User talk:Isaiah Cartwright/Gimmicks/Archive 1

→ moved from User talk:Isaiah Cartwright/Gimmicks (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 12:13, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Listed in no particular order, all three need serious (and, most importantly, immediate) balance:

1. Spiritway.

   This has gone on, in some form, for over a year now; I think it's time to stop it forever. Thumpers abusing weapon spells by having a cheap, spammable IAS/move buff on top of knockdown/deep wound/daze, with a steady stream of heals from Necro/Monks and/or Necro/Rits via Soul Reaping abuse. Combined with trappers (smoke/spike) in the very very closed quarters of HA, it becomes simply overpowered. r10/11+ groups running balanced get rolled by unranked/bambi spiritway; that should never happen. I'd like skill being a bigger factor than build in determining winners, please.

2. Assacasters (Deadly Arts line, filler elite, any caster primary/secondary)

   This makes a joke of the meta. Any primary class (A/*, N/A, E/A, even rarely Mo/A) can roll 12 deadly arts and put the hurts on with a ridiculous combo that is devastating without using an elite! These skills (Dancing Daggers, Entangling Asp, Signet of Toxic Shock, Augury of Death, Deadly Paradox) have all been discussed in talk pages, but five months later, assacasters are still as retardedly overpowered as ever. Can it be countered, one might ask? Aside from straight out killing the entire other team, no. Blind doesn't work. Snares don't work. Interrupts only annoy them. Diversion, which generally is a counter to any spammable skill, falls short here because people usually run 3 assacasters, so diversioning one solves nothing.

   On top of the already too powerful vanilla spike, assacasters get to tack on utility skills (including elite; common choices are Signet of Judgment for a free KD and aoe damage, Toxic Chill/Icy Veins on necro primary to add a hell of a finisher to an already imba combo, Siphon Speed/Ddagger/Castigation Signet/etc etc etc). Maybe making Deadly Paradox elite would fix the problem? It surely has elite power, vastly outperforming other sin elites. I also wouldn't mind a 30r on Paradox. Sure, the deadly arts line would have to be re-worked, but in the meantime... Guild Wars without deadly arts is a better game than Guild Wars with deadly arts.

3. Paragons.

   Plenty of discussion has taken place on this topic since at least five months ago. Paragons are still taking a huge dump all over "game balance" by offering:

   1. unlimited IAS (I read you're a fan of the -20 al while attacking or -10 perma under AR, any time estimates? Are we going to see the release of GW2 before that happens?)
   2. ranged, high-powered DPS and spammable attack skills (which spam the effects of Anthem of Flame and the like)
   3. unlimited energy (leadership needs to either give health instead of energy, or give about 1/4 of the energy it currently does... being able to bring a bar full of 10/15e spells and spam them simply screams "balance? we don't need no stinking balance!")
   4. 80 armor (simply pointless tbh, paragons are ranged attackers that have better energy management than elementalists, why do they need 80 armor on top of it all? Hit it down to 70 at the least, I honestly wouldn't be opposed to 60), and
   5. an entire game mechanic that cannot be stripped or stopped unless you bring a hex necro to cockblock it specifically. There's more, but I really think this is enough to prove that paragons just aren't balanced.
      

All of these add to the un-funness of Guild Wars PvP, and all need to be seriously fixed. And tbh, don't worry about overnerfage, for two reasons; 1, if you did indeed remove spiritway/paragons/assacasters from play entirely, you wouldn't be hurting a thing... and 2, you can always come back later and make them a little bit more good. But for the love of all things PvP, stop letting these ruin the meta. -Auron 14:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Pve is the metagame. 29 September 2007

Amen. But I think there's more point in going to www.burningsea.com and seeing that balance between Nations in that game is done properly before release. GW will now have 5 skills balanced in 5 months time, so what you just typed is completely useless. Servant of Kali 18:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

If Leadership does get nerfed, I'd suggest replacing the Energy gain with a percentile Energy discount on Paragon skills and Shouts similar to Expertise. -- Gordon Ecker 00:48, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If you change it to health like suggested, Paragons will ONLY be able to be adrenaline based spear chuckers. I'm aware that you probably don't care, but as a regular Paragon player, I think you can stick that suggest where the sun don't shine. --Deathwing 01:34, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

No comment on the Thumpers, but Assassins and Paragons I've got some other good points.

