Harbinger's flawed design

[Lily.1935]

It's been a while since I've posted a topic and this has been on my mind for a while so might as well talk on this. There's been a few topics about the Harbinger's design and how it fails to capture a lot of people's imagination. I do think some of the themes that Arena net was going for with the Harbinger are cool, but I feel they were pulled out of the oven a bit too quickly, and although I love the way shroud works and the pistol the failure of the elite spec begins with how Elixirs are used and ends with the rather uninspired traits.

Do note this is coming from a PvE perspective.

Elixirs and there flaws.

Elixirs can sometimes play fairly similarly to other utility skills like Gyros or ranger spirits. Its not a 1 for 1, however the idea of these being used to play as a boon support is there. This part isn't a bad thing in its design. The problem with this is that you need to play these like a support even when you're running as a DPS. So what do I mean? When using utility skills as a support, be it as a quickness spammer or alacrity spammer your goal is to stack your buffs and timings with your cooldowns to support your allies and DPS/heal inbetween that. These support skills become priority to maintain group DPS. Harbinger follows this similar play pattern as a pure selfish DPS and not just as a quickness. Rather than buffing the party you need to buff yourself with blight. So you're beginning your rotation with pre buffs which is a play style typically exclusive to party support, but now you're expected to spend a bit of time throughout your rotation to set yourself up to deal more damage.

This play style is and can be rewarding when you're playing as a support, but as a DPS your building of blight is not active in your offense. Compare this resource build up style to Holosmith or Berserker. These two are building up resource as an active part of their DPS rotation. They don't need to stop to buff, they're building up their buff and getting to their pay off. Harbinger in contrast has breaks in their rotation where they're not contributing to their own DPS just to maintain  their own buffs.

This might be an intentional design decision as a potion user who needs to constantly be needing to reapply their own buffs to sustain their DPS, but in practice it doesn't actually feel good. For me personally its lead me to only running Harbinger when I want to support my allies and almost never as a Pure DPS.

This problem also extends to build customization. You compare this to reaper or scourge which both have a lot of freedom in their builds. There are some Must take utility skills, sure, but harbinger has 3 of their 5 available slots accounted for already. Technically its actually 4 of 5 slots, the elite being the only slot with any flexibility at all. You need 3 elixirs to have reliable self blight since sticking in harbinger's shroud for blight is not an option and you want that blight for harbinger's shroud in the first place.

The elixir skills themselves are almost to the point to where they might as well say nothing but add blight because what they contribute to a DPS build is fairly negligible. So the same 3 get chosen regardless of what build you're going for. And since not all elixirs are created equal, there are a few that could be useful but just aren't because the recharge and timing of shroud is fairly tight so those ones are unlikely to get used. Not to mention that the throw feature of each elixir isn't very good and the loss of blight when its thrown away from you is devastating to your rotation that you have to just toss them at your feet which makes the toss feature just bad because it creates situations where you can just mess yourself up unintentionally.

The traits are Lazy.

I hate to be too harsh here, but the traits lack identity between them. All 3 Grandmaster traits are fairly similar, the only one that kinda stands out is Deadly haste. But they're all 3 second pulse passives. Wicked corruption and Septic corruption are almost identical aside from one being power and the other being condi and the Master traits are all gain 13% stat based on vitality.

There's so little here it doesn't inspire creativity in the player, or even the illusion of creativity. What would happen to some of these traits if harbinger got the cooldown treatment that reaper got? Dark gunslinger begins to look pretty lousy and Vile Vails looks even worse than it did before. If you ask me, ALL of these traits need to be reworked except for Deadly haste. Everything else? we can do better.

How could it be fixed?

most of my suggestions would be to rework the traits. Elixirs need some TLC badly, but those can wait at least.

