[Dev Update] Skill Balances for Early April

Works for me

Because we invested points in Soul Reaping for energy management as theres hardly any e-management skills on a Necro Primary.

Why should I now invest more points in a secondary profession for e-management seeing as my Primary attribute is based upon getting energy from things dying.

To Quote A-net:

Necromancers keep their Energy bars full with Soul Reaping, the primary Necromancer attribute, which feeds upon the deaths of others.

Dont see "BTW must also bring e-management skills" in there.......

(Even though I do, it shouldnt be an additional requirement)

but its not basicly u just need to use energy management, Where eles have "uber" 80-100 energy it doesnt stop them runnign out, what does is

[skill]Elemental Attunement[/skill] and the rest fo the attuemenrts. monsk use GoLE mesmers use the insperation line. we all need skills for energy maintainment. why shoudl a necro have full energy almost ll the time. and how many tiems do u find al lthe foes die in one big group, unless mas farming or agaisnt low level foes???

u dotn ahve to invest attra butes all u need is

[skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill], so u can no longer echo SS but it doesnt matter so much u can cast 2 for 10 energy

me too. that would be my ideal change: zero energy from spirts, 1/2 energy from your minions, and 1/4 or zero from any one else's minions.

i just think its funny that ppl are willing to set the interweb on fire over this kind of change. rants, raves, SR/Necromancer obituaries (my favorite!), threats, foul language, ect...

it all just makes my giggle.

Olly123

I understand what you say mate

if you have a necro, go to domain of secrets to farm lb points.

see for yourself what happens with the energy enviroment effect and try to run either a MM build or SS build and see it for yourself what, on an extreme like that, what this nerf has done to the necro.

Its great that they have reduced energy costs on some of the minions but still this is tottaly uncompareable to what the nerf has done.

the solution is not to go anymore to domain of secrets

Hardly any? Blood is power, offering of blood, signet of lost souls, blood rit spring to mind.

Since when does BiP/BR work on the caster then?

Of course FC has had good skills!What about Power Return?Or Persistence Of Memory?"Enchantment Spell. For 5...17 seconds, whenever a Spell you cast is interrupted, that Spell is instantly recharged."
You're going to say that's not a useful skill?
And let's not forget MoR. If you don't have that, you shouldn't even THINK about being a Domination Mesmer!
And now let's look at SR...Useful skills...ummm...Well...Signet of Lost Souls, I guess...Anything else?

Basically Anet seems to be nerfing stuff so they are "OK" in the abused scenarios AND not caring whether they become _crap_ in the nonabused scenarios.

Mesmers:
They overpowered Mantra of Recovery so Diversion and other stuff became unbalanced when used with MoR.

So now they nerf Diversion etc.

Necromancers:
They allow deaths of spirits (even friendly ones) to provide energy to Soul Reaping. This causes problems with spirit spam in PvP.

So now they nerf Soul Reaping.

If Anet actually had a history of knowing what they were doing with skill balancing, AND actually testing stuff (or just thinking things through) then my response would be different. As it is, it just seems like they break stuff, then they break even more stuff to "fix things".

Spirit spamming in PvP will still work with the Soul Reaping changes, so I don't see how the nerf fixes PvP. Why not just fix the energy gain from spirits instead? I don't see spirit spam as being just a worthy PvP tactic to preserve at the cost of annoying so many more people in PvE. Decent PvP players will just come up with yet another "unbalanced" team build anyway .

Why should PvPers care if SR makes PvE "too easy", when _most_ of the PvE'ers don't care? The last I checked DoA wasn't super easy anyway. Would keeping SR as it was in PvE make PvE players less likely to buy the next GW edition or more likely?

Ritualist is a poor rip-off of the WoW shaman class with their totem poles with two poor versions of air-spike & heal added to their repertoire. Bad design like many things of the Factions campaign.

When was that? Changes during beta times before release don't count.
The only primary that was altered i know of is Expertise.

Because it's done to limit the effectiveness of a GIMMICK. In a few weeks nobody in PvP will use Necros and there will be another gimmick and the cycle will continue from start. PvE Necros will continue limping around.

Is SR a powerful primary attribute? YES, as are Expertise and Energy Storage. But it is a conditional energy gain and the condition takes 5secs timeouts now.

