Skill Balances, HA Update, VoD Changes

possibly because interupting, disabling, and recharging all remove all stored adrenaline on a skill? and because soothing images can so easily shut down an adrenal warrior for a long period of time? just thoughts on it

yeh it came across a bit differently than i meant it, edited it to be more to the point. some PvPers are decent.

Why should the frontline get Aegis support at all?
PvE wise, Aegis is a skill to prevent damage on the casters, not on the frontline.
You pre-prot those.

wow so my PvE rit is now forced to be resto only. they have one good skill in PvE. one skill that allows them to be other than a second class monk. and you nerf the casting time on a skill that already took 4 seconds to do anything and only if they don't move. thank you for declairing my rit useless. it was more than thoughtful of you. PvP screws PvE again! woohoo!

Well..yeah. Theres not much to do about that..I mean, blood can never really be effective as curses simply because the functionality of the skills don't go beyond regular damage/lifesteal. Thats it. If the numbers aren't hugeeee, then blood will continue to play second (third?) fiddle to curses/death. More skills really won't change anything because of that. All attribute lines serve a different purpose naturally, and to expand upon that would probably result in the blurring of lines between them. Hexes are boring yeah, but with the capacity to damage and shutdown melee, etc at the same time, its the obvious choice.

As far as death magic is concerned..well..its death. The only thing besides minions that that line will ever produce are gimmicks. (rotting/tainted flesh are the exceptions) Really, this has all been designed in such a way and it can't be changed significantly. Or actually, it won't be.

I suppose that was stating the obvious anyway.

Here is the first thought that comes to mind when reading this...

I mean seriously wtf...

Not using all 8 skills on your bar to maximize your effectiveness is really retarded, especially on certain builds that work in conjunction with all 8 of your skills. The Burning Arrow ranger comes to mind here as one of the more prominent builds that uses every skill on their bar effectively. Most builds such as the BA ranger, do rely on and are built around certain elites not as a crutch, but as the staple for the build. Lets face it, some moron running around with poison arrow, kindle arrow will never be as effective as the burning arrow ranger. Is it a viable alternative even, no it is in fact not. The nightmare weapon/chocking gas/barrage/splinter build you're commenting on is just plain redundant, not to mention plain dumb. There are far better ways to add more damage than nightmare weapon and interrupt far better than chocking gas. (not to mention that chocking gas without practiced stance is a failure in its own right) Why would u ever run an elite that removes all your preperations in a build like that is plain idiotic and shows that the objective behind the build and the purpose for the build is flawed.

And as for your silly, misguided comment that a PvP player cannot adapt is probably the most misguided thing that you have posted in recent history. If you played PvP on any level other than getting steamrolled, you would know that adapting is a constant in PvP. Adapting in tactics, builds, strategies, placement, targets, skill usage all goes on instantaneously throughout the entire match. Adapting to builds is only a minor part of the overall success of a team or build. Because a skill is ran a lot in PvP does not mean that it isn't overpowered. Most spike builds or most gimmick builds, take advantage of the fact that a skill or skill set IS overpowered. Because you don't see it being ran everywhere in PvE, does not mean that it is not overpowered and needs to be addressed. The problem is that you're relating PvP builds too is the constant evolution of PvE, thus why 90% of the information that you are trying to give is misguided when geared towards a PvP related response and honestly just makes people laugh. Monsters in PvE will always have the same skill bar, same usage of skills, same timing, same placement, same armor, same defeciencies, same advantages all the time. In a competitive environment such as HA or GvG, these will always change. No team (outside of being in the automated tournaments) can have any idea of exactically what map they will come across. No team can be certian as to which team they will get to fight next. (outside of at's) No team can be 100% for sure what build they are comming across, nor the players playing the build. So therefore not knowing the build, conditions, map choice, map effects, etc. why would you EVER limit your build to only fight one certian type of build, and leave your entire team virtually useless and vulnerable against every other build that you come across. When there is a build out there that will force teams to do this, that build is overpowered, whether you agree with it or not. Nothing should force any player to limit themselves to running in a situation like that and be allowed to go unchecked as it was.

