Cap of +25 to the armor buff ... is it right?

Let me get this straight, harder = dumb it down?

You do realize that tanking will be harder, which might create some new archetypes and maybe change something in the PvE meta (lol).

I believe this "monitoring" that Gaile mentions here refers to PVP and does not include PVE.

So there is no hope!

PVE'ers gets screwed again by ANet!

Not since the destruction of the PVE Mesmer, has a class been so nerfed by ANet as the Paragon has been.

But wait...

Coming...

Soon the Paragon will join the Mesmer as almost completely useless in PVE.

You do realise that Pve can be balanced much easier than PvP right? through the addition of bettr mobs, environmental effects etc...

and do you also realise that the game mechanics revolve around 8v8 pvp? No, well there you go, you learnt something

You just made me puke in my mouth, grats.
Seriously, either stop being overdramatic or just rage please, because this game will never cater to "omg im shitty make gw easier" players.
Thanks.

Curse You, I suggested the "environmental effect" you mention back on pg 2 or 3 of this thread and again in the Devs Update thread. It is already seen in certain missions in Prophecies (Dragon's Lair, anyone?) and could easily be implemented and limited to the arenas, halls, etc. in PvP without adversely affecting PvE. It's a win-win situation - uber armor buffs in PvP are addressed and balanced and yet needed armor buffs are still allowed in PvE (because, as someone said, when was the last time you saw a team of 8 in PvP go against an opposing team of 30?).

~Falcon

I don’t think you quite got my point Warriors can relentless they are more likely to shutdown a Caster (via dazed and knockdowns and interrupts) than a Caster is likely yo be able to kill them. Sure u can Snare Warriors, but more often than not there going to snare YOU. Then they get into range, and pummel you and Never let you escape. As it is u can kill them aslong as they don’t interrupt or totally disable everything u do (which is common in high end PvP). With the suggested buff there going to be considerably harder to stop.

Im not saying the other profession arnt a threat im pointing out this buff makes warriors go from a threat to an unstoppable Juggernaut.

I have no problem with Warrior armour how it is, its already the highest AL and they have cheap skills to increase ti further. And personally I have no problems with Hexes however as I understand it the PvPers dislike the hexway where they cant do anything without hurting themselves because they are so stacked with Hexes and theres only so many ways of removing them and they cant be removed fast enough.

Elementalists and monks will suffer the most from this, the Eles because they have few AL ignoring skills, and Monks because they are target proity number 1 for warriors.

Warriors will still be an option, at NO point in the game do u NEED a massive AL buff to be successful, they still have the highest AL of any profession and they will still fill the same role.

Yes and for everything else there is Mastercard oh I mean Warriors! In places the 55ers cant go that’s where the Warriors do go aswell as going to places that 55ers to do because they use a large number of AL buffs. Most primary or secondary mesmers will bring an enchant removal skill this makes 55ers useless in PVP and numerious PvE areas.

Armour is damage negation, both 55 and Earth Eles require skills for there damage reduction, Warriors have high base AL with no skills. As for Damage although I agree with u the majority of players wont, just look around the forum for such examples of people quoting the infamous “Why Nuking Sucks” thread. This Makes warriors not only the highest dps profession, greatest ALed profession and one of the few that isn’t totally dependant on energy. Now increase there Armour further, surely u can understand that this pushes them far superior than any other class rather than the relative balance that there is now.

Unlike most professions warriors with the former AL buffs could solo just about anything this makes them more “wanted” than most of the other classes, some of the newer classes don’t get a second look in. The changes makes it a little more likely other classes will get in to teams.

Warriors are STILL the highest armoured profession, they take only half the damage a caster takes as it is, increase this and they will be taking a 2/3rds less damage than casters why would anyone take a Caster when they can take a Warrior that will live 3 times as long?


The change stops a lot of the super High AL’ed holding teams, Anet wants and promotes balance, is a team of Earth Eles and Paragons balanced when they can buff themselves to an additional 160+ armour (Armour of Earth + Kinetic armour + Watch yourself + others)? That’s what 1/256th damage taken instead of normal, now if you ask me that’s an insane Buff that’s nearly unbreakable unless u happen to have a whole team of mesmers, a normal balanced party would find that nearly unbeatable. Hence the update of the Buffs.

^ agree with the last bit above.

