User:A. von Rin/Proposals

Fixing Primary Attributes (= PAs) -- A. von Rin 17:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Issue:

Nearly all PAs that not only affect your own classes' skills (Divine Favor) or have a weak effect compared to everything else (Spawning Power and Strength) caused balancing issues, because of their potential of being abused in certain combinations. The idea is to change all PAs to only affect their own class and to rework some of them (some skill adjustment could be necessary afterwards).

Suggestion: These ideas need still to be adjusted and this is more theory on how PAs could be more balanced, than really believing these changes will happen. ;)

Divine Favor: For each rank of Divine Favor, allies are healed for 4 whenever you cast Monk spells on them. Several Monk skills, especially spells related to Energy gain and healing, become more effective with higher Divine Favor.

Leadership: For each rank of Leadership, your Paragon skills cost 5% less energy while you are In the area of an ally.

Explanation: This change fits into Paragons' scheme still being influenced by allies to benefit from your PA. It is slightly more effective than Rangers' PA, but conditional. This not only buffs single Paragons, but also kills bad synergies developing from Paraway. And last but not least, it promotes more skill at playing because of the need of positioning.

Spawning Power: For each rank of Spawning Power you have, your Ritualist skills cost 2% less energy. While within earshot of a Spirit, your Binding Rituals recharge 4% faster. Some Ritualist skills, especially those related to Spirit creatures, become more effective with higher Spawning Power.

Explanation: This change fits into Ritualists' scheme still having a conditional effect while affected by Spirits. But it will be much more effective using other lines because of it's unconditional energy management support. Without the high health on Spirits it won't be too hard to handle the new capability to spam Spirits.

Soul Reaping: Whenever you cast a Necromancer spell while being in the area of a corpse or a hexed foe, you gain 1 Energy for every 3 ranks of Soul Reaping and sacrifice 5% of your health.

Mysticism: Whenever a Dervish Enchantment ends, you gain 5 Health for each rank of Mysticism and 1 Energy for every 3 ranks of Mysticism.

Expertise: For each rank of Expertise, the Energy cost of all of your Ranger skills is decreased by 4%. Several skills, especially those related to Energy costs and skill recharge times, become more effective with higher Expertise.

Strength (Modified version taken from Shards idea): Your attacks with Axes, Hammers and Swords have 1% armor penetration for each point in Strength. Many skills, especially those related to surviving and inflicting damage, become more effective with higher Strength.

Energy Storage: For each rank of Energy Storage, your maximum Energy raises by 2 and the amount of Exhaustion skills can cause is reduced by 5%. Several skills related to gaining Health or Energy become more effective with higher Energy Storage.

Critical Strikes: For each rank of Critical Strikes you have, you gain an additional 1% chance to critical hit with Daggers. Whenever your Daggers inflict a critical hit, you gain 1 energy at ranks 3 and above, 2 energy at ranks 8 and above, and 3 energy at ranks 13 and above.

Fast Casting: For each rank of Fast Casting, your casting / activation time of all your Mesmer Skills is decreased by 4%.

Fixing Shadow Steps -- A. von Rin 17:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Make Shadow Steps hex the foe you are targeting and if you remove the Hex you will be teleported back to where you activated the skill. To this add an Anti-Shadow-Step-Effect to Guild Halls and decrease the teleportation distance to Spirit-Range.

This would fix Shadow Steps being unpredictable, without destroying the whole mechanic. And this proposal would also make it impossible to get the imbalanced movement advantage in splits.

Solving the Paragon Issue

Radical idea: Give all shouts, chants and echoes (except "Fear Me!") back their good stats before all the nerfs and make them end on a critical hit (one Shout, Chant or Echo per 'Crit' ). They should be removed by 'crits' in the same order as hexes and enchantments are removed by skills. The only problem with the Paragons' mechanics is, that the effects they apply are unstoppable. With this change it wouldn't be (and it would also be a big buff for Sins, btw.).

Spawning Power & Spirit Mechanics

• Issue: SP belongs to the worst Primary Attributes in GW. It has (nearly) no positive effect on builds with other Ritualist lines or second classes like other PAs and with the nerfs of the Spirits the bonus is not good enough for the primary profession like Divine Favor for example.

• Possible Solutions: The idea is to give the Ritualist instead a health boost for every rank in SP by 3 (for example @ SP of 12 = 36 health), whenever a creature within earshot dies and a little energy boost by 1 for each rank in Spawning Power whenever a Spirit within earshot dies.

Because Spirits would be killed faster, their recast time should be reduced (half of the time they have now) as well as their costs to buff Communing in total. They should not cost more than 15 energy as a maximum and should not have more than 3 seconds of activation time at all. Spirits that now cost 25 energy (or have a longer activation time) should be reduced to 15 energy (and/or 3 seconds of activation time) and instead have 10%-25% of health sacrifice - depending on the other buffs - to balance the buff of Communing.

Hero Battles Suggestion

I would change the system removing all pips from shrines. Then also change Siege Cannon Shrine's to only deal half the damage they have now. Let shrines give only their bonus effects and the centre shrine a 10% Moral Boost every 2 minutes while being under control of one side. Afterwards reduce the kills to 15 for winning and you would have a faster game with less capping. In case of a draw (no one got 15 kills) after 10 minutes, the centre shrine will be set "uncaptured" and both sides need to recapture it to win. The first side to succeed, will win the game (to ensure people will have to gain kills for winning).

Proposal on: Hammers and Bows vs. other (two handed) Weapons

It seems to me that these two weapon classes are too weak compared to other (2-handed) weapons. Daggers have the highest IAS because of their Dual-Strikes (and their skills do very high damage which buffs the low damage of daggers) and Scythes have AoE damage (and a high weapon damage @ end of damage range, which also favours high crits). Both can equal the lack of a shield to Axes and Swords. Spears are the worst of all weapons: Ranged attacks, (almost?) the second highest DPS following axes and the possibility of having a shield.

My suggestion is to give under powered hammer attack skills cracked armor with low durations as an bonus condition - what also would be more "realistic" against hard targets because of the blunt damage and would not be problematic thinking that these skills were under powered before (which skills, has to be discussed). Besides this Hammers should have an increasement of KD time by 1 second because they are the primary knock down weapons, which isn't obvious because all Warrior-Builds can have a KD-Increasement with Stonefist Insignia. Afterwards reduce minimal KD-Duration to 1 second. Doing so you have the same KD-Duration on Hammers like now, but a shorter duration on other weapons bringing KDs. Texts of spells, etc. that produce KDs should be a changed, to state they inflict KD on their old duration (to ensure they won't be nerfed through this changes). Hammer-Warriors would overall benefit most of KDs (that's what this weapon was created for), without really buffing Hammers but nerfing other weapons that are not supposed to inflict long enduring KDs.

All Bows should gain an increasement of basic weapon damage to 20-30 to increase their overall damage per second to a range near to other two handed weapons. This weapon class seems to be designed (besides pressuring with condition spamming) especially for dealing spike damage - Rangers don't have a very good DPS like Warriors or good AoE damage like Elementalists.

Both changes would maybe equal the two weapon classes to the other ones.

To balance over powered weapon classes like Scythes and Spears, I suggest following small changes:

- Scythe damage should be converted to 20-30, to decrease the insanely high "crits". NPCs automatically start to kite on Scythes AoE damage.

- Spear damage should be reduced to 15-22, to decrease the too high DPS by lowering their "crits" and their average damage overall.