Guild Wars 2

Soa Cirri.6012:

Amadeus.5687:

this seems more like Anet not being consistent in how they do stuff or just them nerfing a part of a skill without remebering the other part of it

Definitely probably right on the money, there.

But the point kind of stands that evade frames should = nocap, which was the point of the OP (whether he called it blur or displacement, which, to be fair, are as easy to get confused as the various unrelated rulings Anet has made about skills over the years). I mean, for the engie that’s the case, so why is mesmer exempt? If anything, isn’t that disparity proof of a legitimate issue or “breakage”?

Actually Evade Frams = You can cap!
invulnerability Frames = You can’t cap!
Evade frames are also what a Thief use on Sword/D skill #3 or a ranger on Shortbow #5 or Revenant Sword #2 just for some exampels! They all allow you to stay on the point and capping it, while capture it! Now I do know these skills dosn’t allow you to do other stuff meanwhile, because they are attack much like Blurred Frenzy.

What I meant with Anet not being consistent, is that elixir S used to be a invulnerability grnating ability just like Mesmer shatter F4 Distortion (which OP were comparing the Well to), both of this granted you complete invulnerability to everything and hence you could not contripute to point capping! Hence when Anet changed Elixir S to an Evade, they should have removed the “you can’t contripute to capping” aspect of Elixir S. Which is what I ment with it’s probaly Anet messing up as usual xD

With that said, Well of Precognition, might be a problem with it’s AoE Blur (Evades) granting buff, where people can do actions in it! But the way OP present it, all we get is: “This is broken because it grants invulnerability to everyone! There is no counterplays!”
Which is just a wrong fact! I mean, if he made a prober job presenting the ability and talked about the build it’s being used in, then we could have a discussion about that.

Also, again it’s not that I’m against a change or anything, but if Well of Precognition didn’t allow you to contripute to point capping, no one would use it in sPvP! That is the exact same reason the support idea for memsers of using Blurred Inescriptions (activating a signets grants distortion) in combinition with Inspiring Distortion (When you gain distorition you share it) didn’t work. Because what good were it to share “defence” with your m8’s if you lost the point?

Soa Cirri.6012:

If the argument is “DH virtues > base, with no trade-offs”, and your argument is “there are negligible trade-offs” you consider the entire argument ridiculous and utterly wrong? Because you’ve been using mighty condescending language about the OP, going so far as to call the entire thing factually wrong, which means declaring his DH>base virtues argument factually wrong as well.

The tradeoffs are not negligible…

The inability to instant cast the abilities is HUGE, along with the fact that F2 and F3 can now be interrupted (and easily too in the case of F2). The old F2 was a fire and forget condi clear free heal life saver, but now it takes ages to activate before the condis are cleared and during that timeframe, if you don’t F3 BEFORE you’ll more than likely be interrupted. If you get stacked with life threatening condis in the middle of casting, you can no longer instantly clear it – you either interrupt yourself or finish casting and take that extra few ticks of damage. I would take the old F2 over the new one any day.

F3 can no longer be cast in the middle of an action like stomp or rez, which means you can no longer have on-react stability available, which is a big game changer in many cases. ONE example, if an enemy shows up while you are in the middle of rezzing someone, you’re pretty much screwed. You’re unlikely to have wasted F3 if the coast looks clear, which means if the enemy gets the jump on you, you HAVE to break the rez.

And F1…is obvious and can be dodged or LoS’d. Or if it hooks on to you, you run far enough away so the tether breaks. Or you LoS so the pull shoves you up against a wall rather than a trap. The old F1 charged one of your attacks but the attack didn’t really look any different so it was more luck than anything else if you could dodge it.

Sure the virtues are an upgrade in SOME aspects, but there are significant drawbacks and new counters that open new windows of opportunity to counter a guardian that didn’t exist before. In other words, they aren’t “mechanically broken” like OP claims. OP didn’t do his research and should pick better examples if he wants to get his point across.

Amadeus.5687:

Actually Evade Frams = You can cap!
invulnerability Frames = You can’t cap!

Well, your other examples are certainly valid points, but my point is, for engie, that’s not the case. And you can feel free to call me personally compromised because I main engie and feel like elixir S is pretty useless sometimes, given it shuts down all of your skills and doesn’t do damage or anything.

But I’m not saying engie is UP, either and needs a major buff. I think there is a chance for a substantive argument here, though. First, I will disagree that making something not viable for PvP is necessarily wrong. A lot of things are not viable in PvP, most of them PvE skills which are perfectly viable elsewhere. But to look specifically at the mechanic of evasion:
What makes something unfair to use when capping a point, according to existing mechanics, (and exempting engie of course)? Stealth (can’t be seen or targeted) and invulnerability (can’t be attacked), yes?

