Skill Balances, HA Update, VoD Changes

If you need Aegis in THK, you have problems. If your monks can't run up to heal someone without dying, you've got even more problems. And those problems aren't with skills.

You countered your own complaint in that statement. Players do change targets in PvP, monsters don't in PvE. By that statement, making hexes worse in PvE would destroy them in PvP. Hexes still deserve a place in PvP.

WOW.....the Whole Channeling line got beat to Death with the nerf bat...

I would rather change it now, than have to worry about it later.

Adding exhaustion means you get to use virtually 1 exhaustion causing skill every 30 seconds. This means that, out of this large batch of skills, any build may only take one, maybe two, of the "exhaustion" skills. This also effectively neutralizes the effect of the recharge timers of individual skills. If there were pre-existing ways for a rit to maintain exhaustion, that woudl be one thing, but as is, channelling has now become a near impossibility to run without using an Elementalist Elite, and it's rather clear to see why people are upset.

I'm fine with nerfing ritspike, but once again, this is not the way it should have been executed.

actually I was referring to the comments that nothing in pve requires specific skills, when that is quite obviously false to anyone who has done high end stuff

Assassin
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BSS/Shadow Prison/Expose Defenses --> one step to Assassins being more diverse

Dark Prison/Death's charge --> one step to Assassins using other shadow step skills

Golden Phoenix strike --> actually helps more in PvE, with critical agility...

Mesmer
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Arcane echo --> nonelite echo for spells :O

Echo --> other than enchantment stripping, not much difference

Cry of Frustration --> given that the limiting factor is the energy it doensn't change much

Spirit Shackles --> Since it is in the inspiration magic attribute line and people tend not to put many points in a utility line like inspiration magic, I don't see how it needs anymore nerfing (especially when it is easy to d-shot a 3 cast time spell)

Panic --> a needed nerf to duration since Glyph of lesser energy and Auspicious Incantation makes this ridiculous.

Spirit of Failure --> with Glyph of Lesser energy/Auspicious Incantation this isn't really a big issue

Monk
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Remove Hex finally has a use...on a nonmesmer!

Blessed light --> dropping the recharge form 5 to 3 does little since the problem is the 10 energy cost

Guardian --> the removal of the % block scale means this thing is a monster

Elementalist
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Chilling Winds & Arc Lightning -->these buffs makes Air/water hybrid builds shine more

Blinding Surge --> given the prevalence of Melandru Dervishes + Restore Condition + Mending touch, this doesn't do much (it probably shouldn't have been touched)

Glyph of Renewal --> other than Meteor Shower there are few times it has been used because few spells deserve lowering to 10 recharge. The energy cost is typically the hindrance (at least in the realm of elementalists) save for Divine Spirit...

Rodgort's Invocation --> whoa! 5 recharge, 2 cast time... it is like a super fireball without needing line of sight if you have dual attunements

Blurred Vision --> until hex removal becomes less recharge, this will be the bane of any melee heavy team. There is essentially a 2 second downtime and none if on a Mantra of Recovery Mesmer (10 energy means a mesmer can use it with no problem)

Necromancer
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Reckless Haste ---> like Blurred Vision, on a Mantra of Recovery Mesmer it is easy to upkeep

Plague touch --> a nice step to seeing more use (especially with rarely used skills like Headbutt)

Plaguesending --> this got a buff, but for it to see use the sacrifice has to be less heavy... mending touch removes the same amount of conditions (at least for lower attribute levels) for no sacrifice and less energy.

Price of Failure --> less powerful with high miss chances from block + blind...but still usable

Poisoned heart --> poison in itself is not that powerful and this is adjacent range. The degen doesn't help at all either and there isn't a reason for it to be an enchantment (unless of course there is a secondary effect like a dervish enchantment).

Plague signet --> without a secondary effect (let's say damage on the target and + damage per condition transferred) this ends up being a costly single-person condition remover...unless you run N/Mo with draw conditions to make it a party wide condition removal

Rip enchantment --> the only difference between lose and sacrifice is the Scourge Sacrifice hurts less and Aura of the Lich/Dark Aura don't work with it.

Shadow of Fear --> It has 3 times the duration compared to recharge...and adjacent range.

Warrior
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Crude swing --> given the limited applications in PvP, I don't see what warranted the -40 armor clause. Not to mention it becomes not +1...20 but only 1...20 damage. Not like anyone used it...but still.

