The Difference Between "Annoying" and "Overpowered"

[Exile.8160]

On 8/31/2021 at 4:42 AM, Ragnar.4257 said:

Players need to learn the difference.

 

- An "annoying" build is one that is frustrating or irritating to play against, due to boring interactions or excessive limitations on player activity.

- An "overpowered" build is one that is too strong, which has an overly large effect in keeping other builds out of the meta, or which allows a less skilled player to beat a more skilled player.

 

A build can be annoying but not overpowered.

A build can be overpowered but not annoying.

A build can be both annoying and overpowered.

A build can be neither annoying or overpowered.

 

They are two separate distinct dimensions. They are not the same thing.

 

Most of the stuff getting complained about on this forum as "OP" or "needs nerfs" are actually properly categorised as "annoying". For example:

 

Stealth

Conditions

Pets/Summons

Decap/Bunker Builds

1-shot builds

 

Stealth is not overpowered. Most of the meta builds have zero or limited stealth. However, stealth is annoying to fight against, as you end up playing whack-a-mole and chasing around an opponent that won't engage you in an interesting engagement and won't allow you to use the tools in your kit.

 

Conditions are not overpowered. Most of the meta builds right now are power. However, conditions are annoying to fight against, as they are generally less well telegraphed, and they limit your ability to play the game by reducing your movement, preventing hits/crits etc. They also take longer to have an affect than an instant spike of power damage, which means you spend time watching your HP slowly drain down while you can do little about it, which is more frustrating than simply seeing your HP go instantly to zero.

 

Pets/Summons are, for the most part, not overpowered in the current meta. Minionmancer necro probably is a bit too strong, but that's an exception here and has as much to do with necro's innate tankiness as it does the summons themselves. However, pets are undoubtedly annoying. Having a smokescale teleport across a node and knock you down is without question annoying. That doesn't make it overpowered.

 

By bunker builds, I don't just mean stuff that is kinda tanky like core-necro or prot-holo. I mean stuff that has no intention of winning a fight and just wants to troll on a node. Decap-druid is an example. Another example might be an evade-spam water-weaver or d/d thief. These builds are annoying, not overpowered.

 

There are not any 1-shot builds in the current list of meta builds. They are not overpowered, since pretty much all 1-shot builds have significant trade-offs in terms of survivability that make them non-viable against competent teams who correctly focus targets. However, getting insta-downed by an opponent you didn't even realise was there is certainly annoying.

 

Please learn the difference.

 

It is still valid to complain about something being "annoying". After all, the point of a game is to have fun, and therefore something which causes irritation or frustration is still damaging to the game regardless of how strong it is, and should probably be adjusted.

 

But it is important to articulate your issue correctly. If you label something as "overpowered" when it is actually "annoying" then your issue will be dismissed as the incoherent rambling of a salty scrub who doesn't understand the game.

 

In short:

 

Necro = OP

DH = Annoying

 

lol.

[noiwk.2760]

5 minutes ago, Exile.8160 said:

 

In short:

 

Necro = OP

DH = Annoying

 

lol.

as a necro main i do agree..  i used to main scourge but i quit it because of the situation because i dont enjoy playing a toxic bully class..    i think burning over abit overwhelming in the current game state .. it feels kinda like burst rather than having to slowly build damage.. 
but i think the main issue is rune of the trapper and once agian stealth

core condi necro and scourge are definitely op..  
 

Edited September 1, 2021 by noiwk.2760

[lightstalker.1498]

What is OP

Edited September 1, 2021 by lightstalker.1498

[lightstalker.1498]

What is OP

Edited September 1, 2021 by lightstalker.1498

[shrew.3059]

3 hours ago, noiwk.2760 said:

yes if they are good enough and have some skills and brain to use their escape skills properly but for thief it require 0 skills

 

Again, how would you know this given you have admitted to having no experience with the profession? If you are correct, you should be able to demonstrate this by just picking up a Thief and pumping it to Plat easy-peasy. But I’m sure there’s a reason you can’t/won’t. That doesn’t necessarily make you wrong, but it doesn’t help your credibility.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

7 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

 

Then perhaps you are not in a good place to evaluate its capabilities.

 

5 hours ago, noiwk.2760 said:

still gonna spam for stealth reworked/nerfed/removed . 