It would seem that from the bitching and whining thats going on in this thread and in others that the PvE community is having far more of a problem adapting than the PvP community is having.....

Why shouldn't they? It makes a big difference, unless they're running pure tanking builds.

Looks like it is now. I don't know, I'll have to playtest. I'll try standing a bit closer to the front, I'll try saving Aegis for only protecting the casters, see what works. But before, it was a very effective way of protecting everyone.

What else is ran in pve??? (ok that was sarcasm)
Like all prots, positioning on a monk is key to using them effectively. Aegis got a buff from this update more than it got nerfed for main party monks. Aegis was only an effective way for protting against certain types of damage and was still easily removed. As far as using a skill to proctect casters, prot spirit, spirit bond, or shield of absorbtion are far better choices for single targets. Aegis really gained a huge benefit from being able to run it on off party characters that weren't primary monks and took this skill as a utility, which is what ANET wanted to try to shift away from. And not to forget the pve only seed of life. This skill can be amazing when used effectively.

I've actually played PvP a fair bit. its kinda fun sometimes, but half of it is people using the flavors of the month, and the other half is people who will accuse you of being lame and no skill no matter what you're running when you beat them. I I play pvp a good bit, but i don't like it. not liking something doesn't mean i don't know how to play it, and liking something doesn't mean you're automatically the end all of it either. This is something that a lot of people on this forum need to keep in mind. just because I classify myself as a PvE player and another person classifies themselves as a PvP player, doesn't mean they're any better at PvP than I am; it just means they enjoy that aspect more. I used to PvP and PvE about the same amount in each, but moved away from PvP because of the crappy people you're forced to interact with.

Now that I've got that point across... You can take 64 skills into a pvp team. And most counters consist of no more than 3 skills, most being 1 or 2. theres maybe what, two "gimmick builds" running at a time at the most? You see where I'm going?

The problem is people tend to want to see lots of damage numbers. And thats cool and all, look I'm big and strong. But then when something comes that deviates from the norm of tank tank nuke nuke nuke hex prot heal, its considered overpowered, because hey, suddenly my attack isn't doing anything, and the enemy can still hit me, and thats not fair right? wow they must be lame no skill people to come up with a build like that. well, theres couple skills i could take that would completely shut them down... but no, my build relies on all 8 skills, and so does the rest of my team's builds. how can we fix this... well, we could try playing that build ourselves.... no, no, then we'd be hypocrites for calling them lame... I know.... let's ask izzy to nerf them! we can make a few undercover teams to make it look like its a bigger problem than it really is, and then we can just lose a few matches to them while izzy watches.... that'll prove its overpowered right? because our uberleet selves can't kill it? i mean we're so uberleet we're probably overpowered too, but SHHH. Oh wait... look... I found an easy way to stop them without changing my build.... oh well, lets go ahead and push for the nerf anyway, because i don't think thats how the game should be played, and obviously I know more than everyone else. What they don't like being nerfed? Fine, lets suggest that their other skills get nerfed too!

ok ok Firstly id like to point out RITUALISTS CANT REALLY MANAGE EXHAUSTION. i mean average energy is about 40 - 45 lose exhaustion lowers that to what 30?

this also dont really make any sense whatsoever, Elementalists i can understand having exhaustion Meteor Shower for example.... If you imagine summoning all that death then thats gonna leave you drowsy gonna be a bit of a strain on the whole mentality you see what im saying?

A ritualist can summon Pain, Bloodsong etc with no penalty... are these not spirits? why would a spirit with a different attack be that much of a strain on their overall willpower? yeah maybe itd requre more concentration (represented by the original 25 energy cost) but it wouldnt leave you tired as this is the exact same procedure as summoning any other spirit.