Beserker stance --> the constraints are very restrictive... the only use is for attacks with high adrenaline cost and at best you have 50% coverage if you use the skill at the end of the stance

Flourish --> has seen use, but the elite attack skills are more attractive and energy attacks tend to be bland

Savage Slash --> might actually see use for once but 15 recharge is restrictive

For Great Justice --> add enduring Harmony (even at 0 attribute) and you have a 100% uptime double adrenaline hammer/spear monster...beats Focused Anger by miles if you put it on a Paragon/warrior

Ranger
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Nobody noticed that with 15+ BM , run as one gives 100% uptime speed boost? The only saving grace for it compared to other 25% speed boosts is the need for Charm animal and an alive pet. Granted enchanted haste /featherfoot grace have been updated similarly, with only 10 wind Prayers needed for 100% uptime.

Flame Trap --> makes this a pure damage dealer

Point Blank Shot/Zojun's Shot --> the half range is extremely binding but the 5 energy cost makes it a decent damage dealer since it can be spammed on its 3 recharge

Punishing Shot --> as long as Magebane shot is around, this pales in comparison for caster shutdown...bit to mention Incendiary arrows gets the job done in other situations provided you can get an IAS up with Serpent's Quickness. It's going to have to have like 3 recharge for it to be worthwhile...or 5 energy cost.

Escape --> might see use on a flagrunner...other than that? not likely seeing that there are btter ranger elites than a running/blocking skill

Storm Chaser --> a pure running skill, this has no practical applications other than running since you cannot expect to get hit with elemental damage enough to make the energy gain from this appreciable

Dervish
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Attacker's Insight --> R/D Concussion shot.
Rending touch --> on a warrior , 5 recharge will be the bane of all the prot users.

Ritualist
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Ancestor's Rage --> along the lines of Chain Lightning. A nice change.

Exhaustion on spirits cannot be removed via Glyph of energy, so we'll have to see how this pans out. Ultimately it might lead to the vaporization of the use of these Ritualist spirits.

Wielder's Strike should have probably been made to have a longer cast time and larger energy cost (like lightning hammer). Exhuastion cannot be dealt with by a ritualist.

Sight Beyond sight is extremely narrow in use... it could use a buff to include other effects?

Splinter Weapon: even on 20 recharge a target can get off their 5-6 swings on a hammer/scythe/bow so I don't see how this is a change (at least in PVE)

Spirit rift on 2 cast is pretty iffy if people step out of it. I pretty much notice when people cast it due to the effect. This didn't need a 2 cast time, it really needed a energy increase to 15 or so.

Spirit Burn is still cheap, it is roughly 90 damage on a 1 cast and 6 cooldown with the easy to meet condition of having a spirit (pain/bloodsong/etc).

Wielder's strike is okay but then it doesn't remove its spike potential...just its chaining potential. Might as well bump energy cost to 10 and remove exhaustion.

Paragon
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Awe --> 10 recharge means you can spam daze. P/W hammer user anyone?
Signet of Aggression --> actually useful now.

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will update as skills are fooled around with...

Which moron decided Splinter Weapon should have a 20 second recharge? The skill has no need of a nerf. Grats Anet, you just ruined my main source of income.

Splinter weapon was godly in Altar Maps, and added great pressure to any team.

Ouch My rit is feeling major pain from the exhaust additions.

I am talking about it being chained in PvP not that there are many that use it in PvE unless you use it like I do.It is not monk doing it as I have observed in OB mode.It is hardly worthy of using it or taking hench with it.I have been using this skill since starting my Monk.PvP Monk thqat do abuse it are less exprienced in its use and I do see nervouse PvP Monk on OB mode.I was using Aegis in THK as an example like heal party did you read my post.This is vital in The Gates of Madness mission in order to get masters.You can try with heal party or Lod but it is best to have to full protect Monks in that mission.

gg expose defenses 25 sec recharge. Now anet needs to buff fox's promise.

Until now, elementalists were the only profession that had self-inflicting exhaustion skills. But they also had a massive energy pool to make that manageable. Can we expect to see some changes in the energy resources for ritualists now? Because slapping exhaustion on to 8 skills (6 of which are in one attribute line) seems a bit harsh. Communing has become par with Air Magic, in terms of exhaustion causing skills, acutally surpassing it due to the conditional exhaustion from Invoke Lightning. Ele's have large resources to balance out the penalties for exhaustion, will ritualists be seeing something to help them deal with this ugliness in the near future?