1.  Septic corruption and wicked corruption should be scrapped. Fuse these two traits together and have them give a flat DPS increase that applies to all damage types and add this bonus to corrupted talent.
2. The poison bonus on shroud skill two lost from Septic corruption, add it to dark gunslinger.
3. For one of the Missing Adept traits give us 10 stacks of blight on entering shroud. Maybe something else to spice things up, but that on its own would be wonderful.
4. For the other Missing Adept, Life steal. Give us the option to have some better sustain, you can have it burst out extra life steal on spending blight so we get some synergy with spending blight.
5. Vile Vails, make it so you always get blight from them even if its tossed away from you and elixirs no longer remove blight in addition to its vuln. Or something else.
6. Implacable foe, Some more boons on that might be nice like Vigor.
7. Replace Cascading corruption with something else. Get creative, you said Alchemist was an inspiration for the spec? Get weird with it. There's a lot of mysticism mixed with science in alchemy, they held beliefs like they could create tiny people in glass vials. Why not play into these ideas of playing god? Give them their Magnum opus. Unlock the potential of their equipped weapons like transforming some of their skills to be more devastating that gives another way to spend blight.
8. As for elixirs, some of these probably should act more like spells rather than just a drink. Why don't some of them create a transmutation circle similar to what we see when we enter harbinger's shroud? Why can't we see such a cool design like that that could be something that pulses out boons to allies or devastating conditions to enemies? Why can't we summon little homunculus? I started playing necromancer because of the ideas of using forbidden arts and magics, so why can't we get a little cycloptic homunculus minion?
   
   THat last one is probably a bit too out there. but these are just a few ideas I've had. As Harbinger stands now, it could be so much better. There's so much flavor in the design of Reaper and especially Scourge. Reaper being inspired by horror movie monsters and really plays into that while Scourge takes tropes from Mummy movies like snakes, burning sands, horrifying shades which somewhat resemble the sandstorms in Mummy. Harbinger has some of that cool design too, but its less cohesive and messy. Harbinger isn't without its redeeming qualities. I wouldn't be critical of its design if I didn't think it had them.
   
   I feel harbinger was rushed out the door. And this might be due to a lack of time on the devs part which is a shame. I want to like harbinger, but I just can't bring myself to like it with how lacking its diversity and identity is.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Lily.1935

[Dadnir.5038]

I do agree with most of the things you say even if I wouldn't have phrased it this way.

What I do agree with you at 100%:

• Elixirs are indeed cumbersome to use due to being ground targeted utilities.
• The fact that Elixirs are the only utilities of the harbinger that provide ressource management for blight is indeed a factor that limit build diversity.
• Traits are indeed lacking in variety and I'd say that they are way too passive to raise the player's interest.

What I might have missed in your thread and that I'd add:

• Elixirs are bloated, they do way to many things at the same time (always buff, debuff, damage and ressource management, but on top of that, sometime, they even get utilities like stun break, cleanse, ... etc.)
• While it is pleasant to have powerful skills, I do believe that, in order to be balanced, the torment on Shroud AA need to be conditional (either tied to a trait or only proc'ing on crit).

 

What I'd personally do:

1- Try to open up more utility slots for core utilities:

• I'd add "gain 5 blight stack upon using any utility" to the minor trait Corrupted talent. (This wouldn't affect elite skills)
• I'd reduce the blight gain from elixirs to 5 stacks instead of 10. (Elixir of ambition not being affected)

2- I'd rethink the middle traitline and Elixirs:

• Vile vial would be renamed and change vital draw into a skill that vent 1-2 blight stack every second for 5s to cleanse and provide 2 might and fury to allies around you on each tic.
• Twisted medecine would heal allies around the Harbinger when using skills that vent blight. (I'm thinking of a design close to thief's shadow savior trait).
• Deadly haste would provide Quickness upon venting blight as well as reduce both the blight vented by the Elixirs and the treshold needed to 2 for all regular Elixirs and 5 for Elixir of ambition. Instead of increasing condition duration and damage from elixirs, venting blight with an elixir now allow the Harbinger to share the self boon when you take this trait.
• Elixir of ambition: This skill no longer provide all boons, it now grant self-stability and 2s distorsion on cast.

3- Condition:

• Tainted bolt now need to be a critical strike in order to apply torment (chance on crit: 100%).

