The new sunspear skills

I think that these sunspear and faction based pve only skills should be Primary class specific also. Make the necro skills only apply to a Necro primary, not a warrior/necro secondary.

Just my 2 cents.

25 energy is enough to restrict it from most fighting classes, including my ranger. That and the pet requirement. Rather use the assasin IAS, I agree, since that gives you armor as well.

I give it 1/10 due to it's restrictivness, general uselesness and high energy cost. Without doubt the worst of the sunspear skills, many others being gamebreakers.

intensity is just insane. +25% damage to ALL spells, not just ele spells.


so ermm, N/E with necrosis and intensity= one hellova spike.

ima have to agree with the general consensus.

dont nerf the skills, just make them primary class only usable.

Yes, that will allow them to be MORE flexible (IE make the ranger skill better, etc.)

Holy crap...

The assassin skill is just purely OPed, I solo jade brother hood knights on hard mode with it...

WOW what a pve elitist you forget how many builds on your precious PVP side have changed the game for pve players. while the "balance" on your side might be great, you never consider the ones who hate pvp and BOUGHT the game for pve. You clearly bought the game for pvp and you always get the silver spoon IMHO. Steamrolling? no one wants that or we'd be bored and stop playing.....

play your side and we'll play ours. i love the update, i just want our heroes to get the skills we paid for with HERO POINTS!!!!!!

Take the Luxon/Kurzick skill with you too and you don´t

With 1 patch, they make paragons relevant in pve again. I just went through the Iron Mines mish with henches and heroes, everything but me and the fighter hench were squishies, and spamming that skill along with Watch Yourself, I don't think I saw a single one drop below 50%. They were hard pressed to get down to 75% for that matter. Granted it's not the hardest mission, but I still think that's saying something. Healers didn't really have that much to do I think this skill has nerf written all over it, but I'm definitely going to enjoy it while it lasts.

It's a nice reward for those who stuck with their paras in pve, since they're one of those classes that gets a bad rap and struggles to find parties, especially later in the game and in DoA. With a spammable 32% damage reduction and a 55 HP party heal every 10 seconds, people will want them now. Great addition Anet.

Agreed, at least pet restriction should be removed.(+ less energy imo)

I was sarcastic in the "of course they do" thing.. My point was.. Anet has made the pve you love so much into a steamroll. With one skill set for the two, pvp and pve dont work because they are polar opposites. One is structured one is chaotic. MY suggestions for fixing this is A. Two different skill sets, one for pve one for pvp, Same skills different effects i guess? or B. Change the pve from a steamroll to a more structured enviroment with smarter monsters.

'Theres Nothing To Fear' is something im taking all the time now. It's like incoming but...better in so many ways

wow rangers totally got the short end of the stick... the sunspear skill is just plain terrible

restricted to when using a pet and an insanely high energy cost... even with a high amount of expertise your looking at using around 15 energy for this skill O_O

i'll have fun with my ele, derv and assassin though... shame my main char, my ranger got shafted with this skill...

The mesmer skill could do with some rework. I was extensivley testing it last night and have a couple of observations.

The recharge time is too long at 20 seconds., at the moment it pretty much requires AP, an echo or MoR to make it work effectivley. As much as I love these skills a recharge duration would allow me greater flexibility and freedom in builds and also allow this skill to be more useful.

Painting with a hex.
Mesmer skills should have some sort of condition on them, and not just a straight nuke. However having to paint ones target with a hex first increases the energy cost of this skill. I would change the requirement to any hex.

Functionality:
The damage output is great, please dont mess with. However I would extend the functionality to interupt all foes in the area, or even make the foes in the area lose one enchantment. Being able to strip spell breaker from a mob would be a really useful feature.

If the regen time was changed, the condition exdended to all hexes and another effect was added in(aoe interupt, ench removal etc) then this skill would be a total winner.

Ether Nightmare.
I've not got much faction donated so cant comment on how good this skill is at the higher levels.

While an Aoe Degen is a great idea, the scaling is wrong I think. -4 degen is too low as a baseline. With the new skills I doubt many mobs will live longer than the 10s it lasts therefore I would suggest

Buff the degen, or change the functionality to Target for loses 3-6 energy, for each point of energy lost in this way each adjcant ally gains 1 point of energy regeneration. Keep everything else the same.