Someone asked how these changes will affect a farming build (as though all PvEers to is farm). Well, this particular change will cause some serious discomfort in a spirit farming build I used to be quite fond of. From a PvE point of view (yes, I know dev's care little about skill use in PvE) this exhaustion fix doesn't sit very well.

And why should a great help in PvE be nerfed because of one imbalanced map? This ruins a lot of stuff... R/Rt tomb runs, the Margonite farm... as I said, there goes my only ways of making GW cash.

Gogogogogogogoggo Guardian!!! Exactly what I've QQ'd for for ages! <3 it.

Splinter Weapon:

Izzy has clarified that it is duration and not recharge that is decreased to 20s.

Ouch... that's an awful lot of dead skills for rits, without much in the way of buffs to soften the blow.

On the plus side, now nice buffs to eles and monks, probably a good time to go give those characters some more love.

I can live with that. I'll just have to time it a little better before heading into a mob. I feel a little better now.

QFT. Great update. A nerf to aegis, hexes, and rit spike. Awsome.

I love when being able to farm with a skill is used as justification for leaving it alone.

When does a skill become overpowered in PvE? Serious question. How much shit do you have to be able to solo before you'll concede your favorite cash tool just might be too good?

Attacker's Insight: functionality changed to: For 20 seconds, your next 1..3 attack Skills cost 5..20 less Energy.


So exactly which dervish attack skills cost 20 energy? Or more than 10 energy for that matter? It's good to see it buff from one attack to ... more than one, but the whole scaled energy saving is just a bit silly, don't you think?

I don't get it . . .

Why do rangers always get buffs? Just curious.
Rits with exhaustion? Wtf? They really got run over by the nerfdozer.
Avatar of Melandru still exists.
Paragon elites still suck.

Guess my warrior is going through GWEN first, if I bother getting it.

serious answer, it will never be good enough to admit its overpowered. Its PvE. Balance doesnt matter because the AI isnt self thinking and adjusting as a human player would. Thus why no one even makes a thread about which pve skills are overpowered. They only cry when an overpowered skill in PvP gets nerfed and it effects their PvE playstyle....

Glyphs Ftw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah that’s interesting and all; but we don’t have cheat codes now do we? Considering how some of the enemy AI is built up in the non intelligence category, just the buff of their own energy bar and attributes (killer monster skills as well).

Well it looks like I will be taking some of these skills and sticking them in the useless category. I mean giving the Rit the exhaustion ticket is just playing bad. I preferred it the old way.

Well I guess you can’t make everyone happy now can you?

Well first you ruined my necro, so then I moved to rit, but now you ruined him too. I want my money back from the gw store on my gwen pre order. You guys are just fing unbelieveable. PVP is dead, stop killing PVE to try bringing back the dead PVP. Exhaustion can be dealt with by an ele because of their huge pool of energy, you just killed rits.

I think he's on to something.

123

Damn fine skill balance if you ask me.

PvP was on its last breath long before the PvE killing updates came in... and it isnt due to skills being nerfed to the PvE community has somethign to bitch and moan about...

One could say the same for some of the other professions, but then we wouldn't have much of a game now would we.

Ugh... I only brought my Rit through Nightfall. (I couldn't stand to bring any other PvE through because the content in that expansion was just too boring to me.) So I looked forward to GW:EN and going through with my Rit.

Oh well, I guess plans change. Time to push the Necro, Monk or Ranger through Nightfall.

i must say they abused a little on exhaustion , like with wanderlust ok its a big skill but wielder strike :| why not simply reducing the dmg to like 70-90 idk ?

they simply wanted to get rid of rtspike =)

Rending touch is now on crack. Don't stand a chance of protting against a fear me warrior, it was fine when it was 10.

Ok, cheap skill gets what it deserves.

Meh, lost 1 second. Doesnt mean much with the avg warrior with reduce blind rune/shield.

Err thats a very powerful buff for guardian there for any monk with decent protting skills.

Remove hex...ok, so now it has a 4 sec fast recharge than veil and smite and deny.

Nice change, same with blurred vision. Spirit of failure and price of failure energy to 15, would prefer it to be adjusted like the above. 30 sec is too long.

Interesting change (3 sec off recharge), but it still doesnt compare to non elite savage! so is not going to see the light of day.

