[Feedback] Meteor Shower

[TwilightSoul.9048]

I don't quite understand why everyone is tossing PvP and WvW into the discussion, just like the February '17 change all my proposed changes are intended for PvE only.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:Meteor is intended to do extreme damage to a group of people. Large targets are irrelevant, raids represents a fraction of the content of this game and wont be broken by a strong meteor (noone outside raiding gives a crap about topping a dps table) and any large target outside raids is casual play so its more important that skills feel fun. As meteor is designed for large groups and wvw it should be buffed to a point where it actually is powerful in these scenarios - to cover the cost of standing like a statue while you cast the thing.

If anything the February '17 nerf was also a nerf against groups of targets (In PvE, it didn't change anything in WvW) since it usually doesn't do anything unless two meteors strike the same target at roughly the same time, which is rare against a group of small targets but possible, so a longer cooldown instead of Feb '17 nerf would make Meteor Shower slightly stronger against a group of small targets and a lot stronger against one large target while balancing the whole thing through longer cooldown.

@Jski.6180 said:Bigger aoe on each meteor and make them hit 5 targets but less meteors over all? It would drop the max dmg vs one target but it would cut back on rng a good bit maybe even open up an added effect with an icd per person to balances out that drop is over all dps. Say a strong burn effect that has a 2 sec duration but can only hit the same person once ever 1 sec. At the same time cut the old icd per meteor not hitting the same target. In effect the aoe of MS will give a constant burning effect that dose not stack high but should push out a stable power dmg effect most of the time.

I think Meteor Shower itself is in a good state, having some RNG in there just helps to balance a Skill that has an incredible damage potential and larger AoE would make it a lot stronger against small targets which isn't its intended purpose I think, against small targets an Ele should always be better off with a Scepter/x FA Build, otherwise Staff would be too dominating, I would like Ele to have more meaningful weapon choices in PvE.

@Feanor.2358 said:I'm absolutely certain these options were all considered and discussed, perhaps some of them even tried internally, before implementing the change. The problem with them is exactly how rewarding MS feels. [...] Likewise, waiting the same time to hit like a wet noodle is no fun, and reducing the number of meteors would just make it more RNG-based. [...] What the change did is make MS more consistent without normalizing its damage entirely. I can totally see why ANet went that way.

I agree about those options, I listed them because I would still prefer them over the Feb '17 change but I can see why they didn't choose them. I disagree about MS beeing more consistent though, all I see is another RNG factor, previously MS' dmg only depended on how many Meteors actually hit your target, now it not only depends on the number of meteors that actually hit but also the interval in which they hit, if they hit the target too many at a time you actually do less damage than if you had hit him fewer times in total. If anything the Feb '17 change made MS more frustrating because now you have to watch meteors miss AND you have to watch meteors hit and do no damage, how the kitten does a meteor not do any damage?!

Waiting longer to fire off an RNG-based skill that ends up doing nothing is no fun.

Well it would do more than it does now though, so I don't see the problem here, remember that my change was intended to replace the Feb' 17 change ;)

Also note that all of your proposed changes will make MS a lot weaker against small targets.

My favorite proposed change (longer Cooldown) wouldn't, in fact it would make it stronger against small targets since it replaces the arbitrary Feb '17 change - which reduced the damage against all targets (does affect large targets more than small ones of course but still affects small ones too).

[Feanor.2358]

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

Waiting longer to fire off an RNG-based skill that ends up doing nothing is no fun.

Well it would do more than it does now though, so I don't see the problem here, remember that my change was intended to replace the Feb' 17 change ;)

That's the thing, sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. And players tend to remember the bad feel more than they do the good one.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

Waiting longer to fire off an RNG-based skill that ends up doing nothing is no fun.

Well it would do more than it does now though, so I don't see the problem here, remember that my change was intended to replace the Feb' 17 change ;)

That's the thing, sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. And players tend to remember the bad feel more than they do the good one.

Right now it will always have less damage potential than before, the February '17 nerf was strictly a nerf, id didn't make anything about Meteor Shower better. The Minimum damage MS could do didn't change but the Maximum damage MS could do was nerfed on both large and small targets with large targets beeing affected a lot more than small ones. It doesn't bother me that MS got nerfed, I agree that a nerf was needed in PvE, I just dislike the way they nerfed it because they just introduced more rng into a skill that was already on the more unreliable side (against small/medium sized targets).

