Dev Updates Today!

Section in bold changed to make the statement correct. I posted a link in one of my previous posts here that linked to the thread which discussed the Keen Arrow bug. Basically if you don't get a critical hit, the skill does nothing, even though it should give you a damage bonus.

Doh! Sorry, hadn't played my ranger for a while, forgot which conditional that skill had. Thanks!

Most of the skill updates are fine, however the nerf to armor gain is terrible news for all PVE elementalists.

If balancing armor gain for PVP, all you had to do was reduce stand your groung to 18 ar, and reduce watch yourself by 2 ar points at each rank.

But making it that kinetic armor + armor of earth no longer stack is a stupid decision. Also, why did Stoneflesh Aura need nerfing? WHY? It causes no trouble at all in HA or GVG, and it is easilly interuptable anyway.

Amazing in comparison to Aegis; a non elite skill is now superior to a primary attribute Elite skill in almost every way possible.

This is a joke Anet at least increase the duration or something if your making it interruptible now or worth an Elite spot. How about adding Leadership shields to help compensate for all the Nerfs past present and future.

with only a +25 Armor bonus Obsidian flesh tanks and Earth Ele tanks are a complete thing of the past now. NO MORE DoA or Mallyx or Hard mode in some areas of RoT.

I don't mind the limit just adjust the game to compensate to make area's possible instead of Mobs with skills at 24.

Cool. Glad the buff updates does get in. The power series affecting chant is a much better change than blindly nerfing everything across the board.
(If keep nerfing rocks, then papers, then scissors, then rocks n papers, then scissors n rocks, then paper n scissors, ... soon nothing will be left.)

Look forward to the Sunsper skills, just hope when they come they will be accessible to everyone (ie. no more than the Sunspear General rank please!)

Well said. Anything that can make farming less gimmicky repetitive, more natural-playing will be great for GW.

You make a good point, as did others, and we have made a change -- and kept it very visible -- on the Dev Update. The change concerns eligibility for the Automated Tournaments. Comments in this thread and others lead us to believe we should amend eligibility to some degree. Please give it a read and let us know what you think.

Who in the heck used this skill anyway? Am I missing some amazing abusable ability this skill had? Should I have been using it this whole time instead of, say, Aegis?

Oh by the way Gaile, thanks for having em look into smiting as I suggested, but as mentioned by others, the changes are kinda underwhelming at best...

HA - Paraway
GvG - Lone paras

Thats all i know of, the only problematic area was in the Paraway, which, pretty much, is causing the para to die almost completely until Anet do something about it that will actually work instead of just nerfing everything.

Ms. Gray may I ask you and the Dev’s why they decided to nerf Spiteful Spirit to 15 energy instead of 10? I don’t really use this skill, but does it not really just parallel Spoil Victor; which is at ten, energy as well. It’s not a whine, I’m just asking for some insight into the issue.

They could never overly buff smiting. The last thing anyone wants to fight is a stupid gimmick build involving 8 monks with 1 spike skill. Look at SoMW.

QFT. I havnt really seen this skill used in PVP at all, sorry if im behind any current metas, but I didnt see it in any on the 10 high end GVG's I observed yesterday either.

It sucks in PVE as well. I tried using it on Morgahn, but Sig of removal / cautery sig / expel hexes are much more useful. Now I can use empathic removal too

Mo/A with strength of honor and Judges insight anyone? ^^ cant wait to test it.

Gaile the WORST Skill possibly EVER made is : "Signet of Disenchantment: Lose all energy. Target foe loses ONE enchantment " That is CRAP! No joke! lol i can use gaze of contempt for 15 energy and remove ALL enchantments and only us 15 ENERGY. This skill needs to be RADICALLY changed :P Thanks!

I thought there was going to be a preview of the PvE-Only skills in the dev update... Are we going to get a preview before they come out?

You might not use spiteful spirit, but it is the most widely used necro elite (at least from curses) in PVP. The nerf is a good thing IMO to encourage necros to try other things, like spoil victor as you already use.

BTW, gaile how come [skill]"the power is yours!"[/skill] hasnt been balanced yet? No one uses it at all, it is ridiculous for an elite.

People saying guests will lower your rank are forgeting something: Instead of smurfing, the top guilds could just enter themselves in the tournament and you would be playing them anyway. Or would you chicken out and forfeit if you knew who you were facing?

Well vD were using it almost every time i watched them a few weeks ago, not seen them much recently but i think they changed slightly. And considering they were rank 1 for quite a while.... well you get the idea.

