Post-GWFC Skill Balance: What do you think ArenaNet will change?

delete IWAY skill.

Just make the eles do their job with pride.

I'm a primary ranger, and have no problem with ANet changing Expertise to affect ONLY Ranger skills. After all, Expertise *is* a profession-specific attribute.

Do you even actually play the game? ALL primary attributes except DF "pays out" for non primary skills either directly (ie Expertise, Strength) or indirectly (ie in the form of more energy (Soul Reaping, Energy Storage)

Making Expertise work only for ranger skills is a really big unnecessary brainless nerf just for what? Because you think Touch Rangers and Thumpers are hard? What the hell?

Uhh, Fast Casting is a pro-specific attribute yet it still affects all spells. Critical hits is one too yet it affects any melee/ranged weapon s. Etc etc. What is your point?

I'd say make Expertise trigger of attack skills from melee-based characters (being Ranger, Warrior and Sin now, next adding Dervish and Paragon).
"Fixes" Touch Ranger, keeps Thumper (which isn't a problem and nerfed already with Pet DP) and keeps other builds like th R/A and R/P.
It also makes sense since the other primaries tend to affect either melee or casters (DF, SR, ES, FC favor casters, Strength, Crit Strikes and Expertise only affect Melee, Spawning being an oddball since it affects Spirits, Nature Rituals, pets and Minions).
Then everyone is happy but the touchers...

I'd like a proffesion wide elite skill called the 'Win Button'
on all pvp events when you get into battle its the first person to activate the skill wins! Its not a spell so mesmers dont get the edge with fast casting and costs no energy to keep it fair. That would show all those touchers

Better yet, they deal lifestealing damage to themselves.

This is horribly IMBA IMHO - it'd be better if it there were an anti-lame button that just removed ritualists from the game, forever.

I am kind of getting tired of all the touch ranger and still Iway talk.They won't delete Iway as it effects ppl and it has no effect on pets now.They won't nerf touch rnagers necro skill as it will effect the necro and that goes for Iway not just w/r.

I don't think any Necro uses Vampiric Touch/Bite, really.

I stated over abused not overpowered.
please pay attention.

If you nerf touch rangers for being "over abused" then mending needs to be nerfed to rid ourselves of all the stupid whammos. Add in healing hands with mending too. >.<

That is becuase everyone wants to be an MM even in the low levels.They don't don't touch blood or curses to much except in certian parts of Prophecies all Faction have is MMs becuase of the flesh golems.

Nice job on nitpicking, poindexter. It still doesnt change the fact that youre totally ignorant. I'll say it again, all primary attributes except for DF, can benefit secondary skills. You were wrong and whatever reasons you stated doesnt change the fact that you were wrong.

And actually your reasons now for wanting to nerf Expertise are even worse. Now if you dont actually have anything to dispute what I said, dont post. So maybe you should pay attention to the real points.

That's not true. I love BM, and have always used it on my pve necros. Its just that running into melee range is stupid.
And that MMs are overpowered in PvE...

Touch rangers are just another kind of IWAY.

Definition of abuse:

To use wrongly or improperly; misuse: abuse alcohol; abuse a privilege.
Improper use or handling; misuse: abuse of authority; drug abuse.

In the context of the discussion of Touch Rangers, "over abused" and "overpowered" mean practically the same thing.

Maybe you should be the one to pay attention.

Don't play PvE much? :\ You see all kinds of stuff.

Instead of say agree with Symbol, I'll list some stuff:

Warrior:
Minor Adrenaline Cost changes or Recharges on Skills If anything.

Monk:
The Weekend nerfs will be back before Nightfall, dont know about now.

Ranger:
Debil. Shot like I said, and minor chances to stuff that will go unnoticed.

Necro:
It'd be funny if they touched Tainted Flesh's recharge or Cost...Few minor buffs to useless stuff other than that.

Mesmer:
Wouldn't be surprised if they even further nerfed them

Elementalist:
A few 1-5 dmg buffs on random crappy spells so they can say they are "buffing" it.

Factions Professions:
Nerf both of the actual builds used by the classes (spammer, and AoD ganker) and throw in some minor buffs to spells and skills that were already trash so they can claim a "balanced" buffing and nerfing them. (Example: make some random channeling spell deal 5 more dmg)

Also I want them to Nerf Seeping Wound

Soul barbs? Recurring Insecurity anyone?

RI's usage might be changed slightly. It should be Bumped to the bottom of the Hex Stack when reapplied (thus making it an easy inspired hex target).

Thats about all you can expect in ways of SB/RI nerf, and it gets the job done.

Warrior
- Shield Bash: Nerf. Did you see how WM was using it vs iQ? Horribly imba.
- Griffon's/Leviathan's Sweep: Make them unblockable.

