Nurf Chain Lightning Part: 3

Yeah! The trouble with that is, if the top players are GM in air with really high attunement, to find effective counter you need to invest similar amount of xp into that build. Also as the game gets more balanced, getting xp might get bit less effective as the too good scenarios breaking game balance are removed. My point is, it is hard to tell what is balanced, when people have different levels and different skills.

It is hard to find counter against someone playing the game more. And it is bad idea to balance the game around people at top levels. Especially when you compare them to people at lower levels. The game should be ablanced at all levels, but betweem equally skilled players, the one with higher level should win and between palyers at same level the more skilled ones should win. With different playstyles (slows, stuns, dots...) it gets really complicated.

My experience is, that if people think something is OP, they will copycat each others build. And even if the thing is nerfed and balanced, they still have it at high level so it is still better than anything else, ecause everything else is at lower level. Only solution is to nerf it so much it becomes less powerful then it shoudl be, forcing people to level another things, but then the balance is lost once again.

 

You can do the exact same thing with an Obsidian Arrow though. I don't find damage to be the issue. The issue is the stun rate. My chain lighting is currently at level 70. My Rapid Discharge is somewhere around level 55. This together gives my chain lighting a 52% chance to stun for 4.5 seconds. 52% is way too high of a stun chance for a 4.5 second stun. The damage however is less than Earth's damage, and the focus cost is significantly higher than any other magic school's focus cost (25 focus per cast). Also, as a side note, to get that high of a crit with chain lighting, he must have had at least 3 or 4 chain lightings stacked together. That is not the kind of damage an unstacked chain lighting can get without being crazy high level (higher than adventurer level 55 as you report). I'm adventurer level 56 atm, and the best I've seen was 240 with a 4x stacked chain lighting.

Then again... melee can soak up a lot more damage, doesn't run through focus as quickly, doesn't use reagents, and anyone can pretty easily build up quite a bit of stun resistance to almost completely nullify the stun of air spells. I thought being a good PVP player was all about creating a character that can effectively counter other characters. So any good PVP player would have stun resist and elemental resists... that should be self-explanatory.

Also, the best melee players in my guild have crit for over 500 damage. Granted, that's with Coup De Grace. But they can certainly handle fighting larger groups of high levels enemies at once than pretty much any mage but an Earth mage. Maybe PVP and PVE need separate balancing.

 

Without reading the last 5 pages of junk in here (again, wont change my opinion and experience about chain lightning, nurf it more), I will say that during the telethon, Atos did say it was taking a 8% / 16% nerf. The vast majority of people in Discord were screaming with agreement but also that its not enough.

For the same reason that I could of gone air with chain lighning in R32 but chose not to knowing that it would be nurfed:

They will be providing one skill reset for this and tamming.

I totally disagree with giving this out. People who went tamming and CL knew the skills were OP and had to know a nurf was coming.

So that gives them an advantage over people like myself who went a non-OP route from the start.

 

And that's why you separate PvP and PvE skills, because it leads to this.

Nobody cares if you stun a mob 33% of the time for 3 seconds. But do it in PvP? Everyone loses their minds.

And skill resets for any skill no matter the skill, no matter the reason, should give back 100% of the XP. To do otherwise is to punish your customers for your mistakes, and that's simply bad customer service.

 

I didn't go Air because I knew it was OP. In fact, I didn't know that at all. And I don't even agree at all that it's OP anywhere but in PVP where I believe the stun chance just needs reduced a little. I only joined the game just before final wipe. I think a bunch of you PVP players are just a bunch of cry babies who can't build an effective character. Stun resist is a thing in this game. You can effectively counter all of the CC of air spells. Which just leaves them with less direct damage than Earth spells.

 

Thats my #1 fear whenever any game tries to balance for PVP, they end up wrecking PVE in the process for some number of skills.

 

Absolutely. PVP and PVE should definitely be balanced separately. Something that's OP in PVP (usually any kind of crowd control) is not necessarily OP in PVE. And honestly, I'd like a refund for the entire skill tree if they nerf it too hard so that I can switch to Earth. Earth already does more damage and costs a lot less focus. I only chose Air because I've always played a lighting caster in other games, and Air's damage is comparable to Earth's unlike the other spell schools.

Not balancing PVE and PVP separately was the downfall for Destiny too (if you've ever played that game) imo. Guns that were perfectly fine in PVP were nerfed because they were OP in PVP. This led to many weapons being essentially useless in PVE content.

 

I did, some things that were a THORN in my side during iron banner wouldnt have affected PVE at all.

Its also why all my auto rifles were pretty much useless when I came back after my first big break.

 

But again, I still have issues with the fact that I can stand 30 feet away from a PvP battle up on top of a castle wall with 500 hit points and die from them in ~5 seconds as I am already chain healing myself.

That is an issue in Pve and PvP.

 

How is that a PvE issue?

 

If you have read in this thread, I have also noted that in raids like SS, if I have a chain lightning caster on a spawn spot 30+ game feet away, around a corner and up a hill, their chain lightning is hitting my mobs.

Do you think this as a normal mechanic is ok?

Im sure its not hard to rationalize the fact that if chain lightning is doing this in PvP that it is also doing the same thing in PvE group battles.

 

If 30 "feet" (i suspect it's meters, but ok) is the range on the spell, this is normal.
If you have an issue with the range being extraordinary or inappropriate (beyond 30ft/30m), that's a bug report.

 

Exactly... Thank you for that point. I said "30 feet" which does mean 30 feet (not meters). I don't think me having issues with the range would effect a bug report, a bug is a bug.

 

If it's a bug and there's no bug report, they won't fix it. Is the range 30ft or not? If you think it's exceeding it's range, put in a bug report. If not, I guess you can continue complaining about the range being a bug? /shrug

 

It seems that nobody is considering playing at night. I don't understand how people can be so sure that something deserves to be nerved bc they think it is an advantage... Maybe they are wrong.

 

Downfall of my favorite game? It's going better and better with destiny with private matches coming the 21th of september

 

Post-nerf, I was in a group of 5 players with 300+ health each. Someone came up and killed all 5 of us at once with chain lightning in 2 seconds. I was hit, stunned and dead without any opportunity to react or do anything.

It is still insanely powerful.

 

I would rather say that imbalance between avatars at different levels is insanely huge. Pretty sure high level archer could stack skills and kill you just as quickly from huge distance.

 

5 people at once while stunning you? No so much. And judging from the health and focus of the attacker, there wasn't a massive difference.

 

Well, Chain Lightning hits only 4 targets, so one of you should survive for a while. Does not stun that long though and there are ways to decrease the chance of being stunned. Sure, it is powerful spell, especially when used properly at high level, but it is not the spell that is broken. Pretty sure someone with equally high Earth skills and Earthquake could get dispose of you faster.