4- Strike damage:

• Cascading corruption still grant extra power but now add a 3rd strike to tainted bolts and change it's torment on crit to vulnerability on crit instead of the pulsing aoe.

 

[Joxer.6024]

agree! elixirs are just clunky in there use. Who else has to buff up before going pew pew? I agree that we should be able to build blight much like the mentioned Berserker and Holo, as we attack!

Lets hope ANET sees some of this cuz its really a fun class.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

     See, the design of the elixirs and such doesn't bug me at all. I play the pure dps condi variant only because I don't play support on any profession since I don't care for it in this game. I don't find it that cumbersome or hard to throw down the elixirs on me, and I find it some a lot of times. As for the traits, I am not a build crafter, so I am also ok with them as is because they get the job done. 

     The only thing I would add to Harbinger is adding a second pistol to it for the full Dark Gunslinger feel, but I doubt that would ever happen. Harbinger is the only elite spec I play now though on necro because I don't care for the melee of the reaper, and scourge I got bored with. Plus, I like being a selfish kitten, so helping my teammates out with scourge never felt right to me.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Lily.1935]

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

I do agree with most of the things you say even if I wouldn't have phrased it this way.

What I do agree with you at 100%:

• Elixirs are indeed cumbersome to use due to being ground targeted utilities.
• The fact that Elixirs are the only utilities of the harbinger that provide ressource management for blight is indeed a factor that limit build diversity.
• Traits are indeed lacking in variety and I'd say that they are way too passive to raise the player's interest.

What I might have missed in your thread and that I'd add:

• Elixirs are bloated, they do way to many things at the same time (always buff, debuff, damage and ressource management, but on top of that, sometime, they even get utilities like stun break, cleanse, ... etc.)
• While it is pleasant to have powerful skills, I do believe that, in order to be balanced, the torment on Shroud AA need to be conditional (either tied to a trait or only proc'ing on crit).

 

Elixirs do need rework, how that would work we may of disagreements on. I personally don't think they do enough, you think they do too much. Although what I mean by "Not enough" is a bit nuanced in that everything they do provide is rather minor and doesn't contribute much to how the harbinger plays. The Boons given on their DPS build does almost nothing for them in group content and the damage they provide excluding the heal is the same way for both builds. You could entirely remove the damage side of the elixirs and little would actually change.

I don't see an Issue with them having a utility that stunbreaks or cleanses, which only does that for you which is far less than other support utility in the game. Compare that to blast gyro which gives a group stunbreak on top of a massive CC. Or "Eye of the storm" which gives a rather long range stunbreak and stability. Well of Precognition doesn't stunbreak but gives stability and aegis. Crisis zone gives a stunbreak, aegis, protection and alacrity. Glyph of equality can give either a stunbreak or a stun. You can basically find an example of a party support skill that just effectively does more on every other profession.

I'd be perfectly fine if some elixirs lost the toss feature. Like Elixir of ignorance? Yeah, remove the toss feature give a group stunbreak when you have twisted medicine that provides Resistance and another boon like stability or aegis? Sounds great. Elixir of bliss with twisted medicine providing condition conversion on allies along with resolution would be great. I don't think that's the right direction for all elixirs though as having some offensive potential would be nice. Elixir of Anguish and Elixir of could both have their boon and more damage added to them through the toss. Either a sudden burst aoe with conditions or a pulsing field with the transmutation circle on the ground that grants their effects to allies if you trait for it.

 

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

What I'd personally do:

1- Try to open up more utility slots for core utilities:

• I'd add "gain 5 blight stack upon using any utility" to the minor trait Corrupted talent. (This wouldn't affect elite skills)
• I'd reduce the blight gain from elixirs to 5 stacks instead of 10. (Elixir of ambition not being affected)

 

I think how you generate blight should be controlled by the Adept traits, not the minors. Blight on utility use isn't a bad idea, but I think that should be an adapt. Although generating blight maybe should be done through the weapons and not the utility skills so we don't have redundancy with elixirs when using them. Giving players options to generate Blight through their choice of a weapons, through shroud or with elixirs seems like it might be the best option in my opinion.

