A skill-by-skill listing of Assassin skills that still need fixing

I'm sorry but all this "Shadow Refuge is fine!" talk sounds like fat and lazy guildies who have no clue of self-survival since it is their Monk buddies who are the ones keeping them alive all round.

... or perhaps over-the-top generalizations are ridiculous? Just debate the concepts and drop the insults; no need to force an opinion down people's throats just because they may disagree with you.

You doubled posted.

It's not a generalization or insult, I gave a specific reason why it would be overpowered. Whereas you haven't given a good reason why it should be the best self-heal in the game.

They need to make some better shadow step skills. How about.

Shadow Run

5e 1c 15r

You teleport to target foe.


When I made an assassin, I wanted to teleport, not teleport once every 45 seconds.

Double post deleted, and yes you did insult the "Random Arena ragers" who should be playing Dervish instead of Assassin, to use your terms. It wasn't necessary to say that to get your point across.

"Best" is a relative term, and each class has separate defensive needs. My suggestion addresses an issue that many, many people agree on - that an Assassin's self-healing ability sucks. This opinion takes in account more than just the raw data of how much HP per second a skill gives. It also factors in the fact that an Assassin is on the dangerous front lines fighting with armor barely 12% tougher than a caster's armor.

A Mesmer's Ether Feast isn't amazing, but it is most often cast from the backline where ideally he isn't open to as much of a pounding as those on the front lines. He also has great skills like Hex Breaker and Distortion to help prevent damage to begin with. The option to Distort+Ether Feast from full spell range is very effective when compared to trying to survive with SR and, say, Shroud of Distress on the front line. If targeted, the Mesmer is in the better defensive situation to heal while not taking on a lot more damage in the process.

A Ranger has better armor because of the extra anti-elemental AL, and they are also on the backlines so the long "cast" time of Troll isn't as big of an issue as the frontline Assassin being forced to attack to optimize a heal. A hurt Ranger can put up an evade, kite and Troll, but a hurt Assassin must keep swinging while they are dying? It's not even close.

Warriors have a penalty for Heal Sig, but their high armor rating really makes up for the fact that they are on the front lines in many cases. No one argues much against their survivability, but an Assassin doesn't even need to be this resilient. Just better than they are now.

Shadow Refuge with +6 regen instead of +4 along with an improved .25 cast is better, but not overpowered. They would still have to keep swinging to get the bonus heal, so they remain in a dangerous situation.

Yes, I know you can get a staff or bow to activate the bonus heal from a distance as you kite, but that doesn't make up for what is a bad heal skill. And of course they excel at maneuverability on the battlefield, which I guess Arena.net wants to emphasize as the Assassin's primary defense, but that still doesn't mean that an Assassin can't have competent healing.

A .25 cast instead of 1s helps deal with the fact that they are supposed to battle in close as they heal (and make use of Nightstalker's armor). Adding two extra seconds of regen isn't a major buff by any means, but it is nice all the same. Together any Assassin player can battle just a bit longer than they can now, but they are still more vulnerable on the front lines than the tough Warriors or heal-happy Dervishes.

BTW, Feigned Neutrality is one of my favorite new defensive skills in Nightfall. 80AL and +7 regen (kiting only) for 14s or so is just awesome.... that's how a good defensive skill is supposed to work IMHO. Shadow Refuge with its attack requirement for the bonus should be a bit more worthy of being brought for self healing.

It's not an insult, it's just a reflection on people who don't have the experience. We were all there at one point.

But they shouldn't be in the front lines for very long. That's why they have all these great movement abilities...they can attack until taking too much damage and then escape. If the other defensive skills for Assassins were made useful you could combine one of them with Shadow Refuge if you so desired.

But, once again, the Mesmer can not teleport in and out of the battle. That's why he gets Distortion. Trying to compare someone's survivability on the front line vs. someone's survivability on the back line is a flawed argument to begin with.

I think your problem is you need to realize that Assassin's are not front-line fighters in the same manner as Warriors. They CAN be if you are running Air of Enchant smiting or some other kind of defenses that have good synergy with Assassins but overall that's not the Assassin's role. Your last two lines are just crazy...why would an Assassin be swinging if he is dying? He would teleport away or use Dash/Dark Escape to kite.

It truly is overpowered, though. That's 112 points of healing with a potential bonus and it can't even really be interrupted....at 8 in Shadow Refuge!! Far better than anything else in the game.

