EoE Nerfed

I guess this is a little off topic, but are they going to nerf more skills now?

Yes, there will always be "skill balancing" especially as more skills and combinations are added, and other exploits/overused builds come along.

I think a lot of PvE people aren't annoyed at the EoE nerf itself, but more that it seems apparent once again PvE players get affected by something which for the most part they've not complained about. I personally hardly ever use it, and agree that some kind of fix was needed as it sounds like it's been nastily abused in PvP, but it's a perfectly valid stance to take to wonder why the other side of the coin has to take a hit too - when typically there have been no PvE complaint threads about it. Alpha testers, well, they've missed an awful lot of bugs/design flaws etc as it is and are only a tiny minority of players who probably represent less than the forum goers do (who in turn don't represent the entire population anyway but that's a different topic)

As for those guys who seem to have nothing better to do than post useless junk like "this thread is annoying/you guys just like to whine" take your own solution and don't read/post in them Go make threads about stuff you like etc and what you think is ok with the game, nothing stopping you from doing that. You know who you are heh

That is not true, they solved in the worst possible way. That AB mission was broken due to it's layout. Fixing it by nerfing a skill is the wrong way.

I fear that updates to GW are going to become more and more chaotic, breaking one thing to fix another. Apparantly ANet can not handle/predict the balance-consequences of some of their ideas. That is troublesome.

Anyway, I know what to answer next time a "most useless skill" thread pops up. I just hope there'll be enough skills left to do something usefull.

EoE never did that, you either have no clue at all or you are deliberately misrepresenting facts. EoE doesn't kill, it does ~40 damage, one death by itself isn't going to kill.

They didnt break anything at all, They just make EoE bomb harder to execute, people are still able to drop a EoE bomb anyway, instead of focus fire, they need to spread damage.

Instead of Bombing Urgoz, peopel just need to degen Ugorz down to 90%

The skill is still viable, they didnt fix the griefing in AB tho. and AB wasnt broken due to the layout, the layout is fine.

Off course PvEer get the nerf for spmething they didnt complain, why would you complain for a skill that help you to speed up the Elite farming? Why would you complain about something that HELP you in farming?

The skill was fine, but that mission was broken. The fixed the mission by breaking the skill.

Everyone needs to swallow the hard truth that PvP is king when it comes to skill balance and this game was designed with PvP as its backbone. Read the title of the game; Guild Wars. Nobody really cares how you kill goblins or how many you kill or how fast.

Perhaps if all PvE ppl want is to kill everything they see on the screen all at once, Anet can make you Super Star Sword! Yeah! You hit one enemy and all 30 of them die! Cool! That will keep you happy then right? What? That sounds stupid? Perhaps thats what EoE previously was. That is not what this game is about, like it or not.

And if you think Anet should just change aspects of the skill for PvP it would be a logistical nightmare trying to make skills embed properly into the balance for different modes. For Example:
Edge of Extinction: Nature Spirit: Does 52 dmg to goblins and bad monsters and kills them all so you can farm, but in Alliance Battles and Fort Aspenwood it doesnt get those npc guys. Reqs Beast Mastery.

Face it, Guild Wars is PvP-intrinsic and always will be, even though the PvP population is smaller, they play this game for a fun, balanced competition of skill. Anet isnt going to say this but its obvious and has been this way since the beginning, so griefing is pretty much useless.

Although Anet was nice enough to throw in a few new items skins to make it up to the PvE guys, fair trade?

^ agreed, at least someone have a balanced view of how it really is.

It was a moderate analogy, with a few flaws. I wasn't talking about EoE, but extinction (yes, there is a real world term called that), and how additional deaths bring about extinction when a race is already weak, not when it's at a prime.

Skill certainly doesn't seem broken anyway... eoe bomb is gone, what a loss that will be

After playing some tombs post-eoe nerf, I gotta say it's awesome. Anet finally put IWAY where it belongs: in a trashcan. Just like pre-apostasy.

