[Dev Update] Skill Balances for Early April

I stopped reading your post after this, since I found that part hilarious. The inability to notice that someone was making a joke (which was then admitted by the poster a few posts later) really touched my funny bone, especially when it was made by someone generalizing a large group of people as "ridiculous".

Edit (working my way through the pages):
Since I mainly play a Rt, I can really only talk about Spawning Power (although, from what I've heard, Strength is similar). Since when has Spawning ever been the backbone of a rit? Yes, it has the best energy management skills for rits, but nobody uses Spawning Power because "TEH EXTRE HEALT FOR MI SPIRTS IS SO PWNZOR!!!". If a Rit isn't using any skills in Spawning, he generally doesn't bring it. Yes, some classes have useful primary attributes, but join the rest of us.

Sprit of Failure has always been one of my favorite skills. I've never thought of it as overpowered, of course, given its energy cost, it isn't something you spam either -- it usually goes on 2-3 targets you need to shutdown. The 4en break was enough to make it worth one's time, over the course of a stupid warrior's action, you'd get 4en every 8-10s, making it just about break even around 20s. The 10s recharge made it not so spammable. In the end, it was a good balance.

I guess due to MoR, this became spammable, but what I don't understand is the hit to the energy return. At 3en, it isn't break even (and with 5en hex removal, a net loss). I don't mind the 20s increase in cast time, but what I do mind is the energy break-even nature. If it's not going to be a net-zero energy return skill (while having a good side effect), then perhaps it could be reduced to 5en instead?

I've got some other feedback on the 5s duration in PvE; my "turnover" for guilt and mistrust has dropped by about 50%. I'd have about an 80% success rate with these skills before the nerf when casting on random PvE elementalists, etc. After this nerf, it's dropped *significantly* to about 50% or so. Most PvE elementalists have a good built-in pause between skills that makes these one quite hard given the cast time.... I think they could be fixed by making the penalty higher. For example guilt could do the 2-for-1 deal like energy tap, draining a bout twice as much energy. Hence, it'd be a nasty penalty, but, alas, only a short time window.

In general, energy management for a mesmer is horrible. When the game opened, mesmers were very good at energy management... if not the best. You could find ways to keep up your casting so that you had enough energy to cast rather routinely. This was our advantage over Elementalists (who were simply energy batteries that dumped, but needed to recharge). Elementalists were about spike, not constant pressure.

Somehow about 1 year ago, GoLE became *the* energy management skill, far outstripping even Energy Drain [E]. This lasted for months. Now GoLE is still just as good for Elementalists as it always was (making them less like batteries and more like constant pressure), but much less useful for the rest of us. Why not make Inspiration line actually useful for Mesmers again? Just double the cast time! This will make them still usable by Mesmers, but, less abusable by monks.

I just don't get this buff to Keystone Signet. What is that all about? Mesmer's primary attribute... is *casting* not invoking signets.

Could the devs actually look at the primary attribute of a Mesmer again and start to think about how Mesmer skills can have some synergy with their primary attribute. Other classes should be able to use mesmer skills, but at a decent reduction in effectiveness (divine favor, makes monk spells about 10% more effective? expertise is similar, most ranger skills are useless without it... try running a elementalist w/o storage and the huge energy management skills it comes with).

Perhaps what we need is a few more fast casting skills that actually have to do with .... er, fast casting? and now that GoLE is gone (imagine a mesmer going /el just for energy management!) a few more energy management tricks that are _on par_ with what other classes have?

Why should i?

I fully agree that skills need to be balanced around PvP, but Soul Reaping isn't a skill. It's the class defining primary attribute of a core class that was created the same time or even before the PvP modes.

If PvP too FUBAR, then the mechanics of serious PvP should be in question as well. Regular changing sealed decks could be a solutions for the pvp gimmick problem.

Yes some primaries of other professions suck, but do you really think the solution is to MAKE THEM ALL SUCK?

I'm playing this game since E34E and played my share of pvp. Since the pre-release day of prophecies, when the obvious beta-only UAX button disappeared as expected, the pvp community whines and cries and sometimes even threatens the devs. Alex Weekes was right, when he called that bunch of babies a VOCAL MINORITY! Still those people dictate the holy gospel of META. Pvp'ers: ADAPT or go play your precious vaporware Fury.

Yes. Because it's always clear that someone is making a joke on the internet, especially when there's so many idiots saying idiotic things. Which brings me to your post...

And no I did not generalize a large group of people. I also play PVE. I said that MOST of the PVE complaints were ridiculous. It wasnt even directed at the type of players themselves, just their complaints. So, learn some reading comprehension. Thanks.

QFT

Consider for a moment two sayings, which while old and often used, are still quite true:

Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.

A wise man learns from his mistakes. A truly wise man learns from others' mistakes.

With those in mind, I just want to take a moment to tell a little story: there was once a widely popular game, who shall remain nameless (but whose initials are SWG). This game essentially decimated itself and alienated its playerbase by sacrificing the Joy of Playing the Game upon the Altar of PvP Balance. In the end, they lost many formerly dedicated players and still had no "balance." Anet should think very, very hard about this each time they attempt a "skill balance."

