ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Necromancer/resolved Blood Magic

Note: As of September 2, 2009 this page is no longer active. If you have suggestions for Guild Wars skills please go to Feedback:Main to learn how to submit suggestions that ArenaNet can use.

Spoil Victor

Spoil Victor + 8 Players and Pets Balling on the Guild Lord + Cyclone Axe

→ moved from User talk:Isaiah Cartwright

Equals Guild Lord exploding at 60 seconds into the match. Please fix. Mr J 02:03, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Easiest AT wins ever...I mean o.O this is bull..nerf please...btw smiteways smite hexes are a good counter we found out painfully, so while you're at it kill both birds. Tyvm. 74.229.66.241 04:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

On some maps you can just bodyblock them and send off a ranger to gank their lord, but that's simply not possible on maps like Wizard's or Solitude. The easiest solution would be to simply drop Spoil Victor's damage in PvP to something like 30...46...50 - even with Cyclone Axe hitting sixteen targets, it's barely a kill with they've got Spoil Victor and Empathy up.

The correct solution, of course, would be to code Amulet of Protection properly, so that it actually reduces damage instead of healing over it after it's already done.

-- Armond Warblade 06:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I ran this while guesting for someone and couldn't believe people were getting away with it. Need more proof that the developers don't play their own game? Here it is. ~Shard 07:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

This is becoming a discussion that should probably go somewhere else..... -- Wyn 07:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

<unnecessary comment removed>

Another option would be removing Cyclone Axe from the Guild Lord's skill bar. -- Gordon Ecker 08:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

You shouldn't have to re-skill the lord because your programmers can't code an amulet of protection properly. I mean, if you code the thing to heal damage after the fact instead of preventing it in the first place, you should be able to predict that something like this would happen - at the very latest, after the introduction of nightfall, when people started explaining why angelic protection was bad... -- Armond Warblade 11:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Remove hexes from lord asap, SB him up, and stall until they hopelessly wipe to the pressure, or just send your offense to lord it while you stall, either or you can deal with this build without changing a thing. 74.229.66.241 16:59, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the point is, it doesn't demand a lot of skill. Plus, with aggression, the defending team is screwed anyway. --Antioch 17:18, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Increase the Health of GL so that it won't automkill him, it's close to not-work anyway so make it 2k or so and whole thing nerfed. Or nerf SV as someone suggested, Skillbalanceteams choice. 91.154.13.166 19:09, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

SV - and most necro hexes in general - are bad for PvP. Nuke please. -- Armond Warblade 19:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not have it end after it taking effect after a few attacks? That keeps it viable while not making it useless. Throw it on with Wastrel's Worry. --Antioch 19:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the easiest and most logical solution is to fix Amulet of Protection so that it does what it's supposed to do.

I'm so glad they fixed this before teams started abusing it in the automatic tourn...nevermind. ~Shard 20:31, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

So what do you suggest to change so that this exploit doesn't work anymore? Dark Morphon(contribs) 14:21, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why the discussion was moved here... Nerfing spoil victor is not the point, just re-code the amulet and everything will be fine. ->discussion should be moved to the Amulet of protection skill feedback imo Ysalis 21:37, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm tired of pvp bullshit drama, it was the last time I buy a game with focus on pvp. Trust me on that. 87.189.189.42 11:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Cry louder, nobody is forcing you to take part in the "pvp bullshit drama". I hear Hello Kitty Online is the perfect MMO for people of your demeanor Dargon 18:42, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

A silly suggestion, realistically Hello Kitty Online is the perfect MMO so we will all move there once it goes live anyway. Misery 09:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