It was too easy to get way to high armor without the limit.

But I still think the limit is too low.

Mendes, you are an idiot who has obviously never played HM.

Armor bonuses are required to reduce the 100-200 dps that each enemy deals in a lot of areas of HM PVE. It isnt 50 damage being negated to 0 as you believe it to be.

And prot spirit and life bond are pretty useless when afflicted necromancers and many others use [skill]order of apostasy[/skill] and other enchant removals.

Stand your ground + Watch yourself are vital for surviving a lot of HM areas, and it still isnt easy with just the two skills either.

The armor system has been long unchanged in GW. There is no reason for this nerf when there really hasnt been any major drawbacks in PVP from it. SYG and WYS in HA dont do much against hex pressure or obi flame.

the problem is that we are still trapped in the tanking cookie.
it doesn't matter who is standing in front - if everyone else is standing at the edge of the aggro bubble.
that's what i mean by dumbing it down - with the party wide buffs- there was an option to break the tank/nuker rules.
because if we have x options to play pve now - after the armour nerf - there will be x-1.
(of course the biggest problem is that x equalled 1 already for most players! and they won't lose anything. but then we can only ask ourselves - where is the reward for innovation if trying things differently brought us nerfing and the most mediocre way still prevails!)

No. Sorry, just, no.

Have you seen the buff to Clumsiness, for instance?

Armor-ignoring damage. Degeneration. Snares. Blindness. Those are the ways to bring a Warrior to his knees.

And it will. Trust me, it will.



They have cheap skills because they

a) do not rely on energy as much as other classes
b) rely heavily on adrenaline

Just because people refuse to pack skills such as Ancestor's/Sympathetic and Soothing Images in PvP doesn't mean they don't exist.

The counters are there. Use them.

On the other hand, those anti-adrenaline skills have nearly no effect on a full Paragon team, since they usually have plenty of hex removal and well, simply don't hit in Melee.



Eles have awesome snares in the Water Magic line. There's also Obsidian Flame. On the whole, I do agree, they're not really the Warrior's natural enemy. The Mesmer is. And so is the Necromancer.

Monks, are target number 1 for everyone. Nothing prevents them from using defensive skills as well. Just think of the many Mo/A using Viper's Defense, Dark Escape and such.


It's not about what you NEED.

It's about what you CAN.

I don't want Anet to tell me how I should play, just because one of their new professions is badly designed.

"Bad wammo! No armor!"




That's what I was saying. 55 Monks are super-specialists. They can do one thing: negate damage.

Warriors can do a lot. Negate some damage. Temporarily increase their health when needed. Withstand lifesteal and enchant removal.

Versatility.



Warriors don't have any damage reduction skills. Only Armor buffing.

Not counting the bonus from Absorption runes (nerfed) and Shields (nerfed as well).



Damage reduction comes in the form of skills such as Stoneflesh Aura, Shield of Absorption etc.

Warriors cannot ignore Armor-ignoring damage without using skills from a different profession.



I grow really tired of repeating it over and over.

Armor... ignoring... damage.



And, sure, go ahead, make a team of 8 Warriors. The famous Warrior Endurance wammos. See how long you last in PvP.

The only chance an 8 Warrior team would have, is if more than half of their skills come from the Paragon line. It's how my guild soloed FoW and The Deep with an all-Warrior team.

And even then pure Paragons are much better off. And even better off if they're P/Mos.



Earth Ele enchants can be removed with one skill: Gaze of Contempt.

No attribute points needed.



As for Paragons, they are broken.

They need fixing.



Right now, Warriors are paying the bill for it.

You do realize that trying to balance PvE the way you described is a gigantic undertaking that anet will never commit to right? No? Well there you go, you learned something

Umm.. I don't think "tanking" should be considered a cookie cutter thing. It is just plain good tactics. Do you put a force field behind the ship? Do you put the artillary in front of the infrantry?

Anet is making a big mistake with this nerf. They have even said (elsewhere) that it is an inelegant fix (just like SR). I mean, how DIRE was the problem in PvP anyway?? How many threads have you seen saying "please nerf armor stacking in PvP it makes the game boring (only place it makes sense is greifers in RA and abuse in HB). I mean, the "fix" this issue while completely ignoring the 3-5 overpowering hexes that are being abused?