Or Reduce the recharge time. Again this seems to tie it's use to MoR etc

Summary

As great and wonderful as they are, they cannot compete in terms of damage and pug desirability with an Ele lord+intensity+Glyph of ele power which can boost an ele to over 20 in fire magic.

To end on a positive note, running this skill in an 4+l mesmer team is just insane fun. While this has not, in my mind totally fixed the mesmer in pve it is a huge step forward and thank you

The only thing that annoys me about these new skills is that they're practically all pre-nerf skills.

Cry for Pain = Spiritual Pain pre-nerf
Never Rampage Alone = Rampage as One pre-nerf
1 of the necro ones = Discord pre-buff...

While i'm glad they're finally here, i really don't see what took them so long to release almost exact copies of pre-existing skills.

Ive gotta say folks, please dont go on the "primary" only route - thats the only way any of these skills make it on my bar

Making it short: The new skills are FOOKIN AWESOME!

I have to agree with the many posts above in that the Ranger skill is terrible. Nice concept (combining self/pet heals with increased attack), but its usable ONLY if you have a pet and ONLY with a high level of expertise. The energy cost is just outrageous.

Why couldn't Rangers get a skill like the Warriors got? Increased damage (melee attack), but NOT restricted to what weapon was used. The Warrior Sunspear skill is usable in Sword, Axe, or Hammer builds.

But to add to the short end, Rangers were given a Kurzick/Luxon skill called Triple Arrow only it gets nerfed in damage. Basically its just Dual Arrow with one more arrow (same energy cost and 25% damage reduction, too).

So why couldn't Rangers get something like "Steel Tips" to increase damage on a few shots or "Persistent Conditions" to increase condition builds like they did with Mesmer hexes or "Rapid Fire" in increase refire rate or instant refire on the next 1 . . . ?? shots wtihout the pet restriction? Or even a NEW bow attack skill like a "Bank Shot" that can shoot around corners (perhaps with a slow recharge like 15 seconds so it can't get spammed).

Overall, most of the other skills looked really nice. But the Ranger . . . I'm majorly disappointed.

Yeah, the ranger got shafted. Luckily, there's a few secondaries that work great on a ranger.

I don't think most of the Sunspear skills are nearly as awesome in a secondary profession. Some actually require the primary attribute. Others (e.g., the paragon one, the much-maligned ranger one) are expensive skills that however have half or so the effective energy cost if you have a decent investment in the primary attribute.

Necrosis is an exception, but we've already been told a nerf of some kind is on the way.

Yeah, I was looking forward to some nice bow attacks. Triple shot is nice - not stupid overpowered like Intensity or Eternal Aura, but it's nice, and works like an overpowered dual shot. But Never Rampage Alone? Come on Arenanet, give rangers some nice bow skills, if only in PvE.

I don't think it will instantly recharge avatars since avatars are disabled for certain amount of time and if it recharges instantly you still can't use it since it is disabled

They actually DO recharge avatars skills. Whether they will still do that after the already announced PvE skill rebalancing is debatable.

Assassin, Para and Ele SS ones are quite nice. Derv one as long as keeps affecting avatars can be good also

Assassin Kurz one is a lot like Feigned Neutrality, but instead of making it impossible to attack, they reduce AL and Blind

Ele Kurz skill is nice, depending on build, the Necro one can be quite nice

Warrior Kurz one can be good depending upon the area for the party

Mesmer one could be quite good

other ones, personally not that favourable of

I can't see them leaving that derv skill as is, I mean come on, let's be real now. This gives the ability to have permanent avatars. Do you really think they're going to allow that loophole to stay? I don't.

The Assassins skill is going to get nerfed.

Combine it with Way of the Assassin,Critcal Eye and Critical Defenses.And use Unblockable attack like Golden Fox Strike,Fox Fangs and Nine Tail Strike.

80 Armor,33% Faster attack speed,An additional 36%(Or 58% with max Dagger Mastery and 10 in Critical Strikes) chance to critical,and a 75% Chance to block all attacks.Oh,and don't forget about Double Strikes.

Golden Fox Strike
Fox Fangs
Nine tail Strike
Sunspear Assassin Skill
Critical Defense
Way of the Assassin
Critical Eye
Generic Res.

