Wisp/Leer Discussion

Oonagh

I just want to put my two cents, that I dont think wisp was created because of an outcry from the Spirit-tethered players to have the skill, as far as I am aware of it was just something that happened, so it sounds like everything is just getting lumped in some weird generalization that Spirit-tethered players were being loud voices about unfairness and balance in combat, to which I don't think anyone as a whole was doing.

Perhaps we have alot of people who DO underperform, but the same could be said for Shadow fighters who dont want to leave the room and let their offenses run too, its two sides to the same coin no matter how you slice it. There have been plenty of times I have died to shadow-tethered players running a bashing script orr damage based offense, and I think @Keroc 's whole intent behind this was to diversify the playing field and make it require a bit more tact. Now that people cant hang out in a room and do their bash and kill with damage methods, its becoming a greater issue that has required this whole tirade. Since the GOOD combatants ultimately cannot carry the whole team on their backs which is a struggle I see on Spirit sometimes with calling and leading, that HAS improved in the past months with ALOT of work.

tl;dr it seems like more or less both sides have an issue with underperformance in diversifying combat and were failing as a whole in our team abilities/callouts/strategy.

Stine

In the end, it comes down to whether people want to learn how to use their abilities, how they interact, what situations to use them in and, of course, always working on better communication. If the answer to those items are 'no thanks', it won't matter how many options we have. I won't speak for anyone else in current Spirit faction, but I do not think more teamfight options were necessary for Sentinel
-stine 2/8/19 help i can't quote from other threads

I wanted to go back to the thread when wisp was originally released to show that, even then, at least some of us had concerns that giving this to Sentinel (or giving in general) was not necessary.

What I wrote 2.5 months ago is still exactly how I feel now - it doesn't matter if I have 10 options available if the majority of the crew don't know how or when to use those options, as they are then essentially useless options. Giving more options on top of those already available doesn't alleviate or fix that problem by any means.

For what it's worth, I suggested removing AoE beckon in a classlead comment from the Q1 round this year. I know this discussion is about leer/wisp, but it is not always shadow pk vs spirit pk. I would probably make some people annoyed by admitting that I suggested that, but I recognize that it probably does need a change in some fashion. Report #2580, solution 2 - my comment was something along the lines of "instead of giving aoe beckon to praenomen, I would rather it be removed from luminary". I agree with @fezzix, or whoever said it first in this thread, in the regard that giving the same ability that is problematic to both sides is not the answer.

I had a negative reaction to leer at first because I started thinking about block, gravehands/spiritchains, the propensity to use limb strats by shadow to lock people in room, etc, but after reading all the comments from the shadow pk folks, I can see why it is frustrating to them that it was given only the counterplay of moving out of room when the spirit counterpart follows you around and has some protection in room in theory.

Almost all pk folk vent about skills, just as we vent to our friends about anything that is frustrating, but we have the opportunity to have a good discussion and I hope everyone takes @keroc's survey over in https://forums.aetolia.com/discussion/3151/class-viability#latest and leaves comments about why they graded certain classes how they did.

Edit: Even if it's to say unicorn luminary pls nerf overwhelm. That's fine. Take the survey.

Keroc

Vyxsis said:

Keroc said:

Fezzix said:

Someone mentioned it earlier, but the solution to a problem isn't to create another problem on the opposite tether. I'd prefer balance over an arms race of unfair abilities.

What is unfair to you? Where's the line you draw. I realise other people may have already answered for you, but indulge me!

i'm not fezzix, but to answer for myself: i don't think it's fair to buff classes/abilities because the users aren't performing. certainly, buff or nerf abilities that need to be, but essentially rewarding doing poorly (or punishing those doing well, whichever way you prefer to look at it) sets off all my unfairness alarms. from my understanding, there's a relatively trans-tether consensus that spirit doesn't do as well as shadow on the whole not because their classes aren't viable, but because of a lack of player effort, engagement, interest, etc. in my opinion, performance is only a useful metric for comparison when other variables are equal - in particular, skill & optimization. if syssin has a high winrate, is that because it's busted? or is there some other factor that ought to be considered, like that its main combatant has honed his offense to a razor's edge and has nigh-impeccable situational judgement?

i get the temptation to give people "morale buffs" lest they just continue to disengage, but at some point, you can't buff away disinterest or lack of effort. people with greater skill will *always* find a way to work past it, and you've really only imbalanced the game further while fueling the cycle of bad feelings on both tethers.

While sometimes I give out a buff or two to try and draw attention to a class, it is rarely my sole motivator. In fact it's usually not super high on my priority list for why I might do so. More often then not it's because I feel like exploring an idea that I feel could be interesting or perhaps just want to further individualise a class if an idea I have is unique enough. My thoughts for the implementation of wisp have been explained, but it's not like it was the only thing altered that day. It just seems to be focus.

Vyxsis said:

similarly, i don't think it's fair that, on the one hand, you have classlead guidelines saying that reports that aren't well-thought-out or lack reasonable solutions will not do well, but then on the other, you'll approve incoherent and frankly nonsensical reports while providing some other solution (coughtarotwheelcough). again, it's like... why bother? why should i put in the effort to write a thoughtful report when people who *aren't* putting in effort are getting rewarded for it? it seems to me like, at best, you're deciding completely without reference to the reports, which again begs the question of why should i bother writing them?

so, uh, yeah. tl;dr - the line i draw is about balancing philosophy, and in particular, my perception (and i do recognize it's my perception) of your balancing philosophy.

