Update 12/10/07

I fail to see the difference between that and a dual attunement ele, sometimes even with gole, being able to spam spells.. So that also needs to get nerfed?..

Ah ok, thank you.

Ah but most players just stop playing the Ele class altogether like myself and made them mules instead.

Smart players who care QQ because if you don't complain nothing will ever get better only worse.

I wonder how they'll survive without all that unlimited energy.
Are you trolling, or do you really believe this? I find it difficult to accept that you think this way.

Because Para's broke PvP. And sometimes, guess what.

ANet will actually attempt to listen to Pvpers once in a blue moon.

I know the nerf to SoD was needed....but I still loved that spell.

I know it wasn't such a great skill to begin with, but the change to conjure frost means that [wiki]Mist Form[/wiki] was nerfed too in this update making it an even weaker elite.


Would Anet please consider buffing it up to make up for the change in the Conjures?

I'm not -too- terribly upset about the change they DID make, as they (for the most part) seem to be going in the right direction.

However, I don't think I could be anymore upset about the changes they DIDN'T make. There is so much trash in this game right now, and they're ignoring it because Izzy likes watching red bars go down super fast.

Arenanet has always been known to put a bandaid on their problems instead of fixing things, and this update is no exception. Instead of changing it up so that not only blockway isn't as powerful, but that it's not forced upon you, they just made it a little less broken.

I could go on for days, and there are posts already on most what I would say about the updates.

It's pretty sad to see the players care more about the game than the staff working on the game.

I didn't even mention any classes. What are you talking about? I vaguely mentioned Monk's by saying H+H will spam condition removal on Cracked armor, which is a fact.

My understanding of Paragons being overpowered in PvP was running 4 of them to keep "Incoming!" up constant. And besides:
H+H = PvP AMIRTE?

If they wanted to fix Paragons in PvP and leave them viable for PvE outside of TNTF spammer, all they had to do was the one thing the community has asked for repeatedly:
Make certain (or all) shouts last on the effects bar for X amount of time, so it can't be reapplied by multiple Paragons. Example:
"Incoming!"
Elite Shout. For 1...8 seconds, all party member within earshot take 50% less damage. This shouts' aftereffect lasts for 20...15 seconds where it cannot be reapplied to affected party members.

Or something to that affect. Still viable, still relatively useful, and prevents chaining it. But did they listen? No, they took the easy way out and reduced most shouts to shit.

Calm down please. Every skill update is controversial. If you can't have an intelligent debate without insults or threatening to quit (no, this does not contribute) then this thread will be closed.

As a big time Paragon player I was unhappy about the nerfs to GFTE! and AR and even WY, I feel as though these nerfs to these skills were not for balance but to appease those that complain about Paragons.

I see no fairness ive seen Paragon get shafted almost every skill balance with no buffs(except for awe which isnt that big of a deal cause of spear swipe). GFTE or WY and AR was on every Paragon's Bar, now what is our niche? , sure we got TNTF (which was nerfed for another classes's abuse of it, which it did need a nerf.) Save Yourselves is really good but as its been said before a Warrior can use it just as well.

The buff to SF i see is a blessing in disguise cause maybe people will want Their on Fire! now.

The Real Problems:

Leadership , Finales , Armor

I'm sad about the change to Chilblains, that's about it. It's like a sissy mirror of disenchantment and no longer has a niche.

Why do you find it so difficult? That IS what PvP is all about. Find a few fotm builds that work really well and use them until they're nerfed. Rinse and repeat. Same goes for the majority of pve, though it's rare that something gets nerfed because of pve. Oh yeah, and most pve people aren't fooling themselves thinking what they do is so great and requires so much skill.

Some of my feedback after testing ...

Mesmer buffs:
Nice!

Spirits - 50 HP:
PvE wise ~ Hurting Rits again ... ouch!
PvP wise ~ Soul reaping FTW! (sarcasm: which means makes no diff. really in the spirits runs I had ... still boring, still imba)

Paragon eg. AR, GftE & watch your self:
Feels like the "exhaustion nerf" to the rits ... needs balance but this is too much
~ Cracked Armor buries other condition beyond control (strategy lost)
~ The 4 sec recharge (on both skills) makes you lose too much adrenaline
(adjust leadership not the skills that paras rely on to be part of the game)

Necro:
~ Chilblains: eh? Izzy likes the griefers in HA?
~ Angorodon's Gaze: needs a nerf ... looks like ZB to me now ... dead kinda.
PvE changes eg. mini pets & HM:
Sweet!

