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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Delofasht.4231 said:What is absolutely staggering to me is that many of the players complaining here are also the ones that wanted to see gameplay changes to the Chrono elite specialization. The changes to Chrono make the gameplay different, significantly so, from Core. By decoupling the gameplay from Core and Chrono, many of the shatters of core can be buffed directly without becoming broken by Chrono shatters. They are likely to do a set of renaming for Mirage shatters with subtly different functions as well, to make it so they can directly buff or nerf each version of Mesmer without negatively impacting others. This would reduce the number of potential changes with each patch and allow them to focus their efforts.

Example: Chrono is suffering, buff their shatters, instead of Mesmer traitlines, no longer risks breaking Core or Mirage.

Another potential option is that of making skills that produce clones now work outside of combat, so we could actually start combat with clones, or generate them for various shatters without requiring a target (this is wishful thinking I am afraid... but possible).

Good players will adapt, poor ones will cry (until a new popular build is found that is easy to play and strong).

Its not about bringing change to the class or how hard or easy its gonna be, its about how the feel of class will be afterwards, and i think some of these changes are nerfing the feel heavily.

Predetermining your reaction before having played it will invariably lead to merely bias when you do play it. It is going to be different, and significantly so, but someone will figure out how to play it right, share that playstyle and then the complaining will return to how other professions may be doing one thing or another that we used to do but “better”.

That's not how it works, buddy. It's called predictive power. Using a combination of logic and experience, we can extrapolate from information to make predictions on how something will be. Once we saw that shatters wouldn't work without a clone, we deduce that all of the conveniences of having 0-shatter skills will be lost, and have countless experiences where that lost skill saved our lives.

Tl;dr is never trust anyone who tells you not to think.

That is quite an aggressive assertion, I encourage everyone to think, but that doesn't mean coming to a conclusion that immediately points to a given subjective outcome. In other words, the analysis of experience represents a limited focal range, and in this case it completely ignores any potential benefits and gains in other areas.

So in short, you come to a conclusion based only on the inconveniences, and neglect to look at any potential gains, then determine a change to be bad. I played around with Chrono today after the changes, it was different, but after it gets going it felt good with a constant chain of phantasms turning into clones and being shattered, similar to Core with shattering, but different in play. The issue comes in large battles and times when clones can be AoE'd down... basically, all the areas Mesmers have always been a bit weaker in.

Our weakness is the reliance on a resource that can be destroyed to perform our skills at full strength, it would be akin to other professions having their resource being able to be destroyed. The times where this doesn't affect us is exactly what we are strong in, duels and small scale encounters. My analysis is that this is either intended by ANet, or that they have not figured out a method of making Mesmer not reliant on clones and yet still be balanced, although possibly not even given it thought at all.

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@Delofasht.4231 said:

@Delofasht.4231 said:What is absolutely staggering to me is that many of the players complaining here are also the ones that wanted to see gameplay changes to the Chrono elite specialization. The changes to Chrono make the gameplay different, significantly so, from Core. By decoupling the gameplay from Core and Chrono, many of the shatters of core can be buffed directly without becoming broken by Chrono shatters. They are likely to do a set of renaming for Mirage shatters with subtly different functions as well, to make it so they can directly buff or nerf each version of Mesmer without negatively impacting others. This would reduce the number of potential changes with each patch and allow them to focus their efforts.

Example: Chrono is suffering, buff their shatters, instead of Mesmer traitlines, no longer risks breaking Core or Mirage.

Another potential option is that of making skills that produce clones now work outside of combat, so we could actually start combat with clones, or generate them for various shatters without requiring a target (this is wishful thinking I am afraid... but possible).

Good players will adapt, poor ones will cry (until a new popular build is found that is easy to play and strong).

Its not about bringing change to the class or how hard or easy its gonna be, its about how the feel of class will be afterwards, and i think some of these changes are nerfing the feel heavily.

Predetermining your reaction before having played it will invariably lead to merely bias when you do play it. It is going to be different, and significantly so, but someone will figure out how to play it right, share that playstyle and then the complaining will return to how other professions may be doing one thing or another that we used to do but “better”.

That's not how it works, buddy. It's called predictive power. Using a combination of logic and experience, we can extrapolate from information to make predictions on how something will be. Once we saw that shatters wouldn't work without a clone, we deduce that all of the conveniences of having 0-shatter skills will be lost, and have countless experiences where that lost skill saved our lives.