Weilders Strike... again why? the only characters worth using this on are combay characters (Rangers, Warriors etc) makes no sense that this is now restricted only to ritualist use due to the exhaustion... also why would this exhaust you this surely is less effort that summoning the dead damnit! no point really having weapon skills on rits and thus making this skill pretty pointless why not just remove it??

and lastly

AEGIS IS AN ENCHANTMENT NOT A SHOUT WHY THE HELL IS IT NOW EARSHOT??? AND IF THIS IS THE CASE MAKE THE CASTING TIME ZERO AND MAKE IT A DAMN SHOUT STOP MESSING ABOUT WITH US!!!


thats all i have to say

Ok this tells me that you haven't PvP'd that often because you have this entire statistic wrong. This also tells me with the end of your comment that you participated in said FOTM builds, otherwise the being lame and no skill comment would never have come across.
You missed the point so ill simplify it for you, Because someone is a primary PvP player vs a PvE player, they will have a better understanding and knowledge in 95% of the cases where a pvp vs pve argument is going to be brought up because of the fact that thats the area of the game in which they spend the majority of their time. While you may enjoy PvP and might participate in it, I can gaurentee you that there are people that play PvP that are better than you are at it because its what they do, so no your argument holds no real validity.
really? You obviously havent PvP'd in the last year, because most of the gimmicks running around such as rit spike, zergway, thumpway all require more than 1-2 skills to shut it down to the point where the build becomes pointless. In most cases it requires 1-2 characters to effectively shut down the build, not 1-2 skills to counter it. This statement alone tells me that you haven't been in the past and current metagame for a while, otherwise you would know that the variety of builds and the different gimmicks that are in PvP are ran across quite often as well as having other builds thrown at you that youre not going to be prepared for. Setting up to deal with the off chance of running into a build and limiting yourself to every other build you should run across takes this game from skill and time spent in PvP, to basically rock paper scissors matchups. In a true PvP balance, no one build should be able to completely devistate 90% of whatever it comes across. When this happens you get teams doing nothing but gearing to beat said build, so people that run said build run say thumpway because the counterbuild to ritspike gets smashed under heavy pressure. so ok now we run back to ritspike because it countered thumpway on said map... again youre going into rock paper scissors mentality of gaming. The playerskill and strategies using a build should always outperform the build itself, and sadly in almost all gimmicks it doesnt, which is why also 90% of the people that run them do, is because they look for the quick effective easy way while not really gaining any knowledge or true gameplay.
Again you're comparing a PvE team build to a PvP situation so your entire argument holds no validity as a PvE build will always be subpar in a PvP situation. You simply cannot compare the builds and playstyles from PvE and PvP in the same situations and circumstances because it will not work. And the whole "lets make a bunch of undercover teams" argument holds absolutely 0 credibility in any argument or discussion and clearly shows that you dont have the correct knowledge about the PvP community and metagame to even remotely contribute useful information towards this discussion. Please honestly go into PvP and learn what youre talking about and actually come back with useful informaton so we can have a successful discussion.

Regarding the changes to 'Favor':

If GW is localised for Europe, why isn't Favour spelt correctly and not Americanised?

one question thats been asked countless times and never gets a proper response, that could make the entire debate go away and leave pvp free teritory for nerfs without a single pve complaint: why the hell don't they separate pvp and pve functionality?? instead of nerfing skills in both games that aren't overpowered, just nerf it in pvp where it is only used in an overpowered build, and leave it the fudgepack alone in pve! the two parts of the game function completely differently, that is a point no one with half a brain will argue. why have the same player changes in both then? what to pvp is fixing an overpowered build, is making a balanced skill useless in pve. STOP.

Because that would require them reworking the entire game up to this point to be able to seperate Pve and PvP and anet isn't going to invest this amount of time and resources into a game they are already planning to replace with GW2. This is pretty plain and obvious and has been said 038746096450928654 times and pointed out by 9826450926450297834673265065404365 people.