Everyone saying this is PvP's fault, you're blind morons. This was an obvious PvE DoA nerf, so ppl finally have to do something.

So thank you moron PvE'ers for ruining our loved Paragon high armor builds in PvP>.>

Yes because you see lots of mesmers around the play in PUGS and PVP, pff as if, mesmers rule I love my mesmer but they just arnt common enough to deal with Tanks, the buff to 1 skill is hardly going to increase the numbers of them.

1 shadow step from a secondary proffesion and that Snare is useless. Obsidian flame may eventually kill 1 warrior if he doesn’t kill you, howver after that u have so much exhaustion ur never going to be able to kill a second one.

Yes and now you CANT

Anet has every right, its there game, they pay to run the servers, they pay the staff for the coding.

I don’t think you Get it The Higher AL you have the less damage you take, This IS damage reduction. For ever 20 Al you have Damage is reduce by 50%, so 40 bonus AL reduces it by a further 50% to make it a 75% reduction in total etc. etc.

There are Few non Hex Al ignoring skills, most of which can only be used sparingly, You also don’t factor in the Huge hp most creatures have in PVE, doing 100 armour ignoring damage in most areas other than the early areas is not going to do a lot, I should know, I use my ele with AL ignoring builds and most creatures can strugg most of the attacks off, especially in HM.

Warriors best defense against them is increasing HP, healing (signet wont cause double damage unlike normal damage) or dazing the target so they can cast anymore.

Yes because every enemy and team you run into has Gaze of contempt! There are only a handful of enchant removal skills. Most come with massive draw backs of various kinds.

umm, no? due to the fact that we've seen it implemented on many occasions

Hard Mode being the biggest version of that

You can't change things like environmental effects in PvP without changing metagame and other important aspects, however in pve, those aspects of Player vs. Player aren't an aspect and so environmental variables can be used to make it more of a challenge...

there you learned something whilst trying to flame me, congrats to you

Hard mode is a much greater challenge then any aspect of PVP.

Anyone with legendary gaurdian and/or legendary vanquisher is a better player player then a Rank 9-12.

Harder = dumb it down if it leads to a Hide behind over-enchanted tanks meta.

This change doesn't necessarily make single player tanking harder but it does make team defense harder which typically has led to the boring meta mentioned above.

I don't see it leading to any other kind of meta.

I'm mostly PvE and even RA improves my monking skills more than HM. Please stop.

Made me LOL

PvE has almost never been balanced, readjusted or whatever. They added enchantment removal mobs to stop some forms of solo farming and guess what, it still works.

I think your major problem is that GW is not about PvP only, and specifically one form of PvP, GvG. That is the basic flaw.

PvP has always had priority, but priority does not mean that everything else does not need to be taken in account either. This is where Isaiah Cartwright and his fellows totally fail.

ANet is shooting themselves in the leg when they cater mainly to one form of PvP, whose players already yell at every occasion they will play "Fury" as soon as it got released.


I am pretty sure I who call myself a PvE player do a lot more of PvP than people who are rarely online and playing at all but cannot stop singing the holy chant that PvP is the end all of GW. This is BS.

You made me cry, just give me a week to complete one of the games and I'll get that title easily. But tbh, dont feel like completing those boring PvE missions even if I can semi-afk them as a monk. PvP IS much harder then PvE.

I agree that this is a poor potential change. Just because people are too stubborn to bring enchantment removal in RA we are going to create a cap on armor level now? It was never overpowered. It was always counterable. Don't make the game easier for people who don't know what they are doing.

I wouldn't be totally against a +armor cap, but +25 is WAY too low.

Exactly.

People should use Mesmers more. Mesmers rock.


How is a snare useless against kiting? Even if the Warrior shadow steps, if he's snared more than you, you can just walk away.

And as I said, Eles are not quite the natural enemies of Warriors.



Which is what this thread is all about.

Circular rhetoric FTW.



Of course.

This is a suggestions thread. So is any thread.

I'm just a displeased customer, so I feel they should know about my discontent. Maybe there are more like me, and they need to think about a solution. Maybe I'm an isolated case and they can just ignore me.

Judging by the number of threads on different forums, I think it's the former rather than the latter.


Sigh.

Okay, Damage Dealing 101.



When you attack someone with an Attack Skill, for example, the extra damage from that attack is ALWAYS added. It is Armor-ignoring damage.