[Bladestrom.6425]

The question should be why the nerf was neeed in PVE in the first place - no-one on dungeons, open world, wvw, spvp, fractals, personal stories, public events thought there was an issue with it - a high damage spell with an extremely long cast time rooting you to a spot.

[Guizao.4167]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The question should be why the nerf was neeed in PVE in the first place - no-one on dungeons, open world, wvw, spvp, fractals, personal stories, public events thought there was an issue with it - a high damage spell with an extremely long cast time rooting you to a spot.

Precisely correct.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

Unfortunatly though PvE includes raids and ArenaNet will continue to balance with raids in mind.I myself don't play raids but can see how OP Meteor Shower is against large targets and if you check your dps you can see that in Open World Events vs large bosses too. I don't mind MS beeing nerfed as it is still very strong, the only thing that bothers me is the way it has been nerfed.

[Feanor.2358]

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

Waiting longer to fire off an RNG-based skill that ends up doing nothing is no fun.

Well it would do more than it does now though, so I don't see the problem here, remember that my change was intended to replace the Feb' 17 change ;)

That's the thing, sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. And players tend to remember the bad feel more than they do the good one.

Right now it will always have less damage potential than before, the February '17 nerf was strictly a nerf, id didn't make anything about Meteor Shower better. The Minimum damage MS could do didn't change but the Maximum damage MS could do was nerfed on both large and small targets with large targets beeing affected a lot more than small ones. It doesn't bother me that MS got nerfed, I agree that a nerf was needed in PvE, I just dislike the way they nerfed it because they just introduced more rng into a skill that was already on the more unreliable side (against small/medium sized targets).

It will be less damage potential no matter what. But one is more consistent, and it doesn't reduce the worst-case power of the skill.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:Unfortunatly though PvE includes raids and ArenaNet will continue to balance with raids in mind.I myself don't play raids but can see how OP Meteor Shower is against large targets and if you check your dps you can see that in Open World Events vs large bosses too. I don't mind MS beeing nerfed as it is still very strong, the only thing that bothers me is the way it has been nerfed.

it should be irrelevant, balancing a skill for content that a fraction of the player base plays is wrong, furthermore, if meteor is overtuned against large targets with millions+ of HP, its still a drop in the ocean and irrelevant. The only place it could matter is the dps whore race on meters.

[Jski.6180]

@TwilightSoul.9048The thing is some times meteor shower is to good or dose nothing at all by cutting the number of meteors but making there aoe bigger and hit more targets would even out the effect.Staff is not a pure dmg wepon scepter is so there needs to be more then just pure power dmg to the "big effects" 4 and 5 skills on staff for all of the atuments. This is where i get the though of adding an icd burning effect to the meteors it self.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

@Jski.6180 said:@TwilightSoul.9048The thing is some times meteor shower is to good or dose nothing at all by cutting the number of meteors but making there aoe bigger and hit more targets would even out the effect.Staff is not a pure dmg wepon scepter is so there needs to be more then just pure power dmg to the "big effects" 4 and 5 skills on staff for all of the atuments. This is where i get the though of adding an icd burning effect to the meteors it self.

I wouldn't mind the burning part of your suggestion but I don't mind the little randomness of Meteor Shower - it is the Skill with the highest damage potential in the game and considering you're throwing Meteors at your target, I'd say it should stay that way. Also while I agree that Staff is not a pure damage Weapon I would argue that the Fire Attunement on Staff is extremely powerful in large scale fights. And removing the Feb '17 change would already make MS slightly more reliable and not hitting a target at all is extremely rare thanks to the relatively large impact radius.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:Unfortunatly though PvE includes raids and ArenaNet will continue to balance with raids in mind.I myself don't play raids but can see how OP Meteor Shower is against large targets and if you check your dps you can see that in Open World Events vs large bosses too. I don't mind MS beeing nerfed as it is still very strong, the only thing that bothers me is the way it has been nerfed.

it should be irrelevant, balancing a skill for content that a fraction of the player base plays is wrong, furthermore, if meteor is overtuned against large targets with millions+ of HP, its still a drop in the ocean and irrelevant. The only place it could matter is the dps kitten race on meters.

I agree that it should be irrelevant but unfortunatly raids are a part of this game and unfortunatly ArenaNet cares about them a little too much, we can't really change that and will likely have to accept that the game will continue to be balanced with raids in mind. And removing the Feb '17 change while increasing the Cooldown would make Meteor Shower a lot better in Open World content, you'll almost never use MS every 30s in OW anyway, most of the time you'd use your Lava Font or AA except against bosses, but none of the OW Bosses require a DPS heavy rotation like raids do so a higher Cooldown on MS would simply force you to use more of your otherwise underused Skills during MS CD.

