Update 12/10/07

You sir/madam, win this thread.

Honestly folks, AR is still a great skill, even considerably overpowered still.

Proposed fix to Aggressive Refrain:

Make it work somewhat like Flurry with the penalty of Life Attunement.


For 5...21 seconds, you attack 25% faster but deal 30% less damage. This Echo is reapplied every time a Chant or Shout ends on you.


- It actually stays the same for support Paragons, who are getting near useless now.

- It gets the much needed nerf for 8 Paragon spike teams.



Or if you REALLY insist on debuffing the Paras in all circumstances, simply make it like this:


For 5...21 seconds, you attack 25% faster but have -20 Armor. This Echo is reapplied every time a Chant or Shout ends on you.


Cracked Armor just makes no sense at all. It's potentially going to get abused in the form of Plague Touch/Signet/Sending anyway.

But it's simply not going to stop the one thing that should get nerfed: spike teams.

Or just make it like this:
For 5...21 seconds, you attack 25% faster but you suffer from -20 armor while attacking. This Echo is reapplied every time a Chant or Shout ends on you.

Right now it's messed up, henches/heroes in PvE pump all their energy in you in order to remove Cracked Armor. And besides, it just makes no sense to me at all;
Paragon: Watch Yourself! Paragon: Oh snap! It broke my armor.

The new mesmer buffs (Energy Surge/Burn & Ineptitude) are pretty leet. I still don't get it why they nerfed Shield of Regen, Shield of Deflection and the Conjures though. Imo, they weren't overpowered.

Please return SoD to way it was.. or atleast make the recharge to 8 sec =_+...

I've been gone for awhile, why does Deadly paradox need a nerf?

I can tell right now, you nerf deadly paradox or shadowform (I think thats what people are complaining about) Pve sins wont be happy, sins rely on shadowform generally when farming OR when running.... its just useful for that 20 seconds of invincibility.

and I always thought gaze of contempt crapped all over shadowform,


And shadow refugee buff is needed but not like this -_- conditional heal buff or make it heal when you activate the skill (1/4 casting time plz)

Paragon nerf
I don’t really like forums so I’m not happy to be here.
However, as this is the only way for a person who plays GW to express his thoughts on how the game is developing, here I am.

Well, Buff, buff, nerf, buff, buff, buff, nerf, nerf, STOP!

I play PvE 90% of the time and PvP only in random arenas to unlock skills.
Not many of the changes in the latest update will affect my characters.

However, and I guess that why I had to sit here and read all these damn posts. I’m not happy with the change made to the Paragon skill “Go for the Eye’s”.
How it seems to work in my build is I use the skill”GFTE” then need to wait 4 seconds and then build up the adrenalin from 0. Where did that adrenalin I was just building up in the last 4 seconds go? Can I have that back? Or increase the amount of adrenalin needed if you think it’s to powerful with only 4.

Thx Drequlies

Deadly paradox sin spike would be the main reason, using Dancing Daggers -> Entangling Asp -> Signet of Toxic Shock along with other DA skills like Augury of Death. Paradox makes the spike heavy pressure as well due to practically non-existent recharge on skills.

You don't think that it's odd to allow a class like an A/Me or Me/A a full minute of invulnerability (arc echo, deadly paradox)? I certainly did when I realized I could run anywhere on the map relying on Shadow Form.

The ritualist spirit spammer just got truly screwed!

The update isn't that bad, Aggressive Refrain is now fine, there are a lot of spells which still need to be buffed.

Some of the mesmer buffs however are plain retarded and really aren't needed.

I love this update, and not a single one of my skillbars got touched

And damnit ANet, give me chance to actually finish GW:EN, now I have to finish it to try hard mode

Deadly paradox didn't get touched and Angorodon's Gaze got a very slight nerf. How pathetic really.

For times such as these, there is one picture I believe truly expresses your whinge on the subject that you have to actually think about your build:

If people thought on their builds like Sekkira thought on her posts, it'd confirm why I never PUG with idiots.

