[Dev Update] Skill Balances and Hero Battles

Hello,

It's time for another official Dev Update, straight from the Guild Wars Design Team. Hooray! This week, we'll be making some changes, including a modest number of skill balances and an alteration to Hero Battles. So here's the latest news, with an outline of the upcoming changes and a note about the why's and wherefore's of each. So here we go...


Upon reviewing the first half of the Celestial Tournament, we’ve decided to balance some skills to improve the competitive environment. These changes will take effect after 12:01 PM PST on Wednesday, March 7 to allow completion of Round 4 of the tournament.

This permanent update addresses critical balance issues within the tournament and is not a temporary weekend implementation. We are still working on a larger play balance review in preparation for next weekend’s event.

Ritualist

The following skills have changed:

• Gaze from Beyond: increased casting time to 2 seconds.
• Spirit Burn: increased recharge time to 8 seconds.
• Lamentation: increased casting time to 1 second; reduced damage to 15..75.

When these skills were first implemented, they required the caster to be very close to a Spirit in order to use them effectively. We recently changed all such skills to work at a much greater distance, though they became too powerful. Our intention is for these skills to remain effective but not be out of scope with other damage-dealing options.

Necromancer

The following skill has changed:

• Discord: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

We have been pleased to see Discord useful in a variety of PvP and RP situations, but its rate of sustained damage output is excessive. Increasing the casting time lowers the damage output to a reasonable amount while giving opponents an opportunity to use general purpose counters such as interruption and Condition/Hex removal.

Assassin

The following skills have changed:

• Shadow Prison: increased Energy cost to 10.
• Blades of Steel: decreased maximum damage bonus to 60.

Shadow Prison was simply too powerful for its cost, thus the increase to its Energy cost. The damage from Blades of Steel was out of scale with that of other dual-attack skills. We hope that these skill changes will encourage build diversity for Assassins and Warrior/Assassins, and we believe both of these skills will remain viable but not superior to other options.

Mesmer

The following skill has changed:

• Wastrel’s Demise: increased casting time to 1 second.

With a ¼ second casting time, this skill was too fast and powerful as a source of follow-up damage.

Hero Battles

We’re taking this opportunity to make a change to Hero Battles. Currently, very defensive builds are capable of holding the center shrine, needlessly slowing down games and homogenizing strategies. As a result, we’ve made the following change:

• Capturing and holding any or all shrines on the map now contributes to your morale. The center shrine now grants twice the amount of positive “pip” arrows on the morale meter than other capture points. The secondary benefits associated with these shrines will remain unchanged.

We feel this change will impact movement, tactics, and build creation in a positive manner and will generally make battles more competitive and interesting. With the upcoming Hero Battles ladder on the horizon, we felt a need to improve this format before the ladder is put into place. We will continue to monitor this venue and adjust this mechanic as needed.

So that's it! As I mentioned, this update will be streamed into Guild Wars sometime tomorrow afternoon. As always, your thoughts are welcome, and we invite your feedback on these changes after you've had a chance to try them out and see how they function in the game.

The changes to Hero Battles seem to be very nice when they are going to be implemented. We'll have to see on that. Also it was kind of expected that Shadow Prison would be changed but Blades of Steel, didn't that just revert it back to what it orignally was when Factions came out?

The Discord change completely and utterly breaks the skill. It's conditional enough for an elite! I don't believe it...

The Heroes Battle change might be worse! Hero Battles already strongly favored Runners. Now, that appears to be only viable build...

I hope I'm misreading something.

I'm so happy to see that the team now provides some reasons behind each change! I think it's what had been missing. Thank you!

Hero Battles will literally become a race. Gank builds will dominate. Bad idea.

Bring Shield Bash!

Still waiting on Halls, ANET.

Assasin changes seem mild for a combination abused so much (sp/boa).

Harder nerf on shadow prison, pl0x. It's still way too good compared to other assassin elites, a no-brainer.

Woot! Some of the IMBA skills got nerfed....but the underlying flaws remain

The quick patch to fix the worst abuses is nice, but I hope the dev team is taking a serious look at overall game balance.

hero battles a great idea, no more spirit spam sitting in a circle. running wont work with snares... learn how to stop the meta, and stop complaining. also, skill balances = great. rit spike had it comming

Thank you Gaile for informing us about that. Although I do agree with the shadow prison change, I don't agree with Blades of Steel change. BoS was just so much crazy damage, it made you feel good.
Still Shadow Prison needs more nerf, like less duration or something.