Tl;dr is never trust anyone who tells you not to think.

That is quite an aggressive assertion, I encourage everyone to think, but that doesn't mean coming to a conclusion that immediately points to a given subjective outcome. In other words, the analysis of experience represents a limited focal range, and in this case it completely ignores any potential benefits and gains in other areas.

So in short, you come to a conclusion based only on the inconveniences, and neglect to look at any potential gains, then determine a change to be bad. I played around with Chrono today after the changes, it was different, but after it gets going it felt good with a constant chain of phantasms turning into clones and being shattered, similar to Core with shattering, but different in play. The issue comes in large battles and times when clones can be AoE'd down... basically, all the areas Mesmers have always been a bit weaker in.

Our weakness is the reliance on a resource that can be destroyed to perform our skills at full strength, it would be akin to other professions having their resource being able to be destroyed. The times where this doesn't affect us is exactly what we are strong in, duels and small scale encounters. My analysis is that this is either intended by ANet, or that they have not figured out a method of making Mesmer not reliant on clones and yet still be balanced, although possibly not even given it thought at all.

"I'm not telling you not to think, but I am telling you that thinking is bad because you're subjective. Instead, listen to my claims of special reasoning."

The change is obviously intended to nerf chronomancers. The theme has been core tradeoffs for the past few balance patches.

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@Fumigene.5076 said:How did they 'dynamically scale' Spatial surge? Does it now require to be at range 1200 to do the same damage you would do at range 901 before?

Probably with an added variable which divides target range by max range and multiplies the resulting damage or something similar.

Spatial surge max range is 1,200 thus a target at 1,200 would result in a 1 damage modifier (1,200/1,200 = 1).

A target at 600 range would thus receive a damage modifier of .5 (600/1,200 = 0.5).

Very likely with some maximum and minimum values thrown in.

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@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@Delofasht.4231 said:What is absolutely staggering to me is that many of the players complaining here are also the ones that wanted to see gameplay changes to the Chrono elite specialization. The changes to Chrono make the gameplay different, significantly so, from Core. By decoupling the gameplay from Core and Chrono, many of the shatters of core can be buffed directly without becoming broken by Chrono shatters. They are likely to do a set of renaming for Mirage shatters with subtly different functions as well, to make it so they can directly buff or nerf each version of Mesmer without negatively impacting others. This would reduce the number of potential changes with each patch and allow them to focus their efforts.

Example: Chrono is suffering, buff their shatters, instead of Mesmer traitlines, no longer risks breaking Core or Mirage.

Another potential option is that of making skills that produce clones now work outside of combat, so we could actually start combat with clones, or generate them for various shatters without requiring a target (this is wishful thinking I am afraid... but possible).

Good players will adapt, poor ones will cry (until a new popular build is found that is easy to play and strong).

Its not about bringing change to the class or how hard or easy its gonna be, its about how the feel of class will be afterwards, and i think some of these changes are nerfing the feel heavily.

Predetermining your reaction before having played it will invariably lead to merely bias when you do play it. It is going to be different, and significantly so, but someone will figure out how to play it right, share that playstyle and then the complaining will return to how other professions may be doing one thing or another that we used to do but “better”.

That's not how it works, buddy. It's called predictive power. Using a combination of logic and experience, we can extrapolate from information to make predictions on how something will be. Once we saw that shatters wouldn't work without a clone, we deduce that all of the conveniences of having 0-shatter skills will be lost, and have countless experiences where that lost skill saved our lives.

Tl;dr is never trust anyone who tells you not to think.

That is quite an aggressive assertion, I encourage everyone to think, but that doesn't mean coming to a conclusion that immediately points to a given subjective outcome. In other words, the analysis of experience represents a limited focal range, and in this case it completely ignores any potential benefits and gains in other areas.

So in short, you come to a conclusion based only on the inconveniences, and neglect to look at any potential gains, then determine a change to be bad. I played around with Chrono today after the changes, it was different, but after it gets going it felt good with a constant chain of phantasms turning into clones and being shattered, similar to Core with shattering, but different in play. The issue comes in large battles and times when clones can be AoE'd down... basically, all the areas Mesmers have always been a bit weaker in.