So if you have a well which covers an entire cap point which makes everyone inside it (of the mesmer’s team) unable to be attacked, isn’t that… guilty of the same level of unfairness? To me, it doesn’t seem fair that one type of un-attackable-ness is point-capping and another isn’t but I’m certainly open to seeing how it could be.

The built in attacks on the evades are also kind of a slap in the face though, to elixir S… untraited you get an evade with a similar duration on a lower cool down that also does damage. But I digress.

Opc.4718:

The tradeoffs are not negligible…

You make some good points in illustrating in detail comparative advantages of the core virtues, but I will have to again argue that the DH Vs are substantially more useful.

Yes, instant skills are nice by virtue of their being instant. Having an instant aegis or condi removal is nice.

But shouts do the same thing. Shouts can give quickness, aegis, and can be traited to not only remove conditions but convert them to boons (which is superior to traiting VoR, which is necessary for it to remove conditions at all). On top of that they have significantly shorter cooldowns (without even traiting them) and can be combined with runes.

You can actually have the same utility of VoR and VoC actives without actually having them at all, by using shouts which are on shorter cooldowns granting more utility, and also having all new virtues that add additional utility.

Granted, I am one who has been arguing virtues need a buff for a long time (all the way back to my very first forum post). If core virtues are buffed, then absolutely I would agree that losing them is a major trade off. But from where I’m standing right now it just seems almost a no-brainer that the utility of the DH Vs makes them much more must-have than the core Vs, the utility of which can be replicated by shouts, except for the first one, which has the same passive as SoJ (except considerably buffed when DH traited) and whose active is very lackluster.

Soa Cirri.6012:

Amadeus.5687:

Actually Evade Frams = You can cap!
invulnerability Frames = You can’t cap!

Well, your other examples are certainly valid points, but my point is, for engie, that’s not the case. And you can feel free to call me personally compromised because I main engie and feel like elixir S is pretty useless sometimes, given it shuts down all of your skills and doesn’t do damage or anything.

But I’m not saying engie is UP, either and needs a major buff. I think there is a chance for a substantive argument here, though. First, I will disagree that making something not viable for PvP is necessarily wrong. A lot of things are not viable in PvP, most of them PvE skills which are perfectly viable elsewhere. But to look specifically at the mechanic of evasion:
What makes something unfair to use when capping a point, according to existing mechanics, (and exempting engie of course)? Stealth (can’t be seen or targeted) and invulnerability (can’t be attacked), yes?

So if you have a well which covers an entire cap point which makes everyone inside it (of the mesmer’s team) unable to be attacked, isn’t that… guilty of the same level of unfairness? To me, it doesn’t seem fair that one type of un-attackable-ness is point-capping and another isn’t but I’m certainly open to seeing how it could be.

The built in attacks on the evades are also kind of a slap in the face though, to elixir S… untraited you get an evade with a similar duration on a lower cool down that also does damage. But I digress.

Oh but I do agree with you that Elixir S either should become a invulnerability again or have the “you do not contribute to cap holding” component removed from it!
It gotta be a stupid oversight from Anet’s side that they turned it from a invulnerability (where you could use kit skills) into a Evade ability and kept that <.<
I mean if all other evade skills, but Elixir S dosn’t prevent point capping, then should’t Elixir S be the same?
And while you ofc. are right many things ain’t viable in PVP, I think it’s bad design from Anet’s side that being the case! I mean, ideally we should be able to use as close to everything in PvP as we can right?

And while you point out Stealth and invulnerability as functions where you “can’t be attacked”, the same goes for Blocking and Evade skills, you can’t attack them but they can keep capping! Now, there is unblockable attacks and hence I said: Maybe unevadeable attacks would bring a nice and interestring counter to it?

That said: You can’t stomp/ress/do other things while using blocks (unless ageis, we used to be able to use Shield 5 is an Engineer and then be able to stomp while blocking, it were awesome) and most of the evade skills that also deals dmg, also prevents you from ressing and stomping because you are doing the “attack action”.
So maybe Well of Precognition is to much? It gives you and friends an AoE evade where you are able to do these things, but it does have the hindrance of being a AoE field people have to stand in, so you can allways just walk away from it as an enemy. But if they hold the point it’s still a problem for you!
It is the first skill to grant this sort of stuff in an AoE, hence I rather want a detailed discussion about it, where the facts about the skill are correct!
Like I started out saying, I don’t know if it’s balanced or not, I just wanted the facts to be clear :P

Edit: Actually I do wonder, if the way Anet sees it: The reason you can’t cap points nor attack under Elixir S, is because you are able to stomp or ress people, then by that logic Well of Precognition obivously should be the same!
That said it dosn’t make sense to me designing an evade granting abillity (which used to grant invulnerability), which is an inferior effect compared to invulnerability, and gives it the handicaps of both an evade (still take dmg from conditions on you) and the handicap of invulnerability (Can’t cap points). Or is that just me finding that silly?

