Mesmer and SR changes June 7th update.

This is not what I said.

There is a difference between not having a CONSTANT worry and having "no worries". You must have skimmed over the parts where I pointed out places where necros DO have to worry about energy Pre Nerf. Occassions where investments in SR can serve completely no use.

"Join a New Generation of Online Roleplaying" - the bold heading at GWs own description of their product.

"Join the millions of players worldwide who have become enraptured by Guild Wars, the award-winning online roleplaying game—no subscription required." The A-Net description of guild wars.

"Guild Wars is an episodic series of multiplayer online role-playing games " - Wikipedia's opening statement about Guild Wars

"In Guild Wars, you can meet new friends in towns or outposts, form a party, and then go tackle a quest together. Your party has its own unique copy of the quest map, so camping, kill-stealing, and long lines to complete quests are all things of the past. Every quest has an unprecedented amount of freedom and gives you the power to manipulate the world around you." - Product description from online retailer.

Seems when I was investingating the product, they were marketing a ROLE PLAYING GAME, not an "E-Sport". Silly me for expecting this RPG to actually be a RPG. Guess if I want to play your E-Sport I'm going to have to brush off my E-cleats. Or would they give me some kind of unfair advantage- thus skewing the balance and truning the sport back into a game?

Nowhere, absolutely nowhere does it say in my game manual, or on the package that this product is a sport. And if this actually is a "Sport", and that is the direction that A-Net is heading with its real life material/cash prizes for PvP tournaments - I WANT A REFUND!

My Final point....


Adding a timer to something that is random just doesn't make sense.

That won't work. Mainly because non-MM Necros won't get any benefit whatsoever from SR. Also, no one would invest any points in SR if you only get 1 pip for 3 seconds every 3 ranks.

Here's a slighly better solution:
For every 2 ranks of Soul Reaping, when a foe or allied creature dies, you gain +1 energy regeneration for [insert half your rank in SR ,rounded down, here] seconds. You can only gain energy this way every 4 seconds.

Sort of complicated but non-MM's benefit and the timer is more reasonable and even understandable. Few builds require more than 8-10 ranks of SR so the pips wouldn't create the degenerate environment that the original SR did.

Soul Reaping seems to be even WORSE since this update, is this the best Anet could come up with?

I could have done better.

Did you miss the part where they never actually changed the mechanic in game?

Maybe this goes to prove that the problem really only exists in ones mind?

Because PvE never thinks ANYTHING is overpowered.
Everything in PvE is underpowered.

If Searing Flame does 300 damage per hit - half of PvErs will say thank you and the other half will cry about how their favorite class should also get the boost.

While PvPers go play Fury and WoW.

Give me a break. Those wanting the 'simple' solution:

1. Assume it is easy to implement
2. Wants it because it is NOT a nerf at all. It just nerf on paper. It will allow them to continue to abuse a broken mechanic


ROFL on the dude that compared SR to 55 monk. Brilliant! Compare SR to the one build that had the biggest impact in PvE and economy. ROFL.

way i see it is...if the necro class is slightly overpowered in Pve...well, then that's less work that I have to do

What does overpowered mean in PvE? Is it "limitless" energy, as long as bodies continue to drop? Is it "god mode": being able to go into many areas solo with the same build and be effectively invincible? Is it the sheer immense amount of damage output by 2-3 characters with the same build? Is it the ability to abuse and, dare I say it, exploit the poor AI of monsters by designating a single character as "tank", or going solo and laying traps to destroy tons of enemies?

Why, out of all those seemingly "overpowered" things, at least to me, is the first one the only one deemed "overpowered"? Honestly, god mode, ridiculously high damage output via minimal effort, and AI abuse seem a hell of a lot more overpowered than constant and supposedly "limitless" energy - especially when that was always the original intended feature.

I came up with +1 for 3 seconds for every 3 ranks because that's the exact mathematical equivalent to the old soul reaping of 1 point for every rank. (1 pip of energy regen is exactly 1 point of energy, if it lasts for 3 seconds.) It just works slower. Or that's my understanding of regen. When I play, energy regen seems to work differently than that, especially at higher regens, but I'm just going by what wiki says. Play with it as you will.