So let me get this straight - you only need to complete at LEAST 16 pages (assuming you have 1K - easy to get) of the dungeon book, and you get R5?

I don't like recycling cliche pictures either. It just seemed appropriate.

Lets see, in a word DUH!

The bulk of the Rits skills are linked to spirits, Rits "dump out spirits" however only a noob would sit in one spot and do it. So yes Rits should be allowed to dump out spirits it is/was there main function! Destroying that ability as they have all but done is the same as taking away the the AoE spells from Eles.

Sure you can play Rits differently with some odd hybrid builds but no one deserved to be punished for playing them exactly the way they were meant to be played which is exactly what this nerf did.

Personally I think the "balancing team" should go out and get a Websters dictionary and familierize them selves with the term "Resignation" then put it to use. To not do so would be a great disservice to the entire Guild Wars gaming community.

WTF, Searing Flames is going to be so fun now. ^^

Seems like I havent actually been that long.

Signet of toxic shock needs its old recharge.
Dancing daggers needs its prebuff damage
Mantis touch needs to be a spell like entangling (cast from a distance), makes the meta game varied!
Shadow refuge needs to Conditional heal bonus... 40...140 (16)plz.


Shadowform and DP I made a propose in the pvp section.
Shadowform. Whenever you attack or use an attack skill apply crippled for 20...5 seconds.

Ya an entire 1 minute of invincibility 2 things

For that entire minute... you sacrificed damage.
But if your crippled for attacking (being in a shadow does mean SHADOW)
people will kite from you

I think they more put them where they should have been in the first place than "punish people for playing them the way they were meant to be played." If, from day one of Factions, all spirits had had 50 less health than they did for the past 1.5 years, then people would have played around that and been used to it. But again, the sense of entitlement comes into play, and once something in the game changes, people cry foul as if it was a personal attack. And frankly, it was the Communing line that caused the most problems in game balance and all the Rit hate that has been around for 18 months, so I won't shed a tear to see it get hit. Anet shouldn't have reversed the exhaustion mechanic; that would have worked just as well, but they gave in to the whiners and reversed it. I wouldn't be surprised to see them cave in to whining again. I play a Rit in 4-man arena quite often, and this change doesn't bother me a bit.

I actually agree that Anet has almost no clue how to properly balance this game of theirs, but some of the changes they made in this update are pretty good.

I strongly suggest them to add something unique (new skins, greens) to UW/FoW end-reward chests.
So that it's not ecto/forge run only.

I strongly ... agree with that

Chilblains is pretty naff now

But really cool update

Steam is awesome.
5 energy for 104 dmg and 10 sec blind, recharge is only 8, woot!

As for para, some songs are coming up from my mind:
ANet: "Are you Dead Yet - Children of Bodom"
Para: "Die Dead Enough - Megadeth"

Ouch @ SoD...
Guardian > SoD then.

Agree, we do need Chilblains for its unique removal against Shadow Form, Spell Breaker or Obsidian Flesh.
If it has to be so, make it a skill instead of a spell so that it can remove Shadow Form and Spell Breaker.

A lot of enchantment removals got buffed (except Chilblains), but anyone remembers this elite: Pain of Disenchantment? Scourge Enchantment completely beats this elite.

Andragon's doesn't matter imo. Blood sux anyway...
It only impacts Me/N who spams it, however they already got nerfed with MoR so that Andragon's doesn't really matter.

Blood spells need some tweak for more creative usage just like Steam or Ash Blast. Pure Life Steal based design is boring.

For example: Soul Leech-> Hex Spell. For 10 seconds, Target foe steals x...y health form all his near by allies each second. Parasitic AoE lol.

You know, I don't mind skill balances that get overpowered skills nerfed.

I just hate it when these balances were simply not well-thought of.



I never play Necromancer, yet I think the change to Soul Reaping is ridiculous.

I never play Ritualist, yet I think the Exhaustion that was added for some time was a complete hack job.