(although i feel i missed something by not using the exploits of the Master Guides and primaries ... sigh)

Cheers,
Timebandit

P.s. I might enjoy something that was broken in the first place ... but, paragons and rits are profession I love to play. recent nerfs just turned me down ... why leave something like Melandru (pvp) and Ursan Blessing (pve) untouched while hurting anything else which power you could enjoy ...

Take care

Let's hear it for the odd hybrid builds! Minion Bombers FTW! Splinter Barrage FTW! Seriously, I think the whole emphasis on splits in PVP is Anet trying to make everyone, PVP/PVE included, an odd hybrid build.

All of these changes, some good, some not so good,.. Some really unneeded ones,..

And Still [skill]Winter[/skill] hasn't been fixed.

Is it too much to ask to please revert Winter's ability to be able to do what its supposed to do, like the text read's on the skill icon??

For all it's worth:

First, I would like to applaud the hero/dungeon journal modification. This makes for a nice way to gain EotN faction without having to resort to grind. Also, the fact that a single playing through the game will fill out a hero journal and allow the player to purchase at least one of the factions' armor is a great idea.

I also appreciate the solomonic solution to the Hall of Monuments and miniatures situation.

Several changes, however, seem to be bad moves:

-Ritualists have been hit too hard before, and this hits them further. I'm all for spirits being easily destroyed, but with such a drastic lowering of their health, the whole mechanic of "spirit loses X life whenever it uses its ability" need to be reworked. The life loss halved the amount of damage Shelter and Union prevent, the number of attacks blocked by Displacement, the number of times Wanderlust knocks enemies down, the amount of damage Agony inflicts and Rejuvenation heals (which was already ridiculously low), the amount of time Earthbind keeps the enemy down and so on.

A simple demonstration: I just tested out the new Shelter. I removed my armour, buffed communing and spawning power to 12 each, and let a Norn whack me. Shelter held out for 4 hits. 4 hits. The spirit can't even counter a single party wide Pyroclastic shot. I do relize it couldn't do that even before, however that only serves to stress the problems with the mechanic.

The whole "life for effect" mechanic needs a full reworking.

A possible solution that occurs to me is generally lowering the level of these spirits, which would make them very easy to kill directly, while lowering the life costs significantly further. For example, a Shelter spirit with half the life but a quarter of the life loss would be of twice the value to a PvE player while in PvP, it would easily be killed if the effect were to become too bothersome to the group.


-Paragons need some PvE attention. Simply having two builds worth of useful skills that keep getting nerfed while the majority of skills lacks any use is not a good thing. I'm sure the PvP crowd has its reasons for wanting the nerf, but I really wish my Paragon could switch builds every once in a while without losing all effectiveness in PvE. And no, PvE is not too easy, not for everyone.

In light of the heavy hits that the paragons keep taking, it seems to me that perhaps the problem is not in the paragon not being too effective but rather that the skills that counter the paragon are too situational to warrant a place on the skill bar. While playing EotN, my paragon has been on the receiving end of those skills, and they hurt. Significantly. A single vocal minority had me take a forced rest, which also meant that my aggressive refrain went down as I could not keep it up.

Perhaps the way to countering the paragon does still lie in those skills. A possible solution to this problem would be adding additional effects to those skills that would make the skills useful even if no paragons present themselves.

Additionally, I believe that a skill that removes shouts and chants would be in order. A simple skill that removes all shouts from a target (or even a group), call it a "Deafening boom", would be a most effective counter to a paragon.

The thing is that a paragon's use of energy costing shouts means the paragon must keep replenishing energy with adrenaline based shouts. This is the paragon's "trick of the trade". In order to power those adrenaline based shouts, the paragon needs to keep attacking nearly as quickly as possible and for as much of the time as possible.

