Dev Updates Today!

Chants are one second+ casting time.

The problem most people have with rits is that anet has rounded them basically into a spike only class. 95% (I'm being generous) of rits used in pvp play are based SOLELY on spiking. This is a problem cause it creates a very boring, and stale class which could have been made into something fun. Channeling Magic should be Renamed to 3..2..1 Magic to better suit its purpose atm -.-

here's a stupid question .... when are we actually geting the changes? not realy looking forward to the SR "fix", but it is the lesser of two evils.




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(check out mouse's zodiac clearence sale http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...03#post2893103)

everything he said /agree and i was so hoping for the balance to address this

I'm not going to have a tanty about the armour de-buff, just going to have to think of ways around it. The Devs DID say that these changes are in place for a week, then they'll look at commentary about it.

A way around the armour de-buff: Take your highest armour level buffer, leaving slots open for other skills - that kinda works for me.

Constructive criticism and NOT gripe: taking away the armour stack will make tanking and solo farming (for the average PvEer like myself, who actually does very little farming) very difficult.

PS: I'd also like to say thumbs up to the Mesmer buffs! Nice!

How many people is "a lot of people" exactly? I never ran this...nor did I run a bar with 8 15e skills on it, which would not be viable under any circumstances. You'll have to excuse me for saying so but this sounds like tremendous exaggeration. Why not just remove the +15 sets if its such a huge issue?

The only thing Im not happy about is no nerfs to rit spike. The build is WAY overused. Seeing rit spike after rit spike is a bit boring. And basically it got buffed in this update with longer duration of vital weapon. Just a few recharge and/or energy changes and the build goes to crap. No need to ruin rits to rid of rit spike. A few changes would do it, but nothing was done to the most overused build since iway.


There are a few other changes I'd like to see, but smaller changes at a time are better than huge changes at once. Hopefully they keep up with the updates better and we dont have to wait another 3 months for another update.

Thanks for the prompt reply. Now we can only hope it will be included in a later one.

I have two thoughts. I heard that the armor de-buff was mainly because of e/d in ra, but can u just remove enchants? unless theyre runnin obby flesh, in which case jsut wait it out cuz if u have a monk stone daggers wont kill u in 20 seconds. now its ruined the ele for pve unless ur runnin fire if u wanna farm with an earth ele now u cnt unless u run a sup earth rune to let stoneflesh last long enough to recast it. MY second though is about the mesmers. i think anet is tryin to make mesmers more pve-able???? anyone agree? of course by doing this they have just buffed the hell out of them even more for pvp but i dont mind =)

I know you guys didn't get the participation you wanted out of the ATs but removing both minimum required # and days restrictions is just shouting, "MORE SMURFING PLZ"

sorta takes the whole point out of the ATs.

Well lets see.
[skill]spiteful spirit[/skill][skill]Arcane Echo[/skill][skill]enfeebling blood[/skill][skill]Insidious Parasite[/skill][skill]Chilblains[/skill][skill]plague sending[/skill][skill]reckless haste[/skill][skill]resurrection signet[/skill]
That is a build that you could use before the SR nerf and because you can kill enemeis, especially grouped up enemies, very easily with this and a half way decent group, you would still have no energy problems even though it is very energy heavy.

I did for one. My pve necro used a +15/-1 energy weapon which gave me about 70 max energy. Soul reaping gave me so much energy I didnt care how many pips of regen I had. I probably could have used another +15/-1 offhand for even more energy without having to worry. Back with the old SR anyway. The issue isnt the weapon/offhand its that you can use these all the time without even caring. The +15/-1 sets are designed to give you energy in a pinch when you really need it and dont have the energy, not to keep active all the time which I and I'm sure many others did.

Steady stance & fear me is a problem not just in TA also HA from reading numerous postings in Ensign's thread in the gladiators arena, it really needs to be addressed. So brainless dealing massive pressure & conditions and huge e-denial at the same time, its pretty much an idiot proof build and its all you see from teams in TA.

Want to beat 99% of teams in TA --> play fear me.
Want to beat fear me in TA --> play necro spirit/hex spammers.

The spirit spam hex builds have hopefully been fixed with a hit to unlimited energy in this update, thank you Now time to address the other sort of garbage play, steady stance and fear me combo...

Of course not. Why would Resurrection Signet be classified as a signet.

Did you think that through at all?

Ok I want to focus on the elementalists. The whole list could have been a little bigger. Especially since it's only a 'test' (unless of course you plan for another one shortly afterwards, regardless...)