Now the Ritualist was fixed with great elegance. Making Ancestor's Rage an enchantment was literally a stroke of genius. Heck, it even fits in with the lore (Ancestor's Visage is an Enchantment as well).

However, Soul Reaping is still gimped without any elegance. Why is it that a Necromancer can only reap souls three times every 15 seconds? How do you explain that? Grenth decreed a speed limit and there's traffic jams on the soul highway?

The community has been proposing great fixes since day one. Spirits should not count towards Soul Reaping, or only some Spirits, or a limited amount of Spirits, or a limited amount of Energy per Spirits. There's any number of decisions that make sense.



So I do hope Aggressive Refrain will go the way of the Ritualist skills and see a more elegant solution.

There's no doubt that it needs a nerf, it just needs a better one.



In the meantime, yes indeed: QQ



By the way, coming from someone who is playing Warrior nearly the whole time: nerf Dragon Slash for Pete's sake. It's so ridiculously spammable with "For Great Justice" to the point it's silly to take any other Elite (at least in PvE).

Simply decreasing the unconditional damage it does (while keeping the adrenaline utility) would already go a long way.

why was searing flames reurned to it's former glory, but not sand storm?

the anti-grind part of the update was nice, not much of a hard mode fan, but o well. As for the skill Balance, Hold on as I bent over yet once again, and prepare to get shafted.

I wonder if this was ever said, that "Skill Balance is a Red Herring"

Whoa! Paras didn't diserve ANY nerfs... buffs only i think... the mesmer buffs were fun I like the fact that they don't want to make mantra of recovery a trash
I have been mostly using signet of illusions cause of the update so i'm glad to see it getting buffed again.
the HoM update wasn't THAT wonderfull but still it was fun

I'm confused as to what this does exactly, would you get 1K from every monster after you've killed 200, seems a bit strange.

It means that when you vanquish an area that had 200 foes in it, you get 200 * 5 = 1k gold when you kill the last foe in that area.

Please restate that?!

the spirit nerf isnt a big deal really....oh noes my spirits can suffer from burning for 7 seconds thanks to the newly BUFFED searing flames (utter bs)

and shelter displacement and union take another hit (who cares)

And in a week or two we'll be seeing threads titled: Where did all the Paragons go?
The few that played them just aren't going to bother anymore. Its apparently impossible to run AR with H+H now, without them spamming all their energy to remove cracked armor. Its obvious that they are never going to get a single buff. These 2 skills were just the straws that broke the Paragons back.


That is, if anyone will even miss them.

The few that played Paragons will stop now?
Lmao ;d

Congrats for showing the Holy Trinity pug mindset.

These nerfs affect all the abilites of the Rit not just Communing in one form or another so they are rally cross the board nerfs however it does affect Communing the most.

Killing the Communing skills for a Rit so that the class is forced to use other abilities just plain wrong, no two ways about it. It is like killing healing prayers for monks so they are forced to either use smite or protect instead. It completely alters the core function of the Rit class which is just asinine for Anet to do. They might as well remove it and start all over from scratch.

We are in desperate need of new blood in the skills department, they need someone that is neither delusionally paranoid that players will actually beat the game with current skill sets to easily. Or deems himself the "skills police" and runs around trying to bust everyone that comes up with a creative skill set. Or is an ego bloated mad man that thinks he is god of all Guild Wars and everyone should play exactly how he want them to play and tries everything he can to force them to.

Good job showing a COMPLETE lack of understanding of PvP.

Paragons BROKE PvP, especially GvGs. They are godly good and have great synergy with each other.

Everyone who can't adapt and deal with THREE skills being changed is a bad player. No matter how integral those skills are to the paragon, there are still over 1000 other skills you could use.

For example, if Eles suddenly had their energy management nerfed (ie, attunements and GoLE suddenly stoped working completely), sure you'd see a lot of complaining. But suddenly Ether Prodigy and Mantra of Recall Eles would make a comeback from the old Phrophecies days. No matter how useful 2 or 3 skills are, there nerf/buff will not destroy a class. Good players adapt. Bad players QQ.