It certainly does mean they can't have competent healing. That's the entire idea of BALANCE. You can't have a class that does amazing damage, has lots of options for movement and shutting down the opponent, and still manages to find themselves with the best self heal in the game on top of it all.

You conveniently forgot to mention that Feigned also has a 25 second recharge. If Shadow Refuge is to be given any more than a tiny buff the recharge needs to be increased as well.

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It's silly that we are sitting here arguing about Shadow Refuge. There are so many other skills that actually fit with what the Assassin is supposed to do that need to be improved upon.

Is this aimed at anyone in particular? It does come accross as being presumptuous, even if that is not its intent. We've all had 5 months to evaluate the assassin class, and the majority agree that assassins still lack the flexibily all other classes seem to enjoy.

Most assassin shadow-stepping skills have incredibly long cooldown times, thereby requiring multiple shadow step skills to be loaded to get regular use out of them. Combine this with the extended attack chain dependencies of offhands and dual attacks, and you quickly run out of skill slots. The assassin would be balanced if the skill slot limit were more than 8, but we all know that that will never happen.

I agree here, but mesmers don't have the survival issues that assassins have since they are ranged attackers. They don't usually have to contend with agro and focus fire. The assassin's close range combat design does require improved healing support, but this is not available in the current assassin skill set, while other classes don't have this penalty.

Monks, Rangers, Warriors, Necro's, Mesmers, Ritualists, and Elementalist can all solo UW for a reason. Assassins seem to be the exception. Does anyone else see an imbalance in class utility here?

GW has always been generous to the core classes about utility. All of them can serve multiple purposes depending on the selected skills. Assassins can do only one thing well, and that's deliver high damage in melee. The problem is that they don't have well designed utility and support skills. This is why I agreed that many of their skills like Dark Apostasy, Critical Eye, and probably even SR should not be strippable enchantments.

SR is routinely stripped out or interrupted by the mesmer mobs my assassin engages. It is far from the reliability of Healing Signet.

Warriors, Rangers, Monks, Necro's, and just about all of the other classes enjoy the above in PvE. SR is not even close to being a reliable self-heal. It does need revamping.


I agree, but SR should not be overlooked and ignored.

The assassin class will enjoy a nice boost once Nightfall goes live, assuming no more nerfs in between now and the final release date.

It's even easier to disrupt Healing Signet; the activation time is twice is long. Not to mention you are taking double damage while using it. Warriors quite often end up healing themselves for almost nothing (or losing health) because of extra damage they took while using the skill.

It's good to hear that you agree about the Critical Strikes enchantments though.

You'd be surprised Most interrupts usually target only spells, not signets. There are a few notable exceptions like cry of frustration and distracting shot, but the mobs that actually carry these aren't too common. Even if the Healing Sig is interrupted, its fast recycle time lets it get spammed before the enemy's used interrupt is available again. Also add dolyak signet which adds +40 armor at L15 strength, and Heal Sig's penalty is completely negated. My warrior used to routinely Heal-Sig in Maelstroms while farming IDS's without getting interrupted. Also add the zero-energy factor, and it's easy to see why heal sig thoroughly outclasses Shadow Refuge for raw power-healing.

Assassins can't use Heal-Sig because their armor drops into the 30's range when employing it. Warriors, on the other hand, have the armor levels to support healing signet without falling below 60AL threat range.

I would also welcome SR being turned into a skill as opposed to a strippable enchantment.

EDIT: Warriors have the superior +AL tanking skills to support Healing Signet. However, the assassin doesn't have the superior movement skills or ranged attacks to support Shadow Refuge, especially given that SR requires combat for the conditional heal when the assassin should be retreating to heal. Is SR self-defeating or what???

As I always say, ignorance isn't valid, and not knowing isn't justification, and feeling insulted for being corrected because your ignorant is just adds immaturity to the equasion.

Zuran, I would just ignore the writer after the 3rd invalid remark, some people claim flaws or disapprove just because they don't know any better, and some are just to lazy to look into it enough to make a concrete response on the situation. They just get more and more offended the more you correct them, they woln't learn.

