DanteriusAviusThe GCDE stun thread
#31
(12-20-2022, 05:44 AM)TheHopscotch Wrote: another each and every time. (Apples to oranges.)While stuns do seem to be the largest offender of The LARGEST offender by far has always been pyroclasm as it was a relatively cheap / low cost stun which could be slapped into a lot of builds while achieving powerful spells alongside it. (Bang - As well as fire access, etc.) Providing constructive ideas / concepts to handle stuns in a better way is naturally way more important, in a way that doesn't have every single spell in the game function the exact same as one another. (Thank you to everyone who has been doing so!)

So what youre saying is make pyro an intermediate again. im liking this. >:*)
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#32
(12-20-2022, 05:44 AM)TheHopscotch Wrote: ok time for the real post

There will doubtless be a spell balance change coming with THE UPDATE™

Optimally you went every build/tree to have its own flavor and nuances which make it attractive to a certain playstyle or roleplay trope as opposed to just comparing spells to one another each and every time. (Apples to oranges.)

While stuns do seem to be the largest offender of crazy one-off builds; the whole point of them is to be a very brief thing which allows you to quickly achieve an otherwise difficult to land spell. (Beams, etc.)

Place water whip behind an intermediate slot and bring a new spell in to replace it.

My main issue with just throwing water whip getting locked behind an intermediate is that it severely hampers the effective utilization of ice and mist, devaluing them substantially, I'd argue.

Whilst I am a mist-ice-armed build, I rely on whip uniquely to either lock the enemy in place briefly punishing them for being out of position, or simply to break up the flow of their attacks and pushing my own in their place.

Essentially, what I'm saying is if you restricted water whip in this fashion, you'd need to bring up ice and mist in such a way to replace that fundamental utility, be this through slows, confusion, blind, etc.

It's not simply changing a single spell, it would functionally change how the entire synergy of the entire family of spells operated.

Naturally, this argument could be made for any sub-tree in which the parent has a utility spell that lacks in its daughter trees.

You then run into the inevitable question of 'What so we place a stun in every daughter tree?' This is where I point at your earlier point, no, that's not nessesary, but what is nessesary is giving the daughter trees in this circumstance new thematic utility. Frostbite could bite harder, etc. Not a proposed change, just an example, as ice has plenty of slowing potential.

Yes this may sound like a 'oh my God don't take away my one stun' complaint, because it literally is, but simultaneously, I think my reasoning here is sound.
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#33
I will say this about water whip and the water magic tree.
While explosion has good basic spells (With the exception of inferno. That move is atrocious right now, range reduced instead of increased), the water tree has... Bad to below average basics.  If you move water whip up to intermediate, some of the basic skills will need a touch up.
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#34
There's also the fact that you can just walk in a diagonal line and avoid lightspeed water whip, whereas this isn't doable for pyro as it hits in every direction.
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#35
(12-20-2022, 02:15 PM)Cotillion Wrote: There's also the fact that you can just walk in a diagonal line and avoid lightspeed water whip, whereas this isn't doable for pyro as it hits in every direction.

Doesn't really change anything unless you're in the middle of a dash. Water Whip is 3 wide and you have stepcast. I was hitting it reliably when I used it, just running diagonally isn't enough
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#36
(12-19-2022, 12:26 PM)DanteriusAvius Wrote: The thread we all knew was coming.

So this is not going to be a, this GCDE stun hurt me, please nerf it. I have a GCDE stun, nerf me, please god. The goal here is to break down what they do for the game, the pros I've heard, the counterplay I've heard, and the cons that I've seen, and my opinions on them.

I know Lightspeed is a major contender for most hated skill, however I'd argue that Lightspeed is far more necessary to fight kiting builds, and without GCDE stuns to let it be used in conjunction with any ludicrously high damage skill, Lightspeed is not the problem.

So, here we go.

GCDE Stuns, which ones exist, and what it means-

A quick primer for those not immersed in mechanics or new. GCDE is Global Cooldown Exempt, functionally meaning that it doesn't put your entire spell bar on cooldown for 2 seconds after you cast it. This lets it immediately be combod into another skill. The main skills this is talking about are Water Whip, Pyroclasm, Sancitified Flash, and Crystal Javelin. Grapple Hook is not amongst those I'm counting simply because it is a root, not a stun, which gives more option for counterplay through reaction.

