Sand Shards

Anyone else think that this skill may be a little bit overpowered. I was jsut on an RA run and our A/D was able to kill entire teams by himself. Over 400 aoe dmg every 5 secs may be a lil much.

Your thoughts.

I agree, Sand shard seens over powered. I was just up against an A/D with sand shards and he took out our whole team, not even a boon prot can heal fast enough to heal just what the assassin was doing. While i think its an interesting skill, it seems just a little to strong to me.

Someone tell me the build please

I was happily going along in an RA team in TA, when two of these devils dropped us in seconds.

ummm sand shards plus assassin offhands and dual attacks that miss

perhaps D/Me would work... just casting Signet of Midnight to blind you and 1 foe constantly always a miss then

Perhaps they could change it from "whenver one of your attacks fails to hit" to "whenever one of your attacks is 'blocked' or 'evaded'"? Then it could only be used to counter actual enemy defensive abilities. Having it activate when you use an assassin off-hand or dual attack that you know you don't meet the prerequisites for seems rather silly.

At first I was thinking...

A mesmer/monk build? Mesmers have blackout, archane thievery(factions has the same skill in a different name) and some other disabling skills... powerblock?

monks have pacify where they cannot attack unless they get attacked

That might do the trick.. Damn I'm at work I wish I could try it out now

Maybe Mes/Nec or Nec/Mes I might create a pvp nec...
for this build I'm thinking
1. spiteful spirit = damage when you attack/cast spells
2. price of failure = damage when you miss
3. empathy = damage when you attack
4. there's another nec skill that damage their allies when they attack, that would be funy hahaha they'd kill their own men.
5. maybe the stealing skill spell
6. some healing mechanism?(ether feast probably, or some necro blood one i dunno)
res sig.

That sounds better than the mes/monk build hehe...

Damn its not 6 yet! hahah i wanna go home haha

I haven't had any real trouble with the Sand Shards assassins, playing both BL monk and DB/VIM Scythe Warrior. My monk runs away, my warrior cuts them down.

Does it work when it is being evaded or blocked? That might bring a rather successful counter to the use of certain sand shard builds, getting more use out of straight block abilities and stances to evade.

There are 2 WTF was Anet thinking skills I've seen so far, one is D/A obviously, sand shards and then just spam exausting assault (will always miss, recharge instantly, and lay down 4 attacks per second). This is obviously a stupid mistake by Anet and its just like wtf.

Then there is also stunning strike. Its broad head arrow, but impossible to dodge, and with a 5 seconds recharge and no energy cost (with ias). All I can say is wtf.

id prefer when blocked or evaded actually then its balanced to me it seems

this would be great for farming it sounds

Been observing HoH, and saw a few teams running 3-4 D/A's. They're like walking Balthazar's Auras.

The simple thing is:

A) Anet will nerf this thing very quickly. You will not see this after this PVP event is over. Hell, it may get the nerf-stick before it's even done. It's just too cranked. So don't get your panties in a bind. This skill is getting nerfed. Period.

B) It's funny that all the TA builds are running this currently. Everyone is. Literally. It's all you see, it's all you hear about. Tons of giddy kiddies saying "LOL PWN JOIN D/A SPIKE FTW!!1!". What's hilarious about it, is when they're facing the same damn thing. Who can sand shard faster? .... We shall see.

For all your D/A users. Enjoy your exploit. It won't last. And there's no skill involved to this thing. Point & click. Go back to Diablo II with that crap.

Until then, 3x Angelic Protection P's can give you just enough time to slap those weak ass D/A's with plenty of your own damage--and I love watching them burn.

Siphon Speed FTW, I ram monks until they are 0 energy and then they die. If warrior attacks behind my back, he will suffer greatly too and monk is too busy healing himself. Two deaths. Of course there is rare teams which know how to handle with this build but it is too overpowered anyway. Chance to get gladiator point is very high with this build in random arena.

Spiteful spirit works very well against these guys, in my experience.

But yes, Sand Shards is clearly to Nightfall's PvP weekend what Temple Strike was to Factions. It'll get whacked hard by the nerf bat after this weekend....I doubt they'll do a skill update mid-weekend, but we'll see. It's certainly trendy right now.

Tactical question: Does anyone know whether Sand Shards uses random hit locations, or always hits the torso?

i was trying sand shards and illusionary weaponry this morning it didnt work

It's whenver your attacks fail to hit, not whenever they fail to inflict damage. Illusory Weapon strikes still hit for 0 damage--which, incidentally, makes them quite effective against Reversal of Fortune.

Anyway, it seems reasonable to assume that having Sand Shards work with assassin attacks for which you do not meet the prerequisites is a bug.

Playing in RA and TA is pretty much useless right now I find.

I went through 20+ games and not a single one didn't have either a dual-steal toucher and/or a shard exploiter. It makes the game very annoying to play as balance and skill is thrown all out the window. Point and click gentlemen. That's what these kinds of obvious oversights degenerate this game into. Best defense: just run and run and run.

To top it off, these two arenas are notorious for having people who (a) can't seem to follow called targets, (b) don't run from the exploit/retarded characters and (c) say "stfu" when someone points out something in the hopes of helping the team to pull a victory, and not a poor defeat where everyone drops in seconds and it looks pathetic.

Bleh.

Fix this bull-excrement A.net. Get off your fat paid asses.

I demand the R in RA be changed from Random to Retard.Seriously.

As for Shard Storm,don't worry!It'll be fixed after the pvp preveiw and you won't be affected by it when the game comes out 3 or 4 months later!

YAY!

they should change it to evade or something or increase recharge time so it can be shatterd