It's not a problem with Spoil Victor; it's functioning exactly like it should. The problem is not with Cyclone Axe; it's functioning exactly like it should. The problem is with this Amulet of Protection skill; it's supposed to limit the amount of Damage Per Second that the Guild Lord can take. It doesn't do that. It let's him smack himself in the face with his own axe and then goes, "ups. You shouldn't have taken 2000 damage! Let me fix- oh wait. You're dead. Nevermind. I guess your team loses, then."
You shouldn't make otherwise unused skills even worse or gimp NPCs because players are abusing a glitch. You should bite the bullet and fix the problem. The Lord, according to GvG mechanics (given by developers if I'm not mistaken), shouldn't ever be able to take more than 300 dps. This is what's broken and needs fixing. So, please, stop suggesting half-assed work arounds because that's what caused this glitch in the first place. Mr J 09:59, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't remember Spoil Victor ever being a problem skill in GvG ever since Factions launched. Balancing skills for PvP is one thing. Balancing skills for metagame is something different. Once its nuked for this meta, the chance of it being reverted when the meta changes again is nill. Oh and Spoil Victor is not affected by Amulet of Protection because it causes health loss, not damage. People are not going after the bodyguard to aid Spoil Victor. At least not in the situations I've seen. They're going after the bodyguard to help add their icing on the cake with the damage from every other skill but Spoil Victor and Insidious Parasite. Replacing Cyclone Axe with another skill would be the best solution. Lose @100 health per swing without Cyclone or @1600 health with Cyclone. - jayce 64.20.145.25 08:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

SV is affected by AoP because AoP caps health loss, not damage. ups. --71.229.253.172 09:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You are partially right, but mostly wrong. Spoil Victor goes through AoP because EVERYTHING goes through AoP, it triggers after the damage, it doesn't prevent it in advance like it should. To fix this they would need to cap damage like AoP should, heal up any excess DPS like AoP currently does (to prevent life steal/degening the lord to get around it) and change SV to damage instead of health loss, which let's face it, will affect very little, it will just allow you to Spirit Bond it. Swapping Cyclone Axe for another axe attack is a terrible idea, it's treating a symptom, not the cause and results in side effects such as the ability to send your hammer in to tank while your axe perma frenzys in the lord's face and never gets punished for it. Misery 09:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Or, they could put in a check to see if AoP would heal him above death that triggers before death, but I don't know how it's coded, so I don't know what is easiest. I assume they can't code it to prevent life stealing/health loss/degen without totally recoding the whole way everything works. Sloppy code is sloppy. Misery 09:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

You totally fail and suck monkeyballz if you lose against ZooWay 78.20.153.111 13:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

^i mean, don't change one of those skills cuz that would totally fail even more78.20.153.111 13:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

To please wyn, I'm going to add what I had before, but I'll leave out the part about how arenanet <badly censored>.

This is what top guilds run when you can instantly win:

Please learn how to fix your game. It's easy - check this forum or this forum or oh my god, there are actually TWO solutions on this page!!!.

By the way, 16v8 is, last I checked, not balanced. ~Shard 05:39, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it would be too much to ask you guys to at least give Izzy time until the next monthly update to fix this? You keep saying some things are easy to code, but I doubt you ever worked on a game as big as Guild Wars. Any typo could have a huge effect on something completely unrelated, so everything has to be tested as well. To my knowledge, you guys didn't even give him a week to fix this. 145.94.74.23 07:04, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to be blant, but my faith in Izzy's abilities to balance has been shattered since he "balanced" Smiter's Boon by killing it, not balancing. Anywoo... just drop Cyclone Axe and replace it with something else as a temporary measure (note: its not the most ideal thing but better than what Shard showed up there. Runs to see if people are doing it in-game) and get to 'actually fixing' the issue Izzy. 000.00.00.00 18:29, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

1. Hexes are bad for PvP. Killing Spoil Victor would be good for the game in more ways than this.
2. Smiter's Boon should never have existed. It was the result of the skill development team not consulting Izzy (or anyone) about PvP balance - if they had, they would have realized that having over a thousand skills in the game is an awful idea. The SB nerf is one I hope will be replicated on a number of other skills, but I realize it won't happen because ANet feels the QQing from removing ~700 more skills from PvP will hurt them more than the loss of customers over the current shitty balance.