 

At least they wear their motive on their sleeve instead of trying to hide it behind a mountain of empty rationalization. I can respect that. 

[noiwk.2760]

1 minute ago, shrew.3059 said:

 

Again, how would you know this given you have admitted to having no experience with the profession? If you are correct, you should be able to demonstrate this by just picking up a Thief and pumping it to Plat easy-peasy. But I’m sure there’s a reason you can’t/won’t. That doesn’t necessarily make you wrong, but it doesn’t help your credibility.

i just dont like thief lol..  and also im not playing classes i think are kitten .. i was main scourge but i quit my scourge when it became busted..  why would i lvl thief when i have same opinon about them?   at the end of the day its ok for us not to agree and we never will agree and thats fine..  regardless of anything stealth is stupid and not fun to play against and i think and im allowed to make my opinion about it i suggest it be reworked 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, noiwk.2760 said:

.. i was main scourge but i quit my scourge when it became busted.

 

I can see why they dislike stealth with this context.

 

Pointless to ask for one of the core systems the game is built around to be completely removed/reworked /wrong about it being busted given the context of how brittle thief is, but I'd expect necros to not like fighting them. 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[noiwk.2760]

1 minute ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

I can see why they dislike stealth with this context.

 

Pointless to ask for one of the core systems the game is built around to be completely removed/reworked but I'd expect necros to not like fighting them. 

gw2 is the only game ever that allow such abusive stealth if we are honest..  all other games has far longer cooldown on stealth along with many drawbacks..   in gw2 stealth is just busted..    be that DH /Rangers abuse it through rune of the trapper or thief ..   i left my scourge because of the current situation that scourge in my opinion is completely broken..   and i dont even play core condi cause its kinda op aswell i do play sometimes power core  for fun..  and herald ..     theres far too much stealth in the game and way too much in thief kit 

[shrew.3059]

1 hour ago, noiwk.2760 said:

gw2 is the only game ever that allow such abusive stealth if we are honest..  all other games has far longer cooldown on stealth along with many drawbacks..   in gw2 stealth is just busted..    be that DH /Rangers abuse it through rune of the trapper or thief ..   i left my scourge because of the current situation that scourge in my opinion is completely broken..   and i dont even play core condi cause its kinda op aswell i do play sometimes power core  for fun..  and herald ..     theres far too much stealth in the game and way too much in thief kit 

 

Wait, you play Scourge and Herald and you think Thief is overpowered? I see…

[Psycoprophet.8107]

2 hours ago, noiwk.2760 said:

gw2 is the only game ever that allow such abusive stealth if we are honest..  all other games has far longer cooldown on stealth along with many drawbacks..   in gw2 stealth is just busted..    be that DH /Rangers abuse it through rune of the trapper or thief ..   i left my scourge because of the current situation that scourge in my opinion is completely broken..   and i dont even play core condi cause its kinda op aswell i do play sometimes power core  for fun..  and herald ..     theres far too much stealth in the game and way too much in thief kit 

What are these games? ESO has way easier stealth, press a button every 3 sec for the next 30 secs and have basically perma stealth, wow hit stealth once for perma stealth till u attack, than u have 2 more stealth options for disengage. Neverwinter stealth is on a cooldown but last a long time and u hit far harder from stealth in nvw than u do in gw2, same for lotro. Ff14 stealth isn't really used in pvp, least not to any great effect due to ninja not having a reliance on it. At least in gw2 stealth is only 3 sec stackable that requires using ur global resources and continuous use of those resources to upkeep through the use of combo fields etc or the use of a utility skill.

I will say DE elite is broken, as is itsimob spamability with kneel lol. So fun continuously applying imob while ur friend destroys them, so dirty.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Psycoprophet.8107

[noiwk.2760]

29 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

 

Wait, you play Scourge and Herald and you think Thief is overpowered? I see…

you read? i said i dropped scourge for how op it is right now..    herald..  yea i play it..  and im going to say that thief > herald

[superkaratemonkey.7408]

On 8/31/2021 at 2:42 AM, Ragnar.4257 said:

Having a smokescale teleport across a node and then knock you down is without question annoying. That doesn't make it overpowered.

the then keyword i added here makes this pet less annoying.