First off, Assassins. I personally love the Deadly Arts line, but hate how it's really only good as a main attribute when you've got Deadly Paradox. I don't think the other skills would see nearly as much use without that huge recharge/cast time buff; even if you lower the buff to 25%, it's still better then not bringing it, thus keeping it a staple. It needs so other downside; higher recharge, or something of the sort. I don't think making it Elite would help too much, and I don't think it's entirely feasible to do so; the build that's causing the biggest problem is Elite-less anyway, so it'll only bump out what, SoJ or something? Still doesn't fix much.

Paragons. I play with one of these fairly often, so I've got a pretty good grasp on most of the skills, though I don't have much PvP experience. Not having this PvP experience, I can't justly give any particularly good advice on the subject, but I can state what I think would be a problem. Aggressive Refrain having a AL de-buff would work well I think, I would suggest a perma-debuff rather then a while attacking one; a ranged attacker can handle lower armor if they're planning to deal some serious damage, look at Rangers. It's the party support guys with a permanent IAS that are a bigger issue, they've got an adrenaline boost as long as it's active. Give them a debuff to even this out, and they have a bit more trouble defending themselves in a fight, when they're split defending the rest of the party as well. Don't give them the easy option to just stop attacking and basically get an armor boost.

I haven't seen any builds using a bar full of 10/15e spells yet, and I'm curious how this would work; how are they gaining adrenaline (for stuff like GftE!), while spamming spells as well? Last time I tried to do that, I ran out of energy, then got stuck with no energy, no adrenaline, and no defense. A slight decrease in energy gain might go a long way, maybe even set it to only give energy for each teammate in earshot beyond the first one, basically making it so you need at least two guys plus yourself to start gaining all that energy. Giving GftE! a one-point cost increase would also make a difference, cutting the spamability of not only itself, but a lot of other skills, while still not reducing the Paragon's usefulness (you really don't need that critical bonus that often).

As for shouts, some ways of removing effects could be viable, right? Making Dazed render the player unaffected by Shouts would make perfect sense both flavorfully and probably mechanically; the guy's seeing stars, yet he can still understand what he's being told? Shouts would be much harder to use to defend a Monk, and some players could even Daze a Warrior just to render a few Shouts useless. Of course, Daze isn't super-easy to apply, especially for long durations (aside from Broad Head Arrow), so I can't say it would crush anything.

Perhaps another "test weekend" might be a good way to try some of these ideas out? It's a big change to make in some of these cases, and having a few million testees might do well.

And as a parting note, while "overnerfing" Thumpers or Assacasters wouldn't be a huge deal, I believe Paragons should be handled delicately. That's not a play style, that's an entire class you'd be removing from viable play. -- Jïörüjï Ðērākō.>.cнаt^ 02:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The entire class is probably the single most broken thing on the list.

On the energy part - I see Paragons spamming Defensive Anthem, Stand Your Ground, Fall Back, and either Freezing Gust or Mirror of Disenchant (on recharge), all with no energy problems. I don't think my ele could manage to do that. -Auron 20:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, just to clerify this is feedback on HA right? I mean the Paragon thing is sorta for both, but these all seem like HA builds and I just wanted to double check this was the case. ~Izzy @-'---- 01:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Assacasters are probably most popular in RA/TA, where there aren't as many monks or other utility (condition/hex removal) to counter their spikes. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 01:59, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The assacasters are everywhere, paragons are HA/GvG, and spiritway is just in HA (it exists in GvG but you're allowed to split on them and do other stuff to win so its not really a problem, in HA you can't avoid fighting them head-on). -Auron 08:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The root of problems is not the current gimmick build of the month. If you want to do something non temporary and useful to the game, then take a look at the underpowered and the misc skill tweaks sections.

And by "of the month" you mean "current gimmicks that have dominated the meta for about a year?" With the exception of assacasters, these aren't recent problems.