Wow, pity GW gets no monthly subscription fees from them, I'd buy their shares tomorrow

Yes, it's a lot easier to let PvErs realise that skill balances don't make or break PvE.

ok so i might have exaggerated by 10 or 20 people

I am glad someone knows what I ma talking about no the frontline doesn't need it.The only others are those on the side of you.

That would be shields up and yes funny as Monks don't have shouts.It is going ot be very intersting to see how this plays out gvG as most now will have to stay with the flag runner and no more split teams.It use to work in PvE to but not anymore.I wouldn't a refund as paid for it.

Considering Ritualist spells are mostly 5-10 to begin with, this isn't exactly much of a problem. Exhaustion does not come off the BOTTOM of your energy pool, if you have 45 and you spend 10 and get exhausted, you have 35 left to spend just like you would have before. The only difference is how fast you can dump energy from a full bar.

Because Pain and Bloodsong don't strip enchantments, knock you down, or interrupt you. Why they put it on Anguish, I have no idea.

.... what?

Cast Vital Weapon on yourself, cast Wielder's Strike. You thought rangers and warriors were casting this shit?

For the same reason Guardian is cast from earshot range.

Interrupting causes reuse drawbacks on any skill. Recharge increases affect adrenaline skills just as heavily as anything else. Disables are uncommon. Soothing Images? Pre-veil and remove it. If you're going up against Iboga you should be packing hex stack removal anyway.


By the way, the overall DPS of Spirit Burn and Spirit Rift has been increased, which is what you really want in PvE anyway. Go kill stuff with it.

Glyph of elemental power seems pretty awesome, but it makes the Ele PvE skills even more useless now.

i primarly play a blood necro equipped with four skills from that attribute. the only anti-melee curses skill in my bar is insidious parasite. the bold portion of your text is exactly what i am talking about. i can only use them best as a defensive tactic. thats what i mean by sad, the fact that i have to work 2 or 3 times as hard and definitely have to spend more energy just trying to stay alive than i would casting 25 seconds or more related hexes on a target then go get something to eat while they die. blood magic needs a buff to their skills and for that matter, so does the death magic skills not related to corpses. thats all im asking, not to add any more skills to blood or death, just bring them more up to par with other classes damage potential.



Jayce Of Underworld

Well what kind of changes do you think should be implemented then? Anet hasn't shown particular aptitude when it comes to buffing unused skills, at least on a regular basis. So really, the numbers would be changed around for most of the skills, and thats it. All that leads to are ugly gimmicks. Maybe you know what happened when discord was buffed..along with abuse of hero AI in applying conditions/hexes, it was imbalanced. So thats all I'm saying..to improve the blood/death magic lines, is to likely imbalance the game. I don't know if theres much that can be done about that, just look at smiting prayers. Anet hasn't found a way to make it all that viable, and at the peak of its usage it was..guess what..a broken mechanic.

But honestly, I haven't played a nonhex necro since before Factions, so feel free to share any of your ideas.

I would have bought putts knowing the state of the game its in now and the downfall that seems to be forthcoming. The glory days are long gone.

I could have once been considered a hardcore GW player. As of late I barely play 3 hours a week. This weekend will be an exception as I can afk on the rings.

This game has evolved. It isn't the same game it used to be.

I figured that this thread would be the place where the most people would read it. This is to address the PvE players that are unhappy what they feel is unfair suffering at the hands of pvp-motivated skill changes, specifically the Ritualist changes.

The first thing that everyone must understand is the two fundamental needs of a serious competitive game, which is what Guild Wars was originally meant to be. A serious competitive game needs to be balanced, and needs to reward player skill.

Understanding "balance" is fairly easy - all that is required for balance is that there are a reasonable number of legitimate strategies available to players, and that no strategy blatantly towers over every other one.

"Rewarding player skill" is a little more complicated, but can be approximated by 'allowing good players to distinguish themselves from other players through superior play." In order for this to take place, powerful strategies and tactics in the game must also be challenging ones to execute. The ideal would be to have a direct, linear relationship between difficulty and power. In this way, players would have to use some element of player skill (ex. reflex, timing, yomi, valuation, judgement, awareness) in order achieve victory. The players/teams with the most talent would rise to the top, proving that they are the best - which of course is what every competitive game is all about.