I would think making SR work how it did before but not gaining from spirits and minions would be far simpler to implement than a convoluted timer and a check to see whether you own the spirit or not, ya? and it is most certainly a nerf when you no longer gain back the energy to cast a minion when it dies. you know how often minions die in heavy pve? it would definitely be a huge hit to minion bombers, and to groups that have an MM and another necro, without being needlessly mechanical. and if theres still any JB pvp necros around, its a big hit to them as well.

as far as 55 is concerned... yeah, its the one build that had the biggest impact in PvE. and it hasn't been changed. yet little old soul reaping, that had one or two counterable pvp builds based off of it and just kinda existed in pve, gets a big hoohah nerf and unnatural mechanical limitations imposed on it, while the 55s just keep on doing their thing... I think that may have been part of the point.

i don't normally do this.... but QFT.

sure they would invest. but i didn't forgot about the MM as you would put it. and while Plague's example is similar to my own, i took into account that most necros would already have normal regen of +4. i've been advocating for the change in my sig for quite some time now, hoping the devs would take it under consideration.



Jayce Of Underworld

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

Animate Soul Lich
Energy: 25
Cast: 3
Recharge: 0

Elite Skill. Animate a level 1...14 Soul Lich
at your location and you lose all energy. You
suffer -1 energy regeneration for each Soul Lich
you control. Whenever a Soul Lich you control
deals damage, you gain 2 energy.(Soul Reaping)

Soul Reaping
Whenever a creature near you dies, you gain
1...5..6 Energy Regeneration for 3 seconds
(Non-Stackable) and 1...5..6 energy (Stackable).
You gain half that amount/duration for Spirits.

Staff of the Necromancer
Energy +15
Energy Gain: 0.22 per each point in Soul Reaping
Halves skill recharge of spells (Chance 20%)
Energy +5 (while Health is above 50%)
Health +30
Two-Handed

I could support that one I guess.... just make it so spirits don't gain at all, to keep the nerf-herding pvp whiners quiet ya?

Are you seriously going to argue a build that could clear what was supposed to be the hardest area in the game on its own is not overpowered? Comparing soul reaping to 55 monks doesn't do anything for your point.

Energy Storage is not energy management. If an ele has 16 energy storage, but no energy management skills he is still going to be stuck with 4 pips of regen. Divineshadows compared it to a credit card the other day: it allows you to spend more energy in a short time, provided you're not going to spend a lot in the time after that.
I wouldn't exactly call credit cards 'money management'
Another use of Energy Storage is that it's a buffer for exhausting skills, again like a credit card.
That is just stupid. This is a mentality of PVE-ers that keeps coming back, but it's incorrect. You know why no one posted about it in the PvE forums? Because they LIKE overpowered builds. I've never seen ANYONE complain about an overpowered build in PvE, yet they were overpowered and guild wars is a better game without them.
It was the ability to have a damage output 10 times higher than any other class, in this case, which necro’s were able to do BECAUSE of their limitless energy. This game is about three resources: health (being damage or healing), energy, and time. Health is obviously the most important (if you run out of it you die), but it’s incredibly easy to turn one resource into another. I don't see how such an ability is not overpowered.

other than the part where 55 goes on without a hitch while they're so hell bent on changing the soul reaping mechanic... 55 is overpowered, thats the point. compared to several other things, soul reaping is far from overpowered.

Do explain how that is possible. They are still bound by the limit of damage each skill can do, cast times and recharge times. That's all assuming they have "limitless" energy, which they didn't - entirely bound by deaths. Good luck getting the benefit of it when your target is still alive.

Regardless, the examples I gave can clearly and directly abuse PvE, Soul Reaping can do no such thing. Just because you have lots of energy, doesn't mean you can get more damage out of spells, cast them quicker, or make them recharge any faster - nor can you become invincible, abuse the AI with traps and aggro control, or nuke massive amounts of mobs with minimal effort and maximum damage. Sure, you could do those things with a necro, but all without SR - it's not needed, it has no effect whatsoever, and you would be at a severe disadvantage (except 55ing, which is powerful only because of monk skills, not SR).