 

 

4 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

2- I'd rethink the middle traitline and Elixirs:

• Vile vial would be renamed and change vital draw into a skill that vent 1-2 blight stack every second for 5s to cleanse and provide 2 might and fury to allies around you on each tic.
• Twisted medecine would heal allies around the Harbinger when using skills that vent blight. (I'm thinking of a design close to thief's shadow savior trait).
• Deadly haste would provide Quickness upon venting blight as well as reduce both the blight vented by the Elixirs and the treshold needed to 2 for all regular Elixirs and 5 for Elixir of ambition. Instead of increasing condition duration and damage from elixirs, venting blight with an elixir now allow the Harbinger to share the self boon when you take this trait.
• Elixir of ambition: This skill no longer provide all boons, it now grant self-stability and 2s distorsion on cast.

 

I am not a fan of these ideas going to be honest. I think it over complicates things and like I said I think blight generation should be something the Adept traits do. Twisted medicine giving the elixir's utility they provide to the harbinger to allies is already enough. Adding healing isn't needed. Just the extra utility of group stunbreaks or condition cleans would be enough especially with the reduced cooldown with Vile Vials as a real option for blight generation with my previous idea.

Deadly haste is perfect as is. We don't need to change it, the harbinger already has to manage so much this just adds unnecessary complexity.

Not a fan of your Ambition change. Elixir of ambition is really the only skill the Harbinger has currently that embodies the theme of a Magnum Opus, and I'm not a fan of changing it to something that's almost identical to what a mesmer gets for free. Just makes it playing catch up with with mesmer.

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

3- Condition:

• Tainted bolt now need to be a critical strike in order to apply torment (chance on crit: 100%).

 

HARD NO! Harbinger isn't even close to one of the strongest condition builds right now and that would do no favors for their dps. Which considering how frail they are this could sink their usage even further.

5 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

4- Strike damage:

• Cascading corruption still grant extra power but now add a 3rd strike to tainted bolts and change it's torment on crit to vulnerability on crit instead of the pulsing aoe.

 

This doesn't help, its just weaker than the previous trait. Which the power build doesn't even have a benchmark. So I have to wonder why you'd make something already extremely weak even weaker.

[Joxer.6024]

20 hours ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

     See, the design of the elixirs and such doesn't bug me at all. I play the pure dps condi variant only because I don't play support on any profession since I don't care for it in this game. I don't find it that cumbersome or hard to throw down the elixirs on me, and I find it some a lot of times. As for the traits, I am not a build crafter, so I am also ok with them as is because they get the job done. 

     The only thing I would add to Harbinger is adding a second pistol to it for the full Dark Gunslinger feel, but I doubt that would ever happen. Harbinger is the only elite spec I play now though on necro because I don't care for the melee of the reaper, and scourge I got bored with. Plus, I like being a selfish kitten, so helping my teammates out with scourge never felt right to me.

someone after my own heart! i play and feel the same way. And yea, Scourge was like wait til i put down these shades...ok go! But that dual pistol would be sweet!

[Lily.1935]

2 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

someone after my own heart! i play and feel the same way. And yea, Scourge was like wait til i put down these shades...ok go! But that dual pistol would be sweet!

Shades actually contribute a lot of damage on cast and create a choke point. Its not really comparable.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Lily.1935

[Joxer.6024]

1 hour ago, Lily.1935 said:

Shades actually contribute a lot of damage on cast and create a choke point. Its not really comparable.

nah i meant that the mechanic of doing was clunky, to me. Oh yea, the do great damage!!  😉

[Lily.1935]

7 hours ago, Joxer.6024 said:

nah i meant that the mechanic of doing was clunky, to me. Oh yea, the do great damage!!  😉

You can auto target aoe circles so it will hit where you want or in action cam they work on your cross hair. They're super intuitive to me.