Bhavv, theres a reason why that skill hasn't been buffed. It wasn't picked of the hat of 'useless elites we should buff'. Seems this skill balance Balthazar's Pendulum got it. Better luck next time?

i have a feeling the energy to party members was supposed to be energy regen instead... it would kinda make sense that way eh?

the necromancer soul reaping buff still sux
if i'm an mm and keep spamming blood of master and Animate Bone Fiend ( with bloodstained + half recharge staff )
and i'm using a radiant armor , that's will make me no en gain in 15 secs (which is stupid)
yea good job in keeping me no en in 15 secs
and why they improved wells than others skills , not much of people uses wells
who'll so stupid standing inside a well to keep him degen or strip ?
stoneflesh aura nerfed , at least its not overnerfed
where's my ranger's buff ?
where's my sunspears skills ?
and about trade spam , i'm not a spammer but do you realise how many people turned off trade channel and forgot to turn them on ?

I admittedly play very few other characters other than my fire elem, but the reason that SF is so widely used in PvE isn't because it's overpowered, it's because none of the other elites are a viable option. Mind Burn/Blast - who wants their elite spot taken up by a spiking skill? PBAoE elites in fire magic? Not going to be used....Energy Attunement? With the non-elite attunements and GoLE, it's not necessary to take an energy skill as your elite. Hopefully eventually there will be another AoE elite spell for the fire elem.

Aha! Mesmers Rule!

Did it ever dawn on you thats maybe because.... well.... they don't want to buy anything? If i want to browse in a shop i will, if i don't, i won't go in.

If they can still guest people, they can still pug, etc.

Better than having both rules, but I'd still rather have 8 guild tourneys without pugs than 32 guild tourneys with 'em.

well they're coming out within the next couple days right?

The mesmer buffs..I like the interrupts now go for chants and others.

The armor stacking cap is a hard blow on wars and earth-eles (specially the ones that dont own NF). I DON'T LIKE THEM. I hope devs forget this.

Strange how every farm build gets nerfed...all but mo/* 55HP.

And about SR..well...its still not good. Maybe they should read our thread.

Ok if NOTHING else rits need to be nerffed, seriously guys. C'mon thats a HUGE issue in a lot of PvP, especially HA. Please there are some very simple ways to deal with the ritualist skill problem that have been suggested. At least make it harder to run this ridiculously overpowered spike... please. please. please!!!!

How about make it a like 3-7 day rule. You can't partake in another AT within "" of your last AT if you are in a different guild. Keep the 8 member rule though. This way people can still jump from guild to guild and stick with one that they gel in and still be able to play in an AT without delay in the new guild. Would also prevent smurf/pugs which I thought was one of the main purposes of the AT's. The system you want to put in place will just make daily At's worse gameplay wise(pugs/smurfs/tankage), and proceed to make monthly a more noticeable JOKE. The 14 day rule was a deterrent but so are the available play times.

Archon, since this is predominantly skill balances and we know there's more stuff perhaps it'll be fixed. Don't lose hope.

So the nerf to Weapon of Warding I'm sure will balance out the dominance of Ritspike right folks? ;P

Thats a start but with the amount of smurfs that are already around the 4 members is still too few for this to not be abused. Guests for the ATs is just plain bad.

If you really want to get more participation take a look at schedules not players.It's great that you tried to make everyone happy with the rotating start times but bottom line is when you try to please everyone you end up making it not work for anyone.

No tournament points for matches won by forfeit would decrease the amount of people who only sign up hoping for a bye and 3 points, as well as perhaps a loss of rating for teams who forfeit.
Why in Grenths name do you tell people in advance who they will face? In it's current state that leads to guilds only getting in the matches against the guilds they believe than can roll and dropping as soon as the face someone better.

There are several things in the current system begging for the same type of abuse as you have experienced in past tournaments and the guestway is just adding to an already abusable system.
A few small changes could make the GvG side of ATs work but you guys seem to be looking under the couch for the keys laying on the table.

I really doubt that. Barrage has been bugged with Glyphs for ages, thats a fix, yet Keen Arrow is still ignored. Maybe if Gaile got her head out the clouds she might read it and actually pick up on the fact KEEN ARROW IS BUGGED!

tell the truth
don't scold me
how many people will actually play ats anyway ???

and surely the sr buff will be a total failure

THAT is why they improved wells. The point of these updates is to increase the viability of underused skills while decreasing the power of current cookie-cutter gimmick builds. I think wells are mostly meant for PvE, but they are also a good melee defense in PvP once you get one enemy killed... they're kind of the necromancer version of traps, in a way, and they're not all offensive. Well of Blood and Well of Power have been vastly underestimated by most people, and now cost less energy...

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Gotta like the Mesmer buffs. Too bad the "Power xxxxx" skill buffs only apply to Nightfall,as far as PvE goes. But someone needed to be able to interrupt chants, I guess. LOL

Anyone else having issues understanding what he's trying to say there? Why are you spamming the most expensive minions and BotM anyway?

Err, like every single mob in PvE? "Who uses wells" is precisely why they were buffed. Also, I'd like to think my allies are wise enough to stand in beneficial wells. Maybe that's just me. Sure, they won't see much use in PvP. But then, there are plenty of skills you'll never probably use in PvE either, that see plenty of use in PvP. Like Icy Shackles.

