Harold discusses the results of Guild Wars Guild Battle championship for February and his edited match report commentary.

I had a feeling that this month, I wouldn’t have to check the Guildwars.com website to see when my match report got published.  Indeed, I first found out while browsing some fan forums.  Of course, the discussion would have nothing to do with the skill template codes that I provided (which I’m under no obligation to provide, by the way, and had no incentive other than to help the reader; no sense wasting my time on that in the future). It’s quite simple: some people like to read something, interpret it for what it says instead of for what it implies, and continue on their merry way…or post about their outrage on the Internet. Hopefully, that discussion will lead to some much needed changes in game balance. However, I did find some of the anger directed towards me as a reporter a bit unfounded until I read my article as edited for the site:

From http://www.guildwars.com/competitive/articles/matchreports/20080228-univsei.php:

Considering that “Sinsplit” builds have dominated two straight Monthly Championships, what could [ei] or other guilds have used to better prepare for and counter these split-heavy builds? The Shroud of Silence Assassin relies heavily on knockdown for its attack chain, while Balanced Stance at a mere 2 Tactics has the same duration and recharge as Shroud of Silence at 14 Deadly Arts. Certainly [Uni] could not have split as effectively to kill [ei]’s bodyguard without using Shadow Steps, but given the variety of other skills that one can use against an opponent from casting range, the Shadow Steps did not do as much for [Uni] as its teamwork did in coordinating splits to gain a numbers advantage against experienced opponents throughout the entire tournament.

Two sentences got chopped out in editing. The first sentence of the paragraph was:

With Sinsplit builds dominating two straight Monthly Championships, players wait in anticipation of skill or game mechanic changes to address the current metagame.

(followed by “But could ei or other guilds have used better counters…”)

…and, after the Balanced Stance vs. Shroud of Silence bit:

Likewise, some would argue that shadow stepping as a mechanic needs to have better counters available.

Clearly, my intent was to present the fact that players are looking for some sort of nerf here, to present a flippant answer to what sort of counters were available, and to give Uni a mildly sarcastic pat on the back.

Indeed, I suppose the question of the moment is what could these guilds have used to counter these builds? The Assassins are pretty nasty with their snares, complete caster shutdown, knockdowns, solo-spike capability, and good mobility. But then the base defense team packs tons of AoE, shutdown, etc. as well. In fact, playing Paraspike with the strategy that Good Artist employed is one of the best ways to counter Sinsplit without actually resorting to Sinsplit. In all seriousness, I remember thinking how brilliant it was when I first saw them running it on Corrupted Isle in an AT earlier in the month. Take out their base before they take out yours.

Sure, Balanced Stance does kill a lot of the attack chain for these particular Assassins. No Iron Palm knockdown means no Falling Spider, no Vampiric Assault, and certainly no Impale or Signet of Toxic Shock. But astute readers should recognize my suggestion as a fairly facetious one. Among other things, your Monk loses quite a bit of mobility going /W instead of, say, /A (although Sprint does last 8 seconds with no Strength…). Heck, one Assassin with Wild Strike will take out this strategy entirely. Good Artist did run a Mo/W without Balanced Stance, but this is really besides the point because the suggestion was meant to be flippant.

Notice: 1) there really aren’t all that many viable counters to Sinsplit to mention anyway, 2) it’s a pain to Monk against, and 3) all of this talk doesn’t even consider the lack of counters to shadow stepping itself!

When ArenaNet introduced Ritualists, it simultaneously introduced counters for spirits. When Paragons entered the picture, so did counters for shouts. Yes, in both cases the counters have not had the kind of effectiveness to warrant play in normal balanced builds (although it is satisfying to turn around and Power Leak an Anthem of Flame or Song of Restoration on a P/Me–stop trying to mess with my Diversion [and yes, Paragons get Energy back quickly enough, so I hope you have better things to Power Leak]). But even so, at least counters exist and could be tweaked for greater effectiveness through skill updates. After all, Ritualists finally did get a sizeable nerf to their spirit spamming ways. But here we are, with a potent game mechanic in shadow stepping that has no hard counter. No skill comes close to saying “target foe cannot shadow step”, and no real drawback exists for using a shadow step. Using shadow steps should also not have to be considered when figuring out counters to shadow steps.