[Asum.4960]

On 4/7/2023 at 11:36 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

I'd reduce the blight gain from elixirs to 5 stacks instead of 10. (Elixir of ambition not being affected)

Elixir's consume 5 Blight, then generate 10 Blight. If you reduced their generation to 5, they would generate nothing beyond the first. 

 

/E:

Nvm, don't forum before coffee.

Edited April 9, 2023 by Asum.4960

[Dadnir.5038]

33 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Elixir's consume 5 Blight, then generate 10 Blight. If you reduced their generation to 5, they would generate nothing beyond the first.

What I wrote is meant as a whole Asum. Before that I added to a minor trait 5 blight on any utility use. So, no, as a matter of fact the blight generation of the elixir wouldn't change at all.

[sdaugherty.1984]

On 4/8/2023 at 6:37 AM, Joxer.6024 said:

i play and feel the same way. And yea, Scourge was like wait til i put down these shades...ok go!

YES, Those %!*#  things should be an instant cast!

Edited April 11, 2023 by sdaugherty.1984

[Lily.1935]

2 hours ago, sdaugherty.1984 said:

YES, Those %!*#  things should be an instant cast!

There's something that people here are really missing in this topic.

1. Harbinger elixirs remove blight if they're thrown with no benefit to the harbinger, in fact it reduces their overall damage significantly.
2. The Elixirs themselves have abysmal damage and utility.
3. It actively harms the rotation if you throw the elixirs away from your feet.
4. Elixirs are a dead point in your build where you're not contributing to a fight.
5. They have poor synergy with your own traits.

What's the point of having them thrown when doing so makes the play pattern and play style actively worse? Elixirs have so many issues with them in their design, they basically need a complete rework as they are now.

Shades on the other hand are perfect. You don't like them because, and I'm going to be honest right now, you're bad at the elite spec, and its really just a skill issue. What do shades have that make them great?

1. They create choke points on the battlefield.
2. They have the best AoE in the game.
3. Really good damage even on placement.
4. The traits in the scourge elite spec are actually built to synergize with their placement and maintaining their numbers, where as harbinger isn't build around removing blight from its traits.

Scourge is fantastic design, Harbinger is not. Scourge is the necromancer's BEST elite spec, harbinger is its worst.

I like harbinger. I like the concept behind it, but its clumsily designed with built in anti synergies you have to engage with. Scourge does not have these anti synergies built into the elite spec. This isn't to say Scourge is perfect, it isn't, but you and the other are not complaining about actual issues the scourge has but about a specific play style its built around that others love dearly and saying its bad because you don't like it.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

1 hour ago, Lily.1935 said:

I like harbinger. I like the concept behind it, but its clumsily designed with built in anti synergies you have to engage with. Scourge does not have these anti synergies built into the elite spec. This isn't to say Scourge is perfect, it isn't, but you and the other are not complaining about actual issues the scourge has but about a specific play style its built around that others love dearly and saying its bad because you don't like it.

 

     Oh, I am not sure if you are referring to my initial statement on this as well, but I never thought Scourge was bad because of the numbers it did and how it worked. I just never liked it because of the playstyle, so it is still within my right to say it is bad for me due to the annoyance of the playstyle which I don't care for at all. I am glad people like scourge. I say good for them, but I will still stick with my liking of Harbinger how it currently is because it doesn't bug me that much with how it plays with some of the issues and all.

     Also, the throwing at feet issue doesn't annoy me that much because you have to be in boon range anyways, so you are throwing at your feet regardless with the boss in mind.

[Lily.1935]

22 minutes ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

 

     Oh, I am not sure if you are referring to my initial statement on this as well, but I never thought Scourge was bad because of the numbers it did and how it worked. I just never liked it because of the playstyle, so it is still within my right to say it is bad for me due to the annoyance of the playstyle which I don't care for at all. I am glad people like scourge. I say good for them, but I will still stick with my liking of Harbinger how it currently is because it doesn't bug me that much with how it plays with some of the issues and all.

     Also, the throwing at feet issue doesn't annoy me that much because you have to be in boon range anyways, so you are throwing at your feet regardless with the boss in mind.