Umm, the title "Guild Wars" refers to the lore of the game, not the current action. The Proph manual and history section even refers to the time when guilds were at war as being one of the worst and least civil times during the history.
The franchise also started off as a role playing game then later added PvP as something for players to piddle in after the story was complete. - Jeff Strain, Gamming Steve interview.
O'Brien in a CGW interview also admits to "now knowing" that many people prefer to stick with the PvE aspects of the game. Unfortunatly, the timing on learning this was just before Factions came out.
So Guild Wars PvP is not "king", it's the spoiled child** and the "sport" of the game, so obviously it will get the press.
As said above, it's less about EoE actually being nerfed, it's about once again a skill rendered useless or forced into a cookie cutter situation* for it to be usefull due to "balance". There is nothing "balanced" about the "balancing" Anet does. Anet breaks skills in PvE so the players playing tag (PvP) can continue to do so and their e-sport can stay in the lime light.

* A necro with minions and death nova or SS necro can take ranger second if they wanted to use EoE. Unfortunatly EoE as a ranger specific skill is now useless as it sits on the Beastmaster line and anyone playing a beastmaster knows, to use the line effectively, almost all your skills must be set to protecting and using the pet as your weapon. Therefore, there is no room for EoE... unless you take a gimick cookie cutter build specific for farming.

** There are hundreds of requests and enhancements to the core game PvEers have been requesting for as long as the game has been out. Auction house, stylist, henchmen controls, pet controls, role playing districts, etc. None of these things have been put in or added, yet everytime something effects PvP negatively we see a quick action. This weekend event for example; Anet knew the EoE bombers would have a field day wiping the map and getting double faction. So, it was changed.

PvE got new items skins... extent finger and swirl. Get a great new skin and want to sell it? Good luck doing so through the spam.

Finally, I personally used EoE while out with henchmen and would use it to soften the massive numbers of foes out there. It would not insta kill all the foes on the map, but it would cause damage to them and after killing about four things, the ones left were left easier to kill... hence, EoE did it's job.

Rember the orginal response

The ab was the "straw that broke the camels back" but they id'd it as issues elsewhere in the game with this skill, just not high enough priorty untill there about to go to a ab special event and found that it was being used as an exploit. "EoE is a problem everywhere it's used: Tombs, AB, PvE [and] Farming"

And for the recorded - Interview with Jeff Spain - Gw started with PVE.. and PVP was added during development. And this fact doesn't matter at all because the game is BOTH and anet supports both. They did admit about the pve stuff in factions and Gaile has mentioned that Nightfall has a lot of Pve focus (with new pvp stuff as well).

I would go as far to say since the ID'd the issue, that a change was proable planned for a future skill balance but ab + event made them do it early dut to the exploit that was happening.

In an update two days before a major event ... it is hard to believe that this update had nothing to do with the event ...

Woho, that is so below the belt. And it would apply to all rituals, including such rituals as Union and Shelter. Could make it stick for traps also, and enchantments.


I don't have a problem with EoE myself - I've never really used it - I do have a problem with how ANet appears to be breaking one thing to fix a problem somewhere else.

If you believe that my opinion implies I am someone who likes to bring grief to other people, you end up in my ignore list. Goodbye troll.

You have no clue about what all PvE players want, they are as diverse as the PvP people. But, pff, wait, I am not going to waste time on trying to explain this to you.

tell that to JEFF STRAIN who contridicts your idiotic garbage directly in a recent interview.

read it and learn the awful (to you ) truth.

Sounds like smart tactics to me, How come Anerf hasen't changed that before,( was it the Dev's team that was doing it) Why not bring Rit that can kill the EoE spirit with one spell?

Rit's a campaign class tied to factions, as you get more chapters, you will not be able to depend on getting a specific class in a party vs the core jobs which you will always find.

