The new sunspear skills

I got so caught up about my own Spirit Spamming build getting buffed, I forgot that it's not the only type of play for the Rit class... Sorry :P. I suppose it would have been nice if the two skills wern't 'both' in relation to spirits. A new weapon/item spell would have been cool as well.

EDIT: Thanks Pingu!! Ohhhh Ether Nightmare rocks!!!

Holy Christ the Para skill makes everything sooooo much easier, i.e. Boring.

Whirlwind is interesting, though. It kinda sucks, but it's fun to look at.

The ranger skill is so disappointing.

I disagree many BP teams will benefit from this since its an IAS skill that has NO drawbacks unlike Tigers Fury, plus it has a longer duration with some healing attached to it.

Furthermore you don't have to use it with a Pet. It's can still be a pure IAS for Marksmanship and that was needed a long time ago.

Overall a great skill.

The warrior skill on the other hand sucks. The warrior could have used an Armor buff for better tanking at +1 per sunspear rank. I think you will see many W/A's now just for the Armor bonus. (Even though I'm hoping they will make these skills class specific to preserve their class distinctiveness.)

lol, it sounds sad yet so true.

hammer/sword its like cyclone axe for them

Here's feedback Gaile...

Please don't nerf the new sunspear skills. People have just been given a new reason to play PvE.

Please don't nerf the factions skills. People have just been given a new reason to play PvP and PvE in Cantha.

The skills are fun, and that's what a game is supposed to be, right?

I bet theyre gonna make the dervish one sao it doesnt affect avatars:P

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but laugh at this...these skills came when, 2 months after HM, and you're admittedly releasing a skill that you already know you're going to change?

Critical Agility is awesome, even on non-assassins. The IAS and a high weapon mastery means that Dervishes and Warriors can easily keep it up. The +armor is just gravy. Gonna replace Flail for me. Whirlwind Attack is nice, Hammer Warriors will be happy, as will be Sword ones. I'll probably switch Sun and Moon Slash for it.

The Elementalist skills... wow. +% damage and +2 to all elemental attributes means some major nuking. Both Paragon skills are awesome, and I think we'll definitely see more of them in PvE. There's Nothing to Fear is like a mini version of old Incoming. Combined with They're on Fire and ridiculous SF nuking, things will be smooth.

AI got hax, now players get hax too.
Hax are fun fun fun!!!

The Ranger Sunspear skill is kinda meh. It's not bad since it's basically a non-elite option for a Thumper (which does work in PvE. I beat NF with one of my rangers using almost a pure thumper build the whole time). However, I think the Luxon triple shot skill is a lot more spot on as to what a good ranger PvE skill is.

Running a dervish with Eternal Aura + Critical Agility and a dervish form = pwnage. It will probably get nerfed somehow, but it's fun for now. ^_^

IMO it is cry of frustration.

I mean come ON!

It is a PvE only skill...

I <3 the assassin skill

After thinking about it a bit and playing with the new skills on my characters, I have reached a new conclusion: Primary and secondary should be allowed to use these skills, but only if there is a reduced benefit in using one of these new sunspear/faction skills from a secondary. Anet can tie it to a secondary attribute like current skills do, or they can simply put in a hard limit as to the effectiveness of a sunspear skill from a secondary class. In the first case, the secondary sunspear skill should be AS effective as a primary IF they invest in that particular attribute line (Not including runes). This is a sacrificial cost that all current skills from a secondary class must go through, so why not sunspear skills?

Look for example at the current Warrior/Monk. You have some benefit of self healing, but its never as good in healing as a primary monk. This is the point some people are arguing. The current sunspear skills have no distinguishment on secondary and primary, so a Warrior/Mo can have a sunspear skill just as effective as a Primary Monk.

Anet has stated that they want some of the underplayed classess to be more accepted in PvE. Well If there is no difference in the effectiveness between a primary and a secondary, the underplayed class still will not be accepted in any meaningful way.

So it comes down that Anet have three choices,
1). Restrict to primary profession
2). Tie the skills to an attribute (non primary attribute)
3). Hard limit the effectiveness of sunspear skill from a secondary

I'd prefer #2,

man, E/N or N/E gonna broken with the new skills, so awesome

Cry of Pain is the same thing as [skill]Cry of Frustration[/skill], except it costs 10 energy you're trading off interupting eveyone for a lot more damage. I'm thinking: "Very nice"

P.S: I didn't read through every post, so if someone already pointed that out, ah well.

I really hope they don't. It's a really nice skill since it does recharge the avatars, but a pretty bad skill if it doesn't. There aren't many long recharge dervish skills that would benefit from it. It also has a 30 second recharge. I'm sure there's some obscure combination that would make it useable but then it's just an iffy normal skill and nowhere near the "super PvE" skill it's supposed to be. The holy damage is also similar to Heart of Holy Flame and that has additional benefits. So there isn't much of a reason to take this skill if it doesn't recharge avatars, and it certainly isn't worthy of being one of the sunspear skills if that's the case.

2nd update, no big changes. Still usuable by 2ndaries. It's very interesting they decided to go that route.

did you use it yet? the dmg applies whether or not you interrupt

Wrong, you have to have a pet to use it. This restricts rangers to a number of builds if we want to use it. If you look at the rest of the sunspear skills not one restricts a skill bar like this one does. Add to it the 25 energy cost and you got a pretty bad skill there IMO.

I am going to say restrict to primary profession. If not, this is the future of Guild Wars PvE:

Skill Slot 1: Primary Sunspear Skill
2: Primary Luxon/Kurzick Skill
3: Secondary Sunspear Skill
4: Secondary Luxon/Kurzick Skill
5: Elite Skill
6: Res
7: Soda
8: Popcorn

The whole point of these skills is to make unwanted professions DESIRABLE. What is so desirable about a paragon right now when anybody can use the skill that was intended to make him good, at full effectiveness? How come some skills are pointless without investment (need to invest in a pet for ranger, need to invest in mesmer hexes for mesmer), yet some work at 100% greatness for a secondary?

