Update - Monday, June 18, 2007

So assassins don't always run high critical strikes ?
Thats news to me. But this skill did look overpowered when x/A could use it.

Elemental Lord still looks useable once I get my rank up to at least 7 so I can keep it up. But its probably not worth the required grind any more.

heh intensity got hit real hard... i thought it was a tad overpowered before but now its... useless

what do u know, skills that badly needed a buff didn't get any attention at all. Warriors, rangers are still left in the dust, ritualist got a very very very miniscule buff... hardly even worth mentioning.

I'll still keep an open mind hoping anet will come up with something...

EDIT: Whoops didn't realize mesmers did get a buff :P

4 seconds of godmode is still better than the 10 seconds of Shield's Up! my warrior was using last week. And my primary paragon is completely unaffected by that change.

Faith somewhat restored in the future of PvE skills come GW:EN.

stealth necro nerf - reckless haste changed from 10e cost to 15e cost.

Well like I said in my earlier post, I kinda buried it at the end but the major point is that this is a week long process for these skills. I highly doubt this is the end of the changes.

A.net likes to go towards the high-end/low-end then find something in the middle when it comes to PvE. I expect more tinkering as the week progresses.

The Ele and the Assassin one, for non Critical Assassin, aren't even decent augmentations now. There are far better skills that aren't even PvE only that come in more handy. Also, I never said they should be centerpieces but they should entice one to want to use them rather than avoid them.

The skills where supposed to be over powered, hence the PvE only part so nerfing them into being pretty much useless kinda makes having them as PvE only skills pointless.

retro active doubling of faction donation would be good?

but yeah, theyve gone too far/not done enuff on the skills

vamparism sucked because it doesnt do much damage, not cos it didnt last forever.

the ranger skill cost too much for what it did and required a pet (not popular)

but yay to mesmer buff

paragon probably got a slight nurf by 1sec...

Huh was hoping for a hex removal buff, but I guess changing some major ones would be to much to ask for.

This still does not solve the issue of having over 1,000,000 personal faction earned over the last ONE YEAR amount to amber only. When Amber earned today also amounts for a title and increased skill power.

Why would they? The skills in Critical Strikes primarily suck, and the benefit to actually getting critical hits is pathetic in comparison to the bonus given by Dagger Mastery and the great damaging skills that come with it. You're far better off running Dagger Mastery at a 16 and Shadow Arts at a 13... that way you don't end up dead on the floor every 2 minutes like most Assassins I see in PvE, and you aren't totally reliant on running back to the monk to heal all the time. I played an Assassin through all three campaigns without Critical Strikes, and did better than most. I did enjoy the new skills for the fast attacking and fact that it stayed recharged for the duration of the battle with just one cast, but it's useless to me now.

Not all Assassins run high Critical Strikes. Mine has a 3 in Critical strikes for example and I never run out of energy, deal mass damage, and so on. I hate the Critical line skills as I prefer Dagger and Shadow. Limiting the skills to the Critical line limits anyone using it to play Critical. If they only want the Primary to with the skills they should instead make it so you can only have it on the primary rather than tieing it to primary attribute lines as that limits the profession the skill was meant for.

Shouldn't the skills entice you to play to max them out rather than "If I get it I get it and if not then oh well."? A mighty plus one isn't really that enticing for me when I can just "Glyph of Elemental Power" to take it up 2 points for the next 5 spells.

Bleh... Can my ranger be rolled back please, to where I had 2 more platinum and 2 more skill points and no Critical Agility and "There's Nothing to Fear!" skills?

TYpical... I pick my ranger as the one character I'm going to complete all HM content with, end up with duds for ranger PvE skills, and hardly got to play with cross-class skills at all before they got nerfed to uselessness.

Thanks for the change to the paragon skill. Great! But as for people who play ele's... sorry guys

Lmao, that makes Critical Agility even better for me.

lol wut, Sorry for Eles? They've been borderline overpowered in PvE since Prophecies. Nothing has changed for them.

This update is pretty much spot on IMHO. I'd like to see changes to the faction requirements for the kurz/luxon skills. But now it feels about right. Great buffs to the mesmer with the reduced recharges and thank to MoR intensity is nicely usable

Don't forget an Elementalist can increase their skill by +4 even +7 is possible if they have the right items. A +25% damage bonus will go far if planned correctly and very little can withstand the initial damage spike anyways. A 45sec recharge is long but not completely GOD MODE.

I see .... so a high Critical Strikes build is ok for soloing Shiro in Gates of Madness but not leet enough for your leet dammage builds.

GOT IT

I think someone needs complete training on Shing Jea.

Fact is the "Critical Strikes Nerf" to the Assassin Sunspear skill was needed to help Assassins find their nitch in PvE groups. In this way an Assassin running the skill is better than a Paragon (running GFTE) with the skill who can also keep that Assassin Sunspear skill running at 100%.

Connecting the skill to Critical strikes was the RIGHT thing to do to preserve class uniqueness to the Assassin in PvE.

are you serious? Elems didnt start being good until NF. Also, if SF ever gets nerfed, Elems will basically go back to being bad again. Also, it's not fair that this is Anets way of 'balance'...the PvE skills should be equally as good.

I'll just carry on collecting the breadcrumbs that is PvE faction points and pretend this update didn't happen.
At least Anet was kind enough to remove the faction points from the chat window. There's nothing worse than seeing the pitiful returns you get from running around grinding.
I'll cross my fingers and hope that they slip in another update before tomorrow, like doubling the faction for amber/jade or shrine blessings, which amusingly has to be paid for.

As for the skill nerfs, i was expecting it.

<--PvPvEr

Well Anet reinforced their purpose behind the PvE skills. Make unwanted classes wanted again. They DID give you a fair warning and I'm happy that know maybe...just maybe we can find a place for those little assassins and paragons out there . I'm not too sure if the mesmers and rits are in the same situation.

The dervish are 100% fine now 24h Dwanya or Balthazar, I should be fine .