 

Off-swap Smokescale: If enemy is out of range of knockdown -> Smoke Assault -> Knockdown always

If enemy is in range of knockdown -> Knockdown first (if off cooldown)

 

Knowing this makes Smokescale much less annoying to fight against because avoiding knockdown erases all annoying aspects about it, the one that is annoying is the tail swipe from drake which can knock off 60% of your health with such a fast windup time coming out of a swap combo.

Edited September 1, 2021 by superkaratemonkey.7408

[shrew.3059]

6 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

At least they wear their motive on their sleeve instead of trying to hide it behind a mountain of empty rationalization. I can respect that. 

 

Except there is a mountain of empty rationalisation, since there does not seem to be a willingness to engage with or understand the profession in question. All this sounds very much like a cover for “a Thief beat me using Stealth and I don’t like that”.

 

Since we’re being honest: I would win/lose just as many matches if Stealth were reworked, so I am not arguing from a position of self-interest. I don’t lose matches because other players have overpowered mechanics, it’s almost always due to being outplayed.

 

Lastly: ANet is unlikely to accept the feedback of a player who can’t be bothered to understand the profession they want to nerf, so what is the expected outcome of this discussion?

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

10 minutes ago, shrew.3059 said:

All this sounds very much like a cover for “a Thief beat me using Stealth and I don’t like that”.

I mean they kind of said that up front, you don't have to draw the conclusion from evidence. They wouldn't be here if stealth was trivial to counter on the classes he plays. 

 

Quote

there does not seem to be a willingness to engage with or understand the profession in question

Yeh. Some people be like that. Arguing with them won't do anything. 

 

6 hours ago, noiwk.2760 said:

i just dont like thief lol.. 

 There's been no shortage of necro mains on this forum that have an issue with thief bullying them. Sure, right now the scale's tipped the other way but we had a few years of it absolutely not being easily dealt with.

I don't think Noiwk has a point, by the way. I think stealth as it stands on thief at the moment is reasonably balanced, and any changes presented to it need to be met with sustain buffs. 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[shrew.3059]

9 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

They wouldn't be here if stealth was trivial to counter on the classes he plays. 

 

It depends what trivial amounts to. Although it’s not fashionable to admit, PvP is not easy. You need decent APM, you need decent game knowledge, and you need to be a tactical thinker. You need practice at all those, in this game or in others. You will be constantly frustrated while learning. Being bad at PvP is often just lack of practice but it’s still frustrating. Stealth is probably not trivial to counter if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.

 

If you don’t know the professions you’re fighting, and you’re new to PvP, you might never know why you’re losing. Stability is a game-changer but it’s less obvious that you lost because of it. Stealth is an easy target because it feels like a more meaningful change to the encounter, even when the outcome would have been the same because you were outplayed.

[bLind.6278]

2 hours ago, shrew.3059 said:

 

It depends what trivial amounts to. Although it’s not fashionable to admit, PvP is not easy. You need decent APM, you need decent game knowledge, and you need to be a tactical thinker. You need practice at all those, in this game or in others. You will be constantly frustrated while learning. Being bad at PvP is often just lack of practice but it’s still frustrating. Stealth is probably not trivial to counter if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.

 

If you don’t know the professions you’re fighting, and you’re new to PvP, you might never know why you’re losing. Stability is a game-changer but it’s less obvious that you lost because of it. Stealth is an easy target because it feels like a more meaningful change to the encounter, even when the outcome would have been the same because you were outplayed.

You can lose despite playing perfectly on your own end. I can win 100% of my fights on sidenodes and still lose by 300+ points. It's a team game where 60% of the players have literally no idea what they're doing. People don't teamfight, protect nodes, they run into 1v4's constantly.

 

This game does not foster intelligent PvP or whatever reason. It's not a competitive game, and the fact that there's even a half-assed rating/ELO system built in is a disgrace to actual competitive games. It shouldn't exist. Full stop. There should be no ranked or unranked, because the entire structure is kittening garbage. Anet threw together a kitten gamemode because ESPORTS!!! and then abandoned it immediately after, hoping the playerbase would sustain it for them.

 

The fact that kitten like Scourge and Trapper Runes exist is testament to the fact that Anet just full-out does not give a single kitten about this game mode. Bot, afk, kitten around, do whatever. It literally doesn't matter. The game mode is trash, it runs like trash, it is designed like trash, but the rewards are decent, so kitten it.