I think it got hit a bit hard, but I hated to style of play it promoted so good job, hope it dies a painful death

Was so inferior before since it couldnt be used on recharge at 10e. Don't see myslef using it, I get frustrated enough waiting for dblow to recharge

On the warrior note, can't believe the fear me warrior didnt take a hit. Huge dmg, AoE, conditions, e denial, with party wide buffs (watch yourself etc) Seems like they're yelling hit me to me.

Glyph of energy doesn't work on binding rituals...

I can take any one of my ten characters (I have one of each profession), start in outpost A of any campaign, hack and slash and burn my way to outpost B (provided the content for the area inbetween is level 20+) killing things along the way, with a full group of hench/heroes, and make an easy 2-3K, after selling the junk to the merchant in outpost B. And it takes all of 30-40 minutes, for any one of those 10 professions, of multiple builds, to do.

What exactly do you not do with your other characters/skills that you rely on one character, and one lousy skill, that you can't make money?

Honestly.

I just tried out my Spirit Bomber build and I was able to get all spirits up the first time, but as they died out I was only able to get up pain and Vampirism the second time before casting wonderlust again made the exhaustion level so bad that I couldnt get up any other spirits. So IMO rit spirit bombers are dead in the water. Its only going to be worse with hero rits. Please rethink these nerfs anet.

I play Rit everyday in PvE I have almost all the titles I want on her and its my favorite class, bit when I saw that the rit was going to have exchaustion I was so angry I almost quit Guild Wars right then and there. I am sick and tired how PvP runs this game and that PvE gets pushed into the corner. Yes I understand that the Rit spike was strong but there was other ways to go about it rather than what Anet did. To me When anet nefs somthing they just dont nerf it they go out of there way to kill that skill and for the most part make it usless but I guess I have eveyone in guru to thank for thank, cause to me all it seems you people do is wine bitch and complain and Anet listens to the small amount of people in this forum think its all of guildwars well I am fead up with it if you dont like the skills our the builds out there make a counter or is that so hard. You might say why dont I do the same with the Rit skills well theres an easy explaination. The only other class in the game that has to suffer from exchaustion is the Ele lets look at the difference. Ele has energy storgae, Ele has skills that can deal with energy and exchaustion, the Rit does not have energy storage the rit does not have skills that can deal with exchaustion but it does have some skills to help with energy but oh Anet nerfed those skills to to cancel out the rit lord build almost a year ago taday cause of PvP so there is no need for exchaustion on the rit unless you can add skill to help deal with it casue i dont want to run Rit/E everyday I want to do other builds but it seems you nerfed almost all the main channeling skills and some of the communing skills so, I dont understand the reason by this by this but theres no point and no reason to add exchaustion to the rit class.

Well why were at it why dont we add exchaustion to nature rituals so the rangers have problems to lets see oh Heros Ascent has alont of ranger spirits in their to. oh a great solution lets add exchaustion its the same thing they cant deal with it either. well since were here lets add exchaustion to the mesmer since there skills are so fast and quick lets add it to PD thats fair. this was hardly a skill balanced and its stupid to have exchaustion on any class but the ele cause its equipt to handle it.

It seems to me that the PvP community bitches and moans and eventually get what they want. The PvE community bitches and moans because of this.

Ding! Ding! Ding! You sir are a winner! Sorry though I don't have a prize for you.

You're a couple of months late on wanting an RaO nerf...

Andrew, have you ever played the Urgoz mission? Ever? Have you done so without Consume Corpse or Necrotic Traversal? No you haven't. You know why? Because it can't be done.



Sorry to rock your belief system, but some areas of the game require certain skills. Period. Shadow stepping wont get you up there. Riding the lightning wont get you up there. Jumping sure as hell wont get you up there. Unless you know of some mystery way to get around that gate switch on the bridge. Do you? We'd love to hear about it.

Sure sure, there's a choice between two whole skills, but did anyone ever notice that these are both Prophecies exclussive skills? Not core, and certainly not Factions. So what happens if a bunch of Factions only players try to get through this Factions mission? They don't. Stand alone campaign, my ass. Smooth thinking on that one. Yup, the dev team always considers all angles when putting elements of the game together. That's why players should never question some of the dumbass things that pop-up.

*Limps off with "Consume Crutch" skill*

oh damn, countess just owned AP

When I read his post,I just *knew* he had to be wrong; that certain elite missions DID require specific skills, but nothing came right to mind.

thanks countess.

AP, care to counter?