With Shadows refuge, you have a shorter casting time than Healing Signet or Troll Urgent. You have nearly the same healing as Healing Signet, but unlike these, Shadow Refuge only lasts half it's recast, disabling constant reuse. With a Running Trigger instead of a Attacking Trigger, it is much easier to fulfill the Trigger. Without a Trigger, the healing should be nerfed. If you do not have an enemy to attack, or you need to do more than heal yourself to survive (retreating), than the trigger is easier to meet, and if you chasing a target, you can just keep running for the last second to get the healing instead of landing an attack. If your attacking, a well timed side step will still yeild the healing, and you only lose about one hit.

Best solution, leave SR the way it is, and make a new healing skill which offers 1-8 health regeneration for 6 seconds, and heals for 10-55 health if you are running when it finishes. 1 second cast, 8 second recast. The thing about altering skills is some people are going to like it the way it is. So making an alternative will avoid any disapprovals wile providing a better option.

On other notes, if they make a teleporting skill which doesn't have any other effects, it should be a 10 second recast. My suggestion is an elite which allows you to teleport to any enemy or ally. 5 energy, 1/4 cast, 10 recast.

Deaths Charge and Dark Prison, as I always say, 20 second recast. I used to say 15, but 20 is good enough, it matches AoD. And add "lose all adrenaline" to all shadowsteps.

Also another good Shadowstep idea would be, something like,
10 energy, 1/2 cast, 20 recast
Teleport to target enemy and gain an enchantment which reduces all damage to no more than 10% of your maximum health for 1-9 seconds.

That would be a great advance + defense skill which allows you to move in and put down combos with some protection, and than escape. Perhaps if the enchantment lasted longer, it could be an elite, basicly combining advancing teleport with Protective Spirit.

Why are you even talking about mobs? This game needs to be balanced on PvP, not PvE. You also forgot about Savage Shot, which every single bow Ranger uses.

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Bahamut...I could see a 20 second recharge as well for Deaths Charge/Dark Prison. AoD would then drop back down to 15 seconds, as would the forthcoming Shadow Prison. Shadowsteps shouldn't remove all Adrenaline but I do think they should disable Adrenaline skills for a couple seconds (the skills would simply get a little "X" on them in the same manner as if the person had switched to a different weapon, like a bow, that didn't allow the skill). That way Shadowsteps are still useful for Warriors but with less of a surprise factor than an Assassin can deliver.

Why shouldn't the game be balanced for both? It's not a good idea to ignore 50% of the player base in favor of the other 50%, when a reasonable compromise can be met.

The assassin is generally fine for most pvp game play. It's the PvE portion where assassin players experience the most class hate due to their generally high healing support requirements.

I do agree with BahamutKaiser that another SR alternative will probably be needed to satisfy all parties, preferably as a skill based heal (like how troll ungent was implemented).

Guildwars is a PvP game. GUILD. WARS. As in, players of different alliances fighting each other.

PvE can be entirely single player in this game. Even moreso quite soon with the whole Heroes thing. You can go do whatever you want in PvE, it doesn't matter.

Now I understand why all of your arguments are fundamentally flawed. Sorry, it's true. Any mention of PvE with regards to skill balance is completely irrelevant.

what if shadow refuge disabled all attack skills for it's duration and instead of hard heal it grants an evasion bonus? I mean the flavour of the thing is that you wrap the shadows around you. Seems to me that for that time you'd attack less and be harder to see and as such, be hit.

Well the skill orginally did give you a 50% chance to block and then an unconditional healing boost at the end. It definitely shouldn't disable attack skills, though.

For an AoD ganker it's a fine skill already. You cast it on yourself, teleport in and get beat on a bit, receive the conditional heal because you're attacking, and then re-use it 4 seconds later. If you're taking too much damage you just teleport out at any time.

I'd be fine with the healing bonus being unconditional but it would have to be half of what it currently is (if not a bit less even). Can we please, please, please officially stop talking about Shadow Refuge though?

lord_shar, Shadow Refuge in the FPE was retardedly good. It needed to be nerfed. 50% damage taken + Unconditional heal = wtf.

I liked that incarnation, the original PvP preview one was a nice skill.

Not really, no. What if instead of disabling skills, it ended early if you used a skill? The idea for the assassin is to get in, unload a skill chain and get out. This would be beautiful for a heal as you're gfto'ing. You could still do damage with just regular attacks with stances or whatever, have some evasion do you can avoid some damage and heal in the process. And as for AoD ganking, I don't mind a small nerf to PvP if it balances out the class overall.