Is it overpowered? NO! Overpowered would mean that every skill of a profession would be best used with the profession. Guess what blood line touch skills see more use on ranger...

If there is a need to change primary attributes, it should be a buff to Fast Casting & Spawning Power. Strength is fine since warriors are still the highest dps machines.

When a developer balances a shooter for competition, you wouldn't accept that your rail gun would shoot 5 blanks after one successful hit.


PvP is too imbalanced to cope with a basic game mechanic...

I'd like to lodge a criticism at the way ANET has communicated the Soul Reaping change.

Before I do so, let me say that I generally favor the change because:

1) Players were exploiting spirit spamming in PVP.
2) Players were too heavily relying on the overpowered Minion Master in PVE.

I don't want to debate that opinion as it is heavily travelled ground.

My criticism is that the way this was communicated has set the PVE community against the PVP community and vice versa. Here are my criticisms:

1) It is poorly explained. Take this sentence "Spirits still provide half Energy, and with Soul Reaping's Energy gain limited, a player death will now provide more net Energy, which we believe will help Soul Reaping get closer to its intended function." A casual reading of this implies Anet boosted energy from player / non-spirit deaths offsetting the impact of the nerf. As we all know from testing, this is not true and led players to a false belief in the severity of the nerf.

2) It is buried. Most of the other communicated changes were boosts to lesser used skills. This is a class-altering change to a primary attribute. Anet should have provided more explanation of the thinking behind the change.

3) It set the PVE community against the PVP. What the quoted text above does, besides being buried in a long list of very minor skill changes and being confusingly worded, is imply that something PVP players were exploiting has resulted in a Nerf to PVE. If ANET had simply come out and said, "This skill is being exploited in PVP AND is overpowered in PVE," then the two communities wouldn't be at each others throats right now. More player unhappiness would go to Anet (as always happens during a nerf - needed or not). The way this was communicated makes is seem as if PVE'ers should blame PVP'ers.

As I said, I actually agree with the "spirit" of the change (maybe 4 seconds would be better), but feel Anet did not communicate it well.

On a tagential topic, I am very curious about the PVE-only skills coming. Are we going to get aggro-management that force mobs to attack a specific target, charm monster skills that temporarily convert an enemy to your side, fear commands that cause mobs to flee? These skills would totally imbalance PVP, but make for very interesting PVE tactics.

QQ more please people. It's funny.

i have a necro but im only got here s far as to farm with a 55 in TOA :P, lame i know but there r tiems whe ni run here around and play in tyria with her for the fun of it. but if u take any clase into domain od scerets ( expeshaly a monk) ur see the effect it has on them, it kills my monsk energy as it is , with a 36 target energy im having to constantly swap up cos hero/hencyway r almost as think as pugs.

on the minion part thats a nice buff, i have yet to try MM's since the update, but the nerf to curses energy spell cast has hit that one bad, the combo for SS/RH is now 30 energy, witch is a right shame, atleast u can use [skill]Glyph of Lesser Energy[/skill] to limit it down to 10 energy.

one thing i dislike about this nerf, it has turned all the necros in to crying babies ( ok not all but a fiar few). cant u put ur minds together and coem up with a new build, SS and MMs have been running havock for to long now.need new cooky cutter builds. cos the more u complane the more ur starting to sound like these "dreaded" PVP's uve been saying about how its there fault for the nerf. but cant u grow up and havea look around, its what we did when farmign got its nerf with the AoE ( please dont flame me tho no dout u will :P)

And if anet put the 5 sec timer on every prof's primary attribute benefit, the rest of you would turn into "crying babies" just as quickly.

I just hate the change to soul reaping. If the idea was to nerf it so badly for a week so that people would end up being happy when they'll just announce that SR no longer gets benefits from dying spirits, well, I think it's the wrong tactics they used.

With all the good stuff in the last update simply doing that would've hardly upset a soul. Now you have a lot of upset people, myself included, that suddenly have a hard time enjoying the game...and what for? An unreasonable nerf as a reaction to a PvP problem that could've been fixed much easier and with much less of a nerf.

It does make you wonder if some of these things are play-tested properly before they try it out on us...