You can allways try to find a secondary Rit

The really upsetting in there is that they claim they started GW as a role-playing game. There is no noticable role-playing in GW and I always thought that was by design.

It's not that there weren't ways to counter it that it got nerfed, it was just the amount everybody whined about it because they didn't know how to counter it.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

This is absolutely correct.

You should probly do search through the forums and see other builds people are complaining about.

In the next balance update I expect thumpers and touchers to be nerfed. They can nerf both without destroying any skills. All they need to do is lower the expertise for 2nd class skills. Instead of a 3% per attribut maybe 1.5-2%. If they do that they can kill both thumpers and touchers without changing any skills.

Anything that is overused or people complain about they will change.

1. 'Anet just cares about money, that is why they're always catering those annoying PvP-ers' or 'face it: Anet will always shaft PvE as soon as the PvP-ers start whining'

I don't wish to make this into another PvE vs PvP thread. It's a silly topic. Anet's actions have always supported the claim that they support equally. Face it: GWguru and GWonline are mainly PvE forums. Though a lot of people here might be of the opinion that Anet always tends to the need off the PvP-ers you will get the exactly reverse idea when you go visit a PvP forum (aka Guild-hall.net). Yes, believe it or not but most PvP-ers also consider themselves ignored by Anet.
I'm not gonna give the entire list of complains but as an example: Alot of PvPers are annoyed they are forced to diss out 50 euros for an expansion in which the only PvP content is a couple new skills and two new PvP modes that are too random for actual serious play to be possible. If you compare the content PvE got with factions (Cantha) with the content PvP got (AB and Aspenwood (which you weren't even able to play with a PvP character up until two days ago) you should at least be carefull to state that Anet gives PvPers everything they want.

In the end you simply have to face that Anet has catered to both a bit and that the simple fact that you feel ignored is due to them being unable to cater to all needs, not due to some preference they have. If you're gonna say that Anet favors one above the other then you should do your research first: give us a list of demands of the PvE-ers, a list of demands of the PvP-ers and then compare what they have gotten. Since most people here have absolutely no idea what most PvP-ers want your views are biased.


2. @tomcruisejr, twicky and others, reasoning away the EoE problem in HoH.

I'm sorry but you have no clue. I gave you a situation, you fail to adress it. Stating to simply nuke the spirit is failing to see the point. For your ease let me summarize it again:

2.1 You cannot put a guy on the ranger dropping the EoE. Why? Because you need all your resources elsewhere: either interupting/stopping interupts or trying to hold out against two teams.

2.2 You cannot kill the spirit. Why? Because you won't be in range of it. By the time you get in range the bomb has exploded. Heck, even if you would get magically past all the defensive traps in time you won't be able to kill it in time unless you can one-shot it.

2.3 You can't Heal party it. Why? Because any decent EoE bomb will kill everything in its range in less then 2 seconds. Heck, I've known EoE bombs to kill everything even with two people spamming heal parties and getting three of them off.
Once again you seem to fail to realize that in most cases there will be 22 to 23 people dying there. A full edge bomb in an HoH situation will hit for 1000+ damage. Yes, if you can magically pull off 8 Heal parties during the edgebomb you'll be able to barely survive. Then again, if you can pull off 8 heal parties durnig one edge bomb you're just facing the most horrible bomb the world has ever seen. (oh and yes, we ARE talking about Iway bombing).

2.4 The suggestion to kite outside of it's range when we're talking about altar situations is laughable.

2.5 During all of this I have never suggested any of you is unskilled. Leave the insulting comments aside and try and comprehend the situation for a change.

To summarize: your counter would have to be something that is able to stop the shutdown the effect of the spirit in a timeframe off less then 3 seconds without you being forced to be in range.

Neither of you seems to have faced a decent bomb in an HA holding situation.