As for the other skills, I would like a new Shadow Step that had a quicker recharge rate, even if it did nothing other than Shadow Step. I find the health bonus particularly useless on Death's Charge since quite often I'm at full health when I use it.

GW contains both PvP and PvE. You can feel free to acknowlege or ignore either component, but they will still exist regardless. "Guild Wars" is just a product title.

Try soloing UW with an assassin and tell me how far you get

Such sweeping generalizations are what lead to pointless bickering. I agree with many of your points because the assassin still needs better skill implementation so as not to have self-defeating conditional strings.

I remember SR being too good in its FPE form. I'm not advocating SR be returned to its original FPE form, but I would like to see it less vunerable to enchantment stripping, have an easier +health boost conditional clause to meet, or similar. SR in its present state doesn't really work too well, which is probably why Feigned Neutrality will see much more use once it goes live.

No doubt there are people who agree for the SR buff that have played Guild Wars since launch last spring and the Assassin class since Factions was released. Anyway, let's just move on from this area.

Yes, and I pointed out the movement abilities, but they at this point they don't make up for have zero healing you'd agree? Then the issue is how much healing should they receive while keeping relative balance for the class. I and others say Shadow Refuge is lacking as a competent heal right now, all things considered.

How is it flawed? The point was to compare each class' overall self-survivability on the field, and the Assassin is one of the softest ones out there. This is due to a number of things, and when you evaluate the healing ability of any class, you have to take in account battle position, armor level, defensive skills, etc. I started off my last post by saying you can't just look at the raw data and call it a day, and that's why I made the comparisons.

A Mesmer can get by with Ether Feast's having a 2s cast and 8s recharge while requiring to be in the enemy's spell range to execute it. This is because of where he fights from (backline) and his superior protection defense with skills like Distortion and Hex Breaker. Now relative to where an Assassin is on the field (frontline) and the quality of his defensive skills to prevent damage (including Shadow Steps), SR is lacking as a heal.

I specifically pointed out the fact that bumping up SR by 2s and making it a .25s cast would still not put the Assassin in the same class as Warrior for tank fighting. Just because skill X is buffed a bit does not automatically mean its overpowered and all balance is destroyed. In no way am I trying to redefine what the Assassin is supposed to do, but saying that a reasonable buff would be great for SR.

This may be why you erroneously think a buff is automatically overpowered. How do you reach 112 healing before the potential bonus? Currently L8 SR will give you only 64 HP in regen healing before the bonus. My suggestion bumps that to 96 HP in regen. An extra 32 HP every 8s is over-powered? Makes them tanks like Warriors? C'mon man, it's not nearly that big of a buff.

And the bonus is +52 HP if attacking, which is what you DON'T want to be doing when you are getting pummeled. In other words, unlike heals from backline characters I brought up before, that +52 HP bonus is often wiped away in two seconds because as you continue to attack, so are the enemies that damaged you to begin with. Of course it is at that point, when things get bad, that an Assassin is supposed to use other tactics to get out of harm's way... but a bit of extra healing is still not unreasonable over what SR offers now. The movement and defensive skills for the Assassin are nice, but that doesn't mean adding +32 extra HP every 8s for an attack-heal like Shadow Refuge is too strong.

I also didn't mention it was a stance or in Shadow Arts... I thought it was obvious what else the skill did. The recharge time of FN doesn't make it as weak as SR in the least. While SR requires you to continue fighting for the bonus, meaning subject your self to losing even more health, FN is almost exclusively for kiting where you take less damage as you heal.

The net status of health points after one use of each in battle will often be night and day. If I use SR once and keep fighting the ones who hurt me to get the bonus, I will stay hurt. If I kite with FN (since I can't melee attack), I take on less damage from kiting AND 80AL while repairing a lot more health loss over 14s of +7 regen.

So with my health repaired, I get back to the action. Yes, FN does take 25s to recharge, but in actuality it is only around 10s - 12s of a recharge if I spend enough Shadow Arts points since FN lasts so long before it ends. It's not unreasonable to think a decent Assassin can do a lot better waiting for FN to be ready in that short amount of time after they last used it, seeing as how well they have been healed and protected for the previous 10s - 14s. You can't say that for SR, which BTW is hardly a challenge to interrupt. FN is tougher to stop since it is a stance.

