Update: 13 Nov. 07

gg izzy
like every change

Would be nice to see some kind of explanation for some of these changes from devs here.

Would be nice to knwo if they will remove the timer limit on soul reaping.

Would love to here some kind of coherent reason for player pets not leaving exploitable corpses. They are meat and blood creatures, do they leave them when tamed by the enemy in PvE, I know they dont when untamed.

My thoughts:

Assassin
Dont care, don't care, don't care

Mesmer
Don't care

Monk
Meh...whatever I guess

Necro
Booooo! Maybe it was needed...I don't really know, but it sucks to see necros take so many hits with updates. Necro is still perfectly playable, but its just one more little blow to a fun profession to play.

Ranger
Barrage...pretty cool I guess
EW - Hurts UW trappers I think. Might screw it up a bit.
Magebane - Don't care
Pets - WTF! This is one of those WTF mechanics they implement kinda like when they introduced exhaustion to some of the Ritualist skills. Although I didn't play B/P Tombs much anymore these days I did enjoy doing them once in a while. Buh Bye... B/P On the bright side I have wanted to try a normal PUG put together there before, but just never could because 99% of people in Tombs was B/P. This now gives other professions a little more chance to do Tombs maybe. Then again, maybe it will just become a ghost town???

It's not like the no-exploitable-pets change epicly changed any gameplay, but for some reason I can't help feeling like I'm in a giant box of creativity that keeps getting smaller. I think WoH's update made it a bit bigger though, I have to give them credit. Well done there.

Maybe it was the time I brought a pet into FoW with Jagged Bones...
I'm not gonna lie, it was totally "noobish" but I had a frickin blast, as did my guildies!

barrage boost is nice but... why? no one will complain but it looks random to me

(why updating only Eotn Henchies? other campaigns are easy but lotsa henchies still suck)

I think he means lotus strike, but that's nothing like BLS apart from the energy gain.

bah, make the orders in tombs and the bip in urgoz suicide a few times for a minion army if it means that much to ya

if anything, the corpseless pet "issue" makes it easier on barragers. now they don't have to waste 2 slots on their bars for the stupid minion factory pet and can bring something more useful. they also don't have to listen to idiots spam REZ YOUR PET REZ YOUR PET the very instant your pet dies, as if you aren't sharp enough to notice all yr skills are blacked out and you can't insta-rez your pet anyway.

instead of a pet, how about bringing more spirits? maybe some shouts or chants? a weapon spell that isn't splinter weapon? (there are other gud weapon spells, you know.) or how about this amazing idea...don't rely on bp's for every challenging area of the game. =O it makes those areas stale and boring. honsestly, how many times can you bp tombs or urgoz before you want to bash yr head into a wall. pve isn't so hard you have to resort to gimmicks to beat it. (except for maybe doa, but isn't that why everyone hates it?)

/endrant

anyways, i like these changes. gg no re spiritway, don't let the door hit you on the ass on yr way out.

i agree the timer should be removed from soul reaping now.

now if lod would be changed i could be completely happy. the 2 second cast just adds it to the big stack of useless monk elites. hell, lots of elites could use a buffing of some sort to add diversity to the game.

Pets... meh, could be worse.

Now change Soul Reaping back to the way it was now that you can't exploit it anymore with spirits!!

It took some time but after more then a year they finaly nerfed Spiritway! And not just a little bit but totaly, i love this update. No more E-management for the N/Rt, no more spammable RaO and no more hero necro's with an whole army of minions.

About the other changes:
I like them also, Ineptitude was overpowered in an sineptitude build, split with high presure at stand. Like the nerfs both on Ineptitude and SP Assassin.
WoH was indeed to strong.

I still miss the update that makes BLight an playable skill again so it can compete with skills like RC, SoD and WoH. Also i would like to see update on LoD. Almost unplayable now.

Leaves me wondering what warmonger's weapon and barrage can do to the caster mobs there, might be hax. As for creativity, the usual PvE-er kinda fails at that unfortunately. I once spend a long time in tombs getting a group together to test a build I made up. They all kept leaving when they saw it wasn't a traditional B/P team.

Still, kinda like barrage groups in a way, sometimes when I'm tired and the group is fun I really enjoy farming there.

Pets - Should just make it they so they dont leave corpses in PvP. The same way they only get death penalty in PvP.

Or at least when they die it's only the pet rez that needs to recharge, not your whole skill bar. =/

Barrage - Pointless. An extra 3 Damage why bother.

EW - Yeah kind of overkill. I cant see it having any use now in PvE. How much they have changed it(well nerfed it) is just pretty mad.
Example: now at 16 Beast Mastery it lasts for a max of 33 seconds. Before at 3 Beast Mastery it would last at 54 seconds.