Lol, you're funny mate. Compare that with something like Glyph of Concentration, Mantra of Concentration or Mantra of Resolve and tell me which is better.

not really cos not all of them need the nerf, actualy cant think of any that do :P.

ur just upset that ur nice easy game has become a it more chalanging. so what i u cant keep this 10 minion army up 24/7 or cant cast 4 SS on a bunch of foes. ur just have to adapt liek we all have. i run a necro also, ive gotten over the nerf becuase ive edeted a build or to to alow my necro to face losts of baddies with out major energy crises, and if i remember correct the SS had to was all of his energy b4 to cast such moves to b affective but if u do run into energy probles take [skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill] as psoted alrdy but it helsp to post things a few times . also it did seem b4 the update that a necor with a MM could keep his energy up aoce 30 a majorty of the time. this is the only characters in guildwars that can. so in a sence there over powered, they keep energy up and an army. monks who need the energy most cant they constantly have to spam skills witch drains energy. but they have leart with skisll such as channaling/GoLE u can keep ur energy up.( keep that in mind)

Hear hear!
Why not just abolish necromancers seeing as they've been causing so much trouble in PvP? When we next log on, we can get the option to change our primary class to W/Mo or disappear forever.

I LOL'd at that. Actually, I still am. XD

Because putting a 5 second delay on fast casting, or energy storage, is really an accurate comparitive change. What kind of argument is that?

I really don't see how the change is that big...? You can't use expensive skills without management, or in areas with energy reducing effects? Neither can any other class. Necromancers do not have a special class requirement to burn more energy - and SR still provides more effect than several other primary attributes, without even using skills from the line.

I think the problem is in most cases, decent players can see that this is the case anyway and most others refuse to do the same.

That's the point of the attribute.

Soul Reaping has fewer skills than any other attribute.

ArenaNet has commented on community forums that it had deliberately avoided linking skills to Soul Reaping because they felt its effect was stronger than that of other caster primary attributes.

It is SUPPOSED to be a powerful attribute and take care of the Necromancer's energy management.

Blood is Power:Sacrifice 33% maximum Health. For 10 seconds, target OTHER ally gains +3...5 Energy regeneration.

Offering of blood:
Sacrifice 20% maximum Health. You gain 8...18 Energy.

Signet of lost souls:If target foe IS BELOW 50% Health, you gain 10...82 Health and 1...8 Energy.

Blood ritual:Sacrifice 17% maximum Health. For 8...13 seconds, target touched ally gains +3 Energy regeneration. Blood Ritual CANNOT BE USED ON THE CASTER.

And your point is?????

Anet the nerf on the necro primary attribute is just too much, I cannot rez anything up nor get any energy back. I am a PvE the description is also weird and does not seem proper. Please change it to a max of 3 seconds. The ways to get energy are very less for a necro!

so his first and second where lame resions but sig is every 8 seconds u gain 8 enrgy, +4 pips what ever that equals out to. u cant tell me u wast all ur energy b5 there below 50% hp can u???

And it still is a powerful e-management attribute.

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

Imo, the nerf to limiting minions to 10 had a much larger affect on PvE than this

Anet makes the decisions about what is supposed to be powerful in the game. They toned down Soul Reaping, so apparently it wasn't supposed to be as powerful as it was. Live with it. Learn to manage your energy, like the rest of us casters.

You necromancers act like spoiled kids that get their candy taken away because the parents realise they're getting overweight. Or something. You get the point.

They are taking away candy from both their kids, because one of them is spoiled.
It's been a little more than 23months since the release of Prophecies and suddenly Anet is thinking that Necros (not only MMs, the whole class!) are overpowered for PvE? Sorry, but that's ridiculous. It's a nerf to a nearly 2 year old primary attribute of a core class to apply a SHORT TERM fix to the ever imbalanced PvP.
PvP meta will move on to the next gimmick.
Why not just make the change to PvP SR? The split between PvE and PvP already happened since HA'ers don't have to bother with the basic game mechanic of Death Penalty anymore.

The only reason you MM's are bitching now is the fact that you have to worry about E-Management.