See Cripshot.

If you'd read, you'd know they're coming in the update.

Err... Most people with common sense would turn on the Trade channel while looking to buy or sell something imo. Then again, this is the GW populace we're talking about. So I dunno.

BAD. I think it's safe to say that no one at a-net has read my rant about limiting collateral damage, because this is a perfect example of failure in that regard. If the problem is a synergy between two skills, then you fix one of those two skills. This breaks a whole bunch of other stuff that was not in any way abusive. High-end PvE tank builds? Dead. Just about every PvE warrior farming build? Dead. Earth ele tanks in PvE? Dead.

Even if you insist on doing things the wrong way and fixing a 2-skill problem with a global nerf, there's still ways to control the collateral damage: Limit the stacking cap to armor coming from shouts, or even just armor coming from skills that effect allies. (There's a whole bunch of self-target-only armor skills that are just getting victimized here. At the very least you could try not to break all of those.)

good.

Good.

Nice. Too bad the skill is still nerfed out of usefulness in the one build where it saw a lot of play: PvE crit/barrage.

Nice but... that's it?!? That's the great PvE buff for mesmers?

Ow. These skills were already annoying as hell. I didn't think it was possible to make those stone summit heretics more obnoxious, but here it is.

Contrary to some other posters, I'm going to predict that this change has almost no real impact on the way people play the game.

Another obnoxious skill buffed to be even more annoying.

Interesting.

Ouch. It's a painful kick in the PvE farming build, but I don't see this change lessening its power to annoy (but never actual endanger) opponents in PvP.

Good. The other ele elites need to come up to it's level, not the other way around.

I'm very dubious about this change. First and foremost, the devs are just dead wrong on the need for a cap at all. Second, this looks like another poor choice among capped implementations. The overflow control looks good on paper, but I suspect that it's not going to work out in practice because being a couple points short of full energy is so much more common than being at full energy. Gaining 1 or 2 energy at the cost of not being able to gain 10 or 12 later is still a pretty major kick in the balls. (Barring the best solution of abandoning the foolish cap idea altogether,) The solution would be to measure one's soul reaping allowance in terms of points of energy instead of hits of soul reaping. I've been plugging a better capped alternative that resembles the 3-in-15 timer, only without any of the problems except those inherent in the nature of the cap itself. Sadly, it seems that a-net has not been listening.

I'm curious as to what this bug actually was. Was it not recharging instantly when the only nearby corpse was an exploited one, or was it not recharging instantly whenever there was a nearby exploited corpse? I always thought the nearby mechanic with this skill was very screwy.

I'm ambiguous about this change. Since SR is still capped at craptastic levels of return, this is just another out-and-out nerf to a class that doesn't need any more of them.
The only justification I can think of for doing this is to prevent it from being too good when used on a necro secondary.
So it's "nerf and hurt necro primaries" or "don't nerf and leave the door open for abuse by necro secondaries." What a bad choice. I feel this is just one more sign that capping SR is a bad idea because it creates a ripple effect of intractable problems elsewhere.

Nice, but I still don't think they'll make it onto people's skillbars. They're still non-starters in PvP because there's just not enough corpses to make them worth a skill slot. They're mildly appealing in PvE, but minion users can't use them because they need that space on their skill bar for e-management thanks to SR being nerfed into the ground, and it's a big no-no for non-minion users to exploit corpses if the team has a minion user. (I say this as someone who frequently included wells in my various minion-using builds, and ended up forced to drop them from just about every build to make room for e-management after the SR nerf.)

Good. The spirit spam gimmick deserved to die. It's just a shame that a-net had to totally fudge up SR in every other "game type" to fix it. Oh wait, they didn't need to; just fixing spirits alone would have been enough...

Why the heck not? If SR gains are doomed to stay in the toilet, the entire necro skillset needs to be readjusted, not just just a few token skills. Bone fiend is the most commonly desired starting point. Maintaining an army with 6 or 7 25e fiends (mixed with cheaper melee minions) is just too expensive on the reduced energy budget of nerfed SR.

Huh?

OK.

It's nice, but the multiplier seems awfully small. Most of the weapon spells either have such short durations this effect is only worth a second or two or end themselves long before their duration is up anyway.

excellent.

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All in all, as I've said before, if SR isn't fixed properly, I really could care less how good the rest of the updates are. I'm looking at this purported "fix" and I'm not feeling very hopeful that it's the sort of improvement I've been waiting for these past 2 months.

couldn't rangers and warriors and assassins already interupt them? O.O and even mesmers with cry of frustration...

See Grenths/Harriers Grasp. I will not use it again until it costs 5e, then it can actually compare with a ~8s crippling Called Shot.

And thats really not the buff ANYONE is refering to.

With expertise cripshot will cost you ~5e...