Dev response to Obstructed Shades

[dzeRnumbrd.6129]

My reddit post got a dev response to the obstructed bug:

 

 

If you choose to comment please be nice and keep your comments constructive.

 

We want to encourage an environment of amiable dev<->player communication.

 

[Aetatis.5418]

The dev answer is 100% what I was assuming.

They did it in order to prevent shade camping on walls but couldn't find a way to treat fences or very tiny hills differently.

 

And everybody answering ok Reddit that shades are treated unfair on walls.

Just imagine the amount of AOE a necro can n put down on a wall without unlocking scourge.

And then tripple the amount by unlocking scourge plus giving it a bigger radius plus incredibru short cd's

That is just completely unhealthy and not fun to play.

 

I like that they are looking for a way to decouple walls los and walking down a tiny hill los .

As long as they don't have a mechanic for that, learn to position yourself.

That is the key for shades and works great.

Remember you have still the repertoire of the core necro skills.

[dzeRnumbrd.6129]

Shades are not different to wells really.

Scourges generally run shades in place of wells.

 

As a power reaper I ran wells to hurt people on walls.

 

* I would place the well in the exact same place as I would place a shade.

* They'd do similar kind of damage (or more) than desert shroud.

* They would offer no warning to the wall defender until the red circle activated and they started taking damage.

* I could constantly reuse wells because they didn't consume life force

 

With shades (pre patch):

 

* I would place the shade in the exact same place I was ready to place my well

* The shade would do similar damage to a well (less now after the nerfs)

* I would give prior warning to wall defender because the giant yellow sand shade sitting where I was going to bomb them.

* I have a limited output of F-skills because they drain my LF and there is no easy way to reacquire it unless people are dying around you.

 

So shades merely act as a visual deterrent, they are actually easier for a defender to workaround then a well because you never know where the well is going to be placed.

 

So if anything shades are easier to avoid damage from than power wells and do less burst damage.

 

We also don't have a good source of life force when hazing the walls so we quickly run out of LF to attack the walls if constantly spam our F2/F4/F5.

 

 

[Aetatis.5418]

You forgot the bigger radius on shades.

 

LF is zero prob. If there is a gate and you swap to staff = infinite LF just by 11111ing

If there is no gate, there is usually guards, white mobs and any death around you generates LF.

That is plenty. The availability of shades and their f Keys is too much for walls in addition to the wall hate we already have.

And I am glad Anet has a similar opinion on the matter.

I main a necro in wvw since 2012 and think it is justified.

 

[Nimon.7840]

Yeah well guys. Exactly what i was assuming.

 

Rev-meta inc :(

 

Since hammer 5 can hit enemys on walls and do freaking dmg. 8k crit on a 3,2k armor.

 

But shades are considered op. AS IF...

 

With shades u cant even hit defensive sieges like acs.

With eles meteorshower u can. So are we getting a los requirement for every other class as well?

 

 

But i guess anet has way not enough people to work on bugs and balances and such things.

 

There is no other explanation for dhumfire being "bugged" (i guess the icd was intended) for so long.

 

Some things are just not understandable.

 

Guess ill play power-scourge in wvw. 2 wells +shades = even more red fields for the enemy

[Egorum.9506]

Why are scourges the only profession this applies to?

[flow.6043]

Regardless of whether or not all aoes should hit people on walls, imo a decent compromise thematically would be to have the Shade itself check for line of sight. Shades have faces after all.

[stormwings.8329]

> @"flow.6043" said:

> Regardless of whether or not all aoes should hit people on walls, imo a decent compromise thematically would be to have the Shade itself check for line of sight. Shades have faces after all.

 

Shade dont need to check anything (you already need LoS and range on cast like ALL the other skills in the game) cos they are pulsing AoE so everything that is inside the red circle must be hit. Atm this work only on allies and not on enemies so we can buff our party but cant do damage.

Shade on wall were good but only when some mesmer of guard were able to pull.