I find that "balance" in these games is a vague, undefinable situation, and everyone has a different idea of what it means. As such, it is something that while constantly sought, is never achieved. Much harm is done to games in the name of balance, but what good comes from seeking a nonexistent goal? Usually it comes down to the more complex parts of a game being lost for the simpler, direct parts, such as straight damage over manipulation and control. Raw damage is something easy to measure in these games, but other techniques can be more difficult to quantify for comparison. So when balance is sought, the result is that all methods of direct damage become mirrors of each other, and any indirect methods end up losing any viability at all. I've seen it happen in other games, and unfortunately, I believe it is happening here.

exactly what i was going to say.

Gaile, nerfing PvE players due to PvP skill use is just WRONG. Don't do it, and we'll all get along nicely.

on another note.... buff the trappers? what, trapping underworld and basically killing a dangerous mob before it even gets near you wasn't enough?

Well the SR nerf sucks royally.

Bye bye bone fiends. I could live with it if they reduced bone fiend cost to 15 maybe to compensate, but as it stands, the bone fiends are just too expensive now :'(

why oh why not go with the no energy from spirits. I liked my necro, we've already had one attribute nerfed with minion numbers and also had verata's and jagged bones nerfed. Why now nerf our primary attribute when there are other options that are more workable and would help both pvp and pve not just pvp.

sighs....

Because they won't fire Izzy, period.

Spirit of failure was never overpowered as it takes a long time to cast and your usually lucky to get it off.

That was freaking deep man...The sad truth is, the manic seeking of "balance" has ruined alot of MMO's so I couldn't agree with you more...

Split PvE and PvP skills and get over it. Its so frustrating for a PvE player that skills get nerved all because in PvP its causing unbalance.
We have a Priest of Balthazar we have a difference between PvP chars and PvE chars, then why is it so goddamn hard to make a split between PvP skills and PvE skills. And it is true that when skills are getting nerved or buffed all the time people will get very annoyed by this and eventually quit the game.

I didn't take the time to read through 21 pages of this thread. But I wanted to wait to test the update before talking.
My point is on the mesmer's nerf. Maybe it has already adressed.
I really don't like the nerfs. Yes, now diversion, guilt and mistrust and all that become less powerful in combination with Mantra of Recovery. But the issue is, now you can only use them in combination with Mantra of recovery. They become underpowered without.
Why didn't you nerf Mantra of recovery instead of these spells? Not be nerfing to Oblivion, like you seem to love it, just decrease the recharge boost from 50% always to, say 0%(0 FC)....36% (12 FC)...48% (16FC) and increase duration so at 12FC the duration exceed the recharge.

May I remind everyone that in GW: Eye of the North we will be getting 50 (read it carefully: 50) PvE only (!!!) skills.


Thank you for listening.

May I remind Anet, that killing the PvE fun, isn't really going to make people more inclined to give them any more money for an expansion.

QFT - It could be ‘make these three chapters a bit crap’ so we have to buy the new one., but that would be far to cynical , wouldn’t it?

Not in my book and thats probably the memo that the Devs got

they're also increasing the maximum rank of sunspear title. wonder if theres any correlation there? like sunspear rebirth, for instance...

There is, of course, also a good chance that a lot if not all of those pve-only skills will be one-use mission-specific things, like the celestials in factions or "disarm trap" in nightfall...

What has happened to Obs mode? I miss you obs mode *Sniff*

Well I for one will be disinclined to buy eyes of north. I'm fed up with pve nerfing created from complaints from pvpers who are being owned by yet another new build that exploits some skill or other. I'm also fed up of anets inability to address this issue in a way that's fair to both sides. I understand that skill exploitation can be a pain in pvp, but nerfing the skills in pve as well is not the answer. Waiting for a future expansion is not the answer either. I have paid for all three campaigns, and I enjoy them for pve. The SR nerf on top of the verata's nerf and the minion number nerf is just ridiculous. Separate pve and pvp skills if necessary, but fix them now, a future promise of skills is not going to salve the anger of the current nerfs in pve.
If this continues I'll be moving on, no more GW for me... and it's not just this nerf it's the repeated dictation from pvpers of what skills I'm allowed to use in pve, because it doesn't upset their game, and what skills I should have nerfed because it does.

Soul reaping sucks. The rest I suppose I'm fine with.

Every class has been nerfed and buffed since the origin of the game. I love how everyone always jumps to the negative on every topic. They have nerfed farming to hell and back, yet people still farm. They nerfed AoE a couple times, yet SS remains one of the most dangerous skills in the game. They capped the number of minions you can have, yet every mission group insists on having a MM. I could go on for days.
PvE is easy - it is a fact. When you can load up with henchies (no heroes) and an empty skill bar and still beat missions, it is too easy. The skill adjustments keep things fresh, by changing the way you play the game. Not to be an ass, but skills change - you can either adapt or quit. Personally, I choose to adapt. If you choose to quit, I thank you for giving me less lag when I play.