[Feanor.2358]

Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is save it from more nerfs.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is save it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

[MyPuppy.8970]

What is wrong with a very large AoE impacting larger hitboxes? Seems mathematically logical to me...

[TwilightSoul.9048]

@"MyPuppy.8970" said:What is wrong with a very large AoE impacting larger hitboxes? Seems mathematically logical to me...

Exactly my thinking which is why I would like the Feb' 17 change that made exactly that less reliable by introducing more rng (previously it was only a matter of "did a meteor hit" now it's a matter of "when did the meteor hit" since if two meteors hit at the same time, one of them wouldn't do damage. Which is pretty much the opposite of what MS was designed to be)

However from a balancing perspective I can see that MS was too strong in a way, against one specific type of target, the very big ones. But instead of making the Skill less interesting and less impactfull I'd prefer a longer Cooldown - which makes more sense to begin with. Summoning multiple Meteors should be pretty damn exhausting right? I mean usually Elementalist skill are really not that overwhelming but Meteor Shower is literally a bunch of Meteors raining down on your foes, how does that take only 30s to recover from while it takes us 40s to make it rain?

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

I said work is balance based on impact, by definition making a change that positively impacts a fraction of the game while negatively affecting the majority of the game is a obviously a poor decision, and obviously has a net negative effect.

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

I said work is balance based on impact, by definition making a change that positively impacts a fraction of the game while negatively affecting the majority of the game is a obviously a poor decision, and obviously has a net negative effect.

And you're missing my point again, it isn't negatively affecting the majority. The issue existed everywhere. And has been addressed. Is it the perfect solution? I don't know. But IMO it is better than the suggested alternatives, I explained why.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

I said work is balance based on impact, by definition making a change that positively impacts a fraction of the game while negatively affecting the majority of the game is a obviously a poor decision, and obviously has a net negative effect.

And you're missing my point again, it isn't negatively affecting the majority. The issue existed everywhere. And has been addressed. Is it the perfect solution? I don't know. But IMO it is better than the suggested alternatives, I explained why.

How is it better? I seem to have missed the explanation because so far I don't really see any arguments how a longer Cooldown would be worse than the Feb '17 change which just made MS less reliable overall while reducing the Damage potential on large targets more than on small targets. A longer Cooldown (if the Cooldown is beeing increased with large Target DPS in mind, which it should) would have the same effect without making the Skill a frustrating mess that would sometimes not do damage despite scoring a hit.

[Justine.6351]

Meteor Shower should rupt foes struck. Seriously this skill should be epic. And I don't even play ele !

[Feanor.2358]

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

I said work is balance based on impact, by definition making a change that positively impacts a fraction of the game while negatively affecting the majority of the game is a obviously a poor decision, and obviously has a net negative effect.

And you're missing my point again, it isn't negatively affecting the majority. The issue existed everywhere. And has been addressed. Is it the perfect solution? I don't know. But IMO it is better than the suggested alternatives, I explained why.

How is it better? I seem to have missed the explanation because so far I don't really see any arguments how a longer Cooldown would be worse than the Feb '17 change which just made MS less reliable overall while reducing the Damage potential on large targets more than on small targets. A longer Cooldown (if the Cooldown is beeing increased with large Target DPS in mind, which it should) would have the same effect without making the Skill a frustrating mess that would sometimes not do damage despite scoring a hit.

The Feb '17 change reduced the variance in the outcome, hence it made it more reliable. It also did lower its average performance, of course, which you're mistaking for unreliability.

The longer cooldown would only reduce the average performance, while retaining the same higher variance.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@TwilightSoul.9048 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Unfortunately people tend to blame raids for everything they don't understand. Namely, balancing has to be done around the most challenging content the game has. Doing it any other way is pointless - everything works in the open world, there's nothing to balance. So, assume there are no raids in the game. What do you balance around? The next most challenging content - T4 fractals and/or CMs. Guess what, you still have that same problem with MS. If anything, it gets more pronounced because you can much more reliably get the +20% damage modifier from Tempest Defense. So rest assured, all raids did for our class is

save

it from more nerfs.

You balance around impact. What balancing change has the biggest positive impact on the customer. The best bang for its buck in effect, to get the item up the development backlog and into Sprint. What you do not do is make a change to improve content only a fraction of the player bases consumes which at the same time has a detrimental effect on the vast majority of the rest of the content.