Atm in wvw you get obstructed on oil, EVERYTHING on the wall, on all the bridges, gvg/bvb spot near sentry south camp and in general anywhere with a small thing between you and your target even if you where able to cast the shade.

With any other skills on any classes (necro included) im able to put aoe below the ac on the roof in gari lordroom and destroy ac/fear ppl down and that should not happen if i follow what anet said, right? For the same reason no1 should be able to bomb the gate and kill ppl on the other side of it (same for siege behind the gate). But wait this things are here till the release and there were no change at all so why do that for only 1 skill?

Anet dont need to fix anything just reverse this necro shade only "feature"

 

[Lahmia.2193]

This is silly logic to be honest. Wall bombing has always been a thing long before Scourges and walls have never been safe if an enemy zerg is attacking. This is why we have arrow carts that can be put out of range of most AoEs (aside from Meteor showers - and non aoes like deathly chill shouts/frost aura, fire shield and guardian burn block).

But at the end of the day, I've moved onto Revenant like many others. So I guess the plan to reduce scourge stacking has worked somewhat.

[Crazy.6029]

This is the short version of what they are saying; they will never work on walls but we will try to help with the small hills and slopes no eta is currently available for fix :)

[flow.6043]

> @"stormwings.8329" said:

>Shade dont need to check anything ...

 

I know how it works, there was no need for that long explanation.

All I'm saying is, since they don't want to have shades work like any other aoe, as a compromise they could treat them like minions. You need line of sight to where you want to cast them, but then the center of the shade will aoe to everything from that perspective. This way you get rid of most obstructed issues but you still wont be able to hit stuff on top of walls if you're standing below.

 

 

[Galmac.4680]

Even after this "no more burst"-patch...

[UnDeadFun.5824]

Plain and Simple **Prejudice** against Necromancer. There are other classes that have the ability to AOE beyond L.O.S. and it's been this way forever. :/

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

You would think that all abilities should be canceled by line of sight, that's how I always tanked or PVP in any other game. If you couldn't compensate for players using the environment then that's a learn to play issue. I'm surprised you can't los in this game, eliminates a skill that should be welcomed in a game with no power creep.

[Bash.7291]

I love how they hide behind the idea that it was done to balance wall haze, when it was 100% an unintend effect caused by fixing the targetting issue with shade abilities. It came about because of that patch, and was because they found that if they set the targets based on the scourge and not the shade, there was not overlapping issues with allies getting barriers and enemies getting hit. However the LoS requirements are really screwed up considering i can cast a shade directly ontop of something (im this case a golem in the pvp lobby) and still get an obstructed message even though i could originally cast the shade there.

[DeadlySynz.3471]

Their comment of

 

"An example of why the obstruction requirement exists is that a **Scourge being able to drop shades up on keep wall edges and attack anyone standing out of sight up there, shutting down nearly all forms of defense, is not fun gameplay.**"

 

While I appreciate them finally commenting on this, things like meteor shower and CoR do exponentially more damage on top of a wall then a shade (or group of shades) ever could. Back when the shade wall bombing was allowed, as a zerk ranger, I walked through shade bombs all the time and it didn't do much damage, even if I didn't bother to cleanse. Heaven forbid though if I stood in a meteor shower; I was dead faster than you can blink. That is certainly not fun game play, there wasn't even a chance to react.

 

Even when i was running a shout reaper, I found the shouts to be more devastating on top of walls if you could position your character nicely slightly below.

 

So given their reasoning behind this, I fully expect a patch soon to remove all AoE skills to reach on top of walls, because at best, Shade bombs are one of the weakest skills that can be used currently to attack on top of walls compared to other skills in game.

[Aetatis.5418]

nvm. got merged

 

[Justine.6351]

> @"UnDeadFun.5824" said:

> Plain and Simple **Prejudice** against Necromancer. There are other classes that have the ability to AOE beyond L.O.S. and it's been this way forever. :/

 

Nearly all ground targeted skills require los to cast. I cannot immediately think of any that don't.

