[Dev Update] Skill Balances for Early April

why.. why.. why would you nerf the entire domination line :O you havent even restored insperation to what it was and the trade-off was signet of clumsiness >_< when gaile said "exciting things for mesmers coming soon" this was not what i had in mind -.-

I don't have any comments on the skill changes yet - I suspect I'll just play and feel them out for myself.


But Gaile I must congratulate you on doing a great job on communicating the changes and why they're coming ie. the thinking and reasoning of the dev team.

Thanks for the details and heads up.

I can't believe that we're on page 3 of feedback and this hasn't been mentioned.

Signet of toxic shock is cool now but sig of shadows really needs a buff, its simply crap in comparison

Assassin
Where the shadow prison nerf? Seriously. Also, I'm kinda surprised BLS and BSS weren't touched... if SP was nerfed, this would be understandable, but since it wasn't...? SP, BSS, Twisting, BSS, Blades of Steel still looks way better than any lead-offhand-dual combo.

Nice fix on recall, though.

Dervish
Wow, wtf. Giant thumbs down. Nerf on melandru was good, but we don't need to make other avatars ridiculous. Balthazar, anyone?

Elementalist
GoLE is still very good, but not quite as borked. Mind blast also looks almost viable now. Nicely done.

Mesmer
Again, thumbs down. Diversion/MoR might have been slightly imba (not anywhere near as borken as some stuff other classes did) and you nerfed it? Coupled with shame, guilt and mistrust? GG. Diversion was great, shame was great. Guilt was good dom e-management. Nobody used mistrust. Yet they all get a nerf across the board. Especially unhappy with diversion.

Nobody cares about ether signet, keystone signet, etc. Either change their functionality like you did with Otyugh's or just leave them alone. Keystone signet is like PnH... no matter how short of a recharge it has, it's still trash.

Possibly overnerf on SoF, but honestly that skill deserved it. The rest was 100% unjustified. What do you want, a 100% melee+monk meta? Thumbs way down.

Monk
Nerf on ZB was completely unnecessary. What, monks were breaking the RA metagame? Please. Convert hexes got a good buff, so did smite hex.

Where's nerf on Healer's boon to affect 1...X instead of 10...X spells?

Necro
I'll have to see how exactly SR plays out, but tbh, I'd just 100% remove energy gain from spirits and cut energy gain from minions to 1/2 or 1/3. Still, not going to pass judgment on this one yet.

Price/Reckless: these needed a nerf, but maybe the price/spirit/reckless combo was nerfed too much when considered together. Coupled with yet another butchering of mesmer skills, say hello to all-physical meta.

Paragon
Where's "reduced base armor to 70"? Come on. Paragon armor coupled with best ranged DPS in the game and with all the defensive crap they have is blatantly imba.

Ranger
Lol, I'm putting Otyugh's Cry into my HA build.

Ritualist
Nothing here.

Warrior
Random minor buffs and wtf @ shields up nerf... paragons stay as ridiculous as they are and you nerf one of the best defensive skills against them? GG caster classes imo.



Although the main problem, soul reaping, seems to have been addressed, overall, I'm fairly disappointed with the balance. Namely, the lack of nerf on paragons, an unneeded nerf on mesmers and the general strong push towards all-physical meta. As if it wasn't physical-heavy already.

Monk can use [skill=text]Auspicious Incantation[/skill] + [skill=text]Aegis[/skill]

That's the equivilent of: 30 energy gain every 35 seconds.

Or you can use...[skill=text]Auspicious Incantation[/skill] + [skill=text]Balthazar's Aura[/skill]

And that's the equivilent of 50 energy gain every 30 seconds. A big bonus for smite monks.

Very good buffs/nerfs to balance the PvP world.

And I am very glad that Anet is choosing to explain their changes rather than hide in the dark. Thank You, Gaile, Thank You very much.

I <3 these changes. Lead attacks definitely needed more good options.

