Balancing the Dervish Avatars

Avatar of Grenth and Avatar of Melandru need a buff in my opinion. Both have major flaws:

-Avatar of Melandru costs 25 energy. That's basically the dervish's entire energy pool. Even 15% death penalty will make this unusable in most situations. Perhaps the health gain could be lowered to 120 health or so, and the energy cost lowered to 15, so that a dervish can at least USE it. I don't think 10 less energy would make this skill overpowered at all.

-Avatar of Grenth lasts for about 40 seconds. That's not too shabby, right? Well, that is, until you take into account the EIGHTY SECONDS it is down! That is just about an eternity in Guild Wars. I think Avatar of Grenth should last the same as every other avatar, just nerf it's effect a little. Something like "Every time you use an attack skill, if the target has enchantments, 1 is removed and you lose 3 energy." That way, it has a drawback, but not a drawback as horrific as an 80 second recharge!

Other than that, the avatars are relatively balanced.

-_- Because [skill=text]Avatar of Lyssa[/skill] is so amazing, and is comparable with Grenth or Balthazar.

On a serious tone, I do not believe the nerf to AoG will last for long, I feel that this nerf, and the [skill=text]Jagged Bones[/skill] nerf, are just temporary and will be balanced with the next huge update.

Speaking of next huge update, I heard that it was Monday, is that true?

Melandru is allready overpowered, it hardly needs a buff.

Grenth I'd be more than happy to see stay dead. The idea of that skilll is just so broken from the start.

Then underpower Melandru. That's like saying "dgb, I'll give you a skill with a 1/4 casting time that kills every single enemy on the map and has a 0 recharge" "Sure, thanks!" then when I give you the skill, you see it costs 500 energy to cast. That's one overpowered skill

And your grenth sentiments are the same reason why GW is never balanced. You have the same mentality of Izzy it seems- "Why fix it when you can remove it instead? Less work for me!" I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one- I think that skills should be made balanced. You think skills should be removed from existence. To each his own

Avatar of Lyssa is pretty good for spamming skills thanks to +energy. Also, completely tears ritualists apart. Ok, I'm grasping for straws. Lyssa could use a buff too. Easy buff, actually. Replace that stupid +41 damage against people activating skills with +2 energy regeneration or something. Now that's a good skill!

Hopefully you are right. They seem like Izzy just wanted to knock those skills out as fast as possible, which could indicate something along the lines of "Further testing is required, so no skill for now, we'll give it back later".

I heard nothing of a huge update monday though. Would be pretty cool though.

@Series

I think Lyssa should have a reduce damage, like +31, but attack ~25% faster.

I wasn't the one asking for a buff or a nerf in the first place. I can tolerate Melandru as is but buffing it when it's allready pretty high on the power rating is pretty crazy. If you really want it to drop in energy you need to stop making the effect utterly insane. First off completely scratch the health bonus. Then look at it. Probably still be too good on 15e. Ok, how bout conditions only last 25% of the time. I think that would be ok if you want to drop it down to 15e.

Or you could just stop playing dumb and take a staff to swap to in order to put up Melandru when you have DP.

I think skills should not be added which have utterly ridiculous opening premises. When they are added I don't mind seeing them killed. I get annoyed when reasonable skills get obliterated (when was the last time you saw a decent Divine Boon build for instance?), but not when skills that have mechanics designed from the start to be imba get destroyed.

I think advanced enchantment stripping is totally neccessary considering advanced hex removal, it is the outdated skills that need to be addressed IMO.

I think some simple disparities and overnerfing damages this game too much. Simple things like 20 energy cost which doesn't exsist would be alot better for AoM, and long recharge times.... on everything, but in this case enchantment removal, which makes AoG such a steal. I agree, some sort of additional cost could be added to AoG on each enchantment removed, and bring it back to the duration of all the other avatars, sure it will still be powerful, but that was the whole point of Avatars, alot of power only half of the time. I think it is the disparity with alot of worthless skills which make this an issue, if certain attacks, counters, and support skills were more effective we wouldn't be looking at such an advantage with Avatars, and making one more skill unenjoyable isn't the answer, making more of the other skills more enjoyable and effective is.

Creativity is always the answer, those who are simply bias, prejudice, lazy and uncreative will simply complain and ask for whatever skill they dislike to be shutdown so they can go about enjoying whatever it is that they were doing beforehand again. The simple euphemism applies here "what comes around, goes around", and it is very directly applied here. Trying to nerf skills and shutdown builds just revolves in a circle which nerfs and restrains everything in the game, it directly and distinctly make the game less enjoyable. When something doesn't work the way it was intended, the balanced way, and often it is in obscure conditions, than creative means should be used to rectify it, simply nerfing it is weak and lazy.