64.241.37.140 19:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Smiter's Boon wasn't nerfed, it was removed from PvP. It will remain that way, until they come up with a decent fix. But you would rather have that they left it the way it was while they're thinking about it. Some people are really short sighted. 145.94.74.23 20:03, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Do you not understand? This is a decent fix - this is a more than decent fix, in fact. Just because there are over a thousand skills in the game doesn't mean they should all be in the game - many mechanics break the game simply by existing, as do a number of combinations (snare + shadowstep for one, big damage + blind for another). If you can't see that ANet's screwed themselves pretty badly by adding so many skills to the game, maybe you should go study that before you start talking about shortsighted. -- Armond Warblade 22:59, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Euhm...I wasn't complaining about it. I actually thought it was a smart move on their part, it just needs a little explaining to some people. As for big damage + blind, that's not a problem, because the targets that suffer from blindness usually have buckets of armor to reduce it (I'm assuming you're talking about Blinding Surge here). Damage + dazed: that would be a problem. 145.94.74.23 06:04, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Ineptitude + Frenzy. And, of course, brainless monkeys can time ineptitude to hit while the dude's frenzied. -- Armond Warblade 06:47, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Then don't use Frenzy. When you use it, you choose to weaken your defenses. I see no reason why you shouldn't pay the price for that. And may I add that just about all armor ignoring spells are decently balanced? (In this case, by making it elite and giving it 20 seconds recharge.) 145.94.74.23 07:28, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

You just said that to avoid taking ridiculous amounts of damage, people just have to reduce their pressure by about half and remove any chance they have of successfully spiking something, and that's balanced. Think on that for a while. --71.229.253.172 07:42, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

More than half, because you use more attack skills when frenzied.

And yeah, Frenzy is one of the most balanced skills in the game, and definitely the best IAS - and on top of that it requires skill to use it without failing hard. Ineptitude, on the other hand, is a pretty brainless way of killing a warrior. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 12:50, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting that damage dealing skills should be nerfed because Frenzy doubles all damage? Warriors aren't meant to be played using Frenzy all the time you know. You could try another build, maybe even one without Frenzy...or am I saying something weird now? 145.94.74.23 15:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, you are. There's no IAS comparable to frenzy in the game, and you can't afford to not take an IAS. Besides which, we're more talking about non-skill high damage skills. Like, you see a warrior enter frenzy, you drop ineptitude, you watch him explode himself because the odds of noticing you've got ineptitude on you before you finish your attack are essentially nil. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 15:50, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. You should ask Izzy if he can remove the double damage entirely, since it's such a big problem. We can't afford to have melee characters that actually have a weakness, or a counter. 145.94.74.23 07:36, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe you should read what's been said. Double damage isn't the problem; the lack of skill required to abuse it is. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 21:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I did read it but I don't understand it. I see no abuse, only a smart tactic. Nobody forces warriors to bring Frenzy, but when it's used, nobody's allowed to take advantage of it? And don't give me that 'you need Frenzy to blablabla' because it's not true. If it were, every profession would bring Frenzy. There are plenty of alternative ways to win with a warrior. 145.94.74.23 05:54, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Eles need Frenzy to pressure and spike now? Necros need frenzy to build adrenaline? This is all news to me.

In a game based around skill, skill-less tactics should be punished. There are, in fact, many things forcing you to bring Frenzy on a warrior, and none forcing one to bring Ineptitude - besides complete and total warrior rape requiring no more effort than that to turn on your computer. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 06:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

So basically you're saying: I am not good enough to play without frenzy and because mesmers can do something against me, it takes no skill? Sorry, but I disagree with the statement that something is overpowered just because it hurts warriors. It might help to think outside the box for a change, instead of asking for nerfs everything your meta-vision can't handle. 145.94.74.23 10:13, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

If you have never played GvG on a serious level, refrain from acting like you know what's going on in terms of skill balance in competitive PvP. Ineptitude was a huge problem - not because "it hurts warriors," but because "it completely, totally, 100% and with no skill required, removes target warrior from the game." Clumsiness, Ineptitude, and Wandering Eye recharge quick enough to stop a single warrior from killing - and in case you totally missed it, people were running dual ineptitude, which complete shut down both warriors... again, with no skill required. Guild Wars is theoretically about being more skilled than your opponent, where skills on your bar shouldn't make the entire difference - you should be able to defeat your opponent if you're more skilled than them, no matter what build each team is running. However, things like Ineptitude run directly counter to that design, because it takes zero skill to remove a far greater skilled warrior from the game. That is the problem with illusion-magic-spamming mesmers, not the little bit of damage ineptitude does (or even the huge ass chunk it does to a frenzied warrior). -Auron 10:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