Elementalist adjustments:
I adore earth magic. I really am fond of it. To be honest however, I use it in casual pvp only out of love. A fools love for sure.
As you mention yourself, condition removal has become far easier (in all honesty it always has been). Yet all the the really neat Earth stuff is locked behind the condition door of weakness. The class has only 2 methods of dolling out weakness. One (Enervating Charge) is in another line making things very, very expensive. In fact I'd go as far as to say the line becomes even more expensive than water when you want to use the cool secondary effects, yet water gets it's slow/miss hexes straight away without having to jump through silly hoops (and water is exceptionally well balanced).
The other (Ebon Hawk) is so conditional, it's completely unreliable. Especially when you finally land the thing, weakness just gets removed on a whim anyway. The fact that it's a projectile and has a 2 second cast kills it. If you guys want this skill to be used as a source of weakness, remove all the silly conditions for application. The 2 second cast and 'projectile' status is bad enough as it is. A damage increase doesn't make this any more attractive than it is already.

Ash Blast: A great idea for a skill but suffers tremendously from the duality of it's condition. When you have assassins running around the place with hideous more or less insta-kill chains, you then go and buff the stupidly dangerous Beguiling Haze in the worst way possible.

How can the lovable earth elementalist be required to jump through 2 hoops (weakness, for the knockdown, to finally get to the blind) just to put blind on the guy? Ash Blast isn't used because the damage is undesirable, it's not used because the only reason to use it (Blind) is too awkward to pull off. No amount of 'reasonable' damage can make up for that. Physicals hit hard in Guild Wars. A skill like this just can't keep up. Weakness should be the only required condition.

Ride The lightning: A good change. Becomes an elementalist mobility skill of sorts with damage. Not terribly useful in higher end pvp (and anywhere in pve for that matter) but it should provide hours of fun for the more casual pvp players. I'm glad the exhaustion was kept. The thought of axe or worse still, hammer warriors abusing this with Shock was a little unsettling.

Shockwave: Point-blank-range spells are just not that good a concept for 'relative' softies' like elementalists. Area of effect spells are also a little vitamin challenged. The fact that Earth is plagued with so many elite examples of these skills (ie. wasted opportunities) is really quite annoying...

Stoneflesh Aura: A good change. While farmers the world over are in tears, I think we can all live with this one. However the armour stacking thing is a little rough. This is far too brute force a fix.
The only real +armour offenders were the shouty' shouty' guys who passively added this stuff to everyone around them more or less for free.

The hit to Watch Yourself! a while ago because of them was bad enough, even though I do agree that something needs to be done about the synergy of certain stacking shouts. No need to ruin other skill synergies just because of it. Especially those that are removable....

Go back and read the update. Stoneflesh Aura is getting it's duration decreased. Even if it can still be kept up constantly, there's a lot more chances to catch a 2 second cast with an interupt. Even as the skill is, I always get a good laugh when I catch an E/D tank when I am playing my Burning Arrow ranger. If you are wielding scissors, it's gonna be hard to crack their rock, but grab a piece of paper and watch them crumble.


Woot! Hopefully they'll see my desparate plea to have Keen Arrow fixed. I've wanted to use the skill since Nightfall came out, but it's just really not worth taking if you are likely to spend energy and time on an attack skill that does absolutely nothing when you don't critical.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10125394

[QUOTE]you missed this little detail

that was his answer not Gailes.

where do you get the idea that you are such a big shot to demand that they give you every little detail anyway?

I agree... wasn't one of the main reasons behind AT's to stop smurfing? I think a better way to boost participation would be to LOWER the 14 day requirement (to 7 or maybe even 3 days), not do away with it entirely. Expect to see iQ and its smurf guilds to finish 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th in a daily tournament.

Most of the skill updates are pretty good, but I'm against fast casting effecting signets. This is a HUGE buff to signet of humility, and hexes already force teams to bring ridiculous hex removal in gvg.

A-Net NEVER promised an auction house, they said trade improvements are coming.

i dont mean to be a smart ass but.....
THAT IS WHY THEY BUFFED IT
to make it appear on more bars

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Chant_s...uick_reference

All chants are 1 second and up in their activation time.

Plenty of time to interrupt.

Im assuming that Power Block will stop the chant and will disable all skills of that attribute on that bar.

In general, pretty standard skill balance. Buffs to useless skills which will remain useless, buffs to already overpowered skills (hexes) and some nice changes as well (cripshot and defensive anthem). Trade spam update is a bit meh, but hey, we know they won't implement a new trade system, just get used to it.

But seriously, buffing hexes? You guys say you monitor the skill usage and how they affect the metagame, and yet you buff hexes? Again though, love the cripshot buff.