Long-winded "sort of" rant follows"

Like this will resolve anything. I've yet to understand this fixation on making spirits relevant to Soul Reaping. No matter what they do, the players will always outsmart the ANet staff and come up with a new way to exploit them.

On the rare occasion I want to grief and bring a Shadow Form Assassin to AB or RA, this is what I use to cover the health loss after the enchantment wears off, which goes right back up after about five seconds. So thanks for the grief buff, I guess. It's not as though people use this skill much for anything more than utility anyway.

It's about time, but this skill is still very weak. Assassins rarely are capable of sustained attacks, so the purpose of this skill is innately thrown out of the door. Get in, attack, get out. If I want a decent self heal, I'll bring Restful Breeze, which at 3 att owns this skill in a typical Assassin build / playstyle.

Why? I mean I can see WHY, but honestly, have you thought about just causing this skill to reduce your attack damage and NOT apply a condition? Isn't that the problem, that a Melandru Dervish can entirely circumvent this? Or that any form of a Dervish that can easily remove this instantly, perhaps beneficially, circumvents the intended purpose? There are better ways to balance this than just pooping out a blind nerf.

Completely irrelevant. While I appreciate the damage buffs, no one ever asked for them, and they were never needed. All of these skills are utility skills that are not going to displace pure damage skills on any bars. Due to the necessity of bar compression, these buffs aren't going to change many current builds. There are other Elementalist spells and skills that are in more dire need.

Well, there go my various conjure builds. Instead of nerfing these skills, why isn't the reason they're used addressed instead? Pure damage builds on most melees classes are already difficult to use due to the current meta's abundance of physical attack-denials. Blinds, blocks and disables are so incredibly prevalant that many classes, WARRIORS ESPECIALLY, are totally neutered in some matches, especially RA matches in which they can easily become the focus. Conjure builds, or any other form of damage stacking is the only way to compress enough damage into the time you DO have to get through these literally hundreds of defenses (in the forms of conditions, hexes, blocks, evasions, shouts, wards, etc). The only natural form of this type of compression innate to most physical classes are very weak, nearly worthless. (Signet of Strength, Scavenger's Focus, etc) I understand this nerf, but if you're going to have to resolve the innumerable forms of perpetu-denial that almost all classes have to physical attacks. Using a secondary and splitting the atts gives you the right to use builds like the conjure warriors/sins/dervs/rangers. (Notice I don't mention Paragons, yes.) It's nothing to punish.

This skill is nearly innately worthless. Even if buffed to expand across multiple activations like Elemental Power, I sincerely doubt you would find this on many skillbars. This is once again an issue of utility. Players that understand the limitations of cast speed and projectile dysfunction have already compensated, and hence aren't going to need this skill. Bar compression also plays a heavy role.

Laugh. I'd explain this further but I don't want my favorite Ele build getting hit with a nerf.

No one is going to use this. It is an innately horrible skill. Stop trying to buff it in worthless ways and fix its utility.

This didn't need a buff. This will only introduce more unneeded challenges for physical attackers.

This is less of a hit on Keystone and more on signets in general. Many signets that might go well with this also require another elite to create full utility on the build. Signets in general need a major buff.

Until this skill works in the same vein as Glyph of Elemental Power (capable of being sustained across an entire skilline of activations), this elite won't be a viable threat. This is less of a problem with the skill and more of a problem with the Mesmer. It seems like this elite was added to try to entice players to invest into the weak Illusion attribute, but in the end, this skill is simply allowing you to play another primary's skillbar on a mesmer. More Illusion skills need to be adjusted to make the line more friendly to this elite.

Once again, another unnecessary buff that will hurt an already crippled physical attacker meta. This, once again, is especially true in RA.

About time. Perpetu-block across 3 out of 4 enemies in RA matches made playing a warrior, especially, impossible.

Please link this skill to benefit from Soul Reaping in some way. The problem is with fast cast/recharge mesmers dualing this skill. Instead of punishing Necromancers to balance a single Mesmer skillbar, help a Necromancer to benefit from this skill as well.

