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Make all powers useful...
bioshrike
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,729 Arc User
I will preface this by saying that this is MY experience with the game, so take it for what it's worth...
With all this talk about power balance, I thought I would bring up how there seems to be certain powers or power combinations that are just "better" than others, when it comes to playing the game, (varied based upon character class and level, of course), while there are also powers that you basically never need to bother with.
I realize that not every power can be equal, but I would like to see more done to make *every* power appealing. In particular, many powers either have too long of a cooldown or too short of a duration, to be truly useful - a 1 second daze that doesn't increase as your rank up a power, or power animations seemingly not being considered with regard to a power's balance are just a few examples...
So what do you think?
With all this talk about power balance, I thought I would bring up how there seems to be certain powers or power combinations that are just "better" than others, when it comes to playing the game, (varied based upon character class and level, of course), while there are also powers that you basically never need to bother with.
I realize that not every power can be equal, but I would like to see more done to make *every* power appealing. In particular, many powers either have too long of a cooldown or too short of a duration, to be truly useful - a 1 second daze that doesn't increase as your rank up a power, or power animations seemingly not being considered with regard to a power's balance are just a few examples...
So what do you think?
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"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
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Some powers might be able to be fixed with a shorter cooldown but others I don't know if they could ever be considered effective short of making an overpowered cooldown.
I think getting a discussion going on which powers are lackluster would get a great start, though.
Before mod 6 you could stand your ground with even the most pointless HAMSTER build you could think of for any class as long as you had good gear. Post mod 6, most of the classes ended up being all but forced into using 1 build. Now don't get me wrong, a lot of classes did have a preferred build pre mod 6 like the GWFs destroyer build but you didn't have to use it or be worthless like it is now. The game was easier if you use certain builds but you could still make it on your own using the other 2 builds.
Since mod 6 most classes only have 1 viable feat tree, 2 if they're lucky and 1 or 2 feat trees that are all but useless. We're forced to optimize our builds just to get through the content. So gone are the days when you could (just for fun) decide to run your dailies with a random set of skills. Now you have your rotation that pretty much every else playing your class has.
As for which powers are lackluster, I would say most of them. I don't know many people who other switching out skills anymore like we use to pre mod 6. Ironically, A lot of them became lackluster due to the devs attempts to balance the classes.
And true balance will never happen because the devs keep trying to balance the classes based on 2 very different types of game play. PvP and PvE are just too different to expect anyone to find a balance between them. You're talking about (in some cases) completely different stats, skills, and more importantly gear.
I loved PvP back before the devs added pvp gear with the stupid tenacity stat. IMHO, that was the last time the game was balanced. Back then you had 1 epic gear set, the CN gear. It was perfectly fine for running PvE and PvP. And since everyone could get it from either running CN or buying it of the AH it kept the classes more closely balanced.
But alas, nothing lasts forever and here we are trying to figure out how to fix to fixes we did for something that was never broken.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Any class with a logical build and over 2.5k GS can handle at least up to DR solo, and can handle and can contribute just fine in a party. 3 such players can handle IWD and Shar easy, and 5 can do eLOL easily provided the class makeup includes a tank and healer.
The real problem isn't that there are only a few or one viable builds for any given class, but rather that there that builds that are clearly superior and as such players feel compelled to use them to remain "competitive".
It's the same problem faced with the LoL set and is a valid concern, but don't make it out like other builds than these specific ones are not viable because that's simple not true.
My main, Sekhmet, follows no CW build template - I made it up on my own - and I frequently (90% of the time) come out on top in Paingiver and kills in parties even when partnered with similarly geared friends (3.5k+). My build would be considered "not viable" but yet, I'm living proof of the innaccuracy of that statement.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Fast forward to now and can all classes and all spec's do all content smoothly? This not the case for most classes. I would go as far to say there are classes that have only 1 good viable way to play, so why even have 3 tree's when they are not useful? I also agree that when the Dev's to try to balance because of PvP or PvE, it sometimes has the effect of breaking 1 part or the other depending on what they try to balance for. I know the age old augment that there will never be a PvP tree but there should be it would make things so much easier on folks. I remember there being a similar argument for having greater then 5 man que's and look at what we got now...
So while everyone it looking at power balance maybe it time to look at the none viable tree's for the classes and/or maybe time to add a PvP tree. I don't know. There are lots of talented people for each class and you can read about there idea's on this stuff in the applicable class forums. At the moment if people want to see what changes are coming they should go to the test shard and see the current changes planned and provide clear concise feedback on what is working and not working. If more people do this instead of whine about the "nerf" or "fix", maybe we will see a push to kinda make it like mod 5 in a way (i'm not saying put everything in easy mode) where each tree was viable no matter the content.