[Lahmia.2193]

> @"Justine.6351" said:

> > @"UnDeadFun.5824" said:

> > Plain and Simple **Prejudice** against Necromancer. There are other classes that have the ability to AOE beyond L.O.S. and it's been this way forever. :/

>

> Nearly all ground targeted skills require los to cast. I cannot immediately think of any that don't.

 

The complaint is that after casting said ground targeted shade skill, it doesn't hit the foe if you cannot personally draw a line of sight to them. Ground target skills don't require a line of sight to hit a foe (like if they are slightly back from a wall), like shades currently do. So this is very much prejudice against Scourges.

[Optimator.3589]

> @"Lahmia.2193" said:

> > @"Justine.6351" said:

> > > @"UnDeadFun.5824" said:

> > > Plain and Simple **Prejudice** against Necromancer. There are other classes that have the ability to AOE beyond L.O.S. and it's been this way forever. :/

> >

> > Nearly all ground targeted skills require los to cast. I cannot immediately think of any that don't.

>

> The complaint is that after casting said ground targeted shade skill, it doesn't hit the foe if you cannot personally draw a line of sight to them. Ground target skills don't require a line of sight to hit a foe (like if they are slightly back from a wall), like shades currently do. So this is very much prejudice against Scourges.

 

This. My hammer rev, my burn guard, and my ele can dumptruck people on top of walls, but my scourge can no longer do anything more than tickle them with staff.

[Justine.6351]

> @"Lahmia.2193" said:

> > @"Justine.6351" said:

> > > @"UnDeadFun.5824" said:

> > > Plain and Simple **Prejudice** against Necromancer. There are other classes that have the ability to AOE beyond L.O.S. and it's been this way forever. :/

> >

> > Nearly all ground targeted skills require los to cast. I cannot immediately think of any that don't.

>

> The complaint is that after casting said ground targeted shade skill, it doesn't hit the foe if you cannot personally draw a line of sight to them. Ground target skills don't require a line of sight to hit a foe (like if they are slightly back from a wall), like shades currently do. So this is very much prejudice against Scourges.

 

Oh ok I get ya.

 

Yeah they changed it wrong. If you have Los with the shade it shouldn't be obstructed but they changed it to player to foe Los which was the easy change, and bad. Some could argue that there should be no Los at all, drop a shade and run around the corner, then bomb a chasing player, but shade skills needed to be trimmed somewhere. Shades just need work.

[Kagusaki.3176]

I just love it when I try to use my aoe shades on an enemy who's on a small gentle slope or behind a tree within 500 range and get the words "obstructed", yet someone can use the pot of oil on an enemy that's on the wall or bridge within range and kill them. That made my scourge cry :(

[LordEnki.9283]

It's hard to be constructive given the nature of how long it took us to find out about a HUGE undocumented change. I understand things fall through the cracks on occasion, but this was kind of a big deal. That's aside from the issues with the change to begin with. I've tried to not buy into the "Anet hates Necros" thing, but it's getting harder to stay objective when this sort of blind blanket fix is slapped over Necro only, undocumented, and supplied with a "maybe we'll look into how to fix it later, but don't get your hopes up" kind of response.

[Lanthun.7251]

> @"Kagusaki.3176" said:

> I just love it when I try to use my aoe shades on an enemy who's on a small gentle slope or behind a tree within 500 range and get the words "obstructed", yet someone can use the pot of oil on an enemy that's on the wall or bridge within range and kill them. That made my scourge cry :(

 

Experienced this so hard while doing fractals; it's disappointing when I can use other AoEs and they actually do something versus my shades. Hopefully something gets done about it... _keyword hopefully_.

[Avigrus.2871]

Another bug that's just become a feature.

 

Can confirm that this is terrible in WvW.... can't even hit siege.