User:Queen Schmuck/Rantway FTW!

Hero Spiritway FTL!
Ok, so last night I went to Hero Battles to see a little of how the meta game was working since "PvP Necro Spiritway Nerf" (observer mode wasn't working for whatever reason, probably because ANet didn't want people to see that nerco nerf wasn't "fixing" spiritway at all). HAH! Spiritway Nerf my butt, I did a battle and within seconds of the other team meeting me in the middle, there were 3 spirits on the ground. Withing 6 seconds after that, there were more spirits than I could count! My Searing flames would smack them around for like 10 dmg (or they were healed that quick)! Then the human player started pommeling my team to death, doing an average of 40 dmg a hit with daggers (ouch!). Sometimes the person would only do like 10 dmg, but them the dmg would go right back up to 25-55 dmg a hit. I am pretty sure the human was using Conjure Flame, but I did not check the "dmg from" areas. Anyway, with Searing Flames Ele, 1 W, 1 D, and 1 Mo, I could not damage them enough, once their spirits were perma-up. I lost badly, as the only deaths I was able to cause were right at the beginning, 4-25 (not sure, he might have had higher than 25, but I know I only had 4).

Note:
 * the only Monk on the other team was a Rt/Mo, and I don't think the hero ever used a healing spell, might have been Hex/Condition Removal only.

If this is the way Hero Battles is all the time, count me out from that crap. I did HB one other time, right when it came out. At least then it was fun. Now it is "who can get the most spirits up first".

If this is the way GvG and AB are going, wtf? Why even play? It has nothing to do with "skill", as ANet loves to say, but only about using retarded builds that are just that, retarded. Queen Schmuck 15:30, 7 April 2007 (CDT)

When I do HB, I often bring 2 characters with Spiritual Pain, and sometimes an interrupter. Might seem like overkill, but I can steamroll just about any spirit-based build. Plus the AI likes to spam them at the same spot, a firestorm works wonders on them :) Tycn 00:13, 8 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Considering that after I wiped the team the first time, I was never again able to kill one of them (seriously, they couldn't die!), I don't think that is overkill at all. Spiritual Pain, I like your thinking, an AoE Signet of Sorrow against IWAY peeps like skill.  I never saw one enchantment on any of them, so I think it was all spirits and weapon spells.  Consume Soul and Signet of Creation (AoE spirit deaths, no benefit to me though) are also skills I will probably bring on a hero.  I'll have to remember about the AoE too.  :P  Queen Schmuck 09:24, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

new Soul Reaping tests
Kourna, me as MM (not hero), using Ghial's Staff, 14 Death, 12 Soul Reaping, rest in Blood - keeping between 5-7 minions, very rarely 9, in party of 4. In party of 8, kills are way to fast, barely keeping 4 minions up (lack of energy on standard minion build, not even getting to Fiends). Confirmation on Flesh Golem running in circles, quit using him it was so bad (if 3 targets all roughly same distance to you, he keeps going between them). Bone Fiends selecting target as quickly as before and sticking with it until dead (by far the fastest to select a target from what I saw). Bone Horrors and Minions having trouble selecting a target, but then attack until it moves away or is dead, pretty much same as normal, maybe a tad slower to select target.

Kourna, me as MM (not hero), using Ghial's Staff, 14 Death, 10 Soul Reaping, rest in Blood - loss of 2 energy making large difference, barely able to keep up 7 minions in 4 man group, in 8 man group (hero/hench), 4-5 minions tops (kills happen to quick).

From what I saw, without spending nearly 1/2 your attribute points to soul reaping, you can not sustain an army as MM. Using +15/-1 energy mods is also out of the question, unless you swap them when casting any minion spell when not at 1/2 energy. This would also leave you with negative energy a lot, meaning no quick Taste of Death to save your butt. I have not tried this with Heal Area, but I would imagine that too is now out of the question (BotM then Heal Area combo) except in rare instances where you have nearly full energy after a fight.