It would help if you used that argument, instead of coming up with half-baked nonsens about frenzy. I still don't agree with your zero skill theories, but at least your arguments make it sound acceptable. 145.94.74.23 10:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I have a question: why is it so bad that the blindness removes a warrior from the game for 10 seconds? Isn't that what blindness is supposed to do? And why can't the blindness simply be removed, like every other condition? 145.94.74.23 11:14, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I never said anything about frenzy being a huge issue. Only a stupid warrior would frenzy against a build with two illusion mesmers in the first place, although the fact that you can't frenzy at all means the other team's build is imbalanced - you should at least be able to frenzy 25% of the match.

Again, the problem isn't the blind duration. Take a minute and read Clumsiness, Wandering Eye and Ineptitude. What do they all have in common? They guarantee that your next attack skill will fail. They, with no possible counter (remember, you're autoattacking already, having the reflex to see the hex land and hit the escape key in less than a second should not be the only counter in the entire game to illusion mesmers), guarantee that whatever your next attack is, it will fail or miss. Now take a look at warrior skills. How much adrenaline does Eviscerate take? How much adrenaline does Earth Shaker take? All of that adrenaline (20+ seconds of building) is gone when the mesmer hits you with a single skill. Now remember that the mesmer has three skills that waste your adrenaline. Ineptitude is the only one that takes as long to recharge as a warrior elite, the other two are far more spammable (and are usually the ones that catch your adrenaline skills). Ineptitude's blind is a bitch, and will stop an entire spike (2-3 attack skills) before the monk has a chance to remove the blind, but again, the problem with the build is running basically three copies of the same bullshit, all focused on a single warrior. Then consider that people run two of those mesmers. It really is imbalanced, and most of the problem is with clumsiness and wandering eye, not with ineptitude. -Auron 11:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Hurr. Don't mind me, I just have a thing against Ineptitude because I don't like huge damage and huge antimelee being in the same skill. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 13:31, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean Auron. That actually makes some sense. It does take a little more effort than automatic block or spammable Blinding Surge, but I see how it can be annoying to say the least. 145.94.74.23 15:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Annoying? It completely disables the enemy warrior using three skills, which gives you plenty of room for things like interrupts, Gale, etc - you only need to pay attention to the warrior once every ten seconds or so anyway, just tab around for things to interrupt in the meantime. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 02:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

no it's just you completely forget about the rock-paper-scissors balance, with frenzy you beat the shit out of the most classes but mesmer, sry frenzy will never be the only and the best choice in any situation and anet will not nerf the shit out of mesmer so you can easily win against all classes with your wammo 87.189.211.228 12:28, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I lol'd at the four or five logical errors in that. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 12:53, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

What if (theoretically) you brought condition removal on your Warrior? You would either tie up the mesmer (because now he has to concentrate on you all the time) or get at least 5 seconds to use a spike (if you take your time to build up adrenaline beforehand). I'd like an answer from Auron please, because he knows what he's talking about. 145.94.74.23 07:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

You'd lose a lot of pressure because you'd be stopping to mtouch yourself every five seconds. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 14:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

And it wouldn't stop the mesmer from shutting you down at all because what he should be doing is catching your Eviscerate or Executioner's with the interrupt effect so you have to build up from scratch, your damage gets decimated and you never get any kills. Misery 14:17, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I guess my request falls on deaf ears. Sure Armond, don't use condition removal because you'll do more damage when you're blinded than when you take a second to remove it. Let's change this skill instead, since those other skills that were mentioned are the problem. 145.94.74.23 07:36, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd rather swing and whiff once or perhaps twice while waiting for the monk to dismiss than mtouch myself, which costs me at least three, usually four or five attacks (as I need to catch up to my target again, and anyone good is going to scatter when they see me stop moving). What's your point? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 12:49, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I assumed your monk had better things to do than to remove your blindness. If it can get removed for you instead of by you, then I really see no reason why blindness should be nerfed. It's just a good against physical characters, nothing more. 145.94.74.23 21:14, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

