ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Miscellaneous/Fixing all Primary Attributes

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A. von Rin's most Radical Idea on fixing Classes -- A. von Rin 01:29, 12 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 other 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 1 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%.

"Slight" unbalance in Primary Attribs... 86.26.89.66 10:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Issue

Different PAs have radically different effects (which I'm fine with in theory) which are hard to balance because they all tend to work in very different areas.

Here's a comparison of all PAs. "Class usefulness" is how much it affects other classes, "skill usefulness" what skills it effects and "environment usefulness" how it's usefulness varies based on other factors. Note that this does NOT include such things as Mysticism being potentially less useful in PvE areas where foes have high levels of enchantment removal (though arguably that has its upsides as well) but this too should be taken into account. Some statistics for the numbers on Elite and non-Elite skills are also given.

Profession	Class usefulness	Skill usefulness	Environment usefulness	Non-elite skills	Elite skills
Warrior	All attacking classes	Attack skills only	All	26	11
Ranger	Most classes (varying levels)	Attack skills, Rituals, touch skills and all Ranger skills	All	10	9
Monk	Monk only	Ally-targeting spells only	All	16	9
Necromancer	N/A	N/A	High in high death areas, low in low death areas, unpredictable in PvP.	5	3
Mesmer	All spellcasting classes	All spells	All	4	5
Elementalist	N/A	N/A	All	4	7
Assassin	All attacking classes	N/A	All	11	7
Ritualist	Ritualist and Necromancer	Creature-creating skills and Weapon spells	All	15	7
Paragon	Paragon and Warrior mostly	Shouts and Chants	High in large party areas, low in small party areas.	17	5
Dervish	All classes with Enchantments	Enchantment Spells	All, also more useful with allies who cast enchantments on you	14	8

To summarise, PAs often work radically better or worse depending on the situation and have greatly varying amounts of synergy with other classes. For example, Energy Storage is the least discriminate because it *always* gives you a nice benefit. Expertise is also pretty good because it has a high level of synergy with other classes. Strength and Critical Strikes, however, are good only for attacking classes, but Critical Strikes works on all attacks and actually has a better effect. Strength on the other hand has a high number of skills tied to it. At the other end of the scale is Divine Favour which affects only Monk skills, only spells and only healing ones (or at least ones which target allies). Divine Favour is a problem because it pretty much stops a monk doing anything other than healing (there are a few smiting monks about but these are quite rare) and also makes them the best at it, stopping pretty much anyone else from healing.

In my opinion, the worst two are Leadership and Soul Reaping, not because of whether they are balanced or not, but because of the fact that they change in different situations (particularly bad in PvE) - Paragons are generally weak in teams of 4 (how often do you see one in HB?) yet imba in teams of 8, at least in groups, and Necromancers get hell loads of energy when there are lots of deaths (AB, PvE areas with high numbers of weak enemies, etc.) and yet their PA is next to worthless when there aren't (stalemates in HA to some extent, areas with few powerful enemies et.c.).

This is actually worst not in PvP but in PvE - consider getting right to the end on Nightfall with a Paragon and then deciding to have a go at the Shadow Nexus only to find it's teams of 4 where you are at a distinct disadvantage (and it's not like you can go and roll another char - this is right at the end of the game!). That happened to be and it's pretty frustrating.

Solution

Well, it's not really clear exactly what needs to be done, but I thought a direct comparison would help (and I thought putting this table on the main page rather than the talk page would be wise so it's more easily visible). Clearly certain PAs need to be buffed under certain conditions (e.g. Divine Favour, possibly Spawning Power et.c.) and more importantly in my opinion, Leadership and Soul Reaping need to be changed so that their power is more consistant.

I could give examples of what I think should be done but I'm not going to because the exact specifics aren't important, only the actual overall effect. However, I would personally suggest making Strength slightly more powerful (possibly so it affects all attacks), making Divine Favour affect more skills (possibly all skills which target allies or at least giving some kind of a buff to smiting or whatever), possibly tweaking Spawning Power and thinking of some innovative solutions to Leadership and Soul Reaping. Other PAs may need tweaks as well.

As an example of what I'm getting at, the Fast Casting signet change, for all it's signet build repercussions, was probably a step in the right direction.

One thing I would point out is that not all PAs have to be totally balanced on their own, since classes with worse PAs may have better armour or energy, for example (e.g. Dervs and Sins get the same armour but better energy regen. than Rangers, so it would be OK for Expertise to have a *slightly* larger effect to make up for this.

Limiting primary attribute abuse

Issue:

As a game created in different steps (first Prophecies, then Factions, then NF, then GW:EN), Guild Wars has plenty of mechanics that were originally fine, but became incredibly abusable as more and more features were added into the game. Many of those features cannot be changed now without making too drastic changes, but the primary attributes are something that may still be adapted (as seen on how Arena Net recently changed how Soul Reaping works, for example).

