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

I don't think people understand how bad of a change this is...

can you imagine how many skills will become useless (not to mention the whole armour system being annoying)... for instance

lets say you are playing through pve as an elementalist with armour of earth... and you warrior friend brings WYS...

..he uses WYS just before you cast Armour of earth... and your skill is useless. giving you only 1 or 2 +AL

this would be killing all the armour skills in casual play... and make WYS (among other skills) an annoyance to those who actually use the higher armour skills.


...making skills like these:

"Stand Your Ground!"
Shield of Deflection
Ward Against Elements
Resilient Weapon
Bladeturn Refrain


...kill the effectiveness of these skills on another character...

Avatar of Balthazar
Feigned Neutrality
Armor of Earth
Shield of Regeneration
Dolyak Signet

Thats actually incorrect. You would then gain the full amount of armor from Armor of Earth, but nothing extra from WYS. A single spell can raise the AR level above the cap.

However, PVE players are still shafted by the nerf since tanking and damage reduction is now completely useless.

As I said before, Razah was dying constantly with over 130 ar in a noob island mision in HM. DoA and Elite missions in HM are gonna be so much fun now /not.

Actually, its just the whining scrubs that only PVP and dont have a clue about anything in PVE that dont understand it. Anyone that plays HM PVE understands how bad a nerf this is.

hrmmm so I guess I misread... this means you benefit from the highest single armour skill that is 'on you' ???

'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.'

I think this is not entirely accurate. As per Gaile's clarification here: http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...88#post4930188

So regardless of when either skill is activated, the highest active armor for the situation will be used.

So in your first example, armor of earth will be used rather than WYS.

I think this is likely to have more of an effect on farming and high end area builds. If it proves to be too much of a nerf there, they will probably tweak it more as they've pretty much already said they would regarding this upcoming update.

What was killing Razah? Melee? Wouldn't a monk with a protection build be better then? Or a Necro or mesmer with anti-melee skills?

I'm using my Necro to get through HM and haven't had too much trouble yet. I usually go SS with Enfeebling Blood. The EB reduces their damage by 66% which helps a lot. I would go reckless haste, but I like bringing Insidious Parasite more.

I believe I did this mission with my SS Necro, a ZB protection monk and 2 SF eles. Maybe put myst. regen on one of your eles for more self healing?

Just started playing the paragon and rit, so don't have any recommendations for making them work better in HM.

Lastly, the smaller party size in the earlier missions kind of creates it's own challenge. I've read others saying they felt they were actually harder than the later missions because of the limits on your choices.

Let me guess. You're "Obsidian tank" build uses Stoneflesh Aura and Mystic Regeneration right? Um yea, the only skill on your bar giving you +armour is Obsidian Flesh, which would still give the exact same bonus. I don't see how, at all, the cap of +25 armour would have any effect on the build you describe.

EDIT: Ok, you may be using Armor of Earth with Obsidian Flesh, but the +20 armor you miss out on (since it will use the higher buff from Armor of Earth), hardly makes a difference since you're still immune to spellcasting.

For the record, +40 is in half.

That is why Healing Signet is -40 Armor. It effectively doubles damage taken, which is why Watch Yourself + Dolyak Signet is necessary unless you use it out of battle (in PvE).

The main issue I have with the armor cap is it doesn't reward buffs that are highly conditional. Conviction for example, is almost a necessary thing on any Dervish unless they want to be flattened by enemy melee.

When enchantments are stripped away, the only things saving you are your innate armor. Protective Spirit and Shield of Absorption are nice, but they don't last forever and they require your monk to have battlefield awareness. Trust me, Khim/Talkora using Protective Spirit as a heal is NOT battlefield awareness.

EDIT:
It would've made more sense to look at Team based buffs:
Shields Up! --> nerfed already, unless you chain it it is rather useless and it is onyl against piercing damage
Ward Against Elements --> AoE.
Watch Yourself --> main problem for PvP on paragons
Ward Against Harm --> elite, AoE
Stand Your Ground --> nonmoving allies only, non-maintainable unless multiple paragons (the crux of the problem)