WoHoo another paragon nerf ! Have anyone from A-net been in halls lately, so many rit teams, and now they got buffed. Bye bye balanced teams in HA...

Well I thought the whole idea for AT's were to stop people from starting up a pug to farm champ points?!? But now what you have done is let people join guilds 10 min right before the AT so that they have 4 people just enough to play then have 4 others guest. What happens at the end of the month, all these pug guilds that got the 40 q-points to enter don't show up because they can't have guest any more. Alright lets just make the Monthly tournament be filled with FF wins! What might have been good was to make it 1 day wait before they could play in at and maybe require at least 6 members of the guild.

I fear Ride The Lightning might be a huge change towards the revamped Eurospikes (watch Hellas Team [Gr]).

With an added buff towards the recharge and damage, RtL>Dismember>Executioner's Strike>Agonizing Chop (.5 activation time will make it better than crit chop) will descimate any unsuspecting guild, especially since there are no more hexes to click Infuse on.

Also, the Necro hexes should be nerfed, as the SR changes will not effect them. You did nothing to the hexes in terms of GvG, as the 3-hexes midline still will dominate. And there have been many posts as to nerfing the hexes, as well as intelligent reasons why.

If you still decide the hexes shouldn't be nerfed, at least buff the hex removals (looks at Hexbreaker Aria, Withdraw Hexes, etc.) These are important matters, and should be dealt with quickly and professionally.

Mesmer skills are okay now, and Signets look a little more attractive now (looks at Signet of Illusions). But now, I don't know what skill is better, Arcane Conundrum or Migraine. Arcane Conundrum will be spread for alot longer durations, even with the nerf to Mantra of Persistence.

As for Rangers, thank you. Crip Shot looks more attractive now, especially against the block-heavy team builds in GvG. However, I think you may face a dillema with the soon-abused Melandru's Resilience. With MR having its duration slightly longer than it's recharge, the energy management for x/R's will be immense. This will even make BoonProt's reborn, which I have no problem with.

Over-all, a step in the right direction.

While I don't think it's a "huge" buff, it will make sig of humility, an already powerful skill, less easy as hell to interrupt, and that's the last thing it needed.

Since it will be the only real skill affected by the FC affecting signets (aside from rezzes), it probably should be increased to 3 seconds to compensate. That way you could continue to encourage all the other silly mes signet build while preventing a nasty skill from becoming nastier.

[QUOTE=Loviatar]Refresh my memory who did I address it to?

Ask the hard questions, thats how you get answers. Saying "a lot of people" are running 8 15e skills on their bar sounds like ridiculous exaggeration. My question is a fair question, if +15e sets are such a problem why not just remove them?

[QUOTE=icymanipulator]
Because +15 energy sets serve a purpose other then abusing SR? Duh?

Someone else already answered this. (edit: Kool Pajamas)

15/-1e sets were made for tight pinches, when a caster needs an extra little bit of energy in emergencies. Not to be used the entire time, as they were occasionally when people exploited SR.

[QUOTE=icymanipulator]Uh read my post responding to yours on the previous page.


edit: haha 2 people beat me to it. also the quotes are messed up. ah nevermind it was the first guy that messed up the quote and messed it for everyone else.

I made it almost a year without even knowing they existed and it didn't effect my gameplay in the least. I guess that does make me an idiot huh, or maybe I just don't load up my bar with all 15e spells.

Edit: Just read Kool Pajamas response.

hope we will finally get lvl'4 and 5 KOABD title track this week

So, what purposes would those be - WRT the Necromancer?

Uh, Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Any chance of these updates being out tonight?

I have a critical-interrupter build I play with... assassin with a bow. Keen arrow is a devastating part of that build, so it's a far from useless skill.

Have you been in HA lately?
....IWAY!!!!1
that chant-interupt nerf was seriously needed imo

and how did the rits get buffed?, rtspike still sucks

Gaile,

Thank you for your grace and patience toward all of us complainers and critics. We're a tough bunch to please. Few (if any) of us could do your job.

I will try the ele earth farming tonight in HM, and see what happens, then post results here later. My prediction, however, is that I will be dead...dead...dead...dead...

No, the updates are planned for later in the week. Sorry.

Why is soul reaping getting a huge buff from controlling a spirit? as far as i know no necro skills summon spirits so you have to be a Rit or Ranger for this to help at all with the current SR problems. so no N/E or N/ME or N/Mo or N/W or N/D if you want your characters inherent skill to give you decent energy management? ouch.

I second that, i hate to be a Anet employee right now. If i was i would pay the Liongaurds to protect me against all the angry ppl here.

All in All great update , Keep up the good work.