Our weakness is the reliance on a resource that can be destroyed to perform our skills at full strength, it would be akin to other professions having their resource being able to be destroyed. The times where this doesn't affect us is exactly what we are strong in, duels and small scale encounters. My analysis is that this is either intended by ANet, or that they have not figured out a method of making Mesmer not reliant on clones and yet still be balanced, although possibly not even given it thought at all.

"I'm not telling you not to think, but I am telling you that thinking is bad because you're subjective. Instead, listen to my claims of special reasoning."

The change is obviously intended to nerf chronomancers. The theme has been core tradeoffs for the past few balance patches.

The changes are intended to alter the gameplay of Chrono from Core. The idea of trade offs creates a situation where Core is not strictly worse than either Elite Spec. Just going to ignore the attempt to paraphrase, it is argumentative and childish, focus on the topic instead.

The changes resulted in a gameplay that is like Vanilla Core without IP, making for a lot of builds that rely on any number of other skills. It may also reveal the weakness in the very design of Mesmer to the developers: complete reliance on the clone resource and it’s negative impact on the profession as a whole (being destroyable and reducing Mesmer potential).

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Fumigene.5076 said:How did they 'dynamically scale' Spatial surge? Does it now require to be at range 1200 to do the same damage you would do at range 901 before?

Probably with an added variable which divides target range by max range and multiplies the resulting damage or something similar.

Spatial surge max range is 1,200 thus a target at 1,200 would result in a 1 damage modifier (1,200/1,200 = 1).

A target at 600 range would thus receive a damage modifier of .5 (600/1,200 = 0.5).

Very likely with some maximum and minimum values thrown in.

That's what I'm afraid of, since that would be a nerf. Assuming the wiki is correct and the max damage hasn't changed.

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@Fumigene.5076 said:

@Fumigene.5076 said:How did they 'dynamically scale' Spatial surge? Does it now require to be at range 1200 to do the same damage you would do at range 901 before?

Probably with an added variable which divides target range by max range and multiplies the resulting damage or something similar.

Spatial surge max range is 1,200 thus a target at 1,200 would result in a 1 damage modifier (1,200/1,200 = 1).

A target at 600 range would thus receive a damage modifier of .5 (600/1,200 = 0.5).

Very likely with some maximum and minimum values thrown in.

That's what I'm afraid of, since that would be a nerf. Assuming the wiki is correct and the max damage hasn't changed.

It's a little more complicated than a nerf. While it's a nerf at 901 range, it's a buff at 899 range, etc. Most of the time you're not exactly controlling distance precisely, so overall it's probably going to work out to be pretty similar overall.

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@Pyroatheist.9031 said:

@Fumigene.5076 said:How did they 'dynamically scale' Spatial surge? Does it now require to be at range 1200 to do the same damage you would do at range 901 before?

Probably with an added variable which divides target range by max range and multiplies the resulting damage or something similar.

Spatial surge max range is 1,200 thus a target at 1,200 would result in a 1 damage modifier (1,200/1,200 = 1).

A target at 600 range would thus receive a damage modifier of .5 (600/1,200 = 0.5).

Very likely with some maximum and minimum values thrown in.

That's what I'm afraid of, since that would be a nerf. Assuming the wiki is correct and the max damage hasn't changed.

It's a little more complicated than a nerf. While it's a nerf at 901 range, it's a buff at 899 range, etc. Most of the time you're not exactly controlling distance precisely, so overall it's probably going to work out to be pretty similar overall.

Hard to say honestly. Probably easy enough to figure out if tested if someone wants to put in the time (I don't care enough to do so).

The reason why I stated variable is that I would assume that certain values are fixed. For example, if I were to implement this change, I would do it so that everything above 900 units gets rounded to 1 (aka between 900 and 1,200 units the value used for the calculation is always 1,200 thus resulting in a modifier of 1 for maximum damage).

Similarly I would use a minum range value, thus anything below 300 untis range would always result in a .25 modifier (300/1,200 = 0.25) meaning damage has a minimum value of 300 units as to not make the skill completely useless at pointblank range.

This is going off of the previous values of 300 - 900 units in damage scaling (if I remember correctly).

So without actually testing for such minimum or maximum values it would be hard to classify this as a nerf. If no min- or maximum values are being used, then yes, different ranges would result in over- or underperformance compared to before. As mentioned by Pyro.

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