By the same token, however, shadow steps do require targets to be in spell range. Surely, you can think of plenty of ways to punish someone from spell range without using shadow steps. In case you can’t, some obvious examples are Gale, any number of hex snares, “Coward!”, “You’re All Alone!”, and did I mention Gale? In terms of playing a split/collapse strategy, a Mind Freeze or Icy Shackles Ele could keep a second Monk from coming to join a lone Monk at the main team, while a Blackout Mesmer could keep that lone Monk from doing anything to prevent his or her death. While it certainly is possible to make some great plays, the results are far less devastating.

Case in point: Animal, despite being a great, experienced Monk, got caught without a Veil up after having to escape from a Mind Blast Ele and paid the ultimate price for taking one or two steps too many. To be fair, I think a lot of us would have done the same–if we could even have lasted that long. So yes, Animal made a mistake, but unlike against a simple snare, Shroud of Silence gives no chance to compensate for it. Against a water snare, Animal could’ve made it in time to cover ei’s retreat instead of getting splattered. Instead, this one play blew the doors open for Uni.

As for how easy it is to play an Assassin, well, I’m sure we’ve all seen plenty of bad Assassins. Yes, it can be as easy as 1-2-3-4-5 (-6-7-8), but against a good opponent, button mashing will likely waste a lot of your Energy after getting Blinded, Diversioned, or D-Shotted during your attack. Also, keep in mind that, with the understanding of how Assassins work as well as experience with other professions, playing Assassin should seem easy to experienced players. So I’m not going to delve into the skill required to play the profession. War Machine proved that with their original Assassin gank after Factions’s release

So the problem really comes down to balance. Clearly, Shroud of Silence does too much, even as an elite. The duration could easily take a duration hit and the skill would still be pretty sick. Giving it a longer cast time would be nice for the target, but could make it too unwieldy to use (not a bad thing, necessarily, but I do like skill diversity). Likewise, it does drop easily with a pre-cast Holy Veil. For a slightly more radical change that doesn’t kill the skill entirely, maybe instead of its current functionality, it should be something like “For x seconds, target foe’s next y spells fail” (where a fail consumes the energy). This way, a caster could still get out of it if absolutely needed. Fail a couple of reversals and you’re good to go, albeit with a little less Energy. One change mentioned on GuildWarsGuru was to just make it an elite form of Blackout (disabling all skills on the Assassin’s bar as well). I think it might even be better to make it combine Blackout with a shadow step that first removes all enchantments and stances from the Assassin. This way, the Assassin can’t just Recall/Shadow of Haste/Shadow Walk out, and it forces the Assassin into the opponent’s backline with no possibility of pre-prot. Sure you could probably still use it, particularly in RA, but that Assassin would likely pay, except maybe in RA. And Mesmers would probably find a better use for it anyway. And don’t get me started on RA.

For shadow steps in general, some old skills really need to have their functionality changed or some new skills need to be introduced to counter them. For example, change Muddy Terrain to also make shadow steps fail within its range. Or maybe Weakness or some other condition could be re-worked to prevent a player from using a Shadow Step. Anyway, I don’t claim to be a master of skill balance. I leave skill balance ideas for folks like Ensign to suggest and for Izzy to ignore.

So yeah, in case it wasn’t clear at the beginning of this entry, ArenaNet made some edits, which I did not get a chance to approve (usually they’re fine and make things easier to read), and which, in this case, made it seem like I was expressing an opinion that Sinsplit is fine/awesome/the bees’ knees. While I do think Uni capitalized on some mistakes by ei, I do consider the current Sinsplit overpowered and I think the better team lost because of it. Think about it: I’m supposed to write a factual account of the match and have to adhere to a certain word count, so I only have so many words left even to imply any sort of opinion. Nor do I like repeating over-the-top “uninstall when you shadow step” type of suggestions that only function to cause drama and add noise to discussions that are trying to come up with workable solutions to the problem. So yes, a good player should’ve recognized that Balanced Stance is hardly a real solution to the issue. My mistake here, probably, was trying to encourage discussion of nerfs in the first place by adding that last paragraph instead of realizing how wrong it could come across after some precision editing. But for those of you who like to engage in kneejerk bashing and criticism on fan forums, hopefully this has given you better perspective (btw, r8 hero [r3 before IWAY invaded Tombs, lack of time/interest after], r1 champion before the last ladder reset). To the rest of you, have fun stomping on Mo/W’s until the next skill balance, which will hopefully address more than just Sinsplit.

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