This can only be changed with Damage reduction.



I want you to do the following:

• Roll a Warrior.
  
  • Give him/her 0 Strength, 0 Swordsmanship and 10 Tactics.
  
  • Equip Soldier's Strike and a Sword.
  
  • Go into Isle of the Nameless.
  
  • Hit the the different suits of Armor with Soldier's Strike.

You will do exactly 30 damage on every Suit of Armor. Probably with a +1 or +2 discrepancy. That's your nominal Attack damage which is very low (0 Strength, 0 Swordsmanship).



The damage from Soldier's Strike (as with any Attack Skill) is Armor-ignoring damage.

This is NOT PHYSICAL DAMAGE. No sir.



Elementalists (and Ritualists) you ask? They do elemental damage. The damage their skills do IS ELEMENTAL DAMAGE (save for Obsidian Flame, for example). This is not Armor-ignoring and can be reduced to 0 with high enough Armor.



See the difference?



Warriors do Attack damage (physical) + Armor-ignoring added from Attack skills.

Elementalists do Spell damage (elemental).



Now, the only way to reduce the added Armor-ignoring damage from an Attack Skill is damage reduction. Stoneflesh Aura, Shielding Hands etc.




Proved wrong above.

Besides, Elementalists are simply not made to deal with high Armor targets. This said, they can completely obliterate great amounts of low Armor targets.



Increasing HP is a last resort skill. Not something you want to use all the time. Especially since you lose the benefit of Protective Spirit.

And since when are Warriors Dazers? Dazing is still a job for Sins and Rangers, mostly. The Warriors is there to keep hitting the Dazed target.

As for Heal Sig, I dunno, interrupt it? Ignorance?



Not every enemy team I run into wins. :P

Gaze of Contempt is one of the single most powerful skills in the game. With ridiculously easy criteria to meet and 0 drawbacks.

guys seriously, dont be so melodramatic! we pve'ers now have to think outside the box - hey look there is no box! armour isnt the only way to reduce damage: [skill]Stoneflesh Aura[/skill] [skill]"They're on fire!"[/skill] [skill]Armor of Sanctity[/skill]
tanks mite actually have to get a team member ot help them by bringing they're on fire! in DoA to reduce damage, dervs using armor of sanctity will reduce damage, they mite even do it better than a warrior now that the warior cant stack the skills. Armor of earth or kinetic armor will prob become the staple for tanks coz it can be kept up indefinietly (may take skill in kinetic's case but id like to think we have some skill) and provides alot of armour. Come on it makes us think more and change builds, and *shock horror* paragons may get into DoA carrying ToF! how radical is that!

Please, stop the namecalling, the below-the-belt jabs and other unniceties.

Armor is not the be-all end-all that Makes You Win The Game™.

Nor was it ever deserving of such a nerf.



It was, however, deserving of some changes. Everyone can agree that stacking those Paragon skills is just a cheap game mechanic.

However, I'm afraid that this is a less than elegant solution.

It fundamentally changes a game which is way past its early development stages.



We need some kind of official reaction on this.

Or at the very least wait till the patch is actually released.

Do we know when that will be yet? im guessing tomorrow with the changes for the weekend.

Totally with you on the changes that didn't work, but my theory and reasoning is sound, just unused

I'm charing my gaming experience as well then ^^

It doesn't affect my rangers build at all since I don't play with def. boosts.

I've cleared all missions in Hard Mode and am currently working on vanquisher (28/33 cantha, 17/34 elona) without the use of def. buffs.

Normaly I play with the following hero's (A combination of):
- Myself being broad head arrow ranger with whirling def, throw dirt and lightning reflexes.
- Norgu, powerblock mesmer with leech signer, shatter enchant, backfire and empathy.
- Master of whispers running a enfeebling blood, arcane echo, spiteful spirit with leech signet and drain enchantment.
- Acolythe Sousoke is my blinding b*tch. Blinding surge, lightning orb, attunement and shields up.
- Tahlkora is a Protmonk with shield of regeneration monk with hex and condition remove.

If someone else joins me he always takes another necro that is skilled like master of whispers and another monk with LoD. Then a Minion Master is very cool as well. And ofcourse the class the friend is playing.