Please explain, when compared to other obvious PvE abuse, Soul Reaping is so much more devastating and overpowered. Unless you want to argue any of that I listed is or is not abusing and overpowered in PvE. And yes, SR can be compared, since it is being claimed to have been overpowered, while I make the claim that these other methods are much moreso overpowered.

I had replied to this when you brought it up in the soul reaping thread and that whole post got deleted eventhough it contained very useful information, so ill repost the part about the 55 monk here.

The 55 monk is a very well known build and has many variations of it, but it not all powerful and unstoppable. There are many counters to this build, the problem is that PVE doesn't include these counters except in a few places. Mesmers, Necros, assassins, even dervishes all have enchant removal skills that will effectively destroy a 55 monk if they ran across one. A good dom mesmer will use one skill (shatter enchantments) and kill a 55 monk in one shot.

The problem with a 55 monk isnt skills, its a combination of game mechanic flaws. The main staple skill of any 55 build is Protective Spirit, which believe it or not, works as its intended too. The problem lies in 2 different forms. These being the -50 icon and the -health stack from similar sup runes which allows you to get your health to this level. The -50 icon even existing is part one of the problem and is the staple of so many 55 builds, wether it be a necro, mesmer, ele, or monk. But the reason it shouldnt exist is a combination of the main problem, and thats the ability of the -health from superior runes of the same attribute to stack. without these two things, youll effictively kill off anything 55. period.

But comparing a character build to a primary attribute is like telling a guy he has an apple, when clearly hes eating an orange. Stop with the 55 monk as it has nothing to do with this update that doesnt even exist. God this is like pulling teeth at times.... The removal of the -50 icon and the -health stack from superior runes of the same attribute is the only way to effectively remove the 55 build from the game. Nerfing Protective Spirit would effectively kill a perfectly valid skill that is working flawlessly.

The MM, the walking tank of destruction. Seriously, providing buffers (minions taking up damage) for your entire team while dealing loads of damage (with or without nova bombing), and giving you energy back when they die so you can get them up again is a pretty powerful energy intensive build that required no energy management whatsoever. If you want to take into account the damage and free slots on the mm, as well as the damage to your party negated by minions, it is much better than any other alternative in most guildwars areas.
Reply to countescorpula (sp?) later.

Theres not a single pvp player out there ha wouldnt prefer your SR change to the one anet has implemented.

We always said either no SR from minions or only from your own minions, don't blame pvp.

You have to be joking. MM as high damage output? 10 Bone Fiends, even with support damage spells is nothing compared to a single SF Ele. Most definitely a far cry from Thomas.knbk's "10 times higher than any other class". Although you have one thing right, the MM is probably the best thing the necro has/had going for it, since it supplied not only a battery, but also extra targets to cause a diversion for the foolish AI. But damage? LOL

Yeah, all those times people took nukers instead of MMs for damage... what were they thinking!?

quoted for irony

I really hope they never bring back the uncapped energy machine SR was before. It was probably the most broken mechanic in the whole game--both--for PvE and PvP, because when alot stuff died in a timeframe, Necros got a virtual energy regeneration of 20-30 pips, sometimes even much more. In PvP this got abused to hell and back and in PvE it made Necro a buttonmasher-class monkeys could play. Nowadays at least a little bit thinking is involved when playing a Necro (and some people complain about that...?!?).

Whatever. I think with the 3/15-change solves the biggest issue I personaly have with the 5s-timer: Mobs in PvE tend do die at one time, mainly because of the AoEs everyone is using and with the 5s-solution Necros miss some energy sometimes. This way, they will get the full energy. 45e every 15s @15 SR is enough for me, tbh.

Very smart solution right to the point!

Looks like these updates were just a bad dream?

The FC change to signets is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. If it ever goes through it will mainly be a significant buff to an already overpowered build concept (eurohex). WTF?