So the elixirs have a function which actively harms your effectiveness. You don't mind throwing them at your feet, but that's beside the point. The fact is why does the elixirs have a function to be thrown at all if you get punished for doing so? Lets imagine this for a second. What do you think would be the result if say, every time an elementalist used one of its utility skills two of its primary damaging movies it relies heavily on suddenly were disabled for 10 seconds and there was no choice but using those utility skills? It wouldn't feel good, it wouldn't be good design even if it was intentional. The way blight and elixirs work, that's effectively what happens.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

19 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

So the elixirs have a function which actively harms your effectiveness. You don't mind throwing them at your feet, but that's beside the point. The fact is why does the elixirs have a function to be thrown at all if you get punished for doing so? Lets imagine this for a second. What do you think would be the result if say, every time an elementalist used one of its utility skills two of its primary damaging movies it relies heavily on suddenly were disabled for 10 seconds and there was no choice but using those utility skills? It wouldn't feel good, it wouldn't be good design even if it was intentional. The way blight and elixirs work, that's effectively what happens.

     I am aware it isn't the best system, but the fact of the matter is the chance of them listening to anyone's ideas is very slim. At best if they were to change it, they would do it their way which would most likely be worse than the current system. So, to save it even being playable, I am very accepting of the current system because I don't want to see a changed system due to my lack of faith in them. Your ideas may be actually good ideas, but devs never actually take people's ideas as is. They always warp them to be worse.

    Edit: I am saying this from experience. Look at the beta version of the elite, it had issues, but it was a lot better than the current one we have now. People complained about it though which resulted in the current mess we have now. What do you think will happen if people complained about this one enough? It will most likely end up in a worst state just from the past history observations of it.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Lily.1935]

10 minutes ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

     I am aware it isn't the best system, but the fact of the matter is the chance of them listening to anyone's ideas is very slim. At best if they were to change it, they would do it their way which would most likely be worse than the current system. So, to save it even being playable, I am very accepting of the current system because I don't want to see a changed system due to my lack of faith in them. Your ideas may be actually good ideas, but devs never actually take people's ideas as is. They always warp them to be worse.

Even a revert back to Beta weekend one of the harbinger would be better than it is now. And that's just not true. The devs do listen to us. And they do give us what we want sometimes. Not all the time, but I have seen a lot of changes made specifically because of community feedback. Corrosive poison cloud being one such example.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

8 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

Even a revert back to Beta weekend one of the harbinger would be better than it is now. And that's just not true. The devs do listen to us. And they do give us what we want sometimes. Not all the time, but I have seen a lot of changes made specifically because of community feedback. Corrosive poison cloud being one such example.

     Well, I base things on percentages with my views, so the chance of them actually listening is too low for me to say it true enough. Because yes, going back to Beta Weekend version would be a better choice and play feeling, but I have a feeling there would be a catch with it to make it not a true Beta Weekened version. Yes, I may be a Debbie Doubter and overly cynical with my take on this situation, but I would rather be safe than sorry and learn to live with what we currently have instead of making the Harbinger not meta level at all.

[Lily.1935]

6 minutes ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

     Well, I base things on percentages with my views, so the chance of them actually listening is too low for me to say it true enough. Because yes, going back to Beta Weekend version would be a better choice and play feeling, but I have a feeling there would be a catch with it to make it not a true Beta Weekened version. Yes, I may be a Debbie Doubter and overly cynical with my take on this situation, but I would rather be safe than sorry and learn to live with what we currently have instead of making the Harbinger not meta level at all.

And they listen to that too. You have to remember there are dozens of decanting opinions in the community and its hard to tell which ones are genuine and which ones come from a place of pessimism. So when you're coming at this with a disingenuous perspective as you've just admitted you are that too influences their decision making and if I or other's can't tell the difference, you can be especially sure they can't either.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

36 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

And they listen to that too. You have to remember there are dozens of decanting opinions in the community and its hard to tell which ones are genuine and which ones come from a place of pessimism. So when you're coming at this with a disingenuous perspective as you've just admitted you are that too influences their decision making and if I or other's can't tell the difference, you can be especially sure they can't either.