Yes, I like tweaking underpowered skills, but that causes one huge problem; power creep. If you introduce superpowered skills to get sales on NF and EotN, you need to tone them down after release, or you'll end up having to tweak pretty much every skill released thus far to match it (because the old skills are, by nature, less powerful). A combination of nerfing the overpowered stuff and buffing the epically useless stuff is the way to get best results, doing merely one or the other doesn't achieve anything. -Auron 22:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Deadly Arts works sans-assassacaster? Armond 23:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Auron is right there, but I think there is more to consider. Notice that typically when the developers come up with a profession or skill type, it is usually alot more powerful and useful. This is because when they come up with the skill, they are trying to make a fun ability which is fun to use. Typically these abilities are nerfed to kingdom come upon release or shortly after because of how they fit into the game, but if the skill was designed to be fun and the rest of the game is holding it back, perhaps the rest of the game needs a looking at. To date, several enjoyable and attractive skills and features have been nerfed and suppressed so much that some not only leave the meta, but completely leave use.

So it is really time for the effort to shift attention onto other skills which are ineffective, out of play, and unenjoyable to use, and raise them up to the level and competition of the skills we enjoy using. Why should boring and ineffective skills set a standard for fun and enjoyable skills. There may be some that outshine all build in general, and lack a countermeasure, but typically, if a skill type totally lacks a countermeasure, it is naturally going to defeat other builds based on immunity, and really should earn a countermeasure or opposing skill type. Beyond that, some abilities and skill types need broad redevelopment or replacement, many of them are deficient in nature, this mainly applies to skills which do not fit the uses of a profession.--BahamutKaiser 01:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Power creep, mostly. Izzy already doesn't have the time to balance skills in general (look at how long rit spike went on, look at how long shitway CONTINUES to go on), so time must be considered. Yes, I agree that buffing hundreds of junk skills to usable level would be awesome for the game, but it simply isn't going to happen. Nerfing a few select skills as they need it and integrating more and more bad skills into play by buffing them over time is probably the best way to go - however, as is obvious, ANet doesn't react nearly fast enough.

I have a good friend that is solely a PvEr. That's what she likes doing, that's all she did for months and that's all she does now. Guess what HA rank she is? 9. Because of rit spike. She's a high enough rank to put Legendary Hero in her Hall of Monuments solely because ANet failed to balance rit spike in a timely manner. The same is happening with shitway - it has gone on, as I said, for over a year; in its current incarnation, 5 months. ANet set a failure-to-react record for 6 months on rit spike, I really hope they aren't trying for another.

I'm sorry, but a build that (I'll be quite frank here) clueless fucking idiots can run to beat r10/11+ teams is simply imbalanced. You can't look at it any other way. Having gone up against Spiritway literally more than a thousand times (don't believe me? Open obs. You too, izzy, because you evidently haven't noticed every other team is running it), I can tell you that there is no "simple counter." You say "oh, take down their spirits!" That's nice, but they've pre-trapped a trail from the front of their alcove to the back, rendering any melee (even paragons) that try to spirithunt useless. Wand the trappers, you say? That's nice, except they have Song of Concentration and you have spells to cast and people to heal. I'll start a topic in the HA feedback thread, but I'll say it here; traps are simply imbalanced in HA. If the goal of each map was less pointless (less alliance battles, in other words) and if people in HA actually had somewhere to kite to, traps might be balanced. Just might. But seeing as alliance battle maps aren't going to be removed and seeing as maps aren't going to be re-worked to allow more room, traps will remain imbalanced.

Their nec/rits have unlimited energy (soul reaping is still really good), so even running edenial as broken as fearme sins doesn't cause energy problems. Balanced? Oh, obviously.