Sometimes I provide a new solution based upon comments from players, or perhaps my own thoughts on the problem at hand. If I do so it's because perhaps I agree with the problem at hand but I don't really like the solutions for one reason or another, or someone has written a valid point within comments that needs consideration.

The alternative here is that I just outright reject it based solely on the merit of the report. If that's what you want, it's ok to just state at the bottom of your report that it's your solutions or bust. It's certainly not about rewarding people who put in zero effort though.

I can't comment on the Wheel report though, I'm not sure which one you're talking about.

Vyxsis

Keroc said:

While sometimes I give out a buff or two to try and draw attention to a class, it is rarely my sole motivator. In fact it's usually not super high on my priority list for why I might do so. More often then not it's because I feel like exploring an idea that I feel could be interesting or perhaps just want to further individualise a class if an idea I have is unique enough. My thoughts for the implementation of wisp have been explained, but it's not like it was the only thing altered that day. It just seems to be focus.

i don't mean to make this into a protracted argument, so please just take this as the clarification it's intended to be: i wasn't talking about drawing attention to a class (let alone sentinel specifically). rather, it appears from my vantage that you sometimes buff classes because the users are losing rather than because the classes themselves are lacking in some way. i don't think i'm alone in this perception. that's why i summarized by saying my issue is with my perception of your balancing philosophy - it looks as though you're trying to balance around 'performance' without reference to potential. or to put it another way, you're buffing in response to player weaknesses, not class weaknesses.

Keroc said:

Sometimes I provide a new solution based upon comments from players, or perhaps my own thoughts on the problem at hand. If I do so it's because perhaps I agree with the problem at hand but I don't really like the solutions for one reason or another, or someone has written a valid point within comments that needs consideration.

i mean, it's fine with me if you come up with a better solution when there's a real problem. i know solutions are the hardest things for me to come up with when writing reports, so if my (or someone else's) articulation of a problem is good, i def appreciate having that acknowledged with approval even if you don't use one of the proposed solutions. that said, i'm definitely talking about schlocky reports. like, horrendously schlocky reports. reports that give no real argument whatsoever.

the reason i felt like this tied-in is because you sometimes reply with a rejection by saying something about how the class in question isn't actually performing well (in the sense that it doesn't have a high winrate in sect). see, for example, your reply to report 2596. like i've been saying here, overall performance of a class, without reference to other variables, doesn't really indicate whether there's a balance issue with a class's kit - it quite possibly just means most people aren't using it to its fullest. monk is a great example of this since almost nobody spends much time fighting in the sect with it, and those that do are, i can confidently say, definitely not using all of monk's bag of tricks to their fullest potential. hell, not even 80% potential. maybe we disagree about whether this specific case is one where the report identified a real problem. however, that's not really what you stated as your reason for rejecting - you merely said current monk players aren't ahead of the curve. when i read that, my perception is that an unfair advantage will continue to exist simply because no one is making use of it right now, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. thus, it just becomes an example of what i said above - balancing around player weaknesses, not class weaknesses.

i guess my line of thinking is something like: if i see my car's timing belt is failing - but hasn't actually broken yet - i wouldn't just wait for it to break, would i?

i wouldn't...! not after a timing belt snapping completely destroyed the engine of my beloved '88 volvo 740 gle stationwagon, anyways (rip my beautiful silver tank).

Keroc said:

The alternative here is that I just outright reject it based solely on the merit of the report. If that's what you want, it's ok to just state at the bottom of your report that it's your solutions or bust. It's certainly not about rewarding people who put in zero effort though.

maybe you're being hyperbolic for effect, but just so we're on the same page, that's definitely not the only alternative, especially since i mean to be focusing more on reports that do nothing to support the stated problem. if you really see that as "the" alternative, though, i'd probably say... don't have guidelines if they don't matter, because otherwise those of us who put in the effort to observe them are going to feel slighted when junk reports are approved while our thoughtful ones are rejected. remember, we can't see the comments (can we? pr sure we can't), so if someone made a better case for the report than the author, we don't know about it.

Keroc said:

I can't comment on the Wheel report though, I'm not sure which one you're talking about.

it shows as unsubmitted now... is2g it was submitted and approved. i could be conflating it with another (more reasonable, but not great) report which *is* archived, but i've got a super strong memory of seeing this one approved and despairing. maybe my high-sodium diet at the time made me hallucinate? regardless of whether i'm going senile early or just plain nuts, the above points remain, i think.

Keroc

When it comes to buffs and nerfs, I'm more likely to buff then I am to nerf. Nerfs just generally make people feel bad and want to give up, and if no one plays that class anymore I no longer have any data on it. So if it isn't performing I tend to leave it be unless a strong majority want a problem fixed. Report 2596 specifically only had 1 approval and 2 rejections. So I fell back on Sect results to prevent a change that might be more harmful then productive. At least for now anyway. I don't mind seeing it come up again as there might be more support for it next time.

If I buff a class I usually have a good reason in mind, and not simply because the people playing it are losing. I can't really outright prove that to you, but if you want a more in depth look at my reasoning for a buff recently, feel free to ask.

As for reports... I guess the best thing to do here is just to provide me with examples of reports that you (or others) weren't too happy about. I can't see myself approving a report with a solution that has nothing to do with the problem. But I've been up here dealing with reports for a long time so it might've happened, I can't be too sure on that one.