At the moment, they are incredibly prevalent but in actuality, have seen some amount of play for the past several years.

(Also Tesla is still functioning as a combo linker and it'd be really great if it stopped doing that ANYWAY)


Why now?

With Lightspeed back to being an intermediate, and Sanctified Flash returning to being a real stun, it feels very heavily as if, the main way to be viable at this moment, is to go Lightspeed/GCDE Stun/High Damage Beam/ (Prism Beam or Impact Cannon sometimes)

It's safe, it's reliable, it does very high damage, and frankly, punishes anyone who doesn't have insane reaction time or very good predictive abilities, without a lot of way to return the damage.

And after seeing this for years, I find it both incredibly dull, and incredibly punishing of build variety. As of now, it feels even more like if you want to do an IC build and aren't building this way, you're setting yourself up to lose, and often lose very badly. The old ways of compensating for this were usually to build for hiddens A, B, and C to get power creep so you could stat wall it out. But in the new era of hiddens/Fates being much more sparing and even more based on impact than power level...it's harder than ever to try and work around this.


Why are they a problem?

1) As listed above they make build variety far more difficult. Because you're heavily encouraged to go into Lightspeed (or plasma leap) at minimum, that's an investment of sixty points. Then the GCDE stun, and high damage skill, and follow up, and often that's more than half a build.

2) They don't encourage a healthy relationship in combat. They encourage one party to have a specific combo that chunks someone for a quarter of their health bar at minimum, and then sit back and play defensive moves and auto hits. Some people will play a more risky game to try and eke out more damage, but the game pattern is the same. Put a timer on every match by using the same combo that's nigh on unreactable when performed properly.

3) They hurt design space for new spells. High damage spells are usually mitigated by problems of being difficult to hit, or leaving you vulnerable. As it stands, difficult to hit is no longer an issue, neither is leaving you vulnerable if you miss. This creates a system where every single high risk high damage spell is effectively only limited by its cooldown. There's been a habit in the past of, when the move is too strong within this combo, to nerf the damage spell, rather than the stun, which treats the symptom. It simply waits for another spell to be buffed into territory where its too abusable, to happen all over again.

4) It's not fun to watch. Beams I find incredibly hype to see hit, when used without setup, especially when they turn battles around. But that almost never happens anymore, because it's just not worth it. Instead of being high risk, high reward spells, they're just "ah yep, he hit that GCDE stun, expected." It breaks the high risk aspect, and turns it into just a bog standard combo.

5) It's been this way for several, years. I don't ascribe to the idea that a game should try to be Perfectly Balanced tm. I've come to believe that the healthiest games, have metas where the dominant trees and strategies change over time. It keeps things fresh, and whip beam could even return once in a while. But when it, and often by extension Explosion, remain dominant, T1 strategies for years, it's exhausting and honestly drives away my desire to play in some respects.

(Not Sustain though. I even enjoy playing sustain but a sustain meta would be the most agonizing thing in this world, it should always be fringe at best, encouraged through more DR and Shields, than actual healing)

The Counterplay Options:

I've been told if you cast cleanse in the moment before a stun hits you, the cleanse will still go off and cleanse the stun. Similarly, if one has near frame perfect dash timing, or invuln timing, they can escape the Lightspeed stun combo. All of these require high degrees of luck, usually a low ping, or your opponent to be highly predictable.

Aside from this, there's also war cry, if your war cry is already active when the combo happens. I know of no other actual options to counterplay this strategy.


The Pros:

1) Some people have said this is to try and give lower skilled people a chance, to narrow the skill gap. From what I've witnessed, this mechanic becomes far more abused in high skilled hands anyway, just creating a consistent gameplay loop for those who can use it, and not narrowing enough of the gap for those who may struggle already.

2) It keeps somewhat of a time limit on matches. This? Makes sense to me. Keeping matches shorter can help tension stay high, I don't mind this. I don't find this alone to be a sufficient reasoning.


My Suggestion:

The Minimal, absolute barebones change that won't completely gut all the builds that use it, but make them more fair? Turn all GCDE stuns into roots. This provides a chance for invulns, cleanses, or skills like phantom strike to play around them.

