Dev Updates Today!

Thanks! That's a really kind thing to say, and I do appreciate it a ton.

*rereads "grace and patience*
*hits print*
*pastes to forehead*
*hires cadre of Lionguards*


But remember, these updates won't be in the game for a few days, so please do test out the changes when you see the official Update Notes on the website and get that new build.


Izzy wanted to add another thought: "I know there are a lot of concerns about hexes, so this week during the test please bring out all of the hex builds and really push the issues you feel are going to be a problem, as normally during this week you will have a lot of eyes from Anet on things and if you want skills to change, now is the time to prove they are broken."

...he'll still receive energy from humans and monsters dying, as well as minions...

None do. The other profession combos are still viable. Don't forget even with spirits we still have an obnoxious timer to satisfy. You could spam to your hearts content and it will still hit a wall...eventually.

Yes, but at a level which previouslt wasnt good enough for a rit or ranger secondary to deal with? My problem is that a necros inherent skill is so hugely effected by spirits which arent native to its class. so i spam all my high energy skills then have a spirit that dies fast (or use a rit skill to kill it) and my energy is full again? but no other secondary can take advantage of this "necromance inherent" effect?

It was effected by spirits the entire time, the scope has been shrunken to your own personal spirits and now you get full energy instead of half. Honestly it makes no difference in PvE whatsoever, you might as well ignore that portion if thats the side of the game you play.

Edit: Your example of "abuse" only applies if you happen to be N/Rt or N/R. I can see N/R maybe for SQ or if you are in the DoA or something, but N/Rt aside from elite skill capture is like finding bigfoot. PvE here folks, not PvP.

THere are other ways of dealing with a problem than removing it. Try using their extra health against them. Grenth's Balance and Spoil Victor are just two skills that punish someone for having extra health (there may be more, but these are the first that come to mind), and they are still usable when in more normal situations.

Actually, the Mesmer Illusion changes are kind of a nerf. Typical Illusion/Inspiration builds don't only use Conjure Phantasm.

What about Phantom Pain, Images of Remorse, Illusion of Pain, Migraine and Crippling Anguish?

If Mantra of Persistence gets nerfed and none of those skills get boosted, then Mesmers are actually LOSING an enormous amount of damage from them and only gaining a miniscule damage bonus to Conjure Phantasm.

Can you guys please buff Illusion of Pain please, if you nerf Mantra of Persistence please buff that skill. It’s the only other good skill I use and it would be great if you buffed it; then I will be absolutely satisfied with update as a whole. Thank you.

Ride the Lightning needed an Exhaustion-worthy recharge, but the damage buff is overkill and I expect it'll get reverted.

Agonizing Chop at .5 activation is insane. They've already got Critical Chop, which had to get nerfed once and I wouldn't exactly shed tears if it got hammered some more. Sure, Agonizing doesn't have +damage, but in the usage case it'll get it's also an almost guaranteed interrupt unlike the more random Critical Chop.

I am really waiting to see what is going to happen with that Mesmer PvE buff they were talking about long back. Arcane Conundrum... pfft... it will only prove to be an irritation to PvE Players (when it is cast on players). Clumsines will be the same - irritate mele chars, but not actually do enough real damage to multiple targets to help your team. As long as AoE damage is king in PvE and Fastcasting remains pointless, Mesmers will continue to be darn near useless in PvE.

Makes me sad - my mesmer is a hot one.

On a positive note, good buff for Earth in the Ele line. The rest of the buffs dont make enough of a difference for me to change my skills or any of my hero's skills. Just disapointed again about the mesmer...

Um. *Raise hand* Yeah, remember me? I was running the kinds of skill bars he's talking about because I could afford to with the old SR. It might be a slight exaggeration, since I usually included a few skills that were only 10 energy, but I figure the 25 energy skill I spammed probably balances that out. It definitely wasn't a tremendous exaggeration. And apparently I wasn't the only one, though being told by the people running the game that I wasn't the only one isn't likely to convince you I guess.

Also note that he's not calling the +15 sets a "huge issue". He's saying that if people can have constant -regen, spam expensive spells, and still hover near max energy, that's an excellent sign that an energy source is a little rediculous.

I'm really hoping "later this week" means tomorrow in this case. I'd love to give these changes a try as soon as possible. I don't think the hex changes effect the ones that are really problems, so I don't expect hex builds to get any worse than they are now. And since many of them were SR/Spirit Spam powered, I would think they'd be more fragile than before for the most part. It'll be fun to see how it all plays out.