In order to achieve this, the paragon must "start his engine up". This is not necessarily an easy matter. For example, with a paragon's 2 energy regeneration and low energy total, starting up both Aggressive refrain and Focused anger takes up almost all of the paragon's energy, only possible with a full energy supply.

Hit the paragon with a skill that shuts the energy recovering engine down, and the paragon is put back in his place.

While on the subject, any chant with a long casting time breaks the attack sequence, which in turn breaks the energy returning sequence.

I would recommend a review of the chants' casting times in view of the above, both as a potential of toning down some too overused skills and as a potential way of improving the underused skills. Some rarely used ones may warrant a "quickening" while others may warrant a longer "ouverture".

I would also recommend reviewing the shouts/chants that only activate on attack skills (in a balanced party, that's only 3 actual recipients and including normal attacks would boost that to 8 recipients) and would review the "affects only party/all allies" skills. Affecting all allies, not just the party, is a nice bonus in some PvE situations.

All i gotta say is where's the Para love....

I can see anet's designers really want to implement their new condition ( cracked armor ) into the game, but their are better ways to do this.

Just make Aggressive refrain give a constant -20 armor while its on. I was watching how it works with the skill in observer earlier and it just doesnt fly.
Sometimes they will have CA every second, sometimes not.

If you really want to give some stuff cracked armor, find skills that are stupidly underpowered and add it to them.:

[skill]Wastrel's collapse[/skill]
If successfull: gives CA for 1....5....10 sec. move att to Shadow arts.

[skill]thunderclap[/skill]
[skill]primal rage[/skill]


These are just initial suggestions...but I think people get the idea.


Also, it messes with hero's AI too much.

the really annoying side of AR in pve is your normaly constantly moving forward, and u forget about spamming shouts just to keep AR up, less of a issue in pvp

Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't make them terrible human beings. Keep you personal insults out of this thread and keep it clean. If you have a problem with somebody's behavior or attitude, take it out on them in a PM or contact a moderator.

SoD did need the change, since insta-invulnerability on a 5s recharge is probably a bit too good. However, with the increased uptime it's now a bit stronger in PvE, where target swapping isn't as big a problem. The longer recharge also helps moron heroes manage their energy with it slightly better.

Cracked armor on AR is stupid. Just give it -20 AL all the time and don't make people deal with an annoying condition.

Whoever thought buffing SF was a good idea is a gibbering idiot. However, steam is looking pretty good at mid spec on a SF bar.

Still imba?
Do you ever play Rit healer?
2 casts of SF can hurt N/Rt and kill all his spirits. No spirit = dead N/Rt healer.
And Rit is VERY poor now since most rit builds(channeling, communing and restoration) heavy rely on spirits.

Omg horrible nerf to paragons the -20 cracked armor is just horrible for Aggresive refrain Primarily for PvE monks are gonna keep loosin energy just to keep it removed every 5 seconds AND wont be able to remove harmful conditions like blind as cracked armor keeps stacking up.A horrible nerf
i agree if they wanted to nerf it they shoulda changed it to decrease damage this is just ridiculous

LoL, Dont remove it every 5 secs, WUT?!

Yeah, just turn off the Hench's condition removing spells.

The AR condition change doesn't seem to accomplish the desired effect. In PvE (and especially for solo and small group players) it results in having to micromanage the AI to keep it from removing the condition (or in the case of henchmen, causes them to waste energy constantly trying to remove it) while its utility as a PvP fix seems questionable.

turn off? so what happens when faced with heavy degeneration or blind , weakness, dazed or even burning now what then . Removing conditions is important and having a monk not remove is gonna create a lot of problems

The AR nerf is retarded, the skill is just useless now. They should have amde into a flurry look a like imo.

So, made it even more useless?

AR Useless?

Agressive Refrain + Purifying Finale.

GG Cracked Armor. My para never has it

I think I am just about fed up with all the QQing about the AR change, especially in PvE. Grab your nearest bottle of Vodka and use Drunken Master already. You'll even have up to +8% IAS if you have ground up your deldrimor allegiance like the good grindbots you are.

Too bad Anet's going to take a bat to the skull to that.

Probably make it so that AR removes all other Echo's.

Rits got hit harder than paras imo.

My thoughts on the skill changes that matter.

