Should there be at least one more major skill balance?

With GWEN out now, I'd really like to see at least one final major skill rebalancing go down. Perhaps revamping some of the skills from the previous chapter that either fell out of use because the newer campaigns had so much better options or were never that good to begin with. Perhaps give a minor buff to the few skills or skill lines that were over nerfed. That sort of thing. It really would be nice if we got at least one more big one, plus it would help them with GW2 since until we know more we can assume that the skill system will be similar and that there should be a lot of retread skills.


Anyone else agree with me?

Just a few PvP fixes if you ask me, like melandrus dervishes, paragons, RaO and deadly arts clowns, as for the rest I think the game is in an OK shape. There's some balancing for GvG to be done, but I'm not into GvG so I won't comment on that.

GW:EN doesn't bring very much new skills that are nerf-worthy, except maybe for angorodon's gaze. I wouldn't know, I met Angorodon spike teams in TA every now and then, but they were shit easy to beat.

Yes of course, they should do a MAJOR skill balance, but not only that, they should keep doing balances if they're needed. Just because they're working on GW2, doesn't mean they can just forget about GW...

A few tweaks of mechanics wouldn't be too bad either (VoD?).

The whole Strength attribute function needs a buff.... but then something else about Warriors would need to be nerfed to balance it. For now, the entire strength of the warrior is in the armour and runes, and NOT in the primary attribute.


Aside from that.... I can't think of any skills that particularly need changing. It'd be nice if at least SOME Paragon skills could affect Minions again though.

meh, the skills in the strength line are awesome (enraging charge, bulls strike and so on), and the attribute itself is pretty awesome if you are wielding a hammer or a scythe (Yes I've been told they use scythes at great success, didn't know that at first either). Eats large chunks of red bars.

Strength is balanced in that Warriors totally pwn face without it. It may suck, but warriors are so damn powerful... it doesn't matter.
And there's a few decent Strength skills, Bull's Strike, Rush and the ilk.

anyho, yeah... Deadly Paradox needs to die for Shadow and Deadly to be balanced properly, Melandru needs a hit (or a nuke) and... well... I just wish they'd nuke the Para and start it all over again.

Please... NO........ Not for PvE.

I think not.
Shadow Form couldn't be maintained perpetually without it. If THAT is your concern... nerf Arcane Echo. It should only last long enough for one cast of anything anyway, and it lasts way longer than that. Deadly Paradox actually makes more than just one or two Shadow Arts skills useful.... and Deadly Arts are all but a waste without it.


Default Para skills need slight buff in some areas (a bit more minion-love). TNTF needs a nerf.... not that any PvPer would care.
And Hero AI needs fixing (if I give Morgahn Blazing Finale and Burning Refrain, he ought to use them on more than just himself without being told).

Avatar of Melandru? Lol Fragility + Condition Spike.

True, it's either worthless or thru-the-roof-good. I prefer worthless then and a fun pvp experience. Or maybe buff some deadly arts skills a bit while completely destroying paradox.

Tweaking skills for PvE is rubbish really, if areas in PvE post problems the areas can be adjusted instead of the skills, this has already happened a few times and it worked (realm of torment anyone?). Besides, making para's stronger then they are now would result in 8 para teams everywhere ^^. But thats the suckyness about people not playing PvP, they can't see the destructive potential of the paragon with their own eyes.

Fair enough... that could work I suppose.
I mostly use Deadly Paradox for my healing skills in Shadow Arts though. The recharge on Feigned Neutrality is utterly absurd without it.


There is nothing wrong with the areas though. It is simply that certain classes have a very distinct advantage over others... which creates strong bias amongst PuGs, besides other similar issues.

8 Para teams if modifications were made to apply a few of their shouts / chants to Minions? That doesn't compute...
Paragons are defensively awesome... but more often than not I'll need monks anyway because they can help Olias keep his minions running, while Paragons cannot do anything like that. The skills USED to influence all allies, which was ridiculously overpowered in some cases..... but reducing ALL of them via ubernerf to party members only was total overkill.