Was not Soul Reaping, which behaved exactly the same for over two years, working as intended? It was never a problem until someone came up with a pvp build that abused it through the mechanics of spirits. it gave energy when stuff died, and ONLY when stuff died. fix it for pvp? fine, no energy from spirits. fixed. soul reaping might provide near-infinite energy if you can keep up a steady stream of bodies. is that a little overpowered? maybe, but not enough to worry about nerfing. now 55 on the other hand provides infinite energy AND infinite health, with no requirements other than being hit which always happens when you are solo. ok, so 55 doesn't count because it relies on a certain item. What about stoneflesh / stone striker / mantra of earth farmers? infinite health, infinite energy, relies only on skills and a little bit of energy storage. then you have mystic regeneration, it also can completely keep a farmer alive no matter how much they are hit. suddenly the conditional energy gain of soul reaping almost seems underpowered, eh? yeah ok so these builds don't work against every creature in the game. but in the same regard soul reaping doesn't provide much benefit against every creature in the game, only things you can kill quickly.

every class has and had its stengths and weaknesses. every class had someth special about it. for mesmers, its casting spells and soon signets at nearly double the normal speed. for elementalists, its having a large energy pool, the skills that go with energy storage, and not being hampered much by exhaustion. for monks, its having really strong heals that cost only 5 energy. for rangers, its being able to use pretty much everything but spells for half the normal energy cost, and getting extra protection against elemental damage. for warriors, its the best armor, extra armor penetration, and the amazing skills that are in the strength attribute. for necros, it was the ability to regain some lost energy after vanquishing the foe. now, the necro one is on a timer. can you imagine the outcry if they made divine favor only work once every 5 seconds? or if protective spirit could only reduce damage once every few seconds? or if fast casting was made to be a small % chance instead of on every spell? and if expertise were on a timer or % chance? and those attributes actually have decent skills in their lines to give other reason to putting points in them...

was soul reaping overpowered? maybe, depending on what middle-ground one decides to set. was it the most overpowered thing? most definitely not. should it have a mechanical timer? no. put it back how it was for pve, remove gains from spirits to remove the gimmick build and satisfy pvp "balance".

Minion masters, especially with bone fiends, do ****loads of damage with only 2 skills - botm and bone fiend. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I can't be arsed to to all the math right now, but suffice to say it's a hell of a lot. SF eles depend on bunched targets, anyway. Anyway, the SR issue isn't really with minion masters, it's the fueling of insanely energy heavy bars that's the problem.

Pretty much all the changes that were noted though are pretty inconsequential. FC signets, 20% longer weapon spells, whoop-de-crap.

14 FC + Symbolic Celerity (if stacking) = 90% cut on Signets. 12 Smiting, 4 Insp

Signet of Mystic Wrath (0.2s activation now) followed by Signet of Judgement (0.1s) followed by Bane Sig (0.1s) every 13-14 seconds (cut recharge with Mantra of Inscriptions). 213 damage for all 3, 163 for just the first 2 in 1 second time.

5 Me/Mo, packing Power Return/Leech Signet and some random Smite annoyance with 3 Mo backline should be fun...not to mention Rez Sig could be cast in 0.3 seconds...

Wouldn't exactly call it"inconsequential"...

First off, Minions are not great for damage, period. That has always been the case, I don't know where you've been. Oh, they can rip through low-level stuff, sure, but put them against level 20+, ya know, most of the rest of the game, and they do piddly 7-8 damage a hit. x10, that's 70-80 damage every 2 seconds, or 35-40 DPS. Add in that you cannot control what they attack, and you have very undependable chicken scratch.

And that insane energy is used for what? Lots of 25-energy spells in succession? Like an Ele, you mean? How does that make the necro so much better than say, well, any other class out there? Guess what, Mesmers can cast up to 50% faster and then some. Well, no other class can do that, surely that's overpowered? Not every class should have equivalent energy gain, especially if that's the classes specialty, shouldn't that mean they are designed to have superior energy gain? You knock them down to every other spellcaster and what makes them different?

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Bone_Fiend

27.5/2 = 13.75 dps from a single bone fiend

but, you will have 10 (or a mix)... thats 137.5 dps from 10 minions

with a mix, and other considerations, 100dps and a hard to define tanking worth...

a sf ele also requires 2 and a half energy management skills, and the odd blood ritual from a necro

I think you need to grasp the idea that just because something works as the game developers 'intended' does not mean that it is balanced or correct. Dev implementations work towards balance, they aren't balanced by nature.