How I defend then?
I will simply tank the enemies with my ranger. Prot-spirit, Healing Seed + Whirling Defense take out the first damage. Blind the docked melee's with throw dirt and the hexes have effect on everybody when my stance/prot spirit ends. I'll target the nearest monk myself with broad head and the hexes kill everybody within no time and I'm off to the next group.

True - but do you send a 70 armour assassin to the front lines?
Is that good tactics?

Point is - it is a game. And it would be nice if we were allowed to play it in various ways - instead of just one. Since some classes have serious issues with THAT way.
That's my only problem - we are losing options and NEED to play the game in a very restrictive way.
That's the thing that is bothersome!


(off GWO)
Notice the bolded part?
You were calling names?

The fact is, the paragon is a) quite weak on its own and b) gets stronger the more you put in a team, to the point where having 5 in a team with the right skill bar is bloody rediculous. Paragons need 3 skills for their offense (barbed spear, vicious spear, aggressive refrain), which gives them the option to pack 5 defensive skills. And hey! Look! Paragons actually HAVE defensive skills! This was bound to lead to a build like this from the start.

Setting the armor cap to any less than the current amount would've done absolutely nothing to the paragon teams with 150 armor, defensive anthem, restoration and that other shout that heals your entire party.

If DoA really becomes undoable (but I doubt it. There's a million defensive skills out there that don't rely on armor), they could always adjust the amount of mobs, or make their damage slightly less retarded. This is always a possible solution actually, which is why in skill balances PvP should always come first.

BTW, for the people saying Anet hates farming, think of this: Arenanet at first didn't implement Hard Mode in challenges, because they couldn't understand why someone would purposely gimp himself in a challenge, because this would undoubtly lead to a lower score. They implemented it because they found out people farmed there.

This thread sickens me. I couldn't get myself to reading past page 8. If someone on those pages posted the ultimate all problem solving solution, I apologize for missing it.

Ok, so lets just look at this example please. I just completed Minister Cho's estate on HM with the skill bars in the screenie. Ok its searing way, but it works and got me a masters.



However, Razah died over and over untill he was at 60% DP, I still managed the win by killing mobs quickly enough.

Razah's armor - 60+10 (while holding urn) + 24 (from urn) +16 + 24 (WYS, SYG) = 134 ar, + -29% damage from ToF.

And he still died over and over again. And why didnt I use PS? Because PS is broken on hero AI. Why didnt I get a human monk? Because there werent any.

HM is going to be a sad sad place with this armor nerf.

Oh, and Izzy is great at balancing this game isnt he? /NOT

Just for your information, Hard Mode in challenges WAS implemented since the beginning. They only removed it in the first June 7th update (and then replaced it in the second update). This is how the Remains of Sahlahja became such a popular farming location in the first place.

The problem with the developers, in my humble opinion, is that they don't fully consider how changes will affect PvE players. They put the Hard Mode back in challenge areas once they realized why people were using it. However, the question remains... Why couldn't they see this to begin with? Any PvE player in NF could tell you why people used Hard Mode in the challenge missions. It's so much easier to get the 50,000 points needed for Lightbringer and Sunspear outside of the Remains of Sahlahja. ANet claims to be against grinding, but why add such titles? Also, Vanquisher may be easier when you leave from the challenge mission areas. I haven't yet tried to go for Vanquisher titles yet, so I'm not entirely certain.

ANet is so focused on "fixing" problems in PvP that they seem to forget that PvP is linked with PvE (which appears to have been a horrible decision). Sure, it seems like a great idea to make skills work the same in PvE and PvP so that players can easily switch between the two, but more often than not you'll have to adjust your build to work in PvP anyway. So why not just keep the two separate? If I wanted to take the effort to get into PvP, then I'm sure I'd be more than happy to learn the builds and such required even if it required learning some skill differences between PvP and PvE. Certainly it'd be hard for them to change this now, especially with GW2 coming out in a year or two. I hope this is changed in GW2. At least in GW:EN we'll be getting 50 PvE-only skills that won't have to be nerfed like crazy just to "improve" PvP once some players figure out how to exploit them.

I don't think that ANet hates farming, but I think they're so out-of-touch with the PvE community that they have no idea what they're doing.

I'm going to have to fully and completely disagree with you.

Wrong.