As a side note, I think it's really awesome to be seeing all of these concerns addressed almost directly (one small step of indirection being that it gets typed up and posted by Gaile, thanks for that) by people closely involved in making the decisions. I'm a huge fan of presenting as much information about the decision making process to the public as possible.

And I was sure this update would be a winner... Well I guess there will always be people who aren't content.

Anywho, updates look cool. Thanks for the info about the updates too. NJ. Can't wait for sunspear skills.

It's not useless, it's broken and has been broken for a long time. If it worked the way it was designed to, it would be excellent. As it is, it's not terrible, but it's just not living up to what it could be.

Since observer mode only covers PvP, I don't see how anyone at ANet can be watching for any serious problems in PvE.

So let's say that long-time PvE builds are broken by these changes. Does ANet care at all, and if so, how do we let you know? How do we "prove" that they are broken in PvE?

only 1 team in 10? wow what time do you ha? seriously every time i ha its like every other group it goes rit spike-sf-ritspike-sf with the occassional zergway ..yea sf is way easy to beat if you dont ball and have a good spirit bonder but still...but yea ritualist spike needs major nerfs >_< look at what metagame(the guild) is running with ancestors rage...thats just painful there..ok on topic..

good update like the mesmer updates but the ATS update is rather stupid..
thats like ok well guest [insert 4 top players] and theyll get us a gold trim! should reduce the guests to 2 guests and even make membership in the guild maybe not the 14 days but maybe like 5~? at least try to stop mass smurfs a LITTLE?

You can 'prove' that they are broken by telling A-net what build you used and where. That's kind of the whole reason that they do things like check fan forums and talk to players.

The stoneflesh change wasnt really needed, its mystic regen thats at the heart of all RA tank builds.

Hex's have been ignored and Rit spikes are still gonna be polluting HA, Ancestors Rage and Spirit Rift are still 2 massively overpowered skills.

I can understand why the devs dont want to change any more hexs as the angry pve necros will start crying but why have ritualists been buffed rather than fixed?

Beaten x5 or something like that already Quantum. While I appreciate that not only did you take the time to identify and abuse an exploit you also experimented with it...I really don't care. I got a good answer on why +15e sets were a problem and what they are intended for and thats all I was interested in.

Gaile, I have to ask. Why was the popular suggestion, "Adjust soul reaping so minions and spirits not made by you do not trigger soul reaping" not taken? Also, Gaile, may I suggest an alteration to the current method? Instead of making it not trigger when you have MAX energy, how about make it so that, say, if you have 10 points in soul reaping, you can not gain more than 30 energy over 15 seconds from it in bursts capped at 10. For example, say you have 30 energy and this happens in a 15 second period with SR 10:

14/30: SR triggers, you jump to 24/30
24/30: Oops, a double kill. You jump to 30/30, and have used 16/30 soul reaping points for the 15 seconds.
10/30: Boosted back up to 20/30, now 26/30 SR points were lost for the 15 seconds.
2/30: You are boosted up to 6/30, because that reaches the 30 energy cap set for the 15 second period. If you had 11 SR, the cap would be 33, etc.

I just feel that, if you really don't wanna remove the cap, then you should make it consistent and reliable- no energy lost because you had too much at the time. Just a suggestion for a modification to the current system. Thanks.

The only issue I have is the armor buff. It's basically saying, RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO your defensive skills and bring only one that's past 25. I mean... I know people in DoA are gonna have issues (Stoneflesh Tank... loses like 50 armor or something AND with the stoneflesh nerf...). Anyways, this is telling us there's really no point in using dolyak + watch yourself, or things of that sort. Why couldn't they make it so the highest armor buff is counted full, even past 25, and all the other armor buffs only count half as much (or something like that).

Anyways, good job on update. I can only imagine the new SS/LB skills.

Read this whiners. You complain. You rant. You get needlessly frusturated over a game. You whine, hence the name whiners. No one respects whiners, if anything we just feel annoyed at them, for being such. What ever happened to civil constructive criticism?, and sure, maybe a few angry complaints are acceptable, but not the 3 year old garbage some of us like to accusingly lash at people who work tirelessly to make sure you can have fun. Playing a game they made nonetheless!
This isn't saying the update is perfect, but Gaile just said that this update wasn't final, just something to be tested by the community. Give some respect.



Thanks for your time and effort, ArenaNet dev team. I almost felt betrayed by you recently, but this update made me not worry so much anymore, in a Guild Wars perspective.

I look foward to Sunspear skills and upcoming updates. Keep up the good work.

P.S- You may need some more Lionguard

I like the updates, but as a ranger I still cant think of crippling shot as useful in PvE at least because I think the others are still far superior.