Since there are very few benefits (5 skills, only 3 can be used at one time (3 elite)) to high Soul Reaping besides the inherant (and highly random) energy boost from it, it is of my opinion to now never put anything but left over points into the primary necro attribute. Because of this, my Rt is now a better MM, as at least the Rt has higher HP minions (even if a few levels lower). Queen Schmuck 14:08, 8 April 2007 (CDT)


 * If this attribute is not fixed (no longer destroyed in PvE, and actually fixed vs. Spirits) in one week, I will probably never play my necro again.  That is sad too, as I like playing my necro ( usually used to be SS).


 * Most skills are 10-15 energy, and for the reason that  don't take over their job.  To fix necro skills to be lower cost will hurt the meta game much more than Spiritway is currently making it unenjoyable (fast casting and affordable curses?  er, noty, I see that enough in PvE bosses).  I've seen Spiritway first hand, and in observer mode, and it is ugly, and still happening.  Neutering SR in PvE did nothing, repeat, nothing to slow down spirit spamming in PvP (hum, takes about, oh, 3-5 seconds to drop spirits...).

Would-be WoW ship-jumper
You know, if WoW didn't have a monthly fee, I would be gone from the GW scene. Seriously. This whole PvP thing more important that PvE thing is not in a PvE player's best interest (on top of PvE usually get short (and pointy) end of stick, too!). I am not really caring about how cartoony WoW looks, I am caring about how unrestricted it is. GW is so strict that it ends up being the same ol crap choice of 3 or 4 builds that actually work (at least until next nerf round, which is very often). ANet needs to think about this. The ability to have more than a "skillfully" copied from 3-4 build templates skill set, vast armor differences, mob controls (yo, Anet, add something like this to the game), and the like are exactly what makes WoW better (I've got a 2 week trial right here, I know from what I see it is better, way better than what GW offers).

As far as GW2 goes, new races, cool. BUT, to make new races work (at least worth while to have ability to use different races), they need to be specifically better at some things than others, like Charr are specfically better at Fire Magic (or just better elementalists), etc.

I still can't get over the fact that my super strong Warrior is crap. Eh, you ask? Yeah, my Warrior is crap, and is against all known styles of Warrior play. He can't tank (stance nerfs all around), he usually out damages spell casters (he shouldn't be highest dmg dealer when partied with an Ele), and this is the weirdest part IMHO, he has the exact same health as a frail squishy. Yeah, WTF? Constitution? Hello? Me big bad Warrior with lotso health... Nope. Mr. Monk has same. So does Mr/Mrs anything else. Effectively, the warrior should have health bonus for his strength. Since everyone that knows about strength knows that, as a primary attribute, it totally sucks, how about this, Anet. Change it so that Strength adds X HP for every level you have in it, like 5 HP / level, then remove the whole pile that is armor penetration (but only on skill use) as it is now. What's that? Don't want to mess with way attributes work? BS. Just do it now that you have set precident for changing the entire way an entire class is played.

If GW2 is just multi-race updated graphics version of GW1, I forcast bankruptcy in the GW future (late 2008, early 2009).

Queen Schmuck 17:19, 8 April 2007 (CDT)

OMG - just figured out total and complete fix to PvP problems!
In PvP, no primary attributes' benefits with take affect (none, all benefits are same as pri attrib at zero points).

This means gimmick builds will be greatly reduced! OMG! No more primary attribute benefit means that, once and for all, the highly touted and badly executed dual-profession game will no longer use one class' advantage to fuel another. After all, this is what the PvP players want, NO ADVANTAGES! (EVER!)

The next thing to fix PvP is to quick messing up skills because someone might find a niche use for them. Niche builds are easily countered, because everyone knows exactly how they work (or figures it out quick). What ANet needs to quit doing is bending over backwards to the 500-1000 people that complain the loudest, and start telling them to "figure it out, we know the fix is in your skill list". If random PvE PUGs can figure out ways to live through Impossible Odds, then I think that your Top guilds should be able to figure out how to stop a niche build. If they can't, then they are not worthy of being a top guild, then niche guys are (until they hit a smart guild that can design their own builds).