BUT, for sure, Rit Spike builds in HA needed a nerf and FAST, they got buffed too much.

Edit: Wow, it's simply amazing how fast people respond. There was only one reply when I was typing the first part. Now it's post #10.

If you design a build around that skill, you can easily make it meet the condition it requires. And 2s recharge is good enough for an elite to make 105 armor-ignoring damage. Thus, 1s casting time is just too good, too powerful.

Looks like good stuff.

I don't think the Shadow Prison change will be meaningful though, because usually the very next skill after Shadow Prison/Burst of Aggression is Black Lotus Strike, and you get all your energy back. More relevant for the W/A's though I guess?

Compare the casting time of the new discord and most of the condition removals out there and tell me what discord has become.

Now you can counter a discord damage with using dismiss conditions with your eyes closed or draw conditions while you're checking your email.

gfg again.

They should edit their public release.

----------------------------------------------------------

The following skill has changed:

* Discord: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

While it is virtually absent in the officially sanctioned Celestial tournament, we at least have been pleased to see Discord useful in a variety of PvP and RP situations, but its rate of conditional damage output is excessive to GvG ladder farmers and level 28 RP bosses. Increasing the casting time lowers the damage output to zero because opponents can easily spam less than 1 second condition removals. Now, whiners can pwn those noob discord teams and the supply of green items floating in the market will be lesser than usual.

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at 5, 2, 2.. and.. unarmorable damage, i hope it has counters... stop complaining.

Some good changes, addressing some skills which needed addressing. Thanks for the info.

Glad to see the rit spike got a much needed nerf, along with discord. I don't think the BoA sin will be affected much by this since black lotus strike usually follows up after SP and BoA. Thanks for giving an explanation for why things got nerfed. Now where are the buffs! :P

Finally some explanations on why changes are being proposed
The change in HB may encourage running builds but it's not too big a deal as it takes a while to capture shrines and 4 characters can easily dispose of one measily character(unless designed to tank extremely well)
Good change overall

Oh please, dont be mad because your discord build that MATH was using to farm their way up the ladder got nerfed.

Then decrease the unconditional and increase the conditional damage - 1 sec on this spell makes it totally unusable. It is just as conditional as an interrupt spell - how exactly are you supposed to that with a 1 sec spell?

Uhuh, ladder rank is everything. Nerf those overpowered builds coz they make the ladder useless.

No fix for jade isle, imo thats the most broken thing in the game at the moment. Ohh well can't have everything.
Thanks for the quick fix for Lamentation.

First of all, thank you for listening and implementing these changes to skills and Hero Battle mechanics.

But I agree with Byron that SP is still a bit good...but the tweak is better than nothing. And while the changes to HB are great (no more lame holding builds) now we might have lame running builds. I'd like to see different objectives in HB other than capping shrines, that way any gimmick won't have an advantage on every map.

Hooray, Fast Casting Discord.

Night night everyone.

Don't expect it to continue. They only gave such reasoning because they're changing skills in the middle of a tourney.

There's the death of my PvE E/Rt build that concentrated around those 3 channelling skills that I've used since, well, Keining Center right after Factions came out basically. I didn't see much increase in power with their spirit range buff -- I'd always stand in the range of a spirit anyway. *sigh* The long cast times make my use of Master of Magic all but useless with it, and the build already suffered from waiting for skill recharges.

Another of my characters nerfed dramatically because of PvP abuse (the first being various attempts at building a decent support Paragon).

Well pretty much any regular PVP player will know the reason for each skill nerf, so the explainations provided for each skill change is mostly for PVE players....but sadly that still won't stop the complaints about nerfs.

LOL, that's probably the reason why I've been so complacent with the change. I use it on my Me/N.

Like Cacheelma, I'm glad that there are at least reasons given for the updates. Then again KamikazeChicken is right, it's probably only because of whatever lame elitist event is going on right now. The shadow prison adjustment is much welcomed. I could care less about the hero battles change seeing how I don't like heroes or their battles and frankly I don't understand how anyone does.

Is Anet going to fix the bug preventing some accounts from getting to Hero Battles in the first place? It's mentioned right in the wiki that some can only unlock it via a PVP character, even if Heroes have previously unlocked in PVE. I don't have a free slot, nor do I want to delete a PVE character to make one available.

So what am I to do?

Go without.

You're not missing much.

In case the devs haven't seen any discussion on the skills:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10125730 -Many dagger attack issues, ie, no one uses them, buffing golden attacks, etc. Making leads useful, etc etc.

