User:Borotvaltgandalf/update march 5

No offense but

This update was released in 2009 march 5

Hi Linsey! I have decided to comment on your last skill update, because I don't agree with every part of it.

To make it easier to read I removed the parts where I didn't have any comments.

• Distracting Strike: functionality changed to: "If Distracting Strike hits, it deals no damage and interrupts target foe's action. If target foe has Cracked Armor, that skill is disabled for 20 seconds."

Distracting Strike was being used as a powerful follow-up in spikes. This gave spikes a versatile follow-up and interrupt. We want spike builds to choose between versatility and raw spike power.

This way you reduced Distracting strike to be out of play, because it's only an interrupt, and the disable is highly conditional, and all with such a long recharge. It's even worse than distracting blow. One thing I don't understand is why didn't you give it a "Deals damage only if you interrupt a skill". Instead of giving warriors a viable interrupt skill, you threw it right into the trash bin.

This is a good suggestion as I think your right we just trashed this skill, one issue with this is we can only really do bonus damage on interrupt which means either the skill does no damage normally and just bonus damage, which is still very meh. Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hell of a lot better than 0 damage at all anyway. -- Halogod35 20:28, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

• Rend Enchantments: increased casting time to 2 seconds.
• Gaze of Contempt: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

Removing enchantments from the target is a big part of a successful spike. We increased the casting time of these skills to give opponents an interrupt chance and defend themselves against a spike. We did not change the Elite enchantment-removal skill Pain of Disenchantment. Teams can still choose a more effective spike-oriented skill, but at the cost of sacrificing an Elite.

Actually you made it to be viable only for mesmers... (because of the fast-casting)

Encouraging Split Tactics

The changes below are targeted at GvG.

• Shadow Refuge: increased duration to 6 seconds.
• Ether Feast: increased Health per Energy drained to 20..65.
• Aura of Restoration: decreased Energy cost to 5; increased recharge to 12. Functionality changed to: "For 60 seconds, you gain 0..1 Energy and are healed for 200..500% of the Energy cost each time you cast a spell."
• Healing Signet: increased Healing to 82..172.

To split effectively, characters typically need more self-sufficiency than they do when fighting in a big group. With that in mind, we've made a selection of self-healing skills more powerful.

Ok. Ether feast and shadow refuge needed buffs. Aura of restoration is OK now (beware: it allows for searing flames spamming), but you clearly don't see the problem with healing signet: The armor penalty combined with the long casting time is too much. By changing the armor penalty to 20 or the casting time to 1 you would have made it into a feasible skill. Also you completely forgot about paragons, as you didn't address their leader's comfort, along with leadership (another problematic attribute which makes paragons fail in all 4man areas).

We can't change the armor pentalty to 20 on healing signet to 20 easily it's done as a flag that does -40 so without changing every skill that uses the -40 armor to -20, it would be a lot of work. In the end I think some of the issues with split are more deep routed with the fact the power creep has gotten high enough where unbalanced fights result in fast wipes meaning you just push on a split team and force them to 8v8 which they are not set up to do. Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

• Hidden Caltrops: now disables all your non-Assassin skills for 10 seconds.
• Illusion of Haste: reduced the duration of the Crippled condition to 3 seconds.

Mobility is key to split tactics. Hidden Caltrops, which slows an enemy using both a hex and a condition, has been a powerful way to reduce the mobility of split characters, who rarely have the ability to deal with both hexes and conditions. When used by Assassins to slow potential victims, it wasn't overpowered; this change is aimed only at making Hidden Caltrops less effective for more defensive characters to use. Along those same lines, the 15 second Crippled duration when Illusion of Haste ended was a severe penalty for Mesmers, who lack condition removal options. This shorter duration should give Mesmers the option of waiting out the Crippled rather than feeling like they have to recast the enchantment simply to move at a reasonable speed.

Hidden Caltrops: Instead of reducing the hex duration and the condition duration along with making it half ranged, you

chose to just disable all non-assassin skill, making it useless for any primary assassin using utility skills from his/her secondary. Illusion of haste is ok.

Removing this skill from PvP play is important it created too much pressure on on removal and allowed a crazy amount of utility on that runner, it just didn't need to be there, if split is ever going to become viable again this skill had to get off runners. Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Addressing Problematic 4v4 Skills

• Disciplined Stance: decreased duration to 1..4 seconds; decreased armor gain to +10.
• Defensive Stance: decreased duration to 1..5 seconds; decreased armor gain to +10.
• Soldier's Defense: decreased duration to 1..5.
• Shield Stance: decreased duration to 1..6.

These stances were originally balanced with 8v8 combat in mind. In 4v4 play, where there are fewer attackers and enemies cannot have as wide a range of utility skills on their team, Monks using these stances have become a problem. We've lowered the durations and armor bonuses to help 4v4 teams fight through these defenses.

The problem could have been cured with a single change: Ends when using a skill that targets another ally. I also don't understand why you nerfed Soldier's defense. It was useless before. Now theese stances are useless for Stance tanks in PvE (anyway stance tanks are useless because the only viable build is godmode)

A condition that ends over if he casts on other people isn't going to solve the problem here, just shifts a monk would spend their energy, the fact a monk can so easily gain +armor and stances made the /w secondary so powerful. Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

General Playbalance Changes

• Primal Rage: increased recharge to 15 seconds.

Despite a power reduction in a previous update, this skill continues to outshine other Warrior Elite skills. Even though Primal Rage makes you take double damage while in effect, players could easily change to another stance when threatened. We like this tactic, but the skill's extremely short recharge also made it too easy to immediately activate Primal Rage again when the threat had passed. To make stance swapping a more effective drawback to using this skill, we increased the recharge time.

And you completely destroyed this skill. Making it a 10 seconds recharge would have perfectly balanced it out, but now it's just as bad as it was before the buff.

We need to get warrior weapon balance back in line these powerful strength only elites really do a number on the weapon to weapon balance for warriors. We had made a few changes all ready plan was not to baby step this. Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Some things you might have missed

the problem with assassins

Let me quote Auron in this time, it really fits here:

This is obvious, but I feel the need to mention it - flail is not the problem with Palm Strike assassins. I know you guys are struggling with basic game balance concepts so far, but that one should just be a gimme. I hope you learned from SP sins that the IAS isn't the problem - it's the stupid number of attack skills you allow assassins to bring. If you punish them for having attack skills and nothing else, you will be encouraging sins to use their wide variety of utility skills. You gave sins the energy regen of a full caster - and casters are brought for utility. Why have you ignored that entirely with the Assassin profession?

uhh we didn't nerf flail because of palm strike assassins? we nerfed it because of rangers... Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The problem with Paragons

Paragons' stacking made them very powerful, and it led to various nerfs untill this state where paragons are 100% useless. The first problem is leadership which requires a full party to be effective, while GvG-s and HA matches often feature areas where splitting is essential. Also in 4man party areas leadership is actually useless. (an idea would be to make it only need 4man to reach full effectiveness)

I would agree here, a lot of the issues with the paragon is the fact that the tipping points with his resources so easily go from manageable to infinite, without some better gating mechanics to control the flow of resources you have to fully rely on recharge to gate his play. This is dangerous because in Guild Wars you can manipulate every resource which means if any skill is balanced by purely 1 resource it will become overpowered, and sense this class is allmost purely gated by 1 resource it's very easy for the whole class to cause problems. Add in high armor, instant cast skills, healing, res, and why not bring more!Izzy @-'---- 20:17, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, that's all for now.Boro 15:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)