There are a few ways to kill a Spiritway team, the best is to kill all their spirits at nearly the same time (even before SR uber nerf (that didn't really affect Spiritway anyway)). Yes, this would max out the energy of the necros. Yes, exactly, maxed out energy is energy gains lost. Now once their spirits are down (which if timed good, they will be), whack them hard. They'll have full energy for a few seconds (but only a few seconds, as they most likely only have high energy spammable skills). Once the initial heals wear off, they die. I know this is how it works, I did it in of all places, Hero Battles (and I hate that place). If I, a lowly dump PvE only player can figure this out (and accomplish it!), then can't top rated guilds do it? Oh yeah, I forgot to load my build page on guru for them to copy it...

Grind is on for GW:EN!
From ANet's interview in gamespot.com article:

''In Nightfall, the Sunspear and Lightbringer titles were well received. We are going to be expanding that mechanic to include new groups that players can form allegiances with. These will in turn allow them to gain and power up brand new player-versus-environment skills.''

This means one thing. Grind. Yes, the grind that ANet said they didn't have in GW. Now, I don't mind grind for being more powerful in general. But I do hate grind for very specific areas of a game, just as Lightbringer points works. You grind to their elevated level increments to not get destroyed the first time a demon looks in your general direction.

From what the article says, there will be 50 new PvE only skills (as ANet has stated before). What the article also says is that these skills will be powered by your Lightbringer style title. This is bad, for two reasons. One is grind for the sole purpose of very specific small area of game "power". The other is that these very specialized skills will almost certainly be 100% useless against anything else in the game. Does LB Gaze work on anything except Nightfall demons? Nope. Another possible bad way for this to be implemented is forcing you to show your X-bringer Title to gain benefits. Why even have titles being shown at this point. I mean, everyone (with a clue) will only be showing the title for the area that they are currently in. It is like late NF missions. If someone is in PUG that doesn't have LB title being shown, they get kicked (and for good reason). What is the point of showing titles at all (except for level you have) since everyone will be showing the same one. A better alternative method might be "pinging" your title to show your group your title's stats.

While we PvE players were only dreaming that ANet would finally give us useful skills that could not in any way be influenced by PvP players, we were 100% wrong. What we will be getting is 100 unlockable skills that will most likely be another bunch of weird and/or crappy highly conditional skills (um, Supportive Spirit anyone?). The other 50 PvE only skills will be things like LB Gaze. These skills, as ANet admits in above article, will depend on nearly pointless (and way to slow) grind. Yeah. Fun. Blah.

Ohh, I also liked this line:

The biggest new feature, gameplay wise, is the multilevel dungeons.

Cool. Now we can play Diablo in GW. Woot. *cough* The only way this will be anything but another Ruined Tombs run is if it is not an instanced area. Want to make some nearly impossible things to kill ("epic")? Sure, I'm all for it. Just don't make it limited to 8 players at a time. Since most group skills in GW are affecting only "party" now, I guess ANet will have to make it party based. Just make it so you can have MULTIPLE parties, and the ability for party to add/remove people on the fly, or at a minimum put in some anti-leecher code (I'd much prefer the add/remove option myself). I think the best solution would be a staging area, inside the instance (like, say, an outpost inside the non-instanced explorable area). Inside the staging area, people can add you to their team. Once outside the staging area, only remove from team is available. Remove from team would not kick you, but would make it so you needed to run back to staging area to join another party.

I for one hope that ANet does not allow equipment/weapons to be transfered to characters in GW2. The reason is very simple. GW has incredibly simple and bad design on both weapons and armor. If they move this awkward design to be part of GW2, they are from the start severely limiting what they can accomplish in that game. This one fact alone could make or break GW2. 2008 is not going to be the same as 2005. ANet had better remember that.

Oh, yeah, nearly forgot this one. We get to meet a grown up Gwen. Whoop.