Welcome to your new build.

Un-fu$#%ing believable!
Brand new decent skills for PVE mind you, and already they are nerfing them? WTF is wrong with them? As far as im concerned, I have had it.
I'll wait to see how badly they botch them up, but im afraid that they will not see one dime of my money in the future...EVER! I can't believe that I actually took time to thank them previously...Thanks for nothing I guess.

PVE ONLY skills getting nerfed is way too much, they ruined SR, they screwed up the game with loot scale, the nerfed mesmers to total uselssness, paragons are crap, Ritualists have been ruined as well as over half the skills in the game. Now they gave us a false sense of security thinking that since they are PVE based only they would be exempt from nerfing. They tossed out 10 wonderful skills, the best update in ages, and now they think they are overpowered? Why in the hell did they even release them until they were sure they were ok? God, I would hate to kill a level 28-30 monster too efficiently. My god anet, can't we have decent high powered skills in our game or is that too much to ask? You kiss PVP'rs butts all the time, in fact they have caused so many nerfs to the game that PVE has lost a lot of enjoyment.

I was so excited when I saw those skills this evening, I even told my guildies that at least we wont have to worry about anet nerfing them since they are PVE only.

Some thoughts:

I wouldn't worry about Paragons losing groups to */P secondaries with "There's Nothing to Fear!"; how many classes can afford to spam a 15e shout every ten seconds? Paragons can do that easily without giving up anything other than a slot on their bar and some points into Leadership.

Actually the first thing i noticed was how some skills really seem to work well on secondaries (Critical Agility is one furious dad of a skill), and some really don't. A secondary monk will get nothing from Seed of Life.


I don't think that much of Cry of Pain. It's fine, kinda reminds me a little of pre-nerf Energy Surge mixed with Power Spike on a too-long recharge timer, but it's still not going to get Mesmers groups. I want to test this out with Arcane Conundrum, Intensity and Mantra of Recovery.

It's also raw damage which is a bit icky, but i suppose there's no way around that until PvE stops being so DoA. I really hope that this update wasn't the Mesmer PvE buff.


Kinda wish that Never Rampage Alone was 15e (or less, i don't mind if a secondary /R with pet uses it at all), and didn't require a pet. I swapped out Call of Haste for it, and it took me a few seconds to realise that it doesn't count towards Enraged Lunge, annoyingly. Call of Otahyghuhghhgughuhg goes in instead.

I suppose i could use Critical Agility with bow instead, though that itself should say something about NRA.


I haven't played with the Kurzick/Luxon skills yet, because... well because all my previous faction transfer doesn't count (or maybe it does, i haven't played since i got up, but it didn't last night). It'd be kinda nice if it did, or if kills under blessings gave me a billion faction each so i didn't need to spend even more time grinding titles to see if they're any good. I digress.


The nerf to Necrosis already is a bit disheartening. Weren't these skills delayed because they were in testing? Why would a tested skill require a nerf inside an hour or two of release? I suspect that more nerfs are coming now, and that really has cut the end off my excitement with the new stuffs.

Current thought: I should go play with Critical Agility before it gets annihilated.

EDIT: Also an option to turn off this random-target thing would be appreciated.

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.

I thought the whole point of PvE only skills was that they could be a little overpowered (if there is such a thing), meaning, they would be VERY GOOD and find their place on most skillbars since they didn't have to care about PvP balance. Gaile's response that they're already nerfing / balancing the skills leads me to fear that the sunspear skills will be brought down to a level where there is very little point in using them - at least on a character without L10 or L9 Sunspear rank.

haha, that's awesome. "Hey guys, here are these nice new pve only skills for you because we've totally screwed pve players trying to balance pvp. Oh wait, we're going to nerf these too."

Are the luxon and kurzick skills the same? Sorry if it's been mentioned but I don't wanna search 6 pages.

Intensity + Elemental Lord = MEGA OUCH!

Yes, let's be real. Look at that skill if it doesn't recharge avatars. It's BAAADD. Assassins get permanent 33% IAS and +25 Armor, Elementalists get a whack of extra damage and you want dervish to get.... 80 holy damage every.. 30 seconds? WOW, that would be something. Ooops almost forgot, it will also recharge skills that recharge quickly anyways.