Ritualists violated both of these principles (balance and rewarding player skill). The ability to have large amounts of defense, offense and aoe buffs on the same bar was simply too much. In mass (Rit Spike), a team with a 1000+ damage spike, 8 different characters with healing, all with ~700 hp, and a forest of offensive and defensive spirits, was quite obviously better than what almost any other team could muster. Ritualists were imbalanced. And worse yet, they did not adhere to rewarding player skill. Spirit-laying and Caster-spiking are among the least-demanding facets of Guild Wars, and to have those be the chief tactics of one of the most powerful builds in the metagame was simply unacceptable.

So it is quite obvious why Ritualists needed to be changed. That said, I do realize that its only natural for PvErs that do not participate in any of said Rit-spiking to feel hurt. However, with the reality that Anet is simply not going to completely seperate PvP and PvE, it was absolutely necessary that Ritualists be nerfed, hard.

The reason is clear: PvP has needs (outlined above). PvE really doesnt. There are a million and one ways to beat almost every area in the game, with almost any combination of classes. The fact that every area has a enemies with predetermined, known abilities, combined with the fact that said enemies are governed by extremely stupid and exploitable AI, makes PvE incredibly easy. Most areas a competent player could breeze through with both eyes closed and both hands behind his back, while operating the keyboard with his toes. Perhaps I exagerrate, but you get the idea. After this update, PvE will still be easy, and there are still a million and one ways to beat it. Heck, even if your favorite skillbar just got nerfed to hell, you could probably still go out and beat most areas without changing it. Its that easy. And the fact that its so easy makes complaining about skill changes pretty moot. No matter how the skills fluctuate (within reason), PvE will still be beatable. Easily.

Talking pure PvE again.

We run damage builds a couple of 'tanking' skills. If you want a pure tank, take Ele.

A skill like Aegis is far too expensive on energy and recharge to be used as 'support' for the frontline.
You 'need' a skill like Aegis when enemies break through the frontline and start attacking the backline, and only when several low armor teammembers are under attack at once.
If only one teammember is under attack, the skill is too expensive again.

Now consider how many times multiple teammembers were under attack at the same time and unable to kite.
Most damage on multiple teammembers is from AoE and degen, not spread enemies.
Meaning Aegis would not be very usefull, since that only blocks attacks and does nothing against AoE or degen.

In the end, it's a good skill in certain situations.
But in those situations your party is hardly ever out of earshot.
When you use the skill 'just in case', you are wasting energy and 30 seconds reload.

i have read all posts within this 16 page thread so far.

:cookie:

Am i the only one who thinks "FGY!" is overpowerd?

I gave up on reading through this entire thread.

For what it’s worth, I’m going to toss my opinion in here.

I think that the underlying basic problem has nothing to do with the skills and what was or wasn't done to them.

The biggest problem as I see it is a lack of consideration of others.

There is no need to insult either side, PvP or PvE. There is no need to be arrogant, condescending, and self-centered. This game was not designed for you personally. It was designed for a lot of people. Different people enjoy different aspects of it. If you want any respect at all for what you do in the game, you should also respect how other people play and enjoy the game.

People play a game because its fun…if it ceases to be fun, they stop.

If you read through the threads here you can quickly determine that many players feel alienated, unappreciated and overlooked. Whether that is the truth or only the perception they have, its not good business.

Lol...The Rits taking such a horrific hit is as cringe-worthy as when they nerfed the hell out of my necro with SR due to PvP abuse. Hope they come up with a more 'elegant' solution.

My Warrior knows Infuriating Heat, and now I get to use it (with "For Great Justice!").

If Shelter causes exhaustion, I'll QQ. Don't fix things that aren't broken pls.