Then we move on the (non-trap) offense. The best IAS/speed buff combo in the game, Rampage as One, is supposed to be held in check by the high energy cost - which is negated completely by other means, so the skill thus becomes imbalanced (Imagine if wars had a spirit they could put up to make frenzy not cause double damage? That would be like warring for stupid people. Oh, that's how it is for thumpers. My bad.). So tack on said imbalanced IAS/speed buff to Warmonger's Weapon, and what do you get? A thumper with 60 IQ interrupting any target he c-spaces EVERY SECOND without trying. Is that balanced? Oh, obviously. Then there's the part where, on top of the every-second interrupts, he gets the neat trick of knocking a target down (which, on top of an interrupt of any current skills, makes the target unable to cast for ~2 seconds), Dazing said target (duh, all you have to do is have your pet attacking; with RaO on, he'll guaranteed attack in the 2 seconds your target is on the ground), and covering Daze with Deep Wound at will. Balanced? Yes, of course.

All in all, I fear for the future of Guild Wars if a build like shitway is seen as balanced. Every single aspect is brainlessly more powerful than it should be, and all thrown together, it becomes a textbook example of overpowered. (And as should-be-unnecessary pre-rebuttal, this is not a rant of "OMFG I LOST TO THAT BUILD SO IT MUST BE IMBA" anger, this is a rant born out of watching this build for months dominate HA unscathed by nerfs. Yes, angry is a pretty good word to describe my feelings when I think about the state of the meta, but it doesn't cloud my judgment when it comes to what's balanced and what isn't). -Auron 13:16, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Nice. Didn't realise it's that bad in HA since I have avoided it since around when Dual Smite was destroying it, good summary for those of us out of the scene. Maybe we'd have better luck asking for a solution to detecting spies by continually shooting team mates when friendly fire is off. I mean, I get that you can shoot a guy to check if he's a spy, but negating an ability of an entire class thanks to friendly fire being off seems a bit unfair. --Epinephrine 19:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Redevelopment can happen, it is just a matter of priority. When it is recognized and widely supported it will happen, Anet is just going to have to get their business straight because supporting the game properly is a priority over pursuing more interests. The games going to bleed out of interest unless it starts incorperating more advantage and disadvantage revolution. Every build should have a serious overwhelming weakness which should defeat it especially if it is overly used or exploited, that way players are forced to select diverse builds in order to survive complete counters. As long as there is a strong revolution in power, there will always be a build which simply dominates the other type of builds, and developing this revolution is where the best balance lies. Thing is, most over reliant party builds are best defeated by effective AoE effects, and that is where the effort needs to go.--BahamutKaiser 04:42, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Two things about that; one, the logic is flawed. Sure, I could play rock, paper, scissors and run a direct counter to spiritway; however, and never forget this, my build has to be good against everything else too. Builds that pretty much require you to run a direct counter to them in order to win regularly are overpowered by definition.

"Every build should have a serious overwhelming weakness which should defeat it" <-- yes, and if it doesn't, it is overpowered. Shitway has no "serious overwhelming weakness," have you bothered reading my post? The build itself has no glaring weakness; the players, on the other hand, are sometimes terrible at the game (and are thus just barely beatable, once you fight your way through five dust traps, ten spirits, a wall of pets, and WoWarding). The build remains imba no matter how badly some people play it.

Anet doesn't have time to sit there and make your "skill revolution" happen. Izzy manages to buff merely a handful of skills every 8 months or so - at this rate, by 2015 we should have enough skills to "counter" spiritway and retain our ability to beat other builds. Or... we could nerf what's broken, and buff stuff in the meantime without the whole skill balance failure we call spiritway hanging over our heads.

Just to give you an idea of how balanced it is; shitway sure isn't popular. If more people ran it, maybe ANet would notice? I'll come back to Izzy only when 100% of groups run it, not merely the 95% that do now, as that's not nearly enough to clearly identify an absolutely broken build. -Auron 16:59, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I didn't study nor address your spiritway assesment, I was primarily bringing up Paragons dilema. I can see how a powerful synergy of skills from a hand full of professions may have come together to offer an indominable build in a remote situation, that is what I get from your explaination so far, but it really is the overhall that needs attention.

Every time another adjustment is made based on the existing metagame, the game gets further from the redevelopment it needs, the same excuse was used when elementist value was the only weakness before Factions came out, and that was totally overlooked and unrecognized, when it would have been easy. It was overlooked again in Factions, and than again in Nightfall, the game will continue to get worse until the meta stops dictating the evolution of the game. There will always be another broken build which doesn't fit the meta, you can nerf all you want, somethings going to dominate, either through simplicity, or ease, or plain old superiority, and degenerating into what you can't stand for the moment will always fail to address the effective and inevitably neccessary adjustments that need to happen to right the gameplay as a whole, and not some remote application in a single setting for only a few players for the moment.