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For the Assassin, there's no other skill I'd prefer to see a buff to than Shadow Refuge. I'm certainly not alone since it is by far the skill that has received the most requests for improvement from other Assassin players. That doesn't mean it's the most useless skill (Mirror Stance, blah), but it is one that players really want to be happier with when they add it to their builds. Simply buffing it does not make it overpowered.

Wow, the SR-issue took on a life of its own. Any guesses why?

Either way, I won't mention SR again in this thread unless asked otherwise.

Let's put it this way - the game producers do not sponser tournaments and money rewards for people who can get the most skill points on their characters, complete PvE missions the fastest, solo certain areas of PvE the best, etc. It's clear where the focus of the game is and as such PvP is where the classes need to be balanced.

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You switch to a +20% enchant weapon like a smart player right before casting the spell to get an extra second of healing from it. No, it doesn't make them tank like Warriors, but it gives them absurd healing ability. All the Assassin would have to do is take an Elementalist secondary, grab Kinetic Armor, and he'd be tanking better than a Warrior with your proposed change to SR.

Zero healing? SR currently heals for 80 points (at 8 Shadow Arts) every 9 seconds without taking the "while attacking" bonus into consideration. For the energy spent it's already the most efficient non-conditional self-heal in the game...better than anything you'd get by taking a Monk or Ritualist secondary. With your change it would be THE best self-heal in the game.

But, once again, you're wrong about the Assassin "being on the front line". He has the ability to quickly attack the enemy's backline and then come back and harass opposing Warriors in your own team's backline.

Once again - weapon swapping. Cast Shadow Refuge, Dash away, Switch to a wand, attack once right before the SR effect ends, and then continue running. If you have AoD or another teleport that allows you to get away then you cast Refuge, teleport out and start running, then wand the person who is chasing you right before SR ends and continue running.

LOL, I'm sorry about your poor tactics?

That's not a reasonable buff, though. For reasons already stated.

Wow, good job doing nothing but standing there half the time in your glorious state of Neutrality. SUCH a help to your team.

I'd love to hear about the GvG experience and HA ranks of these Assassins. In the very first page of this thread you have good players who are agreeing with me that Shadow Refuge is hardly broken.

No, you're confusing sponsored competition events with general game play. Sponsored competition events always pit contestants against each other to promote the sport or product, with cash prizes luring competitors into the event. However, since the PvE side is primarily cooperative with random spawns playing a big role, teams cannot go through a competition ladder's standard elimination format in any reasonable time frame.

Anyone who has participated in elimination tournaments, whether it be a sport like pool, bowling, darts, archery, or whatever knows that elimination formats have to be quick and simple. PvE content just isn't viable for quick elimination format tournaments.

That's exactly the point, though -- PvP is competitive and PvE is really not. You can use an entire bar of sub-par skills and still make it through the entire PvE world. You always know what you're up against in PvE as well and can build for whatever the specific challenge is. In PvP you have to be prepared to fight anything and use different tactics and therefore every single needs to be worthwhile.

I agree that PvP is competitive, but you're very much mistaken if you think anyone can make it through all PvE content with just any skill set. Sure, anyone can make through the standard story line with a non-optimized skill bar but usually by riding the backs of other experienced players running more optimized builds. This is why missions like Eternal Grove and G.Hatchery are almost impossible to henchie, especially if trying to obtain protector titles. Then there are the special access zones like UW, FoW, The Deep, etc... BTW, I'm assuming you have both protector titles and speak from PvE experience?

Seriously, there's no need to tunnel-vision on PvP and neglect everything else.

In all honesty, I find GW PvP very underwhelming coming from a competition level Quake background, but I digress. If GW was a PvP only game with no PvE content, I would have never purchased it, let alone all 3 available CE's.

If all of the skills in the game are good enough for serious PvP, you're gonna be able to make a strong character for PvE out of any class. It's really that simple.

The only thing that perplexes me right now are Necromancer minions. Animate Bone Minions is useful for bloodspike and that's about it. I'm really not sure how to make a Minion Master viable for GvG or HA; I'll have to think about it. Off the top of my head I'd say the pet heals need to be un-nerfed and/or undead degen needs to be reduced in order to give Minion Masters the kind of constant power that's good enough to warrant a spot on the team (although this issue alone is not the only quandary on the table when looking at how to make an MM useful). It would definitely be great fun to see a Minion Master used in GvG, introducing a new playing style to that realm of the game.

