' I'm saying 'change both skill type A and skill type B as needed so balancing is more precise and changes made to either are less global'. Why change the effectiveness of ten skills when they work fine just to de-power one or buff another? Changing the functionality of those same ten makes much more sense, however, when it benefits a larger pool of skills on the whole. --Ph03n1x 19:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

But in the end your reason just isn't good enough as it isn't a problem. You will always have strong and weak enchantments and removals of the same powers. The quantity of enchantment removals is very big but only a small portion is used and are balanced. The ammount of enchantment removal you encounter is quite limited and mostly depents on the profession and their builds. The fact is that a balance of enchantment vs removal isn't needed since it's already balanced and not a problem either. As i said enchantment removal is nothing but an annoyance. Da Mystic Reaper 20:49, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

That's where we differ, then. I agree it's a large undertaking and, this late in the game, not worth it for the developers to overhaul the game like that. But speaking idealistically the change would allow more options. Some enchantments that aren't used with the situation of 'it removes an enchantment or it doesn't' as it is right now would see a lot more use and keep combat dynamic and open, which is what all these skills we have access to were created for.--Ph03n1x 22:02, 22 August 2011 (UTC)