Amadeus.5687:

I mean, ideally we should be able to use as close to everything in PvP as we can right?

While PvE, WvW and (s)PvP I think do require different considerations, I would agree that it’s ideal as many traits and skills as possible should be adapted between all modes, including PvP. And Anet has, admittedly, been making some… halting, gradual progress on that.

Amadeus.5687:

Now, there is unblockable attacks and hence I said: Maybe unevadeable attacks would bring a nice and interestring counter to it?

That is an interesting idea, I think, and would make for a good opportunity to add more variety in countering evades. I guess the question is, what sort of attacks should be un-evade-able?

And it is also true that Elixir S does allow you to stomp and rez, but usually if you’re using it for that it means your defense of a point is already likely to succeed. But I will grant that is a very useful degree of utility that evade-granting attacks don’t have.

Amadeus.5687:

Or is that just me finding that silly?

Nope. There are definitely consistency issues here, probably, like you said, due to the nature of how Anet has rolled its various changes out. Now that leagues are out, it’s unlikely this will be addressed for a few months at least, though. :/

Soa Cirri.6012:

That is an interesting idea, I think, and would make for a good opportunity to add more variety in countering evades. I guess the question is, what sort of attacks should be un-evade-able?

And it is also true that Elixir S does allow you to stomp and rez, but usually if you’re using it for that it means your defense of a point is already likely to succeed. But I will grant that is a very useful degree of utility that evade-granting attacks don’t have.

Amadeus.5687:

Or is that just me finding that silly?

Nope. There are definitely consistency issues here, probably, like you said, due to the nature of how Anet has rolled its various changes out. Now that leagues are out, it’s unlikely this will be addressed for a few months at least, though. :/

The first problem i see with unevadeable attacks tho, is… Dosn’t a dodge count as a evade? xD And would that mean these attack also can’t be dodged or? But yeah, that aside:
I’m not sure which skills I would design it on tbh, but I’m thinking professions that could benift of it, to make them more valid would be Warriors (maybe on some of the weapons that see less play? Off hand Axe or Sword maybe? or maybe some of the really slow animation hammer skills? or maybe add it tosome of the burst skills), Necromancer (They also suffer from some very slow and easy avoidable animations, maybe on Focus #5 or some of the shroud skills?)
Maybe on Engineers? I could see it for sure being intetrestring on a skill like Big Ol’ Bomb, which could be a great counter to bunkers ect? Bomb Kit are in a need for some love anyway in my opinion!

But I think that skills that it could be nice to see on, are abilities with long “cast times” or “long windups”, and maybe some alibities that can intertupt! I always loved how magnet could pull past a block, it gave counterplay

Also I really hope they aderess these consistency issues, because it’s annoying as a player/customer that we get confused over how things function when they make odd rulings like this :/

Seems to be a bit of angst here about the number of instant cast traps and CDs etc for a DH. So here is a summary of the relevant DH skills that some see as OP:

Traps:
Two are instant cast, the others including heal and ultimate are 0.5 sec.
When traited all have an aoe daze.
In addition to delivering high burst damage, that can bring even high toughness builds of some classes from 100-0 (or close to) the traps apply a variety of boons and buffs that include blindness, regen, aegis, cripple, stability, vulnerability, revealed, swiftness, protection, might, and slow.
The heal trap can be “double cast” for a massive burst heal (unlike the Ranger version for example).

Virtues:
Justice loses its burn burst, but gets a 1200 unblockable pull
Resolve I think just gets a straight upgrade to better heal+ 800 leap/cure immob
Courage also seems to be a straight upgrade to include 5 secs of block everything

Traits:
Already mentioned the aoe daze on traps- extremely good minor trait !
Heavy/light: any longbow attack knocks back every ten secs when within 300 AND gives 6 secs of stability on knockback. Now that’s what I call an ELITE trait!

LongBow:
As mentioned above when traited every attack when in 300 knocksback and gives a whopping 6 secs of stability every 10 secs.
True shot- massive piecing damage every 4 secs (0.75 sec animation).

So the OP seemed to have a couple of facts slightly wrong, but he probably would have been even more surprised if he knew the details as shown above. I remember when I first read through it and thought “WTF!! How on earth did these kind of things pass through balance testing?”

Most of the new specs are really OP though; you just have to buy HoT or suck it up basically. Hopefully ANET will let players buy just the specs at some point.

Heheh I love our forums. Sooner or later two people starts to fight and others join with wall of texts. I have seen shorter graduation thesis’ then some of the posts.