This has been my TED talk.

NOW DOWN VOTE ME!



Great points, but I don’t think changing things to roots will help against the kind if build you’re talking about.

We need to get rid of lightspeed. Nozomi was right.

Make it a master.
[Image: image0.png]
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#37
(12-20-2022, 08:02 PM)Knawlidge Wrote:
(12-19-2022, 12:26 PM)DanteriusAvius Wrote: The thread we all knew was coming.

So this is not going to be a, this GCDE stun hurt me, please nerf it. I have a GCDE stun, nerf me, please god. The goal here is to break down what they do for the game, the pros I've heard, the counterplay I've heard, and the cons that I've seen, and my opinions on them.

I know Lightspeed is a major contender for most hated skill, however I'd argue that Lightspeed is far more necessary to fight kiting builds, and without GCDE stuns to let it be used in conjunction with any ludicrously high damage skill, Lightspeed is not the problem.

So, here we go.

GCDE Stuns, which ones exist, and what it means-

A quick primer for those not immersed in mechanics or new. GCDE is Global Cooldown Exempt, functionally meaning that it doesn't put your entire spell bar on cooldown for 2 seconds after you cast it. This lets it immediately be combod into another skill. The main skills this is talking about are Water Whip, Pyroclasm, Sancitified Flash, and Crystal Javelin. Grapple Hook is not amongst those I'm counting simply because it is a root, not a stun, which gives more option for counterplay through reaction.

At the moment, they are incredibly prevalent but in actuality, have seen some amount of play for the past several years.

(Also Tesla is still functioning as a combo linker and it'd be really great if it stopped doing that ANYWAY)


Why now?

With Lightspeed back to being an intermediate, and Sanctified Flash returning to being a real stun, it feels very heavily as if, the main way to be viable at this moment, is to go Lightspeed/GCDE Stun/High Damage Beam/ (Prism Beam or Impact Cannon sometimes)

It's safe, it's reliable, it does very high damage, and frankly, punishes anyone who doesn't have insane reaction time or very good predictive abilities, without a lot of way to return the damage.

And after seeing this for years, I find it both incredibly dull, and incredibly punishing of build variety. As of now, it feels even more like if you want to do an IC build and aren't building this way, you're setting yourself up to lose, and often lose very badly. The old ways of compensating for this were usually to build for hiddens A, B, and C to get power creep so you could stat wall it out. But in the new era of hiddens/Fates being much more sparing and even more based on impact than power level...it's harder than ever to try and work around this.


Why are they a problem?

1) As listed above they make build variety far more difficult. Because you're heavily encouraged to go into Lightspeed (or plasma leap) at minimum, that's an investment of sixty points. Then the GCDE stun, and high damage skill, and follow up, and often that's more than half a build.

2) They don't encourage a healthy relationship in combat. They encourage one party to have a specific combo that chunks someone for a quarter of their health bar at minimum, and then sit back and play defensive moves and auto hits. Some people will play a more risky game to try and eke out more damage, but the game pattern is the same. Put a timer on every match by using the same combo that's nigh on unreactable when performed properly.

3) They hurt design space for new spells. High damage spells are usually mitigated by problems of being difficult to hit, or leaving you vulnerable. As it stands, difficult to hit is no longer an issue, neither is leaving you vulnerable if you miss. This creates a system where every single high risk high damage spell is effectively only limited by its cooldown. There's been a habit in the past of, when the move is too strong within this combo, to nerf the damage spell, rather than the stun, which treats the symptom. It simply waits for another spell to be buffed into territory where its too abusable, to happen all over again.

4) It's not fun to watch. Beams I find incredibly hype to see hit, when used without setup, especially when they turn battles around. But that almost never happens anymore, because it's just not worth it. Instead of being high risk, high reward spells, they're just "ah yep, he hit that GCDE stun, expected." It breaks the high risk aspect, and turns it into just a bog standard combo.

5) It's been this way for several, years. I don't ascribe to the idea that a game should try to be Perfectly Balanced tm. I've come to believe that the healthiest games, have metas where the dominant trees and strategies change over time. It keeps things fresh, and whip beam could even return once in a while. But when it, and often by extension Explosion, remain dominant, T1 strategies for years, it's exhausting and honestly drives away my desire to play in some respects.