Thats the best argument to defend PVE? I dont think random spawns play a big part at all. Ok so that boss and that group of 5 brainless NPC's is somewhere else then you though it would be, now you must spend 2 more mins capping that elite that you're gonna use once or twice. You already know what skills those monsters are gonna use and know how to face them.

Ok any mission in the game is hench-able. PvE'ers use whatever skills they feel like and yes, anyone can make it through PvE. Why do you have mending W/Mo's that aggro groups. The AI is so bad the monsters will just keep attacking the first target that comes into aggro range, allowing the other members like the Mo/W using a sword and he ele with a pet to go in after and pwn them

Now back to the thread's purpose:

I'd say buff the deadly arts line, as of now all the skills are pretty much useless, even the rit's restoration magic line gets more use.
Nerf Horns and Fangs, those 2 skills are on every single assassin's bar. I disagree strongly with the "make everything in-removable" idea and think they should stay as enchants. And make more (or improve the current) shadow stepping skills.

There are a couple of problems that with the above statement:

1) L20 opponents are standard opponents in PvP arenas. In PvE, L28+ monsters the norm in end-game zones. Nothing in PvP hits for over 300+ damage in a single strike like a bladed aatxe or deep leviathan. PS: If you've soloed a Deep Leviathan or Kanaxai before, I'd really like to see a screen shot

2) PvP arenas usually have equal numbers of opponents facing each other. In PvE, it's you vs. the zerg hoard in more than a few missions. It's very easy to get overrunned if you don't have the correct classes with the proper builds running support.

3) Critical hits are affected by level difference between the attacker and the target. For PvP, most opponents are L20, so critical percentage chances are fine. However, these percentages drop off dramatically with higher level opponents (like those found in PvE).

I agree that PvP and PvE skill requirements don't always match. PvP usually requires more situational flexibility, while PvE needs more general defense. However, it is possible to balance both sides of the game without negatively impacting the other so long as the skills are properly implemented without bias nor favoritism.

Converting enchantments into non-strippable skills is one example of a "clean" solution. No numbers are altered, but the skill still becomes more viable for PvE without imbalancing it for PvP.

Agreed, though the corpse requirement to summon minons really limits viability. Perhaps GW should borrow an old trick from EQ, where pets were summoned using material components like bones. It would definitely add a new money sink.

Defend PvE? What's there to defend? Did you even read the original post the reply was aimed at? The question was why ANET held PvP competition tournaments with cash prizes instead of PvE -- this was answered by the post you only partially quoted.

Vizunah Square w/ only henchies anyone? It's a total crapshoot if the other team only has henchies protecting either NPC. Be prepared for many retries...

Care to explain here? All of the Critical Strikes enchantments are currently a waste of a skill slot. They would actually be useful if unremovable and instantly performed with no downtime (plus buffs to what they actually do for some of them). Do you think Critical Eye should be turned into an enchantment as well?

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Well I DO think PvP should be given favoritism. There really is no denying that PvP is of greater importance in this game. But, again, if skills are fine for serious PvP they are fine for PvE. I don't see how your examples of fighting level 28 creatures in PvE changes anything...you can take any good GvG build and it would be able to go through all the PvE missions.

Yes, the corpse requirement is the biggest problem. No spell should require components, that does not fit in with this game, but I may have just thought of something...for every minion spell on your bar you start the game with each of those minions and they don't start degenerating until the timer starts. I think that could make them useful without being overpowered.

I think my main grip with SR right now is the casting time. I can take more damage in that 1 second it took me to cast it than the healing it will end up giving me. SR begs to be interupted and having to stay in combat to get a decent heal out of it is counter-productive for an assassin.

Now I don't think it is as bad of a skill as alot of people make it out to be, but I do think it could use a little buff.

This is where we can agree to disagree. If ANET wants to maximize GW's audience appeal, then it MUST cater to both PvP and PvE camps. Without a PvE grind to promote gradual skill + equipment aquisition, most players wil tire of GW quickly and move onto other game titles. Once PvE content becomes stale, PvP provides another level of challenge and entertainment. By keeping the game well rounded, ANET increases GW's longevity and sales.

Why not? Summoning minions without corpses is an obscene advantage and should be counter-balanced with finite resources like material components. If a corpse is nearby, then no material components should be consumed. If no corpses are available, material components can allow the minion master to get the initial minions up, then move into combat from there.