Ditto...The SR change sucks...got owned by Shiro in gate of madness as I watched Olias' energy hover around nothing...my guilding came along and with one chain of Arcane Echo, SS, SS (Arcane copy) was alomst out of energy and had to wait to cast anything else...mean while Shiro was mowing down minions, koss etc.

One of the benefits of necros (or detriments if facing them) is the more death, the more they could do...now...they are going to have to rely on Signet of lost souls or mesmer secondary for energy...

Not sure how SR was too overpowered in PVP...when I did AB, TA, RA or the FA/JQ, there was never enough death to make a difference...I usually HAD energy, but everything was recharging

The BEST way to OffSET SR the way it was is to increase recharge or make it so tat a necor cannot attak/cast while soul reaping...(when something dies, give the necro a 1/2 sec "time out" while it does its SR..that would be interesting....spells would take that much longer and attacks would stop...

i did gates of madness this morning and both my necro and my olias had near max energy the entire mission...

please, check your skills and how your using them, NOT the non existant nerf that SR got... hell, i'm getting MORE energy from it most of the time

I don't know about MORE energy, but I agree that energy is not a problem.

I think that the most simple solution is that every player who has a necro promise that if this nerf is not taken away that we all refuse to buy gwen and gw2. That will actually get anet thinking.

I'm trying to follow Anet's logic on this one:
"We improved skill A, and now skills C, D, E, F and G are now overpowered when used with skill A. As a fix, we are weakening skills C-G, so that if they are used with A, they will be 'balanced.'"

Never mind that without skill A, the rest are a lot weaker than before. Wouldn't it make more sense to realize that when they improved MoR, they went to far, and should just scale it back? I guess that would be admitting they were wrong though, and they can't do that. There's the real reason for the mesmer nerf, an unwillingness to admit they screwed up, and so instead of a fix, they'll just make more of a mess of it.

I'll agree with the first part of your post 100%. As for the last part, no offense, but you obviously haven't done much trapping. When you trap, especially in places like the UW, you don't kill mobs that never get near you. On the contrary, you stand in the middle of them, trying to tank them, so that you can keep them in the damage zone as long as possible and hope they go down before they walk away. You're usually banking on a 75% chance that a mob won't get more than one hit through to you. It's a decent chance, but it doesn't always work, especially if you get careless. Trapping effectively takes a bit of luck, and a lot of skill, which I thought was the point of GW, skill over time played.

As for the buffs to trapping skills, most of them are to skills that few trappers use anyway. I don't think they were needed, but I"m guessing they came in response to the last update where many trappers found out that their traps weren't really doing as much damage as they thought they were. Never mind the fact that technically, they still worked the same as they always did, they just showed the right numbers. There was a lot of complaining over it, and I'm guessing this was the response.

i mean i was gaining energy quicker than i could use it

You may be using a low energy build and thats all good and fine. What about the people who arent? Should they have the game experience ruined for them over a glitch in PVP?

I dont know what the big complaint about necros and energy in PVP is about anyway. Isnt one of the primary functions of a necro to support other party members? Don't the necros in PVP give energy to other party members like in PVE? Wouldnt a necro with more energy mean that he or she can be better at supporting other party members, or is that the problem? Now too many noob teams are beating the "uber" guilds .

I no rite! Why can't necros spam 10e heals every other second for as long as they want?! Its totally balanced amirite?

Nope, i'm not using a low energy build, i regularly run with high cost skills...

And please, with your obvious knowledge, please explain how Pvp has done this? As I would place money that your either, a, wrong, or b, you haven't got a clue how to make a build

EDIT:

Just caught your second post... Umm, yeah, ok...

Isnt it the job of mezmers and rangers to shut down healers? So your saying that PVP players simply asked anet to do their dirty work for them and make PVP easier?

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I experienced that too - before and after the "nerf."

As far as I know, there is no such thing as a "low energy build" for a necro, seeing as most of their "good" skills cost 15 energy or more. The issue is not a "glitch" in PvP, it is the PvP people being smart enough to identify a broken game mechanic. A lot of gimmick builds are based on a broken mechanic, whether the PvE community wants to admit it or not. Soul reaping is overpowered, and this "nerf" is hardly going to kill the class.

QFT!

Read this people, this is the reason PvP is used as a yard stick for the game and skill mechanics and not PvE

Anyone that wants to say differently, DOESN'T DO PVP!

(Oh, BTW, I'm a Hybrid player, i do both)

Wow. Just, wow...

I know, i nearly fell off my chair at that one too

Thats exactly what the guy said. If you dont like necros being able to heal often then shut them down, dont cry over it.

Just for the record, I am a PvE player, but a big fan of Observer Mode. I've seen the abuse that Soul Reaping causes. I don't see how any class should be able to spam all skills on their bar, with no regards to energy nor skill cost.

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic (could be wrong though). In PvP, the specific case that warrants the reason for this adjustment to Soul Reaping, the builds often have 5-6 necros. Care to tell me how to shut them all down at one time, when they have nearly limitless energy, yet still carry enough offense to kill them?

NOOOOOOOOO!! MY POOR POOR NECROS!! Why is soul reaping nerfed??? the backbone - the core to any necro primary....it isn't even a skill!