There comes a time when everyone has to decide between what is easy and what is right, and no matter how cliche that sounds, it truely applies here. You can keep whining and whining as you have since the first day to pander the meta til everything is disfunctional and inadequit or almost nothing is available and a shadow of the functions solicited in the game are really used, or Anet can strike a new cord and make serious efforts to support and restructure the game to be sound in widespread application. Inevitiably, continuing down the current path will sabatoge the game as a whole, discourage players, and reduce sales of not only this game, but also the next, wile redevelopment will ensure the interest and even increased sales through the most powerful form of marketing, word of mouth, wile gaining the trust and respect of their gamers. Anet simple needs to realize that their in a hole, and what they need to do is stop digging before they bury this game, work done in the wrong direction is no work at all.--BahamutKaiser 02:30, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Or... you can stop making unfounded logic leaps :/ really, it's getting old. I've never wanted to pander the meta until everything is dysfunctional; stop making false assumptions. For example... Eviscerate is a good elite. It's powerful, it's flexible, and kills very well; however, most importantly, it isn't overpowered. If I were, as you claim, aiming to pander the skills until they were useless, I'd be calling for nerfs to things like dshot and eviscerate. I care about the meta very much, which is why I'm not doing stupid shit like that. I'm calling for nerfs to things that are clearly overpowered, which just so happens to not be everything.

Izzy buffs skills. Izzy nerfs skills (not nearly fast enough, but the nerfs usually come, even if they're a year or so too late and have caused people to leave the game forever). Like I've stated before, the best way to balance the game is to do both; however, nerfing overpowered skills is basically on a timed schedule. If you don't nerf it fast enough, you fuck up the game forever. Sort of like rit spike. Buffing skills (while also important) is on no such timed basis, and can happen as leisurely as ANet plans (and won't hurt the game).

My... I dunno what to call it... "vision," for the end product is a game in which skill (not skills) is the determining factor in winning. Gimmicks could still be run, but they wouldn't be effective - because, again, that's using skills (builds) and not skill to win. That would be true balance.

To summarize, yes, you're right that buffing skills is required, but you're flat wrong every time you suggest that nerfing overpowered skills would leave us with nothing. It would leave noobs with nothing to exploit, but is that not the entire point of game balance? -Auron 07:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is the reasons for nerfing something can't be "because everyone runs it" that isn't a valid reason for a nerf. The reasons Assassincasters are an issue is because of Knockdown spam, I'll probably tweak them in someway, the other major problem when I read all of this type of feedback is you need to inlcude game types, because so many builds have different balances in different game types, and I think the feedback gets really unclear without some context as to the game type your trying to give feedback on. And I know everyone says it takes 8 months to get any balance updates but if you haven't noticed they come every other month, and sometimes every month depending on how things are going and what needs changed. This has been the case for a very long time and is pretty much the process, The 2nd week of every other month is when a balance update often comes. ~Izzy @-'---- 22:17, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I doubt anyone would seriously suggest that balance updates only happen every 8 months, but what people do say is that problems are left unfixed for months(sometimes even when the fix has already been developed(Jade Isle says hi)). See ritspike, eurohex, eurospike, Searing Flames, RaOs, Grenth, Melandru, ZB, paragons. How interesting how every single one of those examples is post-NF. --Edru viransu 00:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

And everyone of those changes was fixed within a month or two at most, because thats how often we do balance updates, it's hard to update somthing faster then that without just making knee jerk reactions to everything, and most of those changes where issues where a balance update was out there but it took people a long time to find the issues with them. ~Izzy @-'---- 20:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah well I'm not going to argue with the 8 months, I think thats fair. I am still waiting for the much needed buffs to Paragons crap end skills, but all I get is the ability to create my own cover condition so the monk will never get rid of bleeding, deep wound, blindness or any other condition on me. Wow, who's great idea was it to undertake a policy of destroying the Paragon class??? It's working and quite frankly I'm fed up of it. If you're going to do something do it properly please, if you want to balance Paragons do the whole job in a well thought out manner please, not just nerf all their key skills. Ajax Baby Eater 12:57, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