Oh, and Twicky, don't be silly. If you hold halls for 6 hours two days in a row you would have at least earned 1720 fama points and you'd be rank 7 in two days. Not rank 3. Oh and btw: I searched for 'putrid build'. Nothing came up... The only thing I can think of are builds that used the pre-nerfed putrid from one year ago.


3. 'Why must this nerf also affect PvE, we have done nothing wrong!!'

The nerf affects PvE due to a number of reasons but most important: because EoE was overpowered in PvE as well. Noone in it's right mind can ignore the strength of EoE in PvE. If you can kill off every enemy in radar range with one skill slot then a skill is seriously overpowered.

I know alot off PvE-ers have trouble with the concept of balancing in PvE but it is one of the things that keep GW healthy. It's time to face the truth: EoE was ridiculously overpowered in PvE. Perhaps even more so then minion masters or AoE nukers used to be.


4. 'They killed a skill to a fix a mission'

No they did not. They didn't kill a skill. They fixed it so it is still a viable option but not ridiculously overpowered. Every suggested 'fix' to the griefing problem has severe consequences which everyone here seems to forget:

- Changing NPC race -> would kill the use of EoE more then this change. At least now EoE is still an option that can add some more strategic depth into the game without causing harsh unbalances.

- Taking action to griefers -> how would you recognise a griefer or an afker? and what would your punishment be? Once the system is known (and that won't take long) it wouldn't be too hard to grief/afk in a more complicated way. The only thing 'taking action' does is creating a snowball effect in which you constantly have to fight the griefing with new measures and the griefers constantly re-invent themselves with new forms of griefing. This ends up causing normal players harm while leaving the griefers largely unaffected.

An example: it has been suggested that to stop botting all NPC merchants should just ask an easy random question before allowing access to the trade screen. It is thought this would solve the problem since obviously bots won't be able to reply. For human players it would just be a minor annoyance.

The reason this won't work is simple: all a botter has to do is add some lines of codes that will allow their bots to make random replies and then check if it can sell stuff. No matter what your questions are or how many replyes are possible the bot will end up being able to sell his stuff. The problem would still exist and the only consequence it would have is that every normal player is faced with an unnecessary question every time.

No we still run the putrid build to this day. Many people know the build. I don't know if its on this forum or not. Your fame numbers are exagerating. Once we started holding halls its 10 minutes between battles. Match could go anywhere from 5-15 minutes somtimes. You are also ommitting when no opponents were available and the counter resets.

As for the eoe situation at on the Halls map (not HA in general) We pulled the same trick that IWAY does. Let the eoe nuke everyone. Ghost is unaffected by it. We have 1 Heal party monk sitting outside of eoe range. After the nuke he heals the ghost. EoE used to be a problem when it chained outside its area. Now its a breeze.

You have to kill 1 of the teams very quickly. Between wells, putrid and some other aoe dmg this isn't very hard when they come in on the stairs. Btw I was with Banofee when we where holding.

Leechers/afkers are going to be a problem. You really can't do anything about them. As for the EoE greifers. That cold hard evidence that it happens. Its not hard to spot a team that is doing that. The action should have been punished or make it where EoE will not work before the match starts. Hell they fixed it so that EoE will not kill after a match ends so you could pick up your items in HA. They have the ability to make it happen right now but they didn't.

1) You can put a guy on the ranger dropping the EoE
2) You can kill the spirit.
3) You can Heal party it.

But you can't because you dont wanna do it. there's nothing in game that prevents you to do those three.

It's not the problem of game design. It's your problem.

And what? Let them happily cap the altar while you're busy taking ONE CHARACTER out of your build to take on an entire IWAY team?
Sure, run 50 miles into the middle of nowhere straight into a densely trapped area and hope you can gank it before you get owned by their entire team while the other team just goes and caps the altar? Oh, and even if you do gank it, oath shot, OH LOOK, there it is again, FARTHER this time.

The whole point of EoE is that it's a chain reaction that kills everything within SECONDS, Heal party is a TWO SECOND cast time spell.