It's an attribute that gives you up 13 energy every 5 seconds per kill.Theres positively no downside.If you run out of energy because of this right here...You're pretty terrible.Especially with skills like Signet of Lost Souls which is also linked to the same attribute.

Nope MMs have the least problems with the change and my teammates never listen to me to kill slower
Blood & Curses builds have more problems and Glyph of Lesser Energy is the better choice for their energy management, since SoLS is very conditional.

Lies. A small change??

This isn't a small change, you guys are just lazy as all hell. If you have problems with sprits then make them not affect sprits. But no, you rather just issue a blanket nerf.

You know that this affects amount of energy gained back from shouts, you know that now I can't possibly get more than 4 energy from leadership in AB for these chants.

You changed ToF from 20 sec to 10 sec, then also nerfed % now this nerf so I can't possibly use it in AB. Yeah I know you don't give a crap about AB, but there is no need to go break it for AB if just making it affect non-spirit allies would fix it. But no...you had to nerf it all to hell.

You know what's also an awesome side-effect of all these changes from ally to party member? now when I use Watch yourself or Stand Your Ground, Master Togo and Mehnlo become the only allies in the mission with 60 AL, which means they get ganged by all the mobs. And they just happen to be mission critical NPCs.

Secondly where are any serious buffs? You are buffing Anthem of Fury which is just ripe for abuse, by stacking several paragons with it, instead of buffing single target shouts which are way harder to abuse by stacking 5 paragons in a team. Why the hell is Can't Touch This self-targetted? it is completely useless that way. Make it target ally."Make your time" should cost 5. Make Angelic Protection target ally or something and so on.

Lame balance changes. Seems like every time there is a problematic skill, you just "ether renewal" the crap out of it. No wait...I have to retract that statement. Not even ether renewal got nerfed as many times as "Incoming!" and "Stand Your Ground!" did. Just look at the whole motivation. It is pure shit.

And lastly, why the hell doesn';t this patch include fix for Focused Anger? That skill has been broken from day 1 of nightfall, and you don't care it seems.

0_0 Your rant made me cry

1. You don't like Rits so its like, WHO cares about their E-management, I can say the same about Necros, although I do somewhat like them.

2. Energy storage is powerful? Dude look at the Eles spells 1 they cost alute without Dual attunements, 2 Exhaustion on numberous skills means they may not even HAVE all that energy. Im still waiting for Expertise Touch nerf......someday. Expertise also doesnt gain energy so you will DEPLETE even if you DO kill something

3. Fast casting is fine actually, Increased spell casting Speed which means if you take another secondary you can spike with an me/Ele party or Quick save with a Me/mo or piss people off with a Me/N. Spawning power is for their spirits which I think as a whole need some work to fragile.


If I remember the reason SOul reaping has so little skills is because A-net felt it was incredibly strong. I dont know but an attribute that gives you energy when you kill something and putting a bunch of killing skills in that attribute is rahter nuts, and the E-management was already okay so more e-management would be over killed, and mass degen would still give you back energy.


Most mass energy gain thinks have a pre requisite, and ya Soul Reaping does but

1. In pve things were dying all over the damn place

2. In Pvp if there was a large MASS of things dieing in between 5 seconds that makes it the necro ruined now since it has to wait 5 seconds in pvp now...theres a problem.

3. Soul reaping still works in pve MM is not dead, other necro builds -_- if they were so Incredibely costly that that 1 attribute could make it seem invisible and now makes a dent of 5 seconds -_-. Kill something every 5 seconds, get a sin/dervish/interrupter...


This change isnt Necro destroying in PVP unless something was already broken enough for the necro to abuse it...

In pve, MM's are already PLENTY powerful...maybe to much -_- Other necro builds should bring a skill e-management anyways.

I can compare necro SR to Assassin Critical striking and unless I bring skills SR can be far better.

What are you smoking, it's not just MM's that are complaining. It hits all the necro attributes not just Death. It is a bad change and it deserves all the negative criticism it gets. The necro has not become unplayable just as the mesmer is not unplayable, but who really plays a mesmer. The heroes in nightfall have 5 of the core professions with 2 heroes and a single mesmer. Even ANet seems to acknowledge the mesmer as a failed profession.