You forgot the Pargons that took a big hit because what happened in PvP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsod I wouldn't count on it... i think the mods here accidently made the Bugs Forum invisible to all Anet personnel.

Well-known little-known fact:
The devs don't pay attention to Bug or Suggestion forums like they should.

Well said, Neo-LD.

I just wanted to add my dissent regarding the Ritualist changes in PvE.
I never play PvP and I don't want to. I don't care about PvP.

It was quite a shock to find that my Rit didn't have any energy after casting 5 energy spells due to, what, exhaustion? Unbelievable. If you want a spell to cause exhaustion, make it cost 25. That should cut down on the spamming, if that's the problem. I hate exhaustion. I don't play Elementalists primarily because I don't want to deal with exhaustion.

Anyway, this along with all the other complainers, is probably falling on deaf ears. I understand that PvP needs to be balanced and there will be no separating PvE and PvP, so I'll deal with it. I'm not happy about it though.
I'm still dealing with the Soul Reaping nerf too. Grrr.

It is not hard to deal with exhaustion with an energy pool of 70+.

You say to make it cost 25, but it seems that you're misunderstanding the purpose of it. Energy costs and recharge times strain tactical flexibility, Exhaustion simply punishes overdependence. The purpose of exhaustion is to allow skills with strong tactical flexibility that can be used in a broad number of situations, but can't be relied on as a core strategy.

Gale is a prime example of this. Gale is an extremely powerful ability, and because its cost is migrated to exhaustion, you can spam it short-term if that's what the situation calls for, but you can't spam it ALL THE TIME.

Xinrae's Weapon falls into this category. If you need to use it twice in a short duration, you're able to. You're not going to burn out your energy supply for other things in the process either. You simply need to space long-term usage of it out.

The three disruptive spirits are an example of oversaturation, adding exhaustion and dropping the cost allows one tactically-useful spirit to be created at low cost, but not allowing ALL THREE to be continually spawned by the same person.

Reducing Ancestor's Rage to 5 recharge and keeping exhaustion means that it is still possible to use it twice in a short duration to wipe a camp out, you've simply got to wait a minute to clear the exhaustion. A minute-long wait isn't unusual either: Elementalists wait a minute for MS to clear its recharge already. Wielder's Strike.... I have no idea why they put exhaustion on that, they should have just done the same thing they did to Spirit Burn. Anguish might be due to the fact that it effectively does 2 spirits worth of damage.

Now for the real fun. As you see most PvPers dont like the build simply cause they dont have any clue. just look they asked if they could ban me lol.
I simple find it quite hilarious that they simple dont understand something as simple that splinter is used up with 1 shot of barrage when it targets 3+ players. There goes there stacking point. Now As far as preps go everyone and there brother knows thats why you dont use a prep and barrage, still they seem confused on that, but here it is. ITS NOT PART OF THE COMBO. The preps are used in conjunction with dual shot and nightmare weapon. Not at the same time. Since its not a 1,2,3,4 build it seems rather confusing to them. Which goes like this choking gas nightmare weapon then dual shot when choking runs out you simple use ignite arrows with the combo of nightmare weapon and dual shot. As far as choking gas not lasting enough well sorry to inform you but you dont need practise stance as it does last long enough to get the initial first shot in to disrupt the oncomming caster spikes. But since we are at it might as well throw in a quote from a IGN unofficial forums so called elite PvPer too-

Yeap sorry there Evilsod, didnt mean to actually think that a few PvPers might have a brain and or actual playing skills.

Yay for the guy that enjoys self casting and prepping constantly in the middle of a pvp match instead of moving or interupting and reacting, because clearly his opponents are doing exactly the same thing. >.>

You almost detailed what the monk does, except for the fact they only self cast some of the time.

Wow, seriously:

some of us are actually aware of how imbalanced your build is and being pvp'ers, we're crying to anet to get it nerfed instantly. Sadly some angry pve mod who shall remain nameless moko closed the thread.

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showt...php?t=10185391

Stick a fork in this thread, it's done.