I guess nobody realizes that perma-avatar was the POINT of the Dervish skill? Come on people. What huge recharge essential derv skills are there?

I suggest playing it before saying it is overpowered. Unlike, say, giving the entire party +100 armor, it does this:

Instead of having to wait in between mobs for the avatar to recharge, you can do it right away.

That is a good thing. Now, Avatar of Grenth is no longer a crap skill. Think about it... they implemented these to protect PvE from nerfs. Well, Grenth's huge nerf has just been removed in PvE. GG anet

Using an already existing skill 30 seconds longer instead of sitting there regening is a lot less "overpowered" than some of these. It's a good skill, and these should be good skills.

Ever occur to some of you QQers that maybe ANET doesn't want all PvE bars to look like this:

Primary SS skill
Secondary SS skill
Primary Faction skill
Secondary Faction skill
Elite
Rez
2 useless optionals

If they wanted to add overpowered skills to make PvE pathetic, they'd have made a skill that instantly killed all monsters in the explorable area.

I had a good chuckle at both that and Gaile's post quoting a developer on the topic that they are likely to get nerfed - and one does not even an hour ot two into its release.

Anet should realize nerfs let a little steam out of excitement and put a little damper on fun. No one likes a nerf. It just makes people unhappy even if something was overpowered. They need to test things further and release them without a need for a nerf (which is what I thought they were doing), or start releasing things underpowered a bit and buff occasionally if they cant get the balance right. Its a little easier to understand a nerf later in the life span of a skill, when new skills are released and something unanticipated happens. I have no idea what they were doing all this time if a skill needs a nerf before most anyone uses it and they also have to issue a statement that more nerfs are likely the moment they release them.

That's incredibly selfish of you. For your birthday, if you were going to be given $100 but instead you receive $80; do you insult them?

So you enjoy overpowered skills which reduce the skill needed to play?

No they didn't. Soul Reaping was easily one of the best profession specific attributes (if not the best). They nerf it so necromancers (a caster) finally have to manage their mana more often and it's ruining it? That's blasphemy! That's madness!

And added hard mode which made it alot easier to get golds.

Anyway solo farm much? I rarely notice loot scaling, I still can easily get loads of items after a typical run, even in NM. If anything farming is better now.

Ask any farmer, it's alot easier to get rich.

What game are you playing? In Guild Wars a mesmer is always useful to have around. If you've tried bringing a mesmer around in hard mode then you'll realize that mesmers are good and have always been useful.

Yep, you're one of those people that probably crying blood and murder when they introduced AI aoe scatter right?

And these skills are?

Where was it stated that these skills were exempt from nerfing?

ONE skill been nerfed. ONE skill out of TWENTY skills

5% of the new skills is nerfed. 5. FRECKING. PERCENT.

Along that line of arguements, you could argue 'Why did they ever make any updates and skill balances if they just change them again later?' Heck you could say 'Why the hell did they even release Factions or Nightfall is they skill haven't got the skills right?'. Would you ask that? Would you? Because the principle applies here yet I don't see many people honestly saying NF or Factions should have been released later

Maybe, just maybe if you actually looked at the new skills then you'll realize that most of them are devilishly strong.

I've mentioned this before, most of these skills are very powerful. Stop complaining and try, you know, using them.

:/

Did you complain when they added the Dying Nightmares to the UW?
Did you complain when they added AI scatter?

Is your definition of enjoyment just pressing 'C' then 'Spacebar'? Is it so hard to just use some, you know, skill and tactics when playing?

That's your fault for telling them something that you had no evidence to back up

I'm wondering if anyones tested the spells with signet of illusions yet.

These skills are so sweet . . . does faction that I already spent on amber/jade count towards my title now?

I hope so.

Doubt that'll work because it doesn't use am attributes.

But yeah Rangers really did get the short end of this. Triple Shot is pathetic... until you reach r7 Allegience. And the RaO rip off is pathetic. Its basically Tigers Fury. I can only assume you need a pet to be able to activate it, which makes it useless instantly. I am really dissapointed tbh... i would've thought they could've at least given us a ranged deep wound for christ sake!

I said this exact same thing. This is why one reason (of many) you shouldn't be allowed to use your secondary's pve only skill.