(Not Sustain though. I even enjoy playing sustain but a sustain meta would be the most agonizing thing in this world, it should always be fringe at best, encouraged through more DR and Shields, than actual healing)

The Counterplay Options:

I've been told if you cast cleanse in the moment before a stun hits you, the cleanse will still go off and cleanse the stun. Similarly, if one has near frame perfect dash timing, or invuln timing, they can escape the Lightspeed stun combo. All of these require high degrees of luck, usually a low ping, or your opponent to be highly predictable.

Aside from this, there's also war cry, if your war cry is already active when the combo happens. I know of no other actual options to counterplay this strategy.


The Pros:

1) Some people have said this is to try and give lower skilled people a chance, to narrow the skill gap. From what I've witnessed, this mechanic becomes far more abused in high skilled hands anyway, just creating a consistent gameplay loop for those who can use it, and not narrowing enough of the gap for those who may struggle already.

2) It keeps somewhat of a time limit on matches. This? Makes sense to me. Keeping matches shorter can help tension stay high, I don't mind this. I don't find this alone to be a sufficient reasoning.


My Suggestion:

The Minimal, absolute barebones change that won't completely gut all the builds that use it, but make them more fair? Turn all GCDE stuns into roots. This provides a chance for invulns, cleanses, or skills like phantom strike to play around them.

This has been my TED talk.

NOW DOWN VOTE ME!



Great points, but I don’t think changing things to roots will help against the kind if build you’re talking about.

We need to get rid of lightspeed. Nozomi was right.

Make it a master.
Controversial take, add a little bit of damage to lightspeed and THEN make it a master.

(12-20-2022, 08:02 PM)Knawlidge Wrote:
(12-19-2022, 12:26 PM)DanteriusAvius Wrote: The thread we all knew was coming.

So this is not going to be a, this GCDE stun hurt me, please nerf it. I have a GCDE stun, nerf me, please god. The goal here is to break down what they do for the game, the pros I've heard, the counterplay I've heard, and the cons that I've seen, and my opinions on them.

I know Lightspeed is a major contender for most hated skill, however I'd argue that Lightspeed is far more necessary to fight kiting builds, and without GCDE stuns to let it be used in conjunction with any ludicrously high damage skill, Lightspeed is not the problem.

So, here we go.

GCDE Stuns, which ones exist, and what it means-

A quick primer for those not immersed in mechanics or new. GCDE is Global Cooldown Exempt, functionally meaning that it doesn't put your entire spell bar on cooldown for 2 seconds after you cast it. This lets it immediately be combod into another skill. The main skills this is talking about are Water Whip, Pyroclasm, Sancitified Flash, and Crystal Javelin. Grapple Hook is not amongst those I'm counting simply because it is a root, not a stun, which gives more option for counterplay through reaction.

At the moment, they are incredibly prevalent but in actuality, have seen some amount of play for the past several years.

(Also Tesla is still functioning as a combo linker and it'd be really great if it stopped doing that ANYWAY)


Why now?

With Lightspeed back to being an intermediate, and Sanctified Flash returning to being a real stun, it feels very heavily as if, the main way to be viable at this moment, is to go Lightspeed/GCDE Stun/High Damage Beam/ (Prism Beam or Impact Cannon sometimes)

It's safe, it's reliable, it does very high damage, and frankly, punishes anyone who doesn't have insane reaction time or very good predictive abilities, without a lot of way to return the damage.

And after seeing this for years, I find it both incredibly dull, and incredibly punishing of build variety. As of now, it feels even more like if you want to do an IC build and aren't building this way, you're setting yourself up to lose, and often lose very badly. The old ways of compensating for this were usually to build for hiddens A, B, and C to get power creep so you could stat wall it out. But in the new era of hiddens/Fates being much more sparing and even more based on impact than power level...it's harder than ever to try and work around this.


Why are they a problem?

1) As listed above they make build variety far more difficult. Because you're heavily encouraged to go into Lightspeed (or plasma leap) at minimum, that's an investment of sixty points. Then the GCDE stun, and high damage skill, and follow up, and often that's more than half a build.