How is a class with warrior DPS from range, party defensive support, party offensive support, infinite energy, and 3 or 4 free skillslots, a free elite, a free secondary, and 8 or so free attribute points they can use for pretty much any caster stuff weak? Paragons have a few decades to go before being destroyed, and that's if they're nerfed weekly.

--Edru viransu 18:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Probably the same reason they where tweaked almost every balance update sense nightfall release.

What a completely bias and inaccurate analysis, half of that isn't true, and Warrior has much more value than you pretend. Warrior has higher DPS, given skills used by either of them, warrior will still have higher DPS, any example otherwise is comparing Paragon with additional abilities vs warrior without them. Warrior IAS options are faster, on top of having faster weapon speed and higher weapon damage, and additional armor penetration, as if "free" energy isn't costing paragon attribute points. Warrior has very simple and great party defensive support and higher defense by a long shot. And almost all of Paragons benifits require shout use and group proximity, which should have better counters, but is a limitation, and pretending their abilities are something like Aegis or LoD that can be used universally is misinformation.

Paragon does need some better counters and opposition to shout use and proximity, but they are not what you pretend they are, this imaginary DPS value is created by party synergy, and when you compare a warrior with offensive support to a paragon with offensive support, from either other paragons or otherwise, Warrior still out damages Paragon, and honestly, a shout intensive party is more potent with a mix of warriors and paragons rather than just paragons, since WY and SU are just as useful defensive boosts, and the mix of warrior functions into the team is more important than another paragon. You can't derive effective alterations from bias perspectives.--BahamutKaiser 20:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

This is the issue with adding classes, it's hard to find new rolls for classes without hurting others, and when you start losing the roll distinction between classes balance falls apart, so why is it harder to balance things sense nightfall, well because the matrix of skills grows at an insane level every time we add new skills and new professions. Factions classes started off very weak because of this, and I slowly buffed them, heck Rits didn't even really come into play as anything other then a spirit spammer until post nightfall. with Nightfall classes I took a different approach I tried starting things out stronger in order to establish strong rolls for them in the game, this will always cause problems as it pushes other classes out of their jobs, also releasing two physical classes in an all ready physically dominated game will push things around. In the end my only point is I think it's vastly unfair to say things take forever to be changed hell even in the examples being given your talking about like 3 or 4 months of different builds that happen because of balance changes. Also Jade map gets brought up over and over and the simple truth of the matter is our artists are full blown working on new content and when your making a new game every 6 months you don't have time to tweak old art you barly have time to get the new art out the door, I actually learned the editor and worked with an artist in his spare time to get those tweaks done, so yes it took a while to get just right. ~Izzy @-'---- 20:30, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice to see some changes to the Paragon skills that do not hit individual Paras harder than the Team Paras which they are intended to balance. This has the effect of significantly reducing the utility of the lone Para in both PvE and PvP teams. I'm sure there are skills which could be given a buff that would not imbalance the team Paras but give some of the required utilty back to the lone Para, perhaps a reduction in the recharge of Signet of Synergy, or change Remedy Signet to to "Target Ally" rather than "You". Ajax Baby Eater 21:37, 16 October 2007 (UTC) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 12:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Rangerspike.

I didn't see any mention of ranger spike, one of the more potent gimmicks thats been around for years, its only just come back into play but already is more popular than Spiritway. The current build consists of 3 Glass Arrows spikers using Forked Arrow and Savage Shot as a follow up along with a Brutal Weapon ritualist and a paragon carrying the deep wound and Anthem of Guidance then a 3 monk backline consisting of 2 LoD's and an RC. Perhaps bringing back "Shields Up" would see to some of the issues with both ranger spike and paragons, both are pushing the limits of balance, i don't see any downsides to "Shields Up" being buffed. 194.82.121.38 20:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)