Ranger
- Debilitating Shot: Reduce energy loss to 8 points.
- Charm Animal: Reduce pet damage by 5-10%.
- Ferocious Strike: Reduce energy gain by a point or two.
- All Traps: Fix the bug with their damage to have them deal listed damage, then reduce the listed damage.*
- Broad Head Arrow: Fix the bug keeping this from being affected by the flight time modifiers on Read the Wind and Favorable Winds.

Monk
- Contemplation of Purity: Add a 50% chance of failure with less than 2 Divine Favor. (Might not be added until GWN release.)
- Divine Boon: Increase the recharge to 4 seconds. (Might not be added until GWN release.)
- Gift of Health: Slightly reduce health gain.

Necromancer
- Soul Reaping gives full energy whenever a spirit dies.
- Vampiric Touch/Bite: Increase recharge to 4 seconds.
- Order of Pain/Apostasy: No longer trigger if you have a necromancer enchantment on you.
- Dark Fury: No longer trigger if you have a necromancer enchantment on you.
- Spoil Victory: Change skill to consider the target's health before the attack or spell ends casting when triggering. (I.E. Currently if a monk has Spoil Victory if he casts a heal on a target with less health than him Spoil Victory only triggers if his target still has less health after the heal is applied.) Reduce recharge time.
- Soul Barbs: Trigger only when a new hex is cast. (IOW no Recurring Insecurity reapplication trigger.)

Mesmer
- Stolen Speed: Change the casting speed buff to apply to all spells as opposed to only on spells cast targetting the hexed person. Make the bonuses stackable so having multiple copies of Stolen Speed out is desirable.
- Feedback: Reduce cast time to 1 second.

Elementalist
- Immolate/Rodgorts Invocation/Searing Heat/Teinai's Heat/Smoldering Embers: Increase burning duration by one second.
- Mirror of Ice: Change skill to read "For 60 seconds the next time you are targetted by an enemy spell that spell fails and the caster takes (10...x) damage."
- Energy Boon: Increase energy gained by 50%.

Assassin
- Iron Palm: Reduce energy cost to 5.
- Return: Increase recharge to 20 seconds.

Ritualist
- Tranquil Was Tanasen: Reduce cast time to 1 second.
- Attuned Was Songkai: Increase duration to 60 seconds.
- Draw Spirit: Fix the bug that causes the spirit's effect to not move when the spirit's position move.
- All Ritualist spirits: Decrease range to 2/3rds of what it currently is. Decrease cast time to 4 seconds.
- Union: Increase cast time to 4 seconds.


All spirits: When finished casting a ritual that would replace an already existing ritual the death of the original spirit does not trigger soul reaping.









Most of these changes are just castles in the clouds, though. I would love to see them happen, but I doubt the ever will. (Such as the Ritualist changes. Izzy seems to think Ritualists are balanced.)

If ritual lord gets nerfed to a point i bet you could see much more rangers just making the spirits and use oath shot...

Rits: Need a buff to a significant number of their skills, and Rit Lord needs toning down, as it is, you've got the dullest class ever, it's a VoD machine with 1 build.

Rangers: Something, I don't know what... I don't really care about touchers because they're a complete joke anyway, but some scrubs can't seem to handle them... I think the ridiculous power of expertise was emphasized this ladder though, via thumpers (not scrub touchers)... I'd rather not see a nerf to the hammer skills... so something on the ranger side :\.

Ele: I'm really content with them being the utility roll, but wouldn't mind a buff on some of the fire line.

don't be silly. the 15 pip energy regen feast spike was like a lot imba. It's still extremely effective.

I think Conjure Nightmare should be reduced to 15 energy but the duration should also be reduced to maintain balance. Conjure Phantasm is -5 regen where as Conjure Nightmare is -8 regen so is 25 energy really worth it for another 3 degen?

Eles would benefit from a few casting speed improvements, more in the way of self-healing and damage buffs across the Water and Air lines.

Since the inherent effect of Divine Favour is restricted to monks spells only, I'd like to see a greater health gain from Divine Favour (four or five health points per rank of DF) and extend this to monk skills, not just spells. Also, some energy management wouldn't go a miss.

As for rangers, clarify the expertise description or fix the 'bug' that allows skills that aren't 'attack skills' to be used at a reduced cost. Yes, I'm talking about touchers but I'm not suggesting that they're overpowered in any sense. My point is that these touch skills are neither "traps, preparations or attacks skills" therefore there is a discrepancy somewhere.

Warriors and necromancer are fine the way they are. As for Assassins and Ritualists, I haven't played them enough to asses their needs.

It's not a bug. The ingame description is as follows: "For each rank of Expertise, the energy cost of all your non-spells decreases by 4%."