2) They don't encourage a healthy relationship in combat. They encourage one party to have a specific combo that chunks someone for a quarter of their health bar at minimum, and then sit back and play defensive moves and auto hits. Some people will play a more risky game to try and eke out more damage, but the game pattern is the same. Put a timer on every match by using the same combo that's nigh on unreactable when performed properly.

3) They hurt design space for new spells. High damage spells are usually mitigated by problems of being difficult to hit, or leaving you vulnerable. As it stands, difficult to hit is no longer an issue, neither is leaving you vulnerable if you miss. This creates a system where every single high risk high damage spell is effectively only limited by its cooldown. There's been a habit in the past of, when the move is too strong within this combo, to nerf the damage spell, rather than the stun, which treats the symptom. It simply waits for another spell to be buffed into territory where its too abusable, to happen all over again.

4) It's not fun to watch. Beams I find incredibly hype to see hit, when used without setup, especially when they turn battles around. But that almost never happens anymore, because it's just not worth it. Instead of being high risk, high reward spells, they're just "ah yep, he hit that GCDE stun, expected." It breaks the high risk aspect, and turns it into just a bog standard combo.

5) It's been this way for several, years. I don't ascribe to the idea that a game should try to be Perfectly Balanced tm. I've come to believe that the healthiest games, have metas where the dominant trees and strategies change over time. It keeps things fresh, and whip beam could even return once in a while. But when it, and often by extension Explosion, remain dominant, T1 strategies for years, it's exhausting and honestly drives away my desire to play in some respects.

(Not Sustain though. I even enjoy playing sustain but a sustain meta would be the most agonizing thing in this world, it should always be fringe at best, encouraged through more DR and Shields, than actual healing)

The Counterplay Options:

I've been told if you cast cleanse in the moment before a stun hits you, the cleanse will still go off and cleanse the stun. Similarly, if one has near frame perfect dash timing, or invuln timing, they can escape the Lightspeed stun combo. All of these require high degrees of luck, usually a low ping, or your opponent to be highly predictable.

Aside from this, there's also war cry, if your war cry is already active when the combo happens. I know of no other actual options to counterplay this strategy.


The Pros:

1) Some people have said this is to try and give lower skilled people a chance, to narrow the skill gap. From what I've witnessed, this mechanic becomes far more abused in high skilled hands anyway, just creating a consistent gameplay loop for those who can use it, and not narrowing enough of the gap for those who may struggle already.

2) It keeps somewhat of a time limit on matches. This? Makes sense to me. Keeping matches shorter can help tension stay high, I don't mind this. I don't find this alone to be a sufficient reasoning.


My Suggestion:

The Minimal, absolute barebones change that won't completely gut all the builds that use it, but make them more fair? Turn all GCDE stuns into roots. This provides a chance for invulns, cleanses, or skills like phantom strike to play around them.

This has been my TED talk.

NOW DOWN VOTE ME!



Great points, but I don’t think changing things to roots will help against the kind if build you’re talking about.

We need to get rid of lightspeed. Nozomi was right.

Make it a master.
Controversial take, add a little bit of damage to lightspeed and THEN make it a master.
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#38
(12-20-2022, 02:11 PM)Detective100 Wrote: I will say this about water whip and the water magic tree.
While explosion has good basic spells (With the exception of inferno. That move is atrocious right now, range reduced instead of increased), the water tree has... Bad to below average basics.  If you move water whip up to intermediate, some of the basic skills will need a touch up.

water also has shit like tidal wave which is just absurd, i dont think water needs a touch up
[Image: c603523eebb1995b6af75201658c5a0c.gif]
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#39
Honestly Stun/Beams as annoying as they are aren't the only problem here, its the fact that after the beam lands it keeps them locked down for an immediate follow up.

On a build I've been playing recently this comes in the form of Blood Vapor/Tidal wave to follow the beam once it finishes resulting in an absurd amount of total dmg after the whip/beam combo finishes.

I don't truly believe whip-beam is the true oppression but rather the simple fact landing the whip beam = free spell after.

Seen with spells like Impact cannon, Blood Vapor/Venomous Vortex, Furry Fist or other line projectiles to land for free afterwards.

Which can be fixed by making beam's GCD start at the end of channel instead of start of move.
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