As far as I know skill updates will still happen in between Automated Tournament cycles. If only for the sake of tweaking minor things and changing up the flavour of the month mcdoogles.

I am predicting this...
Assassin-changed daggers to ninja stars.
Dervish-now have a moustache. Even the ladies.
Elementalist-Fire is now the DOT line and Water is the main damage line. Also more moustaches.
Monk-bug introduced that gives them ninja stars.
Mesmer-Spiteful Spirit/Atrophy moved to domination for no reason.
Necromancer-Soul Reaping now only adds energy equal to Pi every hummingbird heartbeat cycle.
Paragon-No changes this time. *backs away slowly*
Ranger-Expertise changed to only affect hammer and touch skills. Bug reduces pet damage to 0.
Ritualist-Skill functionality changes to add wards, shouts and whatever they don't already have.
Warrior-Strength now affects signets, increasing it's viability as a primary.

Bah, look at the new PvE skills. If you can't win with those, gb2presear

I'd like them to completely flip all the skills in GW, like WoW's doing. >8D

I thought they had at least 2 teams of developers working on gw.

One to tweak the settings of the current product the other to work on the next.
So I guess one team is working on gw2 while the other is keeping a watch on gwen for problems.

After 4 games they must be used to working that way so don't think any effort they put into gw1 will affect gw2 very much.

They have far longer to work on gw2 than they did on the other 4

Well, be careful what you ask for.

Some changes may be needed but clearly Anet don't always take the time to come up with proper solutions and the results are then not for the better. I fear that they don't have the time or staffing or the right people to do changes.
The fact is that after the SR nerf there still is no class that is better at being a ritualist than the necro ( including the ritu itself).
And as we saw on a thread before (that was on the old GWEN forum) a hero team of 3 N/Rt 's basically owns PvE from start to end...one build to own them all. (I do not know what the current PvP status is for the Ritu but I did hear a lot about all ritu teams not too long ago. I don't play PvP so I cannot say more about that side of things).

The guy who made this hero team build did a great job because it really works like clockwork and I've tested it with my guild leader and so far it hasn't been defeated yet anywhere in PvE even by aggroing extra groups for the heck of it (normal mode so far).
We even tried it without an actual healer monk...My guild leader had his ranger with the 3 N/Rt's and I added my paragon (command), with Tahlkora (prot monk), Jora (DD) and Hayda (motivation).
Yes you saw it right...NO healer monk and we owned everything in various area's even dino's. We didn't just own it...it was easy. At one point I ran around aggroing stuff and we fought over twenty level 22+ creatures, including a boss and not a single casualty once on our side.

And as I've understood running with henchies along the N/Rt hero team it still is a breeze. I got more updates about different area's and tricky bosses and all of it was....easy. So far all we could think of as relatively hard to play in PvE normal mode gets totally owned by this.

Now I am not saying that Anet aren't doing anything right...for the most part skill balances seem to have the desired effect but it also seems to me that for the benefit of the quality of the changes there should be less instances of changes like maybe once or twice a year and in my view it seems that they need the balancers to be more mindful of the PvP and PvE differences and I do not just mean game mechanics but also character enjoyment and feel of the game.

So yeah , some changes may be needed but I have grown to fear changes in the game since the more recent history of changes has been...well, let's say less than satisfactory.

lol QFT


There are loads of skills in the game with just a tiny buff would be viable.

They should just remove paragon from the game, there a waste of space. Button mashing ftw!

I remember Gaile saying they kicked all the PvP alpha testers so they could implement their brand spanking new system for skill balances that would allow faster balancing. I guess that project died as well.

That can be said of other classes. Warrior, Elementalist... Your reasoning for that doesn't work.

Skill "balances" are always fun. I've learnt to just sit back and observe the pandemonium. I would like to see Assassin's deadly arts skills knocked down a peg or two, I've come up against quite a few Deadly Arts sins in AB of late...and when you come up against a group of 4 ...ouch.

Intended pun?

Not really.

Also the hole concept of paragon is flawed non removable party buffs which just get spammed at recharge. Crazy armor for a ranged character and they also pack quite a punch.