Main reason why I get upset from changes like this is it takes away more builds in PvE giving you less choice again and most times less fun.

But yeah the same reply is 'lol pve iz E Z u nub go lurn to adapt'. Got nothing to do with how easy PvE is, just a pain seeing good skills get trashed making them pointless to use because of pvp, over and over. Yes we will adapt, but the fun aspect is on the down.

Anyway thats my view.

The totally useless buff to Barrage seems to be the "cookie" handed to Rangers and Necros for removing pet corpses?

As compensation?

Seems PvE players need to be appeased like silly kids, nice stance towards the majority of your customers...


Instead of buffing the skill used the most ranger skill, try to make some skills see the light of day instead of making the list of trash skills longer in every update. People should be given some alternative ranger elites than BHA and Barrage for PvE, PvPers would say the "Meta got stale"... sigh.


EDIT: Giving Mhenlo Word of Healing was reasonable. But why did he get it? Because the elite he used before is now officially declared to SUCK BIG TIME. The king is dead, long live the new king.

As a beastmaster I'm happy now that pets are more worth alive than dead.

Want an easily exploitable corpse? Invite a silly wammo to your team and let him run ahead. They even get DP to speed things up.

And with the folks saying how according to the lore fleshy creatures leave corpses, it's also in the lore that things dying get death penalty. Pets in PvE do neither now. Although, judging from the replies here, I'm sure majority of you would love to have pets with DP.

Eh, pets were too good! They had to be balanced...

LOL... remove the pet corpses, remove one more argument for pets in PvE. They can still serve as meat shields.

Honestly, how can one see the exploits of pets for minions as a massive pve problem... when Ursan Blessing is allowed to stay.

But buff Barrage... as if anyone needed that. Many rangers have already superglued it on their pve bars.


Edit: Need to stop posting, this update got me cold in the morning.

Thank you Anet for fixing so many problems in one scoop. Please keep up the momentum, the job is not yet finished

A drastic change of build is unviable in PvP because you never know what you'll go up against and have to form your build around being able to handle many situations. (Yes, even with the existance of FoTMs. There was never a time where every single group run the exact same build.)

In PvE the opposite is true. You always know what you're up against, and can form a build to directly counter anything that you'll meet in the mission.

Of course, there's always some misunderstanding between the PvPers and PvEers. PvPers assumed that PvEers actually tweak their builds to suit the task at hand. In reality that rarely happens... To certain extend Anet is at fault I think. They never allowed primary-profession change in PvE, that greatly limits the builds some PvEers can play, and not enough is done to promote the dynamic playstyle.

Anyway, Anet had always envisioned the game to be forever changing, so why not just move on?

If people continue to drag the thread offtopic with their attempts to be e-gangsters by trolling PvE'ers or PvP'ers, there will be bans handed out.

This is not the proper thread to discuss the differences in PvE and PvP balance. This is a thread specifically for responses to the 13 Nov update.

100% correct.

Funnily enough i cant remember seeing any assassins in pve, let alone any using the SP combo.

I don't understand the people complaining about their tombs farming build being nerfed, tombs is utterly pointless to farm, the greens are all merchant junk and the ecto drop rate is really poor.

If you are that reatarded you need to use cookie cutter builds to play pve then do what all the other degenerates do and use Ursan Blessing along with a load of consumables, but if all your doing is grinding cash then farming isnt the way to go.

The only skill they missed killing is RaO, but the rest of the skill changes were brilliant.

Nice to see SR finally got the fix it needed. Shame it was months too late.

NO!!! Not EW again, this is gonna really mess up solo trapping
I hate When A-Net do this.

I like how deadly paradox is still untouched.

:/

Farming is not the only purpose of PvE ppl, some of us just want to have fun. And, in some places, if your guild doesn't have enough people who wants to play a given map, you have to PUG, and PUGing is practically impossible without those builds in such places, as no one wants to try something new.

My last word about PvE.

About the update, I think that necro SR nerf was adequate, but not the best solution at the moment. Bring back to the original SR and remove energy from spirits and maybe minions. Let ranger's pet live in peace, and die in their corpse, don't treat them as a stone golem, they don't deserve it.

Because B/P works in more places then just tombs. Heroes kinda rule at playing it too. Greens are for heroes, not for sale. People are just surprised because pets leaving corpses wasn't exactly game breaking. Spirits were the real problem.
Retarded, degenerate, thank you sir, you are being too kind. I just like numb farming runs for fun, some people actually LIKE pve :P.
They also missed melandru's avatar and lolcaster sins.

Assassin's wouldn't need...they Dont need an IAS.
But a-net puts this silly crap

Repost of what I would like to see

BLS is currently bugged,

Horns- revert.Now.