NON Team based:
Defensive Stance / Disciplined Stance --> yeh right. These are easily broken with Wild Blow/Strike/Throw
Dolyak Signet --> useless in PvP.
Defy Pain --> no warrior would use this in PvP
Dryder's Defenses --> hello, duration?
Convert Hexes --> conditional as anything
Shield of Deflection --> enchantment removal/ short duration
Shield of regen --> screams need energy
Physical/Elemental Resistance --> wild Blow/Strike/Throw and it weakens you to other things
Armor of Earth --> slows you down
Obsidian Flesh --> as an elite, nobody uses it unless in RA or AB, which aren't really reasons to nerf all armor buffs
Armor of Mist--> enchantment
Armor of Frost--> enchantment, only against physical.
Frigid Armor --> enchantment, physical only
Feigned Neutrality --> pretty much needs Deadly Paradox, enchantment, cannot attack
Might was Vorizun --> +15 is like an insignia.
Protective was kaolai-->+24 nearly hits the cap
Resilient Weapon --> +24 neraly hits the cap, highly conditional
Tranquil was Tanasen --> elite, other than trappers, mantra of resolve is so much better
Bladeturn refrain --> slashing damage only
conviction --> requires enchantment, can be stopped with Wild Blow/Strike/Throw
Avatar of Balthazar --> elite, non maintainable

UNIVERSAL:
Fertile Season

Team based buffs as you can see, are basically limited to stand your ground, Watch Yourself. Everything else is only one ally only or self. I don't understand why it warrants nerfing the entirety of the armor skills.

The more i think about this update the more I think its wrong.

Especailly when HM came around. There are certian areas in HM where you need to "kick it old school" and have your standard Obsidian tank, nukers, and monks. Even the devs said that.

The armor cap does help PvP, even though I'm more of a PvE player I can see how armor skills can be almost abusive in PvP play.

But since word of this change I been rattling the concept in my head and I see this being worse than the SR nerf.

But I understood the SR nerf. I knew SR was powerful, and I took advantage of it since before its change there was literally no way of stopping it.

But most of the armor skills have ways around them. I just hope this isn't permanant.

But my gut feeling says its gonna be : (

Well, Hard Mode will be very hard on tanks now cause the lvl 28-30 enemies will be able to really hurt you beyond what you can take, so tanking will fail. So people, you are required to use protective spirit and hope there is no enchantment removal ...

I can only see PvP reasons to do this anyway, so it's the same song being sung again. Whereas in PvE our spells do 10 damage against lvl 28 bosses and so we adapt to using hexes and conditions etc, the PvP community is apparently not capable of adapting to the DoA style tank, which we were required to invent to make it through there....All I can say is: HAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAHAA!!!!!

Yea, my gut feeling tells me the same thing. Oh well, what are you gonna do. I've been resigned to this fact a long time ago, probably the same reason why I hardly ever play anymore. All this changing around is really hard on the casual players like me, who don't have the time to switch around and tweak builds. We just want to pop in game and have some fun playing.

I don't remember who suggested this but someone out there had a really really good idea on how to fix this situation. This is not my idea.

Instead of nerfing armor across the board, Anet should implement an environmental effect in all PvP areas that prevents armor stacking. They said that this environment effect could be Balthazar decreeing fair play amoungst those trying to prove themselves. Call the effect "Spirit of Balthazar". Again, this effect would only affect PvP areas. It would not be found anywhere in PvE except certain zones related to Balthazar, like FoW, if at all.

All I can say is: try some PvP before throwing out a random, biased, ignorant opinion. DoA tank? .... Try full, almost invincible paragon teams. This didn't come from the crappy RA tank E/Ds that don't do any damage. Nobody in the PvP community gives a shit about those, and most don't even care about RA/AB in general.

Also, I've never used a tanking build in HM, even in the RoT missions. PS/SoA put on a warrior generally work fine, and minions help soak up some damage. Even if you do get your enchants stripped, the 80 base AL of a warrior should be enough to keep him alive with his backline supporting him. The only place I ever used any defensive skills at all was in GoM, to tank Shiro while my party did the bonus. And that was a couple stances and GB, not +armor. I don't think it'll make as big a deal as everyone's making it out to be, although there might be some build changes to do.

You Sir get a cookie! it is 40Al that doubles or halves damage ur quite correct tiredness ftl

that’s one thing I do agree with you on, but that’s not the issue here is it

Snares are not useless however the point is they are one of a few methods of slowing a warrior down, all of which can be removed by its team mates or self and make the snare last all of a second.

The debate isn’t about the damage warriors do its about the you wanted to Buff the AL of Warriors higher than it already is. Elementalists are high damage dealers, they can take much damage but they can dish it out, warriors can give and take damage. Warriors with insane AL buffs are going to make non Hex attacks useless. If you don’t believe me use Elemental skills on a Dessert Wurm and tell the the “high” damage u do. Yes is a example of a PvE creature, however the point is you want to turn warriors into characters with that kinda armour and effectively take Eles and Rits out of the game.

Guild wars is designed to be dependant on builds, Build ele A defeats War b, War c beats ele a etc. Having insane AL stacking makes War d effectively unable to be defeated by ele a, ele e, ele f .... ele zz etc. Its unbalanced. In Gw all professions are capable of defeating all other professions with the right build. Giving characters (not just warriors) insanely defensive AL builds makes most classes totally usless against them with the Exception of Hex builds.