You missed my point again. Remove the "content only a fraction of the player base consumes" - which by the way can describe each and every piece of content in this, or any other MMO game - and you're facing exactly the same problems. In this case, only bigger.

I said work is balance based on impact, by definition making a change that positively impacts a fraction of the game while negatively affecting the majority of the game is a obviously a poor decision, and obviously has a net negative effect.

And you're missing my point again, it isn't negatively affecting the majority. The issue existed everywhere. And has been addressed. Is it the perfect solution? I don't know. But IMO it is better than the suggested alternatives, I explained why.

How is it better? I seem to have missed the explanation because so far I don't really see any arguments how a longer Cooldown would be worse than the Feb '17 change which just made MS less reliable overall while reducing the Damage potential on large targets more than on small targets. A longer Cooldown (if the Cooldown is beeing increased with large Target DPS in mind, which it should) would have the same effect without making the Skill a frustrating mess that would sometimes not do damage despite scoring a hit.

The Feb '17 change reduced the variance in the outcome, hence it made it

more

reliable. It also did lower its average performance, of course, which you're mistaking for unreliability.

The longer cooldown would only reduce the average performance, while retaining the same higher variance.

How is a Skill more reliably when it has an additional random factor? Pre Feb '17 the performance of MS depended on the Number of Meteors that hit the target (which is how the Skill was designed to be) after the Feb '17 patch we now have the additional factor of WHEN the Meteors hit the target. Yes it did decrease the Maximum damage but it also decreased the Minimum damage, and although I haven't calculated it I would assume the margin between Min and Max damage is now greater than pre Feb '17 change. Which would make the Skill less reliable. And yes, a longer Cooldown would only reduce the average performance while keeping the peak performance intact making it a Skill that feels a lot more rewarding than a Skill that does less damage on a peak performance than on an average performance (All Meteors hit the target = peak performance, unfortunatly after the Feb '17 change you'll do more damage with and average performance since if all Meteors hit the target it is likely that many of them don't deal damage.)

[Feanor.2358]

The change capped the number of meteors per time unit that can affect the target. That's not adding a random factor, that's reducing the effect of one. Think of it in terms of average and variance. Pre-change you could have a very large number of meteors damage a target or not damage it, depending on their location. After it you couldn't possibly have the first. Even if they did fall on a "hit" location, a number of them would be filtered by the ICD. So you can tell with greater certainty how much is the expected damage output. In other words, the skill became more reliable.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

It does less damage more consistently but usually you aim to achieve the best possible performance as reliable as possible and peak performances are less reliable now. Pre Feb '17 change you could in some situations position your Meteor Shower in a way that would make all Meteors hit a smaller Area If you'd target your Meteor Shower partially outside of the map area, in order to have more Meteors hit the target - this strategy would after the Feb '17 change most likely yield less damage than any other average performance and it would do so reliably, yes. Peak performance however is less reliable now since it not only requires you to hit your target with as many Meteors as possible (which can be affected by players skill since, MS Positioning can alter the odds of hitting your target effectively) but also requires the timing with which the Meteors hit your target, the last mention cannot be affected by the Player so it's just another random factor whether you're lucky and your Meteors hit your target in the smalles intervals that still produce damage or not. Bascially if you cast MS twice and hit your target with 8 Meteors both times you are not guaranteed to do the same amount of damage even though you got the same amount of hits - how is that reliable?

Imagine your AA doin either no damage or full damage based on some timing that you cannot interact with, is it reliable in terms of average damage? Yes, is it reliable in terms of peak performance? No.

And if we're talking about average damage then an increased Cooldown serves the exact same purpose while keeping a satisfying peak performance that is at least a tiny bit dependend on Player skill.

[Feanor.2358]

No, peak performance is more reliable, because you cap the number of hits per second allowed.

[TwilightSoul.9048]

Yes but that number varies, as in my previous example, thanks to the Feb '17 change scoring 8 Hits with MS will not always result in 8 Hits causing damage. I'm not sure if Meteor Shower has a random frequency in which the Meteors spawn or not but if it is random (which I think it is since there are no visible "waves") then you won't even have consistent damage even if you manage to reliably hit with all meteors every time. So the only reliable thing about the Feb '17 change is that it nerfed the potential damage of MS vs large targets by a lot and the potential damage against small targets by a bit. And it did so in a very unreliable way.

For example vs a small target, sometimes you'd hit a small Boss two or three times which would be decent but thanks to the Feb '17 change there is a chance that even though you hit with two or three meteors you'd only do the damage of one - yes very reliable indeed.