[shrew.3059]

5 hours ago, bLind.6278 said:

You can lose despite playing perfectly on your own end. I can win 100% of my fights on sidenodes and still lose by 300+ points. It's a team game where 60% of the players have literally no idea what they're doing. People don't teamfight, protect nodes, they run into 1v4's constantly.

 

This game does not foster intelligent PvP or whatever reason. It's not a competitive game, and the fact that there's even a half-assed rating/ELO system built in is a disgrace to actual competitive games. It shouldn't exist. Full stop. There should be no ranked or unranked, because the entire structure is kittening garbage. Anet threw together a kitten gamemode because ESPORTS!!! and then abandoned it immediately after, hoping the playerbase would sustain it for them.

 

The fact that kitten like Scourge and Trapper Runes exist is testament to the fact that Anet just full-out does not give a single kitten about this game mode. Bot, afk, kitten around, do whatever. It literally doesn't matter. The game mode is trash, it runs like trash, it is designed like trash, but the rewards are decent, so kitten it.

 

Perhaps this is true, but none of this is the fault of Stealth.

[Genesis.5169]

11 hours ago, bLind.6278 said:

You can lose despite playing perfectly on your own end. I can win 100% of my fights on sidenodes and still lose by 300+ points. It's a team game where 60% of the players have literally no idea what they're doing. People don't teamfight, protect nodes, they run into 1v4's constantly.

 

This game does not foster intelligent PvP or whatever reason. It's not a competitive game, and the fact that there's even a half-assed rating/ELO system built in is a disgrace to actual competitive games. It shouldn't exist. Full stop. There should be no ranked or unranked, because the entire structure is kittening garbage. Anet threw together a kitten gamemode because ESPORTS!!! and then abandoned it immediately after, hoping the playerbase would sustain it for them.

 

The fact that kitten like Scourge and Trapper Runes exist is testament to the fact that Anet just full-out does not give a single kitten about this game mode. Bot, afk, kitten around, do whatever. It literally doesn't matter. The game mode is trash, it runs like trash, it is designed like trash, but the rewards are decent, so kitten it.

 

I learned sidenoders don't carry games, you need an high dps or tanking mid to carry them. They just amplify already good teams. Although if your playing out of your mind and you win a couple of 1vX situations at far you may very well win the game for your team.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Genesis.5169

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

8 minutes ago, Genesis.5169 said:

 

I learned sidenoders don't carry games, you need an high dps or tanking mid to carry them. They just amplify already good teams. Although if your playing out of your mind and you win a couple of 1vX situations at far you may very well win the game for your team.

Side noders and roamers are good at equalizing the odds and giving your team a shot to win via stalling. But they can't carry through clueless teammates as easily as burst dps or tank mid. A good sider or roamer will, however, ensure a decent team always wins.

Edited September 2, 2021 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[Ovark.2514]

IF a build is annoying then it's indicative of a design issue. A game should be fun.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

4 hours ago, Ovark.2514 said:

IF a build is annoying then it's indicative of a design issue. A game should be fun.

Annoyance is largely subjective. Although there obviously has to be clear guide lines as to what is "acceptable" and what isn't. Best example of this would be stealth one-shots. I doubt anyone likes to be on the receiving end of those, and even the players themselves can admit it feels BS-itty.

A better indicator would be effort/reward -ratio.

[shrew.3059]

7 hours ago, Ovark.2514 said:

IF a build is annoying then it's indicative of a design issue. A game should be fun.

 

Agreed, which is why I was using “annoying” in quotes. It’s rarely fun to be repeatedly killed by better players, but often necessary to improve. The fun comes when you have improved enough to put your skills into practice. Sadly, players are often impatient and don’t want to put the work in. This is a big difference between casual and competitive modes of play; casual is come-as-you-are, and competitive requires time investment.

 

My point here is that Stealth (and arguably Thief in general) defies a lot of standard gameplay expectations and therefore is extra annoying to newer players. This feeling isn’t exclusive to Stealth but probably extends to Downstate, map rotation, secondary objectives, or anything that isn’t essentially a knockdown-dragout duel between two (or more) players.