You see a lot of Eles and Rits with interrupts don’t u

Now I don't farm with heavy earth armor builds, so that might imply I'm biased. But I'm pretty sure Hard Mode was never meant to be the sort of thing you could just whip up some unbeatable tank skillset for and solo or 2-man farm all on your own (which it is). Not to mention how many people I've heard talking about how "Hard Mode is still too easy and needs to be harder". Of course it's not hard if we're making it as easy and formulaic as possible. Having said that, I think some people are worried about this update because HM will now actually be hard for them.

My main problem with the people who think Anet is ruining PvE for balance issues in PvP is that their idea of balanced PvE seems to be these heavy armor stacking tanks being totally impervious to the lvl 28 mobs in HM. Hard Mode was Anet's way of bringing a new and greater challenge to truly experienced players. From a dev perspective, if people can still breeze through HM with a super-tanking solo build on a regular basis, obviously they're looking for a higher challenge to be had that isn't there yet. With a limit to how invincible they can be (via the armor cap), maybe they'll get that challenge. Maybe they'll even die occasionally. Or just maybe, they'll even join a party of other players.

Now yes, I expect that the cap will make some parts of the PvE experience far too challenging for most players. Many people who used to enjoy HM will discover that they now get slaughtered beyond reason with a limit on their armor, but I think that same limit will refresh some of the previously "too easy for them" parts of Normal Mode to a difficulty level that's probably well worth revisiting. Of course I could be wrong, but for now let's just wait and see.

I agree with that.

GW developed more and more into a PvE game. The additions to PvP since the very beginning were very minor, actually!

This change seems to have been ignored by the balancing department. They were so busy balancing Rits, Assassins and now Dervishes and most importantly Paragons and their Shouts... that they lost any eye for the PvE part of the game. Or worse, they simply do not care. But they should.

I do not think 90% are PvE players. ANet probably knows better, should know better... But I dare to say the so often bashed casual PvE scrubs are the huge majority of GW players!

Very good summary. It really boils down to the question why the combo of TWO shout skills requires ANet to scrap a whole game mechanic. What were they thinking???

Bad idea, especially because GW is already before its final expansion. No need to scare away people already, they will lose some followers in the year before GW2 even without such kamikaze nerfs.

Yo, theres also a CAP on attack speed increases :P Reckless haste is useless in HM

CAPS ftw .

umm...Guild Wars is about group vs group balance. It was NEVER EVER balanced for 1v1 or Duels....Its not Mortal Kombat/Street Fighters....
There is nothing wrong with one prof completely owning another prof since balancing 1v1 isn't the fundamental goal.

Notice how there is no 1v1 pvp mode? Heros Battles is the closest thing... There is still a group vs group situation there.

Reckless Haste is not useless in Hard mode. It still causes foes to miss(52% @ 16 Curses), and it is very useful for that. It's essentially a Blurred Vision in the Curse line.

On topic, I think the armor cap is a hasty and inelegant solution to WY + SYG synergy, or possibly other passive defense builds like Hero battles. I don't really PvP anymore, but would a 25 armor cap to stacking party-wide armor bonuses work? Single target skills would still stack, and since an overly armored character in PvP generally lacks offense, couldn't such a character simply be ignored?

Put more simply, a cap of +25 armor would be applied to multiple skills that stack and affect the party(including Wards, why not?). Single skills that raise the bonus higher than 25 would be unaffected, as would skills that are target single ally/self. If this does not address the problem, please explain.

"Yeah the Armor Stacking Nerf makes NO SINCE whatsoever. ANET is out to Kill Solo Farming."

Good.

Heres a toast to Anet finally kicking the puppy to death while its already been thrown 20 feet in the air by their car.

I dont think they even comprehend how many skills are rendered USELESS as a result of this change.

Like many changes, this WILL be implemented w/ or w/o our consent because they know whats "better" for us. And like many updates, other eccentrically retarded changes will be added with it.

I wonder, what other atrocious changes will be thrown in the mix? Maybe "cracked armor"? Where the warrior goes under 25% health, his armor is decreased by 50% and rendered useless if he dies. Thats sounds like a GREAT addition the game. Now i can spend 300k everytime i go HM into DoA to buy armor and craft 10 new backup sets of armor just in "case" OH YEA!!!

Well where to begin, oh yeah: Armor of earth + doylak signet = bye bye, Phsyical resistance + doylak signet= bye bye, elemental resistance + doylak signet = bye bye, Any of the ones i mentioned with the addition of stand your ground and watch yourself = bye bye, shield of regen + some other skill = bye bye, shields up = bye bye and the endless list of skills rendered useless goes on. And all this cause of what? some HA teams were panzer tanks? I mean did that stop ppl from winning HoH? of course no. And then of course the ele tanks how many of them play in AB? how many can be beaten due to TEAMWORK and so yeah for these few builds ALL professions have to suffer not to forget how ppl loved to combine skills in hard mode areas.