Shadow Prison - Keep duration lower snare to 50%. Target Foe takes 40....20 less damage from attacks. If you crit that foe takes +15 more damage.

Shadow of haste - Original Form.

Jungle strike- increase conditional damage, Damage is not increased if target is hexed.

Recall: You cannot end recall if you have taken damage within the past 10 seconds. If recall is forcefully removed (enchant removal) you take 50 damage.

Swap: You and target foe switch places. If target is a spirit, you switch places and spirit takes 100 damage.

Repeating strike: 25% armor penetration.

Deadly paradox: Affects Spells only. When it ends your spells are disabled for 10 seconds, while deadly paradox is on you attack 60!% slower.

Shadow refuge Heal 20....80 hp, for 4 seconds you have 2....9 regeneration, if your are attacking a foe when shadow refuge ends. Gain an additional 20...70 hp.

Death blossom: If you are under 20% hp you deal an additional +5 damage.

HEart of shadow: Target Ally.

Siphon strength: target foe can not critical.

Points I'd like to make since actually playing my ranger after the update..

I HATE HATE HATE the ranger changes. The Barrage buff does not impress me. I rarely saw any increase in my damage, and what I did see was less that with FW which I rarely use anymore these days.

The pet corpse thing still has me pissed off, not only did they take minion fodder, they are still disabling my skills for no good reason.


My whole point of my first post about I need to give up on my fave type of games (ie GW) is that every time we adapt to anets stupidity, they just nerf again. Over and over they nerf skills with the cry of balance..only to destroy character classes again and again.

What I see happening here is a slow death to GW in a mission to drive play to GW2 and and secondedly driving folks away from GW means that when GW2 arrives they only have to focus on one game instead of two.

GG Anet, your plan is working in part with me. I AM loosing my drive to play GW, but wont be buying GW2

i can just... JUST be happy that spirits got nerfed. But deleting sins from the game was harsh

Mokone may put it a bit harsh, but I'm afraid she's right. This is no way to talk to someone anyways, moko > you.

wtb manners lololol

Worst Nerf Ever.

Instead of balancing sins and sway, you just totally destroyed it.

Everybody is FORCED to get a 3(some 2) monk backline in HA now. This is a really bad thing, everything is based around spike, spike and spike now.

Before 3 BM=54 sec
After 16 BM=33 sec

GG?

Is it worth pointing out that while pets don't get DP in PvE, they also don't get morale boosts from killing bosses? So the two kinda cancel out. So if they did add DP to pets, they could at least add morale boosts, too.

Anyway, for the most part, it's not that everyone wants to use their pets as minion/well fodder, it's just that

A) it's nice to be able to, in a pinch ("Flamigo's revenge" and so on), and

B) it makes no sense from a 'story' perspective that charmed pets are magically non-fleshy after death. It's a minor change from a mechanics perspective, but a major change from an immersion pespective.

And it clearly CAN be a change solely restricted to the area where it actually WAS being exploited, so...it should.

Monks took another hit, not needed after nerf to LoD

Pets not leaving corpse..that's just stupid

Yay kill the sins a while and leave the paragons alone

Spirits no longer affect soul reaping...well that is fine, now revert the earlier change to soul reaping (since the spirit fix is what everyone always wanted anyway)

Mesmer: inept - 15 sec recharge was fitting - nobody was complaining that its too powerful

Necro: nice with the no spirits but why then is there still time restrictions on the soul reaping?

pets: Wow no bodies that sux...

The purpose of your pet is as an aid to help you fight. If you bring a pet just to let it die, get a corpse to exploit, resurrect and start over was not the intention of having a pet. My main character is a ranger and I have no problem with this change.

SP sins = bye!
Woh = rly necessary
Soul Reaping, EW = bb sway

im afraid all those SP sins in HB will run soj now... i think dancing daggers should be blockable...

Good one izzy

Many already see how to bypass this SP nerf.

All they did is kill Horns of the ox.
And if any pvp'er says that Horns Deserved! this death.
I want to see proof that they haven't been in a head injury recently >.>

EW+SR = bye sway Time for some REAL builds.
I dont like the SP build nerf :s

~Prof.

Look, the fact that you CAN go through the game with an empty skill bar and just direct henchies...is irrelevant. You could do the same in heroes ascent, and just direct heroes. Would it be dull, unnecessarily difficult and basically pointless? Yes.

It doesn't ask if you want to make a "PvP character or a HenchMaster character": skills are an intimate part of the PvE experience, just as they are to PvP.

Fixes for one aspect can hurt in the other, and insulting people because they're not happy about this DOES NOT HELP.

But they do get morale from something at least:

Soo very much signed.

Pet should leave corpses period. Stop ruining the story to please your game mechanics.