     I wouldn't say I am being disingenuous though with my view. I fully admitted I am doing this to keep the status quo because I don't think they can pull the job off successfully. I am sincere when I say I think it works as is even with the flaws. All elites have issues of some sorts which I wish I could fix, but I also accept them as is for the current state. You can have both views on it and be genuine.  My worry was always me wanting to keep Harbinger meta which I have said in other posts. May not have been clear on it with this which I admit was my fault if it didn't come off that way. I just want to keep things as stagnate for as long as possible before even more balance changes come knocking Harbinger off its position. 

Edit: I should note coming from a place of pessimism is not a bad thing. Pessimism keeps things safe. Being cynical is not a bad thing either. Being full of optimism is a bad thing though because it blinds people to the dangers of stuff that could go wrong.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Lily.1935]

43 minutes ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

     I wouldn't say I am being disingenuous though with my view. I fully admitted I am doing this to keep the status quo because I don't think they can pull the job off successfully. I am sincere when I say I think it works as is even with the flaws. All elites have issues of some sorts which I wish I could fix, but I also accept them as is for the current state. You can have both views on it and be genuine.  My worry was always me wanting to keep Harbinger meta which I have said in other posts. May not have been clear on it with this which I admit was my fault if it didn't come off that way. I just want to keep things as stagnate for as long as possible before even more balance changes come knocking Harbinger off its position. 

Edit: I should note coming from a place of pessimism is not a bad thing. Pessimism keeps things safe. Being cynical is not a bad thing either. Being full of optimism is a bad thing though because it blinds people to the dangers of stuff that could go wrong.

Stagnation is an incredibly bad thing. Keeping things as they are means they can't improve and further imbalances become more and more apparent. A stagnant game is a dead game. A Stagnant person is a person close to death. You absolutely do not want a MMO to be stagnant.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

Just now, Lily.1935 said:

Stagnation is an incredibly bad thing. Keeping things as they are means they can't improve and further imbalances become more and more apparent. A stagnant game is a dead game. A Stagnant person is a person close to death. You absolutely do not want a MMO to be stagnant.

     It depends on the stagnation though. Not all stagnation is bad. This stagnation is more a safety net from something that could be much worse, so I would rather be safe than sorry right now with how things are. I am not saying for you to not keeping fighting for what you want, but there will always be people like me opposed to it. As for which side wins, I can't say for sure, but I will at least keep my voice out there on it which is probably the same thing you will do even if on opposite sides.

[Lily.1935]

7 minutes ago, Doctor Hide.6345 said:

     It depends on the stagnation though. Not all stagnation is bad. This stagnation is more a safety net from something that could be much worse, so I would rather be safe than sorry right now with how things are. I am not saying for you to not keeping fighting for what you want, but there will always be people like me opposed to it. As for which side wins, I can't say for sure, but I will at least keep my voice out there on it which is probably the same thing you will do even if on opposite sides.

You admit that the harbinger's design is filled with flaws. You even admit that the points I make are correct, but you don't want to change it because you fear it'll get worse? That sort of thinking is baffling to me and is honestly deeply concerning outside of this specific context. Harbinger's design now is at its absolute worst it possibly could be. There really isn't many minor tweaks they could do to make it worse than it is now.

There are a lot of suggestions I'm making in this post and honestly, none of them would hurt your desired gameplay either. If anything it would enhance it, and provably so. You like throwing your elixirs at your feet? This post doesn't remove that as a possibility even if my suggestions are put into place, it just expands the scope of what you could do. Both Harbinger builds right now play exactly the same in spite of their different party roles. That is bad design. When you get into this sort of situation where things feel the same it creates a melancholic state of boredom.

I'll give you an example. Lets take your position and apply it to the game as a whole. What this would result in is content droughts or worse, the maintenance of the current game as is with no new updates in the future much like GW1. This will work for a very small group in the community but it'll result in the death of the game. That is stagnation, and that is the effects of it.