I would really post more towards this, but I can't be bothered. I took my necro into PvE, set it up to spam fiends, had no energy trouble, and got bored again. Yes, SR was reduced, but it would appear just about every build can still be run with minor changes... so where is the problem?

Plus, I'm on holiday.

I'll neglect all your retarded post for this, 15 SR !!!...you must be out of your mind.

i wanted to keep the description as close as possible to what it currently is now. but one could always make it as follows:

Soul Reaping
Whenever a creature near you dies, you gain
1...5..6 Energy Regeneration for 3 seconds
(Non-Stackable) and 1...5..6 energy (Stackable).
You gain Soul Reaping from Spirits you control.

at least this way, the will be one spirit that i can reape



Jayce Of Underworld

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

Animate Soul Lich
Energy: 25
Cast: 3
Recharge: 0

Elite Skill. Animate a level 1...14 Soul Lich
at your location and you lose all energy. You
suffer -1 energy regeneration for each Soul Lich
you control. Whenever a Soul Lich you control
deals damage, you gain 2 energy.(Soul Reaping)

Soul Reaping
Whenever a creature near you dies, you gain
1...5..6 Energy Regeneration for 3 seconds
(Non-Stackable) and 1...5..6 energy (Stackable).
You gain half that amount/duration for Spirits.

Staff of the Necromancer
Energy +15
Energy Gain: 0.22 per each point in Soul Reaping
Halves skill recharge of spells (Chance 20%)
Energy +5 (while Health is above 50%)
Health +30
Two-Handed

I saw that before I posted - key here is that's against Armor 60 level 20 dummies. Not including any armor spells, higher level mobs which, like I said, is most of the game, and other factors, like them attacking warrior mobs that have at least 36 more armor than that. SF blows that away entirely.

Also, who cares what e-management they also have to use? The point I was refuting was raw damage potential, which clearly MMs have not.

Why are they making soul reaping so ridiculous? The answer is so simple... Izzy go stick your finger in the electrical socket then attempt to balance this game you may have more success.

SF is also an elite, that requires several spells to fuel its energy costs. Minion Masters just bring Order of Undeath, and now you have DPS that breaches SF many times over, since even SF gets affected by armor. Net result? One combo deals more damage at the cost of losing more health.

Note also, that Minion Masters will provide bodies for bodyblocking. Usually inconsequential for PvE, but smarter players can kite through them to prevent melee from destroying them.

Hold up. I saw this and just wanted to say that Blizzard does the opposite: skills are mostly balanced because of PvP.

Whoa. Seriously???

And sad.
GW PvPers rather play WoW PvE over GW PvP.
So sad.

Quoted/bolded for undeniable truth, which some people seem to be ignoring in their attempt to keep the arguments going.

Can someone comprehensively summarize all of the changes? All I can find in the 14 pages of this thread are piecemeal bits of information (i.e. the new sunspear skill, a summary of the mesmer skill changes and whether they've been repealed, etc.).

It would be awesome if the OP or mods could edit the first post to allow posters to avoid reading 14 pages of information to get an update.

;(

I use to run Aura of the Lich as my Elite plus 2 Superiors all the time when playing MM and it really does not matter if I have 200 Health (2 Sup) after AoLed up, or 237 Health (1 Sup), because my Minions tank all the aggro and AoL basicly halfs the effective penalty of runes. This is how I roll, -- if you don't like it, no problem -- but stop calling other people names, just because you don't know better. Thank you.

no it's not. We were talking about the pre-nerf soul reaping, and the pre-nerf MM.
True, SF is a bar with a pretty high damage output, but your claim that it's higher than an MM is 1) simply not true and 2) irrelevant because an MM has half a bar left after he has his essential skills on it to do cool stuff with, while an SF ele has to devote almost his entire bar to energy management.
Soul Reaping has always been a problem in PvE. I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the tank/SS/MM/bonder/healer team that could pretty much farm anything. I've seen skilled players do it with only one monk and only one necro.
When one necro can make up for the lack of damage of 4 other players, something has to be wrong. Guess what! it was soul reaping's limitless energy that gave necro's this ability.