[Dev Update] Skill Balances for Early April

SF, along with GG, got nerfed the last skill balance. Theres really no way to nerf it without killing it now.

A couple things:
First, I really like a lot of the skill changes, at the very least they'll provide an interesting test week.

On Auspicious Incantation-
A lot of people are thinking about the Auspicious + Aegis obvious combo, saying it'll result in a net gain of 30+ energy. The way I read it though, wouldn't the caster only recieve 110% of the 15 energy cost of Aegis? As in, they'd gain 20ish energy? after the 5e cost of the spell, it's only a net gain of 15en every 30 seconds or so, 35-40s if you wait to use it on aegis each time. I mean, it's not bad at all, but it's not close to the 25en every 30s from GoLE with 0 atts spec'd.

Also, it seems a lot of people are complaining about the memser nerfs... you really should have seen them coming. Price/Spirit of Failure + MoR Diversion spam is probably one of the most obnoxious overused midline builds in gvg. Also, it's not even as though they're nerfing Diversion that hard, an extra 2 seconds recharge, or 1 second while under MoR isn't that much... the real nerf here is the lack of infinite energy from Spirit of Failure that keeps the MoR/dom mez chugging away.

Also, I think keystone signet could be potentially viable in GvG now with some tricky thinking... how about something along the lines of, say, symbolic celerity, matra o' inscrips, purge sig, sig of disenchantment, sig of humility, sig of weariness, keystone sig, rez sig on a me/mo? you could completely keep 2 foes (a monk backline) w/o an elite skill easily while spamming your other sigs... i dunno if it'd work, but there could be something there.

As for SR... stop complaining until you test it out, it's vaguely written, and hopefully as a pve MM (like myself every once and a while) won't notice it too much.

I wonder how ANet decided some of these nerfs and buffs. I can't complain about most of it.

Perhaps the SR nerf has something to do with the general attitude in PvE that everything is fine and no one should complain. I think that alot more progress could be made if the PvE community steps up and becomes as vocal as the PvP community is. I hear alot of "Sins suck b/c [insert reason]" or "Mesmers need [insert buff] so people will want them in PvE more!" on GWG and what we should be doing is emailing ANet and giving them feedback on our PvE experience. Simply posting about it here won't really change anything.

I agree that Necros shouldn't get energy from spirits. Sometimes the bit of extra energy is helpful but most of the time it doesn't matter. Otherwise, Soul Reaping should remain unchanged because of the dynamic nature of PvE. PvP just doesn't produce deaths at the same rate as PvE. I do Tomb about 3-4 times a week and it makes you appreciate Soul Reaping. Whether you're Orders or MM you often need more energy than your weapon, armor, and level provide you. If the Orders doesn't bring Blood Ritual(it happens about half the time ) then I have to rely solely on Soul Reaping to refill my energy. When you're spamming BoTM, HA, AND making minions at the same time you need that steady flow of energy. Just a quick blurb on the reduced costs for 2 of the minion skills: they were cheap enough already and didn't need to changed. I guess shortening the recharge time for them wouldn't have been a bad thing.

What is Soul Reaping's intended function? I can't really see it making a big impact on PvP, though it obviously has. If you compare the skills of each caster profession, Necromancers have the costliest spells. Not just in terms of energy, but also in terms of conditions. Many spells have health sacrifices and some inflict health degeneration or negative conditions on the caster. In short we need more energy than the other caster professions and Soul Reaping seems intended to sort of level the playing field. Necromancers run on deaths. Whether its by Hex or Minion they need deaths to provide energy and sometimes exploitable corpses. The proposed fix to Soul Reaping will simply cripple already energy deprived Necromancers. I simply can't imagine standing around UW or FoW, waiting for my energy to fill back up because nothing died at the right interval.

They seem to be addressing to SR in every way possible that is not what has been discussed on the forums, but I want to see it in action before I judge. The famous pet skill actually is interesting now, I was actually surprised. And last, hurts my pride to see inspiration being touched, either for nerf or buff; mainly because other classes using it motivates the changes. Spirit of Failure seems sad now, but Auspicious Incantation seems promising, and I don't mean for aegis combos, but mesmers themselves.

great nerf

So once again PvE suffers because of PvP players coming up with more gimmick builds for PvP, and PvP players wanting things nerfed instead of adapting their old builds to deal with whatever the latest gimmick in PvP is. I really hope that these new PvE only skills that you are promising are darn good... because PvE players have been put at a further disadvantage for a long time now, and many of the classes are hardly worth playing anymore thanks to the nerfs that PvP players got ArenaNet to make to them.