As for mesmer update, they did really improve the mesmer profession but not mesmers in my opinion. As far as I can see is that the best buff they got was arcane conundrum, but because I enjoy HM missions so much as a ranger, I can still use this skill just as effective as a mesmer for all means and purposes, mostly because i mostly use apply poison, BHA, screaming shot + epidemic, so with that i should be able to do a little more.

still cant see that good buff for them, I think that the only way of making mesmers up to par is to give them abilities only mesmers can use, such as into fast casting, not illusion or inspiration because these are for support for other proffessions.

im really tired, i hope that made sense

other wise I enjoy the update notes.
but I will be ecstatic when I see the sunspear skills because I have been waiting so long.

As izzy once said, that defies the reason necros were created. While they recognize that their ability to get energy from summoned creatures can be exploited, they still hold to the idea of 'creating something then it dying and you getting the energy back from it'

And as to your suggestion to fix it, entirely too complex for Anet to implement. As is their current SR system is twice as complicated as they'd like it, I think.

Let me guess, you played a Minion Master back then? How many of the builds being run, as they claim, where Minion Masters? Since they are saying people where using 8 skills that cost 15 energy then they looked at what PvEers where running right? How many where Minion Masters? How many where Blood or Curses? Or where they just watching the Spirit Spammers in PvP?

Also, if a Necro could spam said 15 energy spells why couldn't they keep up with a touch ranger with just the two touch skills?

General
We added a cap of +25 to the armor buff when stacking skills. A single skill can still bring the bonus over +25, but multiple skills with smaller bonuses will not do so. Armor bonuses from shields, weapons, insignias and inscriptions are not affected and still stack.



Horrible... Terrible... God Awfull.... Shoot ... Darn...


And ANET Claims They are not agains Solo Farming! hehe

Looks like My Warrior is going to be alot less protected and alot of my Farming builds with him are now pretty much useless..

Looks like my 55 Monk is the only Farming worth anything anymore. I am guessing ANET will Nerf Protective Spirt in the next update and do away with that build too.


Soul Reaping looks better in this update than it did... I just wish they could find a way to Nerf Necromancers that does not involve a silly timer.

There is NEVER anything good that comes out of Updates i have learned. Any Good thing for the community is ALWAYS mixed in with a Horrible Nerf. This time they Killed All Armor Skill stacking.

Im just wondering what the next big Solo Farming Nerf Will be?

Can't wait for the divine favor nerf: You may only gain extra healing once every 3 times within 15 seconds. You may only gain extra healing in this way on every other healed ally, on every other day, between the hours of noon and 3pm. You pay double energy cost for this healing.

Writing in capitals doesn't make your post any better. People rant and argue for a reason. SR: people dealt with it for 2 years and now it's bad that they had to nerf it? (Still talking over the last update) Armor stacking: What the hell is up with that? Really GG for hard mode / doa /endsarcasm Don't even get me started over loot scaling. (I kill 1 vs 1 but don't get a drop? just plain wrong :S)

Been to the other thread? If not I don't blame you trust me...but I and others have suggested several viable simple alternatives that would cap SR and not put it on a timer. The problem is not wanting to get away from the whole "energy on death" bit. If that could be put on the back burner it opens up tons of possibilities. Or leave it and use a pip system instead of burst gains. There are tons of good suggestions, they just get cluttered with crap.

I'm just curious, but what is wrong with Keen Arrow, and how long has it been broken? From the way you say it, it sounds like you're disappointed with how it works.

No, it's broken as in bugged: it doesn't give the unconditional +damage, but does give the +damage for enchantments.

Finally an update I can't complain about. good job to everyone on Guru who posted in my trading problems thread and/or started their own.

We got our messages across and all the nay-sayers who told us to "stfu" can STFU.

KANE

"We changed Arcane Conundrum to an adjacent AoE so that Mesmers can better handle large clumps of casters as are sometimes encountered in PvE"

If the word sometimes was replaced with Rarely, we'd have a much closer representation of how often casters are actually adjacent to each other in PvE. Adjacent is a very very small distance in the actual scheme of game play. The red dots on the compass have to be directly overtop of each other (not just partially overlapping). And with the current AI behaviour, casters actually spread out a little at the beginning of a confrontation, typically so they are just outside of "adjacent" range of each other... maybe even outside of the "nearby" range.

Unless part of the update is a change so that enemy casters will stop semi-scattering at the first sign of a conflict... in which case good stuff. Now they'll be acting more like allied AI casters, who seem to fear losing physical contact with any other caster on the team.

huh nerfed stoneflesh aura but not the two other invulnerability enchantments? interesting. wait, no dervish nerfs at all, and yet another paragon nerf? well, expected I guess.