Hero AI is decent with PS and you went into the mission poory equipped for the situation. The only difference is that Hero AI monks react after some form of spike and cast PS on you after the spike. There is absolutely nothing wrong in pre-protting yourself by just clicking PSpirit yourself before you get into a fight. Looking at your skillbars of your heroes it's generic, I have no idea why you brought a charge elite on your para into the mission since you can jog into masters in Cho's. Raz was used poorly by making him a heal rit instead of a shelter/union spirit spammer to help reduce the widespread AoE dmg of afflicted explosions.

Another note, why bring breath of fire? It causes scatter in hard mode which makes the situation worse than it really is when the mobs scatter.

You didn't prove anything from your screenshot other then your lack of putting together a decent party for missions in hard mode it seems.

Well im fully agreed with that regardless of what others think.

If ANet really hated farming, why not just COMPLETELY REMOVE the -50 Health Grim Cesta from the game? That'd effectively kill any and all 55 Monk builds. That'd also have stopped all the bots in Begen Bot Springs, no banning of innocent human players required. However, it would have also prevented ANYONE from using a 55 build. ANet can't completely be against farming, it's probably why many people still play. After you finish all the quests and missions with all your characters, how do you get the money you need for the armor or titles that you want?

My quote was mostly towards your completely bogus line of "ANet is out of touch with the PvE community". If anything, ANet is out of touch with the PvP community. I just found that line rather insulting, and this is coming from a hardcore PvE'r.

Fine then keep it in the PvP realm then. I am convinced you are so out of touch with the PvE community you make choices on PvP alone without regard to the PvE experience. Many would say thats a good thing until you realize that PvE makes up for 90% of your game community.

If this change goes through you will have a major revolt on your hands as the PvE community as a whole just won't tolerate it. I personally know of over 37 people who have left the game already never to return because their experience was ruined by PvP effects on the PvE aspects of the game.

If this change is so important for PvP then please please please keep it in PvP only realm.

Yes, it was and not only that but was abusing exploiting the ai which would never use these combos. You are suppose to be "competitive" vs anyone including the ai, not be practically invincible and this was what was happening vs the ai in many places not just DOA. In pvp the arenas of RA, AB and FA saw the obsidian tank quite often. Unless you have a specific build against it it is quite invincible you can't do any damage and all you will see is 0's above the players head as you bang and bang and bash and bash on them. This was not Anets intention for players to be able to build a character this way. But, leave it to the players to screw things up by exploiting anything and everything they can to get the upperhand or an advantage. They have no one to blame but themselves for not even realizing what they were doing was just exploiting the mechanics of the skills.

I'm very happy with the nerf. I tried an Obsidian tank one in FA an although yeah it's funny to watch people try to kill you and the luxon warriors can't even touch you, but, it's also easy to realize that is unfair to the rest ot the participants, the ai and the overall game. People will just have to adapt now to the reality that they will no longer be invincible and have to learn "skills" and "strategy" and "tactics" instead of just pushing buttons 1-2-3-tab.


Lol this is what I would call hotdogging for your rights. Threaten to quit, threaten a revolt that will never take place, throw out an undocumented number of people that support you and there you have it hotdogged rights. hahaha

In a 4 man mission, razah is a lot better with that bar then a monk hero.

Breath of fire is used to make enemy mobs scatter. They dont attack for a few seconds, and they actually still take 3 hits from it. For the energy cost it is a very good spell.

Charge/Fallback = Mission done faster, less time wasted.

I got gaurdian of tyria in four days using builds I specified and people able to play them, so I think I know how to put a decent party together for HM.

As for the shelter suggestion, you do know it dies pretty fast then you end up screwed right? Its pointless in HM.

The only thing I get screwed by is the lack of puggers able to play decent bars.

I don't see your point. If anything, you proved missions in HM are still doable. Yeah, your razah got 60DP and kept dying, but you got the masters reward anyway now didn't you?

Could we cut it out guys? Stop bragging about your HM accomplishments/tearing down everybody else's ability and their builds.

Just, try to redirrect the discussion back to what it's supposed to be about please.

The point is that you still take too much damage in HM with all the armor buffs. at the soon to be 85 max armor possible for a caster, they will just fall like flys in HM.

And this mission is one of the easiest ones and doesnt compare to places like eternal grove and vizunah square which are totally un henchable.

PVP is still 'doable' with the armor buffs, so by your logic it didnt need nerfing.