In all honesty, anybody making the argument that they should keep access to all of these skills is somebody who would make the argument that Anet should have a 5 energy quarter second cast time 0 recharge skill that does 500 armor ignoring damage to every enemy within earshot and for every damage dealt, you gain 1 energy and 50 health.

By letting secondaries use these skills at full effectiveness (or at all perhaps), the point is gone. Period.

People say this is calling for a nerf? I'm sorry, but if you need FOUR overpowered skills to beat the game, as opposed to 2, then well, I think that the game is not the problem here. Whatever happened to teamwork? Now everybody is a juggernaut running around slicing through mobs in hard mode. There should be an incentive to take paragons, mesmers, and the like into a team, which this update intended to do. So instead of buffing paragons and mesmers, every single player got buffed into an unstoppable killing machine that can do anything and everything. That was clearly not the point. The point was to make it so that no matter how hard a profession is nerfed, they have some redeeming skills. This is lost by allowing secondary professions to use the skills at full effectiveness, or any effectiveness at all. Uniqueness is a good thing, otherwise there would be 9 less professions.

Out of curiosity, where is this stated?

Cry of Pain is garbage... it's not an AOE interrupt like Cry of Frustration, it's a single target interrupt with conditional damage.

QFT. Now avatar of grenth is viable in PvE.

See, in PvE, a skill like this isn't overpowered. You can either:

A) Use this skill and keep your avatar up most of the time.

B) When you avatar runs out, stand there for 30-60 seconds before reapplying.

Who likes standing there bored for a while? And yes, this skill is useless if recharging avatars was not allowed. Completely.

PVE is all about overpowered and imba skills. Clearly they dont like the real skill balance. So better leave it like this, less people whine about skill balance. Now back to HM with the brand new skills.

Conjure Phantasm + Necrosis + Cry of Pain = GODLY

Hell, Cry of Pain is godly in and of itself. Such a nice skill!!!

Bah probably right. I was always wondering why PvP'ers would make the "QQ more you just want to run through everything" argument. I guess it is true

This honestly blows my mind. HM came out 2 months ago, these skills were mentioned in the HM announcement (which came a few weeks before HM was implemented, IIRC). Weeks and weeks of "they're coming soon!", until finally an announcement on Tuesday was made that we'd be getting them this week. Even if the skills weren't in their current form until this past tuesday, you mean to tell me that it wasn't until the build was going live that someone said, whoops, this skill needs to be nerfed!

Cry of Pain is very versatile. You can combine Frustration for more spike dmg in once... /build thinking with mantra of recovry...

Tested Critical agility and all can I say is... Man, I feel like a warrior with daggers (sorry but its true with +20 armor (90 total) for now with my title)

And the paragon, I can't imagine combined with Incoming lol

How's Critical Agility + Paragon's Skill working? Sounds deadly...

Necrosis wasn't even that great compared to the others TBH

Of course it's true. The way GW pve is set up is basically just a huge steamroll. Large groups of stupid monsters that ball up. I think having different skill mechanics for ALL skills in pve and pvp would help alot with balance. PvE'rs want to steamroll everything, let them, until you make monsters *SMART* instead of just attack faster and hit harder, GW pve will always just be a huge steamroll. PvP'rs want structure and balance. They dont like overpowered skills that steamroll things.

So until Anet changes pve from huge mobs of stupid creatues to smaller fights with SMART monsters (NOT DOUBLE EVERYTHING) It seems that the skills will never suit both.

GW pve is very chaotic, very AoE heavy, and all the monsters are stupid and ball up. While GW pvp is much more structured and organized. The idea that skills can work for both of these well seems like just a failure from the start honestly :/

wait, aren't luxon and kurzick skills the exact same thing? so we can have two versions of the same spell in our skill list, but can only have one on the bar? Am I missing something, or is this completely useless to all? or do you mean faction skills and sunspear skills can't have both on the bar?

oh one more thing, any chance we could get a third set for prophecies? those tyria-only people must be feeling pretty left out right about now

Buying incentive, imo.

pve only spectral agony would be pretty fun

i kinda doubt 1 new skill in each class would sway any non-buyers into buying it... but then again, theres also people that have factions or nightfall and not prophecies, so a set for proph would work the same way for them... as long as the skills arent copies or anything

Necrosis is deadly....
It's almost spammable and it make boss solo farming 10x easier.....

It's going to be NERF fast like Gaile said.....

1 new awesome skill in each class, mind you (well most are cool, anyways).

Look at the other "special features" they've included: Material storage for Factions, Insigniable Armor and heroes (!!!) for Nightfall. Notice how those things were added to all of the campaigns after the titles had been released for awhile (Heroes is still a huge buying incentive, though, so we probably won't see those added to Proph.)

You are correct I was mistaken. I had loaded the skill but had failed to test it. Because the ranger skill does not read "when your pet is equipped" and they fact you can load the skill without it "blanking out" I had assumed wrongly that it would apply without your pet. Its all in the semantics interpretation.

Because you can only use with a pet the skill goes from a 9/10 to a 5/10. Its only half as effective as it could be.

Possible reasons might be to try and discourage the skill from other classes using the IAS plus Pet. It is my sincere hope that this will change later this week, or the description will change.

However Ranger combined with the Assassin Sunspear skill became quite deadly when tested and I could keep it up almost constant. With my Paragon I did keep it up constant when combined with GFTE. It was a better selection than other IAS options for the Paragon.

This only reinforces my hope that Sunspear skills will remain for Primary Classes only to keep the class distinct form other class options.