Soul Reaping now is.... barely acceptable. It can work now, but it is still way more involved than it should be. Why not implement the change that over 40% of people in the poll wanted and see how that works for a couple weeks??

Hmm Crip Shot buff and the Defensive Anthem nerf are alright. Why however is nothing still done on Searing Flames? Since you guys will be keeping close eye Gaile, you are probably gonna see a lot of Rit spike, and Searing Flame builds.

Only thing I like is the Cripshot buff.

Though I do like the buffs to the mesmer line, I'm not sure that i can see how it will make them a more desirable party member in PvE, which I believe you said was your original goal.

The changes to the Power X line are kind of needed in my opinion since Paragons didn't appear to have as many "natural enemies" as other classes, and the mesmer being the one to get the buffs keeps in line with their role of being the master of all things annoying.

FC changes look alright, but I doubt it will have much of an effect in game.

Lyssa's Balance - nifty... might use it.

I didn't use MoP much in the past, but with its bonus decreased, I don't think it warrants its energy cost or possibly even a slot in the skill bar anymore.

The Clumsiness buff is really the only one that I had any interest in in the Illusion line. With this update I think it will be a bit more usable now, and with its energy cost I don't believe it would be overpowered. Kind of like a Spiritual Pain that has an easier condition to meet.

Phantasm wasn't awesome to begin with, and I still don't think I'll be using it.

Nightmare still isn't worth it's energy cost in my opinion. If I were to re-work it, I probably do something like: 25e, 3 sec cast, 15 sec cooldown. "Target foe and up to two adjacent foes suffer -8 health degeneration for 2...15 seconds." Makes it more useful in PvE since most PvP players don't ball up. could be interrupted fairly easily and would make it worth the energy cost without having to use something like Auspicious Incantation.

I am a little irked about the armor buff cap since stacking buffs have saved my warriors butt on several occasions, but I guess we'll see how that plays out.

Like the crip shot thing, but I believe that there are several other skills under the marksmanship line that could use buffs as well.

SR - eh... we'll see.

Well updates look good... Still have yet to see if anyone will bite.

Like most of the warrior changes, even if I really only use some of those skills to just screw around.

As for Rit, I don't HA much and therefore rarely run across their spikes, and as a result I'm indifferent in that front, but I do like the Spawning Power changes.

Assassin looks good as well, but I agree with others that some of the buffs didn't seem to go far enough.

Paragon looks OK as well. Don't know why some people scream "ZOMG! PARAGON NERFED! GGBAI!" at a 1 sec increase in one skill's activation time. Any reasonable ranger/mesmer would be able to interrupt it anyways.

Over all, I say good job but I hope to see more come around with this update besides just this and the Sunspear Skills.

4 guests for ATs? holy crap now we are getting our guild rank killed by pugs/smurfs. This is a bad idea.

The more nerfs that come to farming, the less people you will have playing this game. It has now been out for over two years - do you really expect to keep those same people that started two years ago if you take away possibly the ONLY goals they have left in this game? They've done PvE, they've done PvP, and now they can't pimp out their chars and heroes, or get titles, because a source of income is only luck, not hard work. And the armor nerfs don't just affect farming, but success in other higher-end tasks like DoA, or FoW, etc. I don't think the armor buffs were bad in PvP either. That nerf seems to only benefit.. oh.. wait..... no one.

As for soul reaping.. :\ It fixes the N/Mo backline in HA, I guess, but I think now Minion Masters are going to have to go N/E so they can Glyph of LE their bone fiends :x


/disappointed.

what they need to do is nerf ALL invulnerable solofarm builds, and then make farming with heroes more viable (make it so heroes don't take loot, so farming with 3 heroes will get the same loot solofarming gets now). that way everything is a bit more balanced out, people can still farm, and farming is less profession-specific and something everyone can enjoy equally.

I don't think minion masters ever really had that much of a problem... actually the fix so it doesn't count at full energy is mostly going to help minion masters. what had problems with energy mostly was aecho-ss builds I think, and thats going to be even worse now. now... if a timer is the way you people really want to go, can you at least change it so its a max amount of energy that scales up with soul reaping level (whatever 3xSR would be) instead of number of triggers? getting one energy when you're almost full isn't much better than getting no energy when you're completely full...

We already shot the idea around of rewording it to "3 times your current rank in soul reaping in 15 seconds" rather than the current 3 in 15 hits system in the other thread. Series also posted something similar here earlier. No wasted energy this way and it still has a cap, its a win for everyone.