Instead of nerfing an entire attribute and further penalizing PvE players because some teams want to spirit spam for free energy in PvP, why not just limit the teams to no more than 3 of any one primary profession? At least for the latter stuff. Would not being able to have more than 3 Necromancers, 3 Elementalists, 3 Mesmers, or any other class... on your team at once, really break anything but some of the pathetic gimmick builds that get abused anyway?
Wouldn't limiting the number of any one primary profession on a PvP team solve a heck of a lot of problems, problems that have caused PvE players to suffer due to the constant nerfs that PvP causes to be frequently implemented?

After all, Lets not forget that PvE is what supports Guild Wars. Most people Buy Guild Wars for the PvE content, and seldom do I ever find PvP primary player who has a half dozen accounts like many of us PvE primary players do, and it's also not to often that I hear a PvP primary player talking about how they had to buy several more character slots again because they really like the new faces/hair available for some of the classes in the last expansion, and how they are making a second or third Monk/Necro/Warrior/whatever because they don't want to kill off their old character(s) but really want to play with the new looks and armor available in the latest chapter. I know with the more than a half dozen accounts I've bought (the majority of them collector's editions) and the dozen or more character slots I've picked up since that option was added... I've spent a lot more on the game than some PvP player who has one account and maybe not even all the chapters on it, who uses only 2 or 3 of the slots his account has available to him.

Yeah... way to /flame the entire PvP community on an un-based, un-backed, unintelligable argument. Furthermore, the dynamically evolving nature of PvP demands many updates and nerfs... Since when has a gimmick or imba build ruined PvE? or since when has a nerf made PvE impossible?

Well, looking through the list, I have a few thoughts and comments.

I do not play with assassin / warrior, hence most of the skills I am not familiar with.


Dervish:

For the avatar skills, I find the Grenth skill lacking in duration, yet over-powered at the same time. I find that the mechanism should be reworked such that it is the same as rend enchantment. Reason being is that if you bring Grenth skill into PVP for the reason of easy removing enchantments, you should realise that there will be a penalty to pay for.

Example:
For 10...75 seconds, whenever you use an attack Skill, you also remove 1 Enchantment from your target, and your attacks deal cold damage. For each Enchantment removed, you take 55...31 damage. This Skill is disabled for 120 seconds.


Mesmer:

I like the change to Auspicious Incantation. The old version is really crap.

I gave up my mesmer when I realised that mesmer is always the class that always get hit. Quite surprised that this update doesn't change Energy Surge AoE to be adjacent! (sarcastic)


Monk:

Signet of Rejuvenation should have its recharge time decrease as well. At the current standing, 8 seconds is too much. A 5 second recharge would probably be welcome better.


Necromancer:

It's interesting to read that the nerf to Soul Reaping will mean that it is most likely not possible to use Animate Bone Fiends anymore. Does this mean that Bone Fiend spell will get an adjustment as well... to like 15e? Or will it be joining the ranks of veritas soon...


Paragon:

Most of the Paragon's skill are officially crap now.
Skills like Incoming, The Power is Yours, Cautery Signet, Help Me, etc...
Btw, Incoming is still too high in duration, please change it to 1 second.

Seriously, some skills really need to be reworked, like The Power is Yours.

Example:
For 10 seconds, all party members within earshot gain 1...5 Energy energy regeneration. For 10 seconds, you have -10 Energy degeneration.

This would be much better than the original. In terms of viablity, it still loses to Blood Is Power though. Oh wait... I forgot, 2 paragon in a high end GvG will get it nerfed. (Sarcastic)


Ranger:

I think pet's skill is still unpredictable though. I can never seem to disrupt a caster using pet skill. Using distracting shot etc is so much easier.

Now Otyugh's Cry (non-elite) is worth using, compared to Incoming (elite).

Needling Shot might be too high in dmg though, especially when used with quick shot.

Traps dmg are welcome changes.


Ritualist:

Consume Soul should be changed to within earshot, or 1/2 compass radius. It's after all an elite. That's goes for Preservation too. As it is for right now, Preservation randomly select a target at 4 sec. Mechanism should be reworked such that it target the lowest health party member.