People have talked about AoD being inferior, and it still is comparing the cost of both of the combo styles involved with hexed and enchanted.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10115432
Honestly, I think BoA made the Shadow sin overpowered, not the hex.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10119903 -Another discussion on a skill that was "nerfed". Pats idea seemed to balance out the damage, while keeping the skill worth taking on a primary. This only saw play as a gimmick, I doubt it will see use again with a 2 second cast time. Its like putting a 2 second cast time on Searing Flames.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10125403 -Another skill discussed. In two threads. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10127114

Id also like to quote something Wasteland said in the second thread, as he seems to have hit the nail on the head:
You also make a gimmick skill that is no longer playable, instead of balancing the damage on hexes, conditions and hexes. Id rather have pat's idea, or have the recharge upped. Or even my idea of making the skill so you would have to apply your own condition. (Another) Or make the npcs that make this skill to powerful not be able to spike as soon as the conditions are met, maybe disable hex spells and condition spells for 5 seconds when this is used, or dropping the damage dealt. Id rather have it back to its prebuff status than the skill it is going to be.

As of the last change in the ladders there is no "middle of the tourney" and they explicitly stated that skill balances will happen at fairly short intervals. This is now to be normal.

As to why they are giving reasoning - note the beginning of the Gaile's post "It's time for another official Dev Update, straight from the Guild Wars Design Team. Hooray!". Once more - new standard operating procedure.

Obviously this attempt to make gamers happy will fail as much as pretty much any other thing they could ever do (or any other company). Those that tend to be happy will be, those that want to find something to complain about always will. Though I do think this makes those of us "happy" people happier so it is still a win. Hope fully Anet looks more at the compliments (I, for one, hope these stay at least as regular as they are now - I also miss the old weekly questionnaire they did even if they did tend to cover the same stuff a lot).

Feel free to think otherwise - no skin off my back. They will either continue to do this or not, in the end all arguing either will will not accomplish much as it is in their court as to who ends up being correct.

a decent patch up to hero battles but it is still in desperate need of a major fix.

Ensign had the right idea (base damage, +damage if hexed, +damage if condition, +damage if enchanted). Increasing casting time to 2 seconds basically removes it from the game again. The spell is simply too conditional to be anything but a spike gimmick.

In the right direction at least, but what's more important for Assassin primaries is that with a zero in the attribute it lasts long enough for their entire attack chain.

The difference between Wastrel's Demise and interrupts is that the former is on a conditional that *you* control. For the usage it was getting it was effectively unconditional because the target was usually knocked down already anyway.

Do you not understand that this is an emergency update and not a full rebalance?

Glad to see Lamentation get hammered. Spirit Burn is still a bit too good but with the other changes Ritualist damage should be reasonable again. I like these changes in general, they get the point.

The Discord change was suggested by someone who has never used the skill and doesn't get it at all. A 2s cast on Discord makes the skill more horrendous than it has ever been. Simply reverting it to its previous form would have been better. I'm glad to see something done about Discord but the particulars are very poorly thought out.

The Assassin changes don't do anything to Assassins. Blades of Steel was normally run at +56 or +60 anyway so a lower cap doesn't do anything. The Shadow Prison change I approve of, for making it a bit harder to use on Warriors, but that's the extent of it. If Assassins are percieved to be a balance issue, this doesn't address them at all.

Wastrel's Demise needed that for a long time, thank you for finally getting around to fixing it.


Hero battles: still don't care.

Peace,
-CxE

Realized it after my soapbox moment, will edit.

Me neither. I do not see how such changes make an inherently super boring and slow paced arena more fun.

It maybe helps, but it is still nothing you, me and probably a lot of other players want to do at all.

I agree 100%. Making a skill useless, especially an Elite, is not "balance." And as has already been said, making Shadow Prison 10e does nothing other than make it uninviting for Warriors. But what's to stop them from bringing a +5e axe instead of their 15>50 and use the skill the same way? 5e -> 10e does absolutely nothing to dissuade Assassins from using this over any other elite. Having to wait 20 seconds between attack chains means they'll have that extra energy back anyway.

Yay, way to kick assass...

Im assuming SP change was to stop W/A ? I can think of other ways to get it done... How about change SP to WORK only if one's deadly arts are higher than 7? This way it will be balanced- no more ppl talking that you can still pwn with 0 deadly arts, no W/A...
BoS change... *moan*
Cool, change good skills to sucky skills and leave sucky skills of assa (golden, elites, you name it) as sucky as they are

Meh