PS: Please keep an open mind... makes brainstorming more productive.

There's nothing that's needed to balance classes in PvE. I mean, really. If things are fine for PvP it's gonna be good enough for PvE. The draw for PvE is going to be having more interesting missions and such. Guild Wars is not about grinding...You just go through the game and gain whatever you want at your own pace.

With the way the game set up the way it is now, you can unlock any weapon or skill in the game through PvP. You shouldn't HAVE to do anything in PvE to be able to use any skill in the game. I'm not sure if a minion being constantly summonable is totally balanced either. It would be as if a Ranger's charm animal ability was also the pet rez for the class.

I'm liking my minion idea.

I disagree, but to each his own.

Depends on how many materal units are consumed per minion cast. If 100 bones are consumed per bone fiend cast, then you'll burn through a lot of bones trying raising an army. Try a full 250 stack per minion, and it gets pretty expensive. You could also use life sacrifice as another finite resource (50%+ per minion).

Summoned minions should never be free-casts. They are not ranger companion pets.

EDIT: Are we still talking about assassin skills, or is this thread done?

Materials just aren't a good idea. Don't like it, doesn't suit this game, no thanks.

Yes, let's stay on Assassin skills. Everyone who's reading the thread please pitch in on anything (except Shadow Refuge, omg). I'll do the Necromancer thread in the next few days and people can add their opinions on minions there.

The skills are balanced based on PvP, not PvE. I agree, that skills should be developed, or better yet, enemies should be structured to work effectively in PvE, but the true test of talent is PvP, and PvE is for the experience.

No matter how poor certain things work in PvE, PvP balance is a requirement, PvE function is always going to take second place. In essence, PvE itself should be crafted better to provide relatively simular challenges as PvP to keep skill functionallity equal. But we all know that PvE is alot more about crowd control, and alot less about counters like Mesmer, yet that doesn't mean Mesmer will get a total recall because it is not PvE focused.

And though the whole necro thing doesn't belong in this topic, consumables do not belong in this game, we don't use arrows, spears, or other inventory items to power anything in this game, it is all based on skill slots and replenishing costs. This game doesn't deal in consumables, not potions, mana bottles, water, or anything of that nature. The cost of a corpse is what minions are made of, and bones are provided by the corpse. There are certain things specifically left out of the game for the very distinct and legitimate purpose of keeping PvP well rounded.

PVP skill rebalances are more frequent than PvE rebalances, but that doesn't mean it never happens for the latter. Wasn't Hundred Blades converted into an elite because of its over-powered synergy with Illusionary Weaponry? Was this a PvP or PvE nerf, or both? And what about the protective bond nerf? Remember how a L18 protective bond only lost 1 energy per hit on the original 105 UW monk build? That isn't the case any more.

All I'm saying is that ANET does rebalance skills for both PvP and PvE issues... nothing more, nothing less. To claim that no PvE skill rebalances ever happen is outright ludicrous.

I agree that PvP game play does drive skill changes more often than PvE, primary because ANET wants to prevent a single dominant tactic from ruling the arenas. I still remember when spirit spam existed, and it was quite a mess.

I'm only wishing that the Devs have better direction in global class and skill balancing, because their knee-jerk updates are generally poor rush jobs.

I agree that necro skill suggestions don't belong in this thread. However, consumable items definitely exist in game now. What do you think makes up the armor your character wears? What about Candy Canes, Salvage kits, ID kits, and other clickables? Spell components may not be present now, but if there's enough of a push to use material to limit very powerful skills, then it is possible that they may get implemented in future patches. Until then, MM's will have to continue waiting for corpses.

Sorry for the derail again, but if someone disputes a point I've previously made, I will address it appropriately.

The arenas??? Lord help us all if PvP balances are made based upon THAT.

When I said arenas, I meant all of the organized pvp areas... HoH, HA, etc... should have chosen my words more carefully

HoH and HA are the same area. LOL? I seriously question your knowledge of the aspects of the game that are being addressed in this thread. No need to respond, though. We're off topic enough.

Oops, my bad lol

EDIT: As for this thread, we are talking about assassin skills, right? We've all had half a year to use them, so what certification do we need to post here?

That question answers itself, I think.

I'm quite ready to hear some opinions from people who can discuss their PvP-specific thoughts on balancing the Assassin skills.