EDIT:
Just thought of something... remember how they are going to rework Soul Reaping mechanism?
Soul Reaping: now only provides Energy at a maximum rate of once every 5 seconds.

They should change all of Paragon's shouts / chants mechanism to this method.

Confused? Here's an example:

Example: Incoming
For 5...11 seconds, all party members within earshot take 50% less damage. This skill only affect party members at a rate of once every 20 seconds.

This way, chants cannot be spammed continously by different paragon since the skill will be nullified at the 2nd spam.

So, for the first Incoming chant, it will last 5 -11 seconds (and work). However, from the 12 to 20 seconds, spamming another Incoming chant from another Paragon will not work for the party members since it only work once per 20 seconds. This will effectively kill all the Paraway.

I'm surprised that anet never think more about more elegant methods of solving problems, and instead rely on brute force to kill the skills. We should make a petiton for anet to save paragon. For now, Paragon seems to be worse off than mesmer / ritualist in terms of getting a group for PVE. I don't blame them too... their skills are seriously in a mess. Elegant class, elegant idea. Sloppy skills

It's not? From what I've seen of PvP you have the majority of people using the exact same builds over and over again, unable to be creative at all and having to copy their builds down from a website just to be allowed on a team with most PvP groups. How is that not predictable?

Regardless, I'm rather amused that this is the only part of my post that you addressed, but then again it's hard to argue against the rest of my post I suppose, given disagreeing with the obvious truth is a bit difficult.

It's true though, that after you've been through a specific area in PvE often enough, you do tend to remember what skills most monster types use, and what monster types are in an area... but it's still a lot of fun to use some tried-and-true favorite skills mixed in with some new ones to see how you'll do out there... but it's always very frustrating when you go to use a skill or ability that wasn't even remotely overpowered in PvE before, and find out that the skill has been screwed up because someone abused it in a PvP tournament.

How so? Is PvP so dependent on the gimmick builds that without them it could not exist?

It always amuses me how the PvE portion of the game uses incredibly overpowered skills as if by right, and then can somehow find dissent when they're reduced. Having played necro in runs like 3-man fissure, and simply maxing out my energy cap with +15/-1s, while carrying no management except SR and always being full after every fight instantly, I can note that SR was broken in PvE.

This is because PvE is designed to let you win, so imbalance is not as noticed by players that exclusively play one aspect.

Overall, not sure if I agree with all of it, but I'll wait until I see the effects on the game before making a real judgment.

Paragons need a major retooling. Simply make it where most Paragon shouts do not effect other Paragons and rework all the skills in this context (the exception would be shouts that effect chants and other shouts, as they would be completely useless without effecting other Paragons). This would make Paragon only groups dead, and thus, not overpowered anymore. See, on one hand, the more Paragons in the group, the longer incoming can be maintained. On the other hand, the more Paragons in the group, the less people are effected by it. The perfect balance right there, and it makes sense, as leaders can't really order around other leaders. With a change like this, Paragons can be buffed to the point where they are a very useful aspect to the team, as opposed to now when they are only useful in an all paragon team.

You can manage to keep this civil can't you? I mean, if you can't manage to debate the topic rather than trying to discredit the poster?

Yes, yes I do, in fact that's included in my post, but thanks for reading the whole thing. To reiterate, I included it to say that said skills have more versatility than simply "Anti-Assassin Management" to quell any persons who may say that they don't want to bring anti-profession or anti-build skills.

Just as a point of humor, I'll note that your next sentence is actually a question.

Yes, having been on both sides of the house with said profession, I do. It's a fast cast, low energy, fast recharge, non-draw back 5 seconds of "burst" for the assassin.

It gives you that little extra edge against a slow monk, or a chance to get a critical strike or two in, if you have a huge-energy combo.

You lost me with the "spawnable" part, but to the rest... The assassins "role" is basically a Spiker. The better builds are supposed to lay down a large amount of damage and conditions before retreating. So, so far, I see it doing its job.

Well, I think you are saying how can Way of the Fox be as useful as Expose Defensives? You have to realize, the two skills have largely different applications. They aren't meant to do the same thing.

Expose Defenses.
-Hex: So skills like [skill]Hex Breaker[/skill] render it useless (which is why many assassins who use both ED and SP, will use ED as the initial Hex to break Hex Breaker (pun intended of course! )
-Single Target: So if your opponent throws up a stance or massive tanking skills, your sort of stuck if you have Hex-requiring builds as far as switching to another target.