Wearying strike: This isnt going to do much, now its just a SLIGHTLY less powerful non elite eviscerate when used on a tree which is invincible.

General Ele changes: Good. Ward is now MOST EFFECTIVELY used on an ele. Conjures got a much needed change.

Mesmer changes: I lol'd

SoD: No longer usable, cant protect spikes as often.

SoR: GG E/Mo runners.

Chillblains: For everyone who is pissed cause you cant remove shadow form: use SIGNET OF DISENCHANTMENT on a low energy set. Chillblains was NEVER worth it with signet available.

Paragon: Why was AR nerfed? I mean srsly wtf is wrong with a IAS that lasts forever and cant be removed and has no penalty and essentially costs no energy with the 800 adren shouts paragons can (could) use? Oh wait.

Rits: took a harder hit than paras, but it was much needed as the passive nature of just laying down spirits and forgetting about them, but getting a decent effect was incredibly obnoxious.

Aggresive refrain is worthless in PvE now. Unless you have 2 real monks who wont spend all their time curing you ( and how often does ANYONE have 2 real monks in Pve?) 2 hero monks will spend all their time and energy curing !!. You guys should of made the cracked armor simply an armor debuff in the form of a SHOUT which cannot be removed. So you can actually fight with heroes and they will 'heal' you, instead of 'cure' your paragon and let you die !!!

Either that or simply add "While you are effected by this Echo you have -20 armor"

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Actually, i retract that previous statement. Just have someone who knows what they are doing (and actually may of played the game a few times) sit down and rework paragons from the ground up.

And they don't even really care.

Why should they? Most HP reliant spirits were unuseable for long time, its not like you would get rt lord spammer complain here .. its 1.5year too late for that.

Once you give up on shelter/union/displacement, there is little to complain about last change.

---

SF vulnurelability sucks, agreed, you no longer can take shelter as life insuarance policy vs. some NF ele bosses.

Maybe if spirits returned to affecting each other like in beta days ... okay, that might be bad idea.

2 things:
1- spirits down = N/rt full of energy
2- that will just happen if u are noob and ball up all ur spirits

-Dervish

Wearying Strike: decreased damage to 5..20.

"As part of our effort to decrease melee damage slightly, we made Wearying Strike less powerful to adjust the ever-popular Avatar of Melandru/Wearying Strike combination. "

Sure Wearying hit a little hard, but if your intention is to lower melee damage, why are sins untouched? -550 hp's in 5 seconds seems a little high too XD.

-Warrior

Agonizing Chop: increased activation time to 1 second.

"Critical Chop and Agonizing Chop now have longer activation times to reduce their raw spike potential. Without a recharge time..."

Last time I checked, it still took a good amount of time to build adrenaline unless you're using some sort of buff. Raw Spike Damage? Look at deadly paradox/dancing daggers/augery of death. Also with the introduction of the new unblockable sins, warriors are becoming more and more inferior.

-Monk


Shield of Deflection: increased recharge time to 10 seconds; increased duration to 3..10 seconds.
Shield of Regeneration: increased recharge time to 12 seconds.

"The 1/4 second cast time of both Shield of Deflection and Shield of Regeneration made these skills too easy to maintain on a constant basis. We countered this by increasing their recharge times. Enchantment removal should now be a more viable counter to these popular elite skills. "

Hmm, in game damage keeps getting higher, but monks haven't recieved any real buffs to compinsate for it. Maybe put ZB back to +10 energy while below 50% hp to compinsate for this nerf.

"Decreased the Health of all Spirits by 50; allowed Burning to affect Spirits.
The existing specific counters to Spirits were too narrow. This change allows area-of-effects to more effectively neutralize Spirits. It also means Spirit-users may have to place Spirits more strategically."

"Searing Flames: increased Burning duration to 1..7 seconds"

Lol, in one quick update you've managed to bring back SF spikes AND make the already unbalanced N/Rt recieve energy faster and easier. META HA FTW

Only problem with that statement is:

Chillblains: Core skill (available to everyone, so everyone can remove shadow form if they want to)

Signet of Disenchantment: Factions skill (so, you need to buy a expansion if you want to remove shadow form now?)