1. Removing blindness is probably a monk's third priority all match (behind protting against spikes and redbarring things at 3 hp).
2. The blindness wasn't the issue.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 21:24, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Blindness is at 90% (we all know it's more than that) because it was so easy to remove and it wasn't that prevalent. Now that almost every profession can cause blind 4 or 5 different ways, it seems lame and annoying. There are too many duplicate skills in this game. ~Shard 21:43, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Then what's the issue Armond? It wasn't the damage, and it wasn't the blindness...and that is all the skill does. And YOU said your monk would remove it, not me. One thing that did occur to me thought, was this: we had block to protect against melee. When it got nerfed, people switched to blindness (mostly Blinding surge). When that got nerfed, appearantly, people switched to mesmers to interrupt and keep the melee characters out of the game. As a casual observer, that would indicate to me, that you guys are just too good! If you're left a lone for a few seconds, you score a kill! Nerfing this skill, will only make another one come out to stop you. 145.94.74.23 06:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Le sigh.

1. The fact that it kills all your adrenaline.
2. The fact that it takes almost no skill to use effectively.

And, if you ask me, the damage is still a problem... but that's just me. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 14:20, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

There are more things that take no skill to use, and they tend to somehow tend to end up on the skillbars of players beating certain others. Oddly enough, those players tend to be less skilled than the players they beat 99% of the time too. 145.94.74.23 15:02, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Dear Izzy

→ moved from User talk:Isaiah Cartwright

I'm not hear to complain about how you update skills. I know it's hard to make 'em in a way everyone'd like 'em. (it's impossible.) Rather then that; I'm here to ask you a question: The Spoil Victor abuse has been ruïning GvG for well over a week now. Why the fuck hasn't it been nerfed yet? I, myself GvG at ~r200 now, at which range you'll only see top500 guilds that ratingbombed by using Spoil Victor shit. It is no fun anymore.

Regards,217.120.229.159 20:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

If you haven't noticed the big skill balancing updates always come out on the Thursday around the 5th to the 12th of each month so at least wait until the 9th until creating a duplicate, duplicate, duplicate question.- TheRave (talk) 09:46, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a bug, not a balance issue. This isn't someone asking for a particular brand of nerfs or whatever, this is him asking for a huge bug in the amulet of protection to be fixed. The fact that it hasn't been fixed in over a week shows that ANet is very incompetant at coding - or doesn't have anyone on the task atm. This isn't something we should wait for the bi-monthly updates for, this should have been fixed the day it was found, like Signet of Ghostly Might. -Auron 07:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

People have been trying to abuse this bug for a long time, it's only now become easy because of how powerful hexes are and how hard they are to remove. ~Shard 21:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Dear QQers

if you lose to Zooway, You're f---ing bad78.20.153.111 18:14, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeh, but that doesn't make it balanced. It takes zero skill and exploits a huge bug. Those are the issues here. 64.241.37.140 19:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

So

this is a bug. People are abusing it. Abusing a bug is supposed to get you banned. Anyone want to bet that nobody gets banned over this 'cause a top 10 guild used it on TV and Izzy doesn't want to lose the handful of skilled players he hasn't already chased off? --71.229.253.172 06:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

ANet only bans people after they fix things, historically, so keeping to that precedent it's looking like no one's going to get banned. -- Armond Warblade 14:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

It's pretty stupid how you can get banned for having "butt" in your name (in a T game), but not for cheating. ~Shard 21:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

So this has been fixed...

...in the next update, as the more patient members of the community have predicted. I would love to move this to adressed issues, but I don't know how. Anyone wanna help with that? 145.94.74.23 10:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The underlying problem still exists. You can move the Cyclone+SV version of AoP abuse to resolved, but there should be something on AoP where this should have been moved to in the first place. Mr J 10:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

True, I believe it should be moved to Amulet of Protection then. 145.94.74.23 10:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

...in the worst way possible. 137.163.16.66 09:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)