Sure there are.
1, the other team trying to cap the altar.
2. the fact that the spirit is placed miles away from the rest of your team.
3. the fact that it takes far less skill to trigger an EoE bomb successfully than countering it successfully.
No, it's a problem in the game design and players abusing that problem which cause for one dimensional strategies with little depth.

if you need your 8 man team to shutdown 1 oathshotter with EoE, you shouldnt be in HA.

watch IWAY teams in HoH and look where they summon the EoE. dont exagerrate please.

if an IWAY team wants to produce a total EoE bomb, their necros will stop heal partying.

No. Please read my statement over again. I'm saying every character you split off the deal with the spirit spammer is one character nowhere near the altar dealing with capping.

HA is always going to have problems with spirits. Its a confrontational map with no where to run. Unless you know how to battle spirits you might as well not set foot in HA.

The spirits are not to blame here. They are being used in a situation that takes advantage of their great power. If you want to blame some one blame yourself for not bringing something to take care of the spirit through you build or tactics. 1 Unatural sig will kill any ranger spirit in 3-4 hits from a ranged distance. You will always run into spirits every single match in HA so it will never be a wasted slot.

EoE is still usefull but now will not do the job it was intended to do. It has the word extinction in its name for a reason. Now you are going to have chance situations where there was some one ^90% and doesn't get touched while everyone else got bombed.

well if you dont do that, you deserve to be EoE bombed then.

Well, I can flip that around and tell you that if you can't kill Urgoz without resorting to EoE bombing then you don't deserve to play PvE. These superficial insults gets us nowhere in this discussion.

It takes far less skill to trigger an EoE bomb than it is to counter it. That's why I think the skill is unbalanced. Now, you can say I have no skill or that I'm not skilled enough to counter EoE all day long, but will that get us anywhere? No.

Oh your matches in Hall of Heroes stretch to 15 minutes? 10 minute waits between battles? Oh sorry, yea I guess you could hold 6 straight hours then, spamming putrid with its 5 seconds recharge. Sorry, I guess I got confused.

Putrid is just 1 skill out of 64. Learn to use some common sense. Not my fault the other teams can't kill each other quickly.

15 minutes is a rare case but its not to say that it doesn't happen. Notice I said 5-15 minutes. You conveintly left out the 5 to 15 minute range to further you bias opinion.

Don't turn this page into a flame war. If you want to flame take it elsewhere. Next time I'll alert a mod.

I like how you assume that 100% of the teams in HoH were using EoE. That's the way it seems.

And uh, if you send something off to take care of the spirit spammer, that makes 7v7 does it not? Not sure how even numbers would equal a disadvantage.

Chill out dude, it's just a message board. It's people like you that get threads closed reporting to mods.

BTW, it's not like you weren't replying to everything he said as well

I'm not. When did I assume that? I apologize if I gave you that impression, it wasn't my intent.

That spirit spammer is sitting far away from the alter. From there, he can still lay his spirits and set off the bomb. Whereas the person you're sending off to park on him will not.

Urgoz and pvp are apple and orange. in PvP, you wont be facing level 25+ players doing 100+ dmg savage shots. PvE is for farming, killing monsters, getting loots, relaxing, having a good time. Who cares if EoE makes farming easier? should be thankful right? and 55 monks and SS necros are still here anyways.

well hopefully you get the point.

and pardon my "insulting" tone. reality checks tend to sound insulting .

I'm sure they already have an eye on your thread.

There is no point debating anything with you when you fail to see anything incorrect about what you have posted and how rediculous it is. I will let someone else inform you about your "5-15 minute" Hall of Heroes matches.

Anyways, you will have to learn to live with the new EoE and every other nerf that comes due to PvP.

Peace

I would think mark of protection would be the only way to survive an eoe bomb, not heal party. Killing the spirit is fine, but it comes out again with a quick oath shot, so you have to keep killing it the entire time.