Way of the Fox.
-Enchantment: Satisfies the "when enchanted" requirement some builds use. It has plenty of "hang time" before it expires, you can pick your targets, take your time, and not lose the few points of energy that the Hex version does, thus allowing you to run a tighter energy-demanding build. You are limited to just one combo then (or there abouts if you just run a Off-Hand/Dual, and with a slow renewable use.
-No Target: So if your opponent sees you coming, or for whatever reason throws his defenses up, you CAN switch targets effectively.
-Shadow Arts: For characters who don't/won't use the Deadly Arts line (or don't want to put in a lot of points).

As I said, two different skills, in two different Attributes, for two different purposes. If you are trying to use Way of the Fox in the same fashion as Expose Defenses, then of COURSE you will run into problems.

I hope this answers your question.

Have I ever played Assassins before? Yep, that I have. I'm also on record as having two Builds in the Assassin database which the community approved of at the time.

Just because I don't play the Guild Wiki vers-... I mean your version of the Assassin, doesn't discount anything.

See? We can keep this civil. After all, the discussion between the community and the eventually progression of the profession is more important than either of our Egos, right?

Let me know if you have any more questions!

In PvP everyone is on an even playing field. In PvE it is you vs AI which have imba monster skills and 100 more armor ..ect ect. If guild wars the game wants to retain any sort of balance, atleast 98% of skill changes need to be based around PvP. I thought people understood this when they left pre-searing

1) Theres honestly no need for it.
2) Even if it was ever implended, there would still be gimmick builds.
3) Not only would it affect PvP, but I'm sure alot of PvErs would be pissed about it.

Wouldn't it help to stop the gimmick builds?

Wouldn't it help to cut back on the number of available gimmick builds?

Why would it? How would PvP players not being able to take more than 3 of a class in to a PvP tournament effect the PvE players?


So because PvE is harder and puts you up against monsters with superior skills, it's okay for PvP to dictate when a skill is nerfed and made next to useless in PvE where it's needed more? Sorry, your logic and your statement don't see to make any sense.

QFT
You know that like you I have a copule accounts and a lot of extra slots. Everyone that I know who does PVP only usually never uses most of their slots. They don't keep paying pout of pocket to support the game like us.

Maybe, but they are also often 8-10 levels higher than you, much more powerful, and hexes and conditions last like half the time. It's much harder than a group of people with the same bunny thumper builds and the same heal-party elementalists, and all the silly adredilen warriors.

LOL too funny, and so true!

This makes sence to me for 2 reasons.

1) It is a successful way to nerf a build that really needs nerfing
2) Paragons are meant to be the "leaders" of a party, thus the leadership attripute, not to mention motivation and command. Everyone knows that if you have too many leaders in a group than that group should most likely fail. You need one or maybe 2 leaders and the rest followers that can get things done. Why not take that conscept into Guild Wars and say that Paragons wont listen to other Paragon's orders (ie. shouts and commands and stuff)?

Slightly, yes. But balancing skills does the same.
Same as the above.
I meant if it was a permanent change, not just for the tournament.

In the end, the best solution imo would be seperate PvE skills from PvP skills. That way a PvP nerf won't affect PvE.

AGREED! ...sadly, despite seeing sooo many requests for this, it's not been done yet. Hopefully someday though (at least maybe in GW2?)

Till then, they really need to consider both when making a nerf.

I am glad people like you have no idea about invincimonks. it has no effect on invincimonks.

Come on now Inde. What fun would there be if we couldnt say how most PvPers were whinny little brats. That would take the fun outa most of the threads here.

Anyways i think most of what the skill balance looks ok to me. The change(notice i didnt say nerf) isnt bad. Just lowers the ep gain only from spirits and minnions. Dont think it effects other creatures at all for there ep gain. just dont think it will be that bad myself.

derv line. haha poor PvPers gonna be waillin out loud on them comming up soon.

mes line. another bash on mesmers.

monk line wasnt affected as you would think if you look at all the skills right.

war line well not bad at all. be more crying comming from PvP land on that.

sin line needs a few more buff to things. recall was finally fixed the way it should be.

ele line not bad in itself

necro not bad at all on most of them

para line why oh why the paras again

ranger and rit line about damn time gets the right buffs

thats all I can say about it at this time.