Sekhmet@kvetchus_
Guilds: Greycloaks, Blackcloaks, Whitecloaks, Goldcloaks, Browncloaks, Spiritcloaks, Bluecloaks, Silvercloaks, Black Dawn
Tredecim: The Cloak Alliance
Kvet - blazing the trails in NW since 2012
Having recently started playing my HR again (first character in NW), I can empathize with this thread. SW Archery has fallen out of favor with most HRs but I still like playing that path. I like to snipe from a distance so the path suits me very well. It's a shame that one or two builds per class have taken over. Oh well, the less traveled path has fewer traffic jams
To me, it's not so much about min/maxing, it's about power A simply not being as good, overall, as power B. I have no doubt that an experienced player can get through all the PvE content with nearly any power combination, it's just that some powers are objectively better than others, so the underperformers should be brought up or reworked...
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
In game, i notice plenty of players playing their class and not following the 'conventional wisdom' to create the highest DPS--yet I assume they are having fun playing their toons, even if they aren't top of the charts. Isn't that why we should be playing a game--to have fun? If they have fun by choosing an option that is 'unpopular' or 'non-viable', and if they are not top Paingiver, so what? Maybe to them, going 'smoke', shadow lurk, and swoosh five or six times is boring. Maybe they just discovered a new method that does an incredible amount of damage by combining it with other boons/classes (ie. Hawkeye). Just looking at that power and description in the tooltip, who in their right mind would take that power?
Which, I think after rambling way too much, really brings me to my point--if the devs make changes to each and every power that we believe is 'inferior' or doesn't create a viable option, based upon the law of unintended consequences, how many of those changes will result in strange interactions that create the '200 million' damage kill shots?
With so many inventive players in NW, you can bet at least one of them will find out.
To better answer the OP's question, my humble opinion is that 'one man's trash is another man's treasure', and when one person sees little or no viability in a certain path, another may see the ultimate combination. I would not be in favor of tweaking to make all the powers or paths equal. To paraphrase the Incredibles--"If every path is super, then no path is super"
Again, I want to stress that the problem isn't that you *can't* play using certain powers - it's that there are generally much better ones that accomplish the same thing.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
As it stands, we are forced to pick out the best in slot loadout. It's not players not wanting to utilize more of their unlock powers, it's just most of the time it isn't practical, except when you set up your loadout at the beginning of playing/fights. What we need is to open up the options since the level cap raise and overflow power points have expanded everyone's power list, and thereby improving our gameplay combat dynamic.
The game badly needs a double loadout solution that can be tabbed switched quickly without countdown penalty much like the HR encounters switch when outside of combat, but has a shared cooldown on encounter powers/slots when switch in combat to prevent double encounters use. This is the minimum to improve combat dynamic to deal with trash adds and elite adds on the fly and make better use of power combinations instead of having to cater for both within 3 encounters.
What I suggested is not simply 2 loadouts but instead lets players form their own playstyles freely with their own power combinations. Example:
Encounters: 1 2 3
Loadout 1: Smoke bomb / Dazing strike / Wicked Reminder
Loadout 2: Blitz / Blade Flurry / Lashing Blade
Players freely switch between loadouts, using smoke bomb puts encounter slot 1 (blitz) on shared cooldown for duration of smoke bomb's cooldown. Player can follow up with dazing strike for closely group enemies or blade flurry for loosely surrounding enemies. This gives players the freedom of their own power combinations and play styles (which encounters and which slot to slot) and effectively more power combinations than simply 2 loadouts instead of following the 3 BIS powers in some guide.
I have no suggestions to make all powers useful, this just makes more powers useful, because there is no equality when the meta is to slot 3 BIS encounters. No matter how many times balancing takes place, it's only the changing of the 3 BIS encounters.
In each "F" could input one loadout or build. If one power cooldown, next "F" auto enter.
(The "auto" or "manual" mode, can be choise pressing button and in Options HUD.)
My solution, in giving players more freedom in power use/combinations does not and should not circumvent the 3 encounters cooldown mechanic, otherwise it will dynamically increase a players' dps output and throw content balance out of sync.
It would be even better if you could not only switch powers with a single button but also gear.
For example I have different power/gear combinations for the following situations:
1 Almost all solo content.
2 Demonic Escape HE
3 Dungeons in an average party
3a trash
3b bosses
4 Dungeons in a highly-geared party
4a trash
4b bosses
5 eDemo
6 Dragons (heralds, dragonflight or Tiamat)
However, I'll like to comment on the group effort part but instead of needing powers, all classes can (should) have team based buffs class features, so it turns into having the class be useful in team play ie. TR is too much of a solo class that brings little to the table in groups.
So it's not especially unpredictable in actual practice. Way less repetitive, though.