Either way, I'm glad they adjusted it. Now you at least have to participate somewhat in bringing their health down 10% for them to be affected.

Attempt number 3.

1. My fame numbers only assume 5 wins per hour. Which is perfectly possible assuming you always get a group and never a second timer. That is nowhere near an exageration. In fact, I didn't even include a single win before HoH. If you only got to rank 3 after two times 6 hours holding you would average 1 match every 30 minutes. I sincerely doubt that was the case... Heck, even if the timer resetted a couple of times you would've been at least rank 5 or 6 after that long a period of holding. Anyway, it's completely irrelevant to the discussion. If you held halls for 6 hours for two days in a row then more power to you.

2. If you can afford to keep one monk out of the actual battle to just Heal Party then the teams you're facing are simply crap or you're runnign a very sick holding build. How you're holding build also manages to kill off an enemy team at the stairs before you're being a**-raped by the second team dazzles me.
Since you're strategy largely depends on another team being willing to clutter into your wards and AoE damage I highly doubt you're actually facing decent teams...

3. Specially for TomcruiseJr:

- If you want to interrupt an enemy EoE you lose one interrupter to interrupt enemy ghostlies/damage. You don't put 8 guys on him... Losing just one will hurt your team more then enough...
- Killing the EoE even if you're there when it drops will take at least 2 seconds. That is, if you have a warrior there that can freely frenzy with fully charged adrenaline and get criticals on both hits. Unnatural signet is horrible at killing spirits. More realistically it will take you at least an average of 5 seconds to get a spirit down. If the bomb doesn't hit in that 5 seconds you're just facing a crappy bomb.
- Even if you hit two heal parties during the bomb you will die. Two heal parties means you have at least two guys with heal party (which most builds don't even have). As I said to counter a full bomb with heal party in HoH you would need at least 4 to 6 casts. Unless you're entire team is packing it Heal party will only save you from an edgebomb when you're in an 8v8 situation. Not if you're in HoH.

No, we're not unwilling to do what it takes to win. It's just that you can't win when it's executed well enough. (which for completeness sake has only happened to me about 3 times maximum in about 10 months of playing HA).

Once again, we're not talking about some random Iways here. We're talking about the top Iway teams that have excellent communication.

- Spirits are a problem and trust me, every build I run has at least one very direct counter them. The problem is not not taking that counter. The problem is not being able to use that counter because that counter is needed elsewhere.

[Edit] Twicky: HoH matches are timed. They used to last 10 minutes and last 4 minutes nowadays. There can never be a 15 minute HoH match... I hope you realise it's silly to claim yourself knowledgeable when you don't seem to know this basic fact.

[Edit2] Tomcruisjr: if you split someone off you're not in a 7v7 situation. You're facing two teams so it's more like a 7vs15. There are a lot of situations where you simply cannot afford to split someone off, please stop pretending that's a possible strategy.

I may respond to his post but I do not take anything he said out of context. I pointed out valid counters that are used to this day. Teams know they are going to deal with spirits when they go in HA.

Mods won't close a post from 1 flamer. Once it starts and war with many people then its closed.

Other people are saying the exact same thing I am but he singles out my comments and twist them.

As for dealing with spirits its all in your build. If you do not prepare for them then you are going to have problems. Is that because the spirits are imbalanced? No its not. Its because your team did not prepare for the environment you are entering.

Might as well give up Tortoise, tomcruisejr is from MATH or used to be when they were primarily Iway so he is probably just bitter that one of their strategies is not as easy to pull off. Twicky thinks Hall of Heroes matches can last 15 minutes. There is obviously no reasoning here, just griefing. No point in making this thread any longer.

i dont care if they nerf any skill in game. it's just nerfs benefit unskilled scrubs who dont even try think or do the simple counters.

and thats not griefing.

change has been done. have to live with it.

you want your healparty's to prevent EoE bomb from happening. Not as a direct counter to an EoE bomb.