Update - Thursday August 16

Skill Updates

Assassin

• Dark Apostasy: reduced casting time to .25 seconds.
• Fox Fangs: reduced activation time to .5 seconds.
• Golden Fox Strike: reduced recharge time to 4 seconds.
• Iron Palm: reduced Energy cost to 5.
• Jagged Strike: increased Bleed duration to 5..20 seconds.
• Jungle Strike: reduced activation time to .5 seconds.
• Locust's Fury: reduced recharge time to 10 seconds.
• Palm Strike: reduced Energy cost to 5.
• Unsuspecting Strike: reduced recharge time to 2 seconds.
• Way of Perfection: increased duration to 60 seconds; decreased casting time to .25 seconds.
• Way of the Empty Palm: reduced recharge time to 10 seconds.
• Wild Strike: this Skill is now unblockable.

Ritualist

• Ancestors' Rage: decreased casting time to .25 seconds; removed Exhaustion; functionality changed to: "For 1 second, nothing happens. When this Enchantment ends, all foes adjacent to target ally are struck for 30..130 lightning damage."
• Anguish: reverted skill to its original behavior. Defiant Was Xinrae: reverted skill to its original behavior.
• Disenchantment: reverted skill to its original behavior.
• Dissonance: reverted skill to its original behavior.
• Spirit Burn: functionality changed to: "Target foe is struck for 5..50 lightning damage. If any Spirits are within earshot, Spirit Burn causes Burning for 1..3 second(s)."
• Wanderlust: reverted skill to its original behavior.
• Wielder's Strike: increased recharge time to 6 seconds; decreased unconditional damage to 5..50; decreased conditional damage to 10..40; removed exhaustion.
• Xinrae's Weapon: reverted skill to its original behavior.

Victory or Death Changes

• Increased the total time between GvG matches in Automated Tournaments to 35 minutes. Games use a tie-breaker if not complete within 28 minutes, with an extra minute on either end for map loading or internet delays (total 30 minutes), and 5 minutes between each round to allow teams more time to organize.

Miscellaneous

• Made additional adjustments to the Luxon Warriors in Fort Aspenwood to prevent them from fleeing homeward when the siege turtle is killed.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally cut off lengthy trade and party-search-related messages in the Chat panel.
• Added additional trade and grouping keywords to the list of words that trigger Party Search.
• Changed the layout of the Forgotten Shrines and Fetid River Heroes' Ascent maps.
• Added a message to alert players when someone in their district has achieved a maximum title that counts toward earning Favor of the Gods.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented Water Tormentors and Sanity Tormentors in the Domain of Anguish from having weapons when created by the Call to the Torment skill.
• Changed Abaddon’s AI for "Words of Madness" so it does not allow entirely avoiding him while achieving Masters level completion of the mission at the same time.

Thanks to ANET for listening to thier customers and reverting the changes to the rit skills. I think that the one second delay on Ancestors Rage was a good compromise.

On behalf on many many many Ritualists...


THANK YOU!

YAY! It's finally ifixed !

Does this mean the Realm of Torment is harder than it already is? >_>

I'm glad they fixed Wild Strike...but if only it was a lead attack.

Until we can no longer bypass lead attacks all together off>dual>off>dual will always be used because of bar compression. The buff to wild strike is a year and a half late. GJ anet.

As far as the Rit update goes, well, i'm so happy I could almost cry. However i'm not going to take it that far because it's a game. Thank you so much for ditching Exhaustion on the ritualist. Best update ever! Well maybe not, but it feels that way kind of.

Yeah I second the jump of joy, with the Rit getting their function back. Um, so the Abbadon exploit just not work anymore then I take it?

You have my thanks. Good update.

Nice. Buff to sins, kinda of negation buff to rits. I'm quite fine with ancestors rage now

boo at abbadons mouth. wanted to get my rit through game to do it that way ^.^

oh no they've left reckless haste as it is....its been off my skill bar for the past week now =/

"Thanks for the (insert anything here) (buff/nerf) youre (insert time frame here) too late."

Finally, people can stop complaining about the blockability of wild strike. I do fear that they might tweak the damage later though.
Also an excellent buff to unsuspecting strike, finally a fast recharging lead option other then jagged strike for the PvE lead>wild>death blossom combo.

And good change to spirit burn. Maintains usefulness while eliminating some of the spikeability of the skill (since the burning won't stack up with multiple hits).

i have a feeling that now that they buffed the rit they are gonna nerf it again

Joyous was LumpOfCole: Hold ashes of your previously awesome Ritualist build. Wait 14..7 days after major unfortunate skill balance, gain one smile.

Thank you for undoing those horrible things to my Rit!

took them 2 years to fix barrage removing gylphs >.>

The sin update made them a little better Although Iron Palm is now the best lead eva

Hopefully Izzy ate a spoonful of humility when Rit exhaustion was unnerfed.

No more completely crazy nerfs please. That experiment went over as well as (insert your favorite potty humor joke here).

Regarding the fix to 'cuts lengthy party and trade messages' thing, is this exactly what Gaile said would be impossible to do?

Great Update all around. Good Job ANET!

woo glad about the rit updates

ty anet!

/cookie