You know, it is no irony that in the same chapter exceptional enchantment removal was introduced, Anet also introduced powerful chant and shout defense alternatives, and aura enchantments which are designed to deal determental effects when removed. But most are too busy trying to uphold a norm so they destroyed "Incoming", nerfed "There on Fire", and nerfed the already seldom restoration shouts, when what they should have done is come up with improved and creative counters for shouts, wile actually improving them to work as a genuine alternative. You know we have Defensive Anthem and Ward Against melee, we have Binding Rituals too. The fact that the variety of alternatives doesn't solve the problem says one really obvious thing, these skills arn't good enough, they need to be better.

Series you don't pvp at all do you?
You gotta remember that ( even tho Anet will say its no so, we all know it is) that skills are balanced for pvp first then pve.

Melandrus is possibly the Form that gets used the most out of the options , , yes even with its 25 energy cost.So can you tell me why it needs a buff?Any buff for that matter?

Grenth, it seems you were afk for the whole while when Grenth dervish were everywhere, they were so good that they could tear thru any teams defence.The balance might have been too much but it was needed.

Do you think that maybe the reason that izzy according to you thinks "Why fix it when you can remove it instead? Less work for me!"
Is that there is no real way to "fix" this skill? I agree with DGB.The skill is broken from the root up.
Possible way to fix it?Pull out the root and plant again.

If you have trouble with 25 energy, either stop dying or bring a staff with you. You can get a staff with 10 energy from about everywhere.

Melandru's is currently the best avatar. She can't be blinded or crippled and can spam wearying strike.

Melandru is overpowered rather than anything.
Grenth lasts too short? Did you see what it did when it still lasted as long as the other avatars? That's right. It broke the game.
Lyssa and Dwayna are OK. Balthazar needs a serious buff to 33% IAS

As bad as grenth was for prot monks, it didn't allow that aegis chain bull****. As a side bonus, it actually made people pay attention to weapon rits, which now have a tenuous home in PvP even after Grenth is gone.

The other avatars are fine, though lyssa could use a slight nudge upward with an IAS, orr -cost to skills instead of +max energy.

If you want to keep the avatars in line with what they do now, sorta, something like...

Grenth would be better if it was closer to OoA... makes you lose some resource (health or energy) whenever you strip an enchantment. Like -3 energy per enchant removed, or something.

Lyssa is kinda neat, but it doesn't really mess up enemies the way Deep Wound spam with Melandru up or Enchantment stripping with Grenth up does. As someone said above, maybe if it reduced skillcosts or something, an effect similar to Onslaught perhaps. (Or not, because that would make Onslaught somewhat redundant. Hmm.)

If you are willing the change the skills completely I think it would be nice if the avatars were designed vaguely like the skills on the classes representing the gods the avatars stem from. Necromancers seem to have ways of punishing people for trying things (spoil victor, faintheartedness, shadow of fear, spiteful spirit, corrupt enchantments, defile flesh), so maybe Avatar of Grenth makes enemies you strike heal you for each enchantment/hex on them, or applies a limited effect where people you strike have a reduced effect against you. (For all enemies struck by you while under the effects of this form, their conditions, enchantments, and stances last x% shorter, or something? Or maybe a similar effect for reduced healing.)

Mesmers have things that do bad things to the enemies after they do stuff (shatter hex, shatter enchantment, diversion), or control of applied effects (hex application/removal, enchantment removal, condition modifiers), so you end up with something like removes an enchantment on an enemy for every hex you have on you; or perhaps, whenever you kill an enemy, for every hex on you, all party members lose the same hex; or whenever you strike an enemy, all conditions on that target are extended by x amount.

Anyways, I think I'm sorta rambling now. But does anyone think that these might be a better line of ideas for how the avatars might work?

The whole idea of avatars is stupid. Izzy wants you to feel like god when in this 'godmode', so he makes them extremely powerful and thinks it's balanced because of its downtime.
Guess what. Eviscerate on a 2 sec recharge is not balanced because you can only use it half of the time ffs.
Those kind of uber skillz just dont fit in guild wars.

I think Lyssa should have built in interrupt like Dwarven battle stance....

Yes, I do.

So give it less power and a lower energy cost. Balance it with the others.

I wasn't. But if something is overpowered, removing it is lame. It should be fixed, not destroyed. Even if you do need to completely change it.

That would be pretty darn powerful, unless the interrupt was limited in some way.

How do you give Melandru's form less power, even if it was only , immune to conditions, its still powerful.