I'm sure there could have been a MUCH better solution to this.

/endrant *finally*

It was stated that the change was because PvP players didn't find it to be "fun" to fight a team with excessive armour buffs. So to make these (few) players happy, they go and implement something that will only serve to piss way more people off. Good job, you got 1,000 people happy, while annoying 10,000.

So have you folks seen the new skills?

100 armor shout? Who gives a crap about stacking anymore?

Yes I seen it and personally I dont like it due to its short duration and high adrenaline and of course it requires grinding to be used at best, Personally these skills should have gone in the normal attributes line not the grinding one.

Weapon of fury on a sword/axe with IAS man. Better yet, focused anger on an agressive refrian paragon. You will have *no* trouble keeping it up constantly with even rank 1 title.

They might add a recharge to this skill, because it's just too insane otherwise. 100 armor is like... 75% damage reduction. Constantly!

Good idea but tell me how that's gonna be effective for elite missions where the group hides behind walls when the tank takes all the dmg, what you gonna do throw spears from the side to attract the mob? Enlighten me

cause the tank can take the shout as well?

Wouldn't help, it affects everyone except the user.

The only place where this is needed and particularly efficient is DoA. And there even if there was no armor stacking adjustment, W/E tanks are still dead thanks to the stoneflesh nerf.

Everywhere else you just need to get better monks. Well, not really because you can just bring that paragon shout on top of the armor shout...

Just like i thought they would offer some lame compromis to the armor nerf get real everyone who wants to use those new skills to their full potential has to grind titles mindlessly until their getting close to usefull. Plus what if secondairy classes can use the skills in mind since they require title not attribute wich i think is ultra lame , i guess secondairies cant use them but still having it require a fully grinded title makes me wanna throw up, cause this will create a load of pve eliteness like hall has at rank will now be the same for pve also they already said it dont get attached to them their gonna get nerfed. great idea make overpowered skills that everyone will have to have on their skillbar, not saying i dont like the skills i dont like the fact i have to grind some boring title to be able to use them.

We'll include this thread in the weekly Community Summary, which we send to the entire design team.

Thanks.

As I noted in another thread, most earth farming builds are now dead for players who don't have Nightfall, since Armor of Earth and Kinetic Armor no longer stack.

Kinetic armor alone though is more then enough to farm many areas Francis.

i took my ranger in DoA with a R/E build, tried the opening area of cities and foundry and until the mob broke off after a couple of min, they took off after the monk as he was re-applying seed and spell breaker. i had nothing but zeros flashing on my screen for damage. i can get a ranger up to 186 armor without needing to double stack armor bonus skills. granted thats probably not a real test but with the current stale builds everyone uses its hard to get a group together to see how much the ranger could really tank. everyone is so use to having a warrior or ele no one will give the ranger the time of day. think out side the box and you will find a solution. if your up for trying ill be on tonight trying to get my guild or aliance mates together for a full test. ranger FTW :-)

Fair enough. I've done it.

But unless current normal mode drops are a lot better than I think they are, we're not talking about a very profitable activity.

Remember, I'm talking Ether Renewal builds here, not Stone Striker, because Stone Striker is Nightfall also.

Unfortunately, the grinding aspect of it leaves us casual players out in the cold.

So, PvE is now harder and PvP is better balanced. Sounds like a good change that will improve the game to me.

If anything I am tired of these threads were some PvEr's are just raging and being melodramatic about changes in overpowered skills. They all make PvE better. While that is not always the case (almost exclusively with mesmer skills) it usually is and even when it isn't you can't ignore that pvp and pve have the same skill set and a mediocre build in pve still works and is fun to play but in pvp overpowered skills just make the game not fun. I also don't think that PvE and PvP should have seperated skills, not only would it make the game more confusing for players like me who enjoy both but I also cherish the feeling of killing monsters and people alike with the same builds (try a spike build in PvE its a lot of fun )

Thats not to say I don't understand that a lot of builds that people enjoy are completely ruined. I was a little bit disheartened when some of my favorite skills in the game where nerfed to make them more balanced but people should realize, that in the end, the game and there experience with it will probably be the better for it.

my dervish is so much more fragile now :/

I thought dervishes were supposed to use enchantments and buffs to get enough armor to make them an effective melee class? Why ruin that?

Plus, if they want to encourage people to use more of the forms, Melandru or Dwayna or whatnot...this is not going to help.