This skill will always be worthless. I don't say that because of the skill's utility. I say that because whoever is balancing the game apparently has something against this skill. It took... what? Three years for this skill to finally be rebalanced? And after all that, it's a TWENTY-FIVE energy spell that causes ***46*** damage. COLD damage. And it also removes an enchantment. Think about that. This is NOT an enchantment removal spell, this is a pathetic AoE damage spell that also removes an enchantment. Truly pathetic. This skill needs some major, major buffs. And someone aside from whomever is currently working on it needs to be put in charge of it. Because they apparently have no idea what they're doing.

Okay. ...Was this supposed to do something? Am I supposed to actually waste a skill slot to bring this now? I can see it on some specialized high end PvP builds, but then, it's not going to need a massive level anyway.

I personally hate playing as a Paragon. I find more benefit in using a ?/P rather than a primary. Leadership, I feel, is broken, and is poorly designed. I cringe when I see a Paragon in my party in a RA match, less so in a 6/6 (where applicable0 or 8/8 when that Paragon isn't wasting attribute points in Spear Mastery. Yet, I feel for them. They've been abused ever since their release. I consider them Guild Wars' misunderstood, often abused stepchild that seems to be able to do nothing but wrong in his parents' eyes, due to their own horrible parenting. The Go For the Eyes buff was just unnecessary. It was one of the few shining reasons to have a Paragon leading your well-orchestrated party into a fight. It's not unusable now, but it was imply unnecessary. The Aggressive Refrain "nerf" can be solved (if you even want to solve it) with one use of Remedy Signet. It's not so much a nerf as it is a nuisance. Please, for the sake of the Guild Wars family, stop abusing the Paragon. Child Services is watching.

Okay. Congratulations.

Sure. Why not.

Why exactly is this skill on my bar? I can bring a skill that actually compresses my damage into a spike, applies bonus damage AND has a high chance to critical with the high weapon mastery I should already have. Nerfing this skill was like spitshining a dead horse. It has its uses, but not in the way you think.

I fully expect the Gladiator's Defense / Riposte warriors in Random Arena to cheer. The rest of us? I think we'll use a real skill with some actually relevant utility, thanks.

So the most important shout in the entire game just got nerfed. It's probably the only spammable shout, as far as I can remember. There goes my Soldier's Stance conjure build. (Not that I could use conjure effectively anymore anyway. And not that anyone else would use Soldier's Stance, which needs a buff, and isn't on this update list.) The 10 second duration does not cover the recharge. Gaining adrenaline in many matches can be an extremely painful process; once again, this is due to the melee-denial meta issues. Roll back the recharge to 2 seconds, 3 if you must. And why do adrenaline skills even have recharge these days? Wasn't that the POINT of adrenaline? That you have to earn it by making hits? Honestly.

Please, Izzy, whomever, look at the heavy list of underpowered skills on the wiki. Notice almost none are on this list. Remedy that. Some skills do need a nerf or a buff, but the ones I keep seeing in these updates are often the ones no one cares about. They aren't relevant to the current meta. The skills that are on the rebalance list are there because they're the ones getting the most disappointment; they're the ones players want to see changed. Not many people have been aching to see Illusion of Haste get a 5 Energy buff.

Who gives a crap about PvP in this game? It's always imbalanced, and has always revovled around gank gimmick-of-the-month builds. It's stupid to turn PVE classes into mush, they might as well make seperate skill updates.

Dude, mellow out. They made so many changes for the wants of the community, and they made two skills not work as well as they did. You're obviously overreacting.

I haven't really played anything since the update, but the AR Para nerf is an interesting one.
WY+GFTE needed this nerf. Basically infinite energy, and ridiculous party buffs. This whole PvE thing is BS - Paras are still overpowered in PvE because of TNTF.

I agreed with the post about Hammer Bash. If that skill got put into the strength line, I'd be so happy.

RaO didn't get touched, and SF got some unneeded attention. Lol, what?

And why did you touch SoD. Why Why Why Why. RIP