Seriously. Stop using this ridiculous analogy. It doesnt work and it just makes you look like you dont understand anything at all. Which you don't.

You can not possibly compare the restrictions of one primary attribute and impose it on another. Can you not see that? That's like saying Fast Casting shouldnt affect spells because Expertise doesnt.

Gah. The amount of garbage I've been seeing gives me a headache...

Quoted. For. ****ing. Truth.

Preach my brother, preach!

Exactly my point. Some people will not be satisfied or consider the game "balanced" until all classes are identical. I'll say it again: any time an online game alters their PvE game in search of the mythical PvP "balance," they end up destroying themselves.

I'm not going to argue any more as to whether the changes to SR, mesmer skills, or any other "nerfs" or "buffs" were good or bad. Honestly, I seriously doubt that any single change could break an entire game. What breaks games is the overall direction of the changes and the motivation behind them.

(boldface added for emphasis)

I cite this trend as evidence that the prediction I made about the future of GW is indeed happening. As the devs pay more attention to the PvP environment, mechanics shift towards the more easily measureable, and therefore more easily balanced, aspect of raw damage. Indirect abilities, such as damage mitigation, energy management, and more, which are harder to quantify, take a back seat and are weakened until they are no longer a factor. Eventually, all characters become copies of each other, dealing the same damage, at the same rate, in the same way, with the same skills. Balance has then been achieved. The game is now a perfect reflection of the players' skill and only the players' skill, which while it sounds desirable, has the effect of removing all diversity and making the game intensely boring when played for any extended period of time. Welcome to the perfectly balanced PvP, a game with all the excitement and imagination of Pong. I hope you all enjoy it.

Do I sound a little over the top? Maybe, but I've seen this exact process happen before, and I see the beginnings of it now. As long as the PvP "balance" is the driving force behind the evolution of the game, this will be the direction of all future changes, and the eventual conclusion they will lead to. The devs (and for that matter, the players) need to seriously ask themselves if this is what they really want, and if it is truly best for the game. For now, GW is still a great game, it's enjoyable to play in both PvE and PvP, for novice and veteran players alike. I just hope people wake up soon enough so it can stay that way.

My previous post on this topic for reference:
Lessons from gaming history

Trust me, you're not the only person who realized this.

agh please take your time and make some sort of effort to make your posts legible.
that said....
You say to come up with a new build. But the PvE problem with this change isn't any specific build, it is the whole primary attribute of the necromancer. The only way to come up with a new build to not worry about the nerf would be to not put points in soul reaping at all. In which case, you might as well take an elementalist or mesmer or ritualist primary. And Signet of Lost Souls... It is nice, but it has a very strict conditional (under 50% health but not dead) which against non-boss mobs can be real hard to catch at times...

As for your argument about monks: I have a healer. He almost never runs out of energy. He doesn't use a single e-management skill. between powerful healing spells like Word of Healing, and the primary attribute that increases healing even more, I can heal an almost-dead party member to full health for 5 energy. So I can take a full party of 8, over half of which are squishy casters and assassins, PLUS two allies that I must keep alive, and go an entire battle without any deaths and still have near full energy leftover at the end of the battle. Sounds kind of like how necromancers USED to manage... you know, before this nerf...

Also just to note, necros were not the only class that had a powerful energy management primary. dervishes, assassins, paragons, rangers, elementalists... all gain energy in some form from their primary attribute. And now all are far more powerful than soul reaping.... PLUS have really good skills linked to the primary attributes!

BiP and BR are not E-management for yourself though. Sig of lost souls is conditional on foes being less then 50% hp and OoB really isnt that great.
So no necros dont have good E-Man skills.

Absolutely can.
Arcaine Echo =10
SS = 15
Echoed SS = 15
Reckless Haste 15 I think
= 55 right there and thats before they even really start attacking you.
so your down to 0 energy and have to wait till one gets down to 50% then you get 8 energy back from sig so now youre up maybe 15 if youre lucky since you still have to cast more skills once your energy finally charges enough. By the time they die you may have about 10 or so then you gain a one time energy gain of 12 or so depending on SR. So you end up with 20-22 then by the time next group comes you dont have enough energy to cast anything.

Thanks for the reassurance.

Let's hope it's enough.