Change is necessary, it is good, it is healthy for the game. Harbinger is stagnant, as you've said and that's why its popularity is  dipping dramatically. Bad mechanical design with no real variation in game play resulted in this.

[Doctor Hide.6345]

2 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

You admit that the harbinger's design is filled with flaws. You even admit that the points I make are correct, but you don't want to change it because you fear it'll get worse? That sort of thinking is baffling to me and is honestly deeply concerning outside of this specific context. Harbinger's design now is at its absolute worst it possibly could be. There really isn't many minor tweaks they could do to make it worse than it is now.

There are a lot of suggestions I'm making in this post and honestly, none of them would hurt your desired gameplay either. If anything it would enhance it, and provably so. You like throwing your elixirs at your feet? This post doesn't remove that as a possibility even if my suggestions are put into place, it just expands the scope of what you could do. Both Harbinger builds right now play exactly the same in spite of their different party roles. That is bad design. When you get into this sort of situation where things feel the same it creates a melancholic state of boredom.

I'll give you an example. Lets take your position and apply it to the game as a whole. What this would result in is content droughts or worse, the maintenance of the current game as is with no new updates in the future much like GW1. This will work for a very small group in the community but it'll result in the death of the game. That is stagnation, and that is the effects of it.

Change is necessary, it is good, it is healthy for the game. Harbinger is stagnant, as you've said and that's why its popularity is  dipping dramatically. Bad mechanical design with no real variation in game play resulted in this.

     I am going to go over each paragraph as heads up, so sorry if it turns out too lengthy.

     Yes, I do fear it will get worse because I have no confidence in the dev team on this matter. I think it could get much worse though if they did try to change it. You say it is in the worst state it is while I say it could become bottom of the barrel. This version is useable at least and is meta even with its fault. I just don't think you can imagine them messing it so bad that it becomes a worse version while I can because of what they have done in the past to other builds. All the changes to DE come to mind, all the changes to reaper as well, all the changes to basically any profession at one point in time. That has eroded my faith in them greatly. 

     Like I said, my problems are not with your points exactly because I think some of them are great ideas. My contention was always how they might interrupt them like they interpreted this version from the weekend betas. Many good ideas were given back then as well, and this is the result of it from their view on the ideas presented. I don't want to risk another round of that. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Sometime it is best to leave a tool broken as is instead of trying to repair it to make it worse. I also don't see both styles playing exactly the same as a bad thing in my opinion. To me, it just means people can switch easier instead of having to learn something brand new. So yeah, I don't see it as boredom at all.

     See, I also work on context base as a heads up. I am fine with stagnation for balance if it means what I like stays in the meta, and I am also fine with the game as a whole being stagnant to a point if it means I keep getting the content I enjoy.(IE. they keep adding OW metas and such). So if a change does occur though for the game as a whole like adding real player housing than I would be for it even if it changes the state from stagnation. As a whole though, I am not happy with the direction of the company/game  which I have made clear in other posts. So overall, I am not very happy with things as is, but that is a separate discussion which I don't want to derail this one for. This one is mainly on Harbinger.

     Some change is good I will admit, but not all change is. Change when it is more like an investment is a good thing because you can control and make it still good. Change when it is a gamble is bad because you don't know how it will turn out. This change of Harbinger you want is more like a gamble change than an investment change. Frankly, I don't think the risk is worth it given the past history. It is too 50/50 for my liking. I also don't think it's popularity is dropping. I see Harbingers all the time in the game. Not sure where you got that from.

[sdaugherty.1984]

4 hours ago, Lily.1935 said:

Shades on the other hand are perfect. You don't like them because, and I'm going to be honest right now, you're bad at the elite spec, and its really just a skill issue. What do shades have that make them great?

It's not the fact that they are not liked, But it can be annoying in certain situations such as roamers catching you in WvW. The enemy will not wait as you set up some shades.....Cast time could be faster.       By the way, your comments on the clumsy design of the Harbinger are spot on.