Solution

Assassins: Critical Strikes allows assassins to use some weapons better than the professions those weapons were designed for. In some cases, such as scythes, the imbalance caused by this is so great that not only assassins are overused on PvP, but also they are causing a need to nerf the weapons' damage. I suggest changing Critical Strikes so it only works for daggers, and changing all Assassin skills (with one exception) that increase the chance of a critical strike so they only works with daggers.

The only exception would be Way of the Master. It would become an elite skill (remove elite status from Way of the Assassin and replace it with WotM), and it would be the only assassin skill to increase the chance of a critical strike with weapons other than daggers.

Rangers: Expertise has been abused since the release of Factions. The nerf here is obvious - change it so it only works for Ranger skills. Otherwise, there is a very large number of skills that need to be balanced both to their primary profession and to Rangers with a high expertise, adding way too much complexity to game balance.

Dervishes: Mysticism is too easily abused, but IMO it's not this profession's main problem. Change Mysticism so it only triggers when the character uses a skill that removes a enchantmeng from himself, as opposed to simply when an enchantment ends; this would add great sinergy with Dervish skills that remove enchantments from the self and limit a bit the chance of this attribute being abused. More importantly, make it so scythes only have AoE damage when used by a (primary) Dervish; when used by any other profession, they would only hit one target.

And that's it. Strenght is too weak to be abused (it could be buffed as proposed above, even), Energy Storage is not that useful outside elementalist skills, Fast Casting isn't that useful for non mesmer skills anyway, Divine Favor already only works on monk skills, Soul Reaping has already been nerfed, Spawning Power is only useful for ritualist skills, the current paragon skills make using Leadership with warriors skills to be mostly redundant.

Erasculio 09:37, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How about having primary attributes give unique boosts to non-primary skills?

Rangers

For each rank of Expertise, costs of bow attacks and pet attacks are reduced by 4%, durations of non-expertise stances are increased by 5%, and cast times of your Ranger skills are reduced by 3%.

Monks

For each rank of Divine Favor, your healing prayers heal for an additional 4 health for every 5 energy, your protection prayers enchantments last 3% longer, and your Smiting prayers recharge 3% faster.

Elementalists

For each rank of Energy Storage, your maximum energy is increased by 2(this is intentional, not a typo). Your Fire Magic skills recharge 2% faster(minimum 10 seconds, used for recharging massive AoE), your Air Magic skills cast faster, your Water Magic skills last 2% longer, and your Earth Magic skills gain 2% AP.

Warriors

For each rank of Strength, your hammer attacks(all attacks not just skills) have 1% AP, your sword attacks have a +1.5% chance to critical, and your Tactics skills cost 2% less energy. At 3 ranks of Strength, your axe attacks strike one adjacent foe for half base damage, plus an additional adjacent foe for every 5 ranks of Strength

PRIMARY ATTRIBUTES ARE FINE AS IS

Letting most PAs interact with skills from another class let users create a unique build. Before I get flamed on how this will unbalance the game:

"No matter how you limit players, they will ALWAYS find a way to gain an edge"

Not all PAs have good synergy with all classes. It just so happens that a few synergize very well, making it seem overpowered. This thinking is pointless. After all, if all combinations were made to be good then we would see many more warrior/elementalist flare spammers :). Also, if all combinations were equal in every way, where would the fun be had?

A few I would like to point out:

Soul Reaping: You gain energy when a creature dies. The changes made limit this in a way, but it still remains usefull. Keep in mind that as a necromancer primary you are limited to 12 in another classes attribute line, making you less effective in return for the energy gain. and no SABWAY is not a good example, it has its weaknesses (even in normal mode).

Energy Storage: You are an elementalist (mage). I see no problem with having the ability to raise your energy levels. Let us say you chose to become an elementalist/monk and use healing prayers.. Yes you will have greater energy to utilize, but you will not have the bonus from divine favor.

Critical Strikes: This is one that I could see people making a valid point on. Builds based on critbarrage and critscythe have become common. I can see how this can be seen as unfair, but i believe the reason is not because of critical strikes, but skills such as critical agility & critical defenses. Without powerfull skills such as these, a dervish primary would be a better choice.

Mysticism: The energy gain from enchantments ending is of great help, but by no means is it great. Unless in a party where skills have been set up to include massive ammounts of enchantments to be cast on the melee dervishes the effect is minimal at best. Do not forget that mystic regeneration costs 10, and all dervish attacks are energy based (unlike a warrior who has a mix of both).

Spawning Power: This affects minions as well as spirits, and why should it be otherwise? Summoned creatures are summoned creatures. ritualist/necromancers have a solid place in some parties as a bomber minion master, but do not forget they also lack soul reaping. They rely on an enchantment spell to grant them an energy return (which is easily stripped).

Contest this as you wish..

but do keep in mind that the trouble does not lie with an entire attribute line, but with a few key skills in a classes line.