Now, if Temple Strike's recharge could just be reduced to 15 seconds to go along with GLS. . . .

Wow I think the whole mesmer PvE idea went directly out the window and all of the supposed helpful updates that were suppose to go into effect. I am severely disappointed to that note. My question is; why could we have waited till Eye of the North came out, before this skill balance would go into effect? Considering that would bring around PvE only skills, so that way there would be less of a backlash from the community. I guess you rather make it more of a pain so we have to purchase Eye of the North to get the full benefits of PvE now.

I guess that whole ranger pet thing and mesmer update is defiantly not going to happen now.

Nerf phe's avatar imo.

Gonna have to slap a great big QFT on that one.

(Except I think you're thinking of the other MoR. Silly acronyms. Either way, the principle is the same.)

O,o

wonder what this means? adding pve only skills??

The way I see it is that SR will be "turned off" after each trigger for 5 seconds. So, for your standard spirit spam build, energy gain was reduced to 7e(@14SR)/5s = 4.25 pips. So, now a necro isn't a class with unlimited energy, but simply with 8 pips of regen instead. (Slightly more, since occasionally you'll get a 14e trigger, rather than 7) Which is still pretty damn borked.

If SR is "pooled", as you thought, this nerf is meaningless, so I don't think that's the case.

yet more pvp imbalance issues becoming pve's problem

predictable

This soul reaping nerf is Garbage

It kills the PvE minionmaster, kills the effectiveness of the PvE SS, and forces the pvp necromancer to have to take Spritway gank.

Minions with their degen are so fragile anyways and with bone fiends still at 25 energy, and bone horrors still at 10 energy, theres just not enough energy to maintain the army anymore.

I'm pretty sure that the pvE B/p group build is dead as we know it too. Maybe it can be ressurected with Ritualists instead of Necromancers though.

In pvp, If you cant get full energy when something dies, you must force death every 5 seconds by having a redundant spirit around. This change, if it doesnt kill the necromancer entirely, forces them into spirtway garbage in pvp.

I hate it.

how do we know that? no one knows how the new SR will work exactly. until we see it, we cant say it will or will not work.

I just have to lol whenever someone from XoO wants to be a smartass with an opinion about PvP. Why would weapon removal spells be retarded? Last time I checked, there are plenty of counters to Shouts, and none of the Shouts are really overpowered. If you look at Weapon Spells, though, they're doing the EXACT same thing as Enchantments, with no condition. Shouts like "I Will Survive!" have a condition for the health regen, which is why they don't really need to be removed. They're inherently balanced. Weapon Spells, though, can't be removed, and have ridiculous effects. Health regen and chance to block, etc and so forth.

Last time I checked, there are exactly two counters to shouts in this game. Not exactly something I'd call "plenty" especially when one of them blows. (Roaring Winds... blows? winds? get it?)

EDIT: Nekrataal - you seem to have no clue about PvE and even less about PvP. L2P plz.

IMO Weapon Spells are already balanced to a degree in that you can only be under 1 at a time. Though maybe a mesmer skill to remove them wouldn't go amiss...

Even before playing it, I think I can say GoLE is better in energy storage than non-att. This is a happy change, I'd also say 10...18 is not enough to reduce it's usefullness by secondary Elementalists. I'd have changed it to more on the lines of 5...18...21. Primary Elementalists, I think you'd find would use it *more* and it would be used less frequently by non primaries. At 20 energy saved minus the 5 energy cost every 30 seconds (which cannot be stripped) it's still in line with ELITE energy management skills...


Oh, and as a Ranger I would just like to add, thanks

I'm wondering when:

Shields Up's description will be changed from piercing armor bonus, to "projectile" armor bonus. Since it doesn't affect daggers anymore as far as I can tell, but affects all elemental bow strings, which aren't piercing damage.

When Vital Weapon + LoD/ZB will be fixed. Right now, LoD/ZB still use your original HP instead of the new max/current with Vital Weapon applied. It seriously screws with both those monk elites.