I think it's pretty straightforward. It never said in the description that the skills have to be traps, preparations, or attack skills. Go look ingame for yourself.

I do not think touchies are hard. However it does limit variety. Thus it does need nerfed. Many Feel the same way both PvE'ers and PvP'ers agree. I shall not flame the way you did, However expertise does make a swiss army knife out of the ranger with better energy managment then most classes.

If you are angry then these changes would effect builds you run. These changes would mean you would have to adapt. Flaming that way show your not willing to do so.

We have had both high ranked players and players of the class state expertise does require a change to ranger skills only due to over exploitation.

Attitude is not appreciated in a forum of public opinion.

You're right but they must have updated it without listing it on the site. This is what it looked like before:

Overabuse is proper description for what is happening with the ranger.
Overpowered does not mean practically the same thing.

Please do not twist my word to suit your need to flame.

This is a game. just a game . not a life. a game.

expertise does allow a slightly larger advantage to secondary abilities. basically if it has the title of skill its half the cost.
having most stance defenses attached to expertise makes this both an attribute energy managment system and source of protection ability.

Its pretty bad when a ranger has better energy managment and implimentation with some of its secondaries then those classes would as primaries.

Now lets stop the flaming and stay on topic here of what we think should be changed.

Unless you want to do something wise like lower your warrior based damage by doing something like using ranger or assassin skills as your primary method of attack, you will realize you are speaking from your ass.

Energy storage is neutral, as it doesnt do anything other than create more space to put exhaustion into. Which doesnt help much since its the exact same wait everyone else has before it goes away.

Soul reaping was just a gimmic to give free energy to power corpse exploitation skills. It wasnt until the ritualist came along to "break" the attribute. Furthermore, to really get the full benefit out of it, you will require running 1 specific build not just inserting a necromancer into any build to try and take advantage of what soul reaping could do. Even with a ritualist, you are looking at roughly equivilant numbers across each necromancer as ether prodigy without any drawback aside from those inherent with the build.

Spawning power is only useful on spirits really and only creates a synergy with the self damaging spirits, that also happen to be ritualist only skills.

I also fail to see where critical strikes is causing rebalancing considerations at all for any other profession's skills, since it is random when it does trigger and the effect is minor and only applies to basic attacks and attack skills. Its not like critical strikes is causing critical blackout durations, or critical trap damage and durations, critical pet attacks, etc.

Then you have the mesmer's fast casting, which is the only place you can have any kind of argument that it makes a real difference. Then again, if you have been paying attention to the trends within pvp, you will notice that mesmers are used in virtually every build, similar to rangers, monks and warriors. Then again, the fast casting does more for the bulk of ele skills and necromancer skills than the majority of the mesmer skills anyway, as the actual effect of it is more noticable on spells with a cast time of 2s or greater due to the consideration of aftercast times.

Its been more common for ANET to nerf the vehicle that drives the builds (ie the source of the energy) than it is to rebalance the entire profession(s) skills to make it fair. So, then you have expertise, which is purely energy management and fast casting which is not. Hamstring the engine where its being used out of place compared to other professions, then re-evaluate.

You're contradicting yourself. You say that touchies limit variety. Yet you want Expertise to only affect Ranger skills. Guess what genius. That would limite variety far more than any lame touchie build. Good job.

They need to buff "I Will Avenge You!"




Just kiddin

Keep in mind this thread is not "what do you want to be changed", it's "what changes do you think will be implemented?"

I honestly think touch rangers will be looked at, somehow, knowing Anet.

Whether or not Im speaking from my ass, it still makes more sense that what you're saying. No one said that warriors bow or dagger attacks will be effective. Thanks for throwing out some blatantly obvious examples.

On the flip side, we can say that a Ranger using a sword or an axe is seriously gimping his damage. So we should say that Expertise is horribly underpowered right? Of course not. Unlike you, we dont make assumptions based on a few builds that obviously dont work.

You've listed only the cons for each of the primary attributes and compared them only to the "overpowered" pros of Expertise. Of course they have drawbacks, even Expertise has one....it doesnt affect spells.

But hey...keep on whining about Expertise okay?

add a second or two to the recharge, or make expertise work 2% on non ranger skills, or... "this skill is not affected by expertise"

was that pun intended? :P


anyways....I'd hate to see DebilShot nerfed....though i can see it coming.

Echo Debilitating with serpent's quickness makes for a better and easier (not to mention less targeted) e-denial.

Make Channeling actually useful.

Hitting a Ranger Boss with a 10 energy spell for 26 damage is idiotic.

Since the original topic was based on speculation and some of you can't seem to grasp the concept of No Flaming/Trolling allowed and staying on topic, I am closing this.