Shadow Prison changing anymore would make it useless. If I wanted a useless teleport, I'd use Dark Prison. Before the change to where you needed even higher Deadly Arts, I would use this skill on my Warrior when she uses a hammer, however, now that I have to put in around 8 or 9 attribute levels into Deadly Arts, either makes my strength or hammer mastery, completely useless.

If they really want to solve the Tiger Prison, just say you'll ban them! And let us use the old skills.

Shadow's Refuge, NO. It has a 4 second cool down, do you realize how easily you'll stay alive? I have almost no difficulty staying alive with how it is, NOW.

Death Blossom, be changed to 33% rather than 20%, honestly, how will this be worth anything to you if you're at 20%? You'll be able to pull off 1/2 of the attacks from the dual, and die.

Heart of Shadow, no.

BLS, fix it.

Horns, go back.

Recall, no. It was a decent skill, now it sucks.

Shadow of Haste, yes, let's go back.

Jungle Strike, I actually like the look of that, but the extra conditional may find it's abuse.

Siphon Strength, it's great already.

To anyone saying "Quit QQing. PvE is easy" or "Theres Ursaway" need to realize that even if PvE is easy, or there is alternatives, it doesn't take away from the annoyance of having things changed around on you.

Thats the grievance, and its a legimate grievance, so stop belittle-ing the other players. -.- And that includes some of you mods here.

Assassin
Black Lotus Strike: decreased Energy gain to 5..18; this skill now counts as a lead attack.
Exposed Defenses: decreased duration to 1..11 seconds.
Horns of the Ox: decreased damage to 1..11.
Impale: increased casting time to 1 second.
Trampling Ox: decreased damage to 5..20.
================

Uhm..

1 nice little tweak imo
2. bad nerf
3. damage nerfs..hmm, can#t say something about it, must test it



Mesmer
Ineptitude: increased recharge time to 20 seconds.
==================
Why ? What was it before ?


Monk
Word of Healing: decreased unconditional heal amount to 5..130.
===============
first they buff it...then they nerf it -.- lol


Necromancer
Soul Reaping: no longer gains any benefit from Spirits.
===============

Stop nerfing the SR !!!!, otherwise you can start thinking off soon for a new primary attribute for Necros, because SR wont be it worth anymore to be called a primary attribute (not to mention, HOW LESS SKILLS PRIMARIES HAVE LIKE SR AND FAST CASSTING...two attributes which cold really need more skills compared to the other attributes of necros/mesmer



Ranger
Barrage: increased damage to 5..20 damage.
Energizing Winds: decreased duration to 1..31 seconds.
Magebane Shot: increased disable time to 10 seconds; decreased recharge time to 5 seconds.
Player Pets: no longer leave exploitable corpses.
====================
WTF ..change this back ...pets are LIVING CREATURES, thus meaning, they give corpses ... U can't change this simple, activate your brain and think on an other nerf way, then to take away pet corpses...
or what will happen next, that players also won#t give anymore corpses ..then GOOD BYE MM -.- well made...fools

A slight hooray for barrage buff/magebane ...


Miscellaneous
Changed the elite skill used by the henchman Mhenlo in Eye of the North to Word of Healing.

lol, clear, where you made now the successful deathnerf of LoD Monks, couldn't you just remove only the annoying 80% limit and let the heal ammount in peace ? , imo LoD isnt worth it anymore to be called an Elite ..
tooo long cast time, when used alone, and theoverall heal is crap, there the player can just use the normal group heal skill that heals now through the buff better


but what is really annoying ..AGAIN no ele or dervish buffs/nerfs ....especially some dervish attack skills need a big nerf and no i dont mean with that melandrus avatar -.-, i mean the scythe attack skills, there are some in, which are overpowered and that does any player see in HM, when fighting versus dervish enemies, that use lots of scythe attacks, other then skills of other attributes.

i don't find monsters in HM funny, that do withing less seconds with like 2 attacks 300 damage to anything, what they hit of the party with their attacks
Any dervish monster groups in HM are H/H terminators and kill your h/Hs away within less hits, when your not able to kill them quick enough, before they hit your group too often with their scythe attacks, where good groups heals are neccessary to survive long enough to have a chance versus them.
Not to mention that the standard weapon damage output of scythes is imo overpowered with 9-41...it should be more like 10-36 and therfore the attackspeed is very slightly better

Also mesmer skills could need more buffs in reload times or energy costs
Ritualist ghosts need level buffs and need to become multiple cast able, also rits need ghosts, which follow them, for example as elite ghosts
Rangers need to become able to have more then only 1 pet at once so that they can become real beast masters with maximum 3 pets around them, therfore max level of pets should be decreased to 15 and pets dont receive anymore these buffs through making them either dire or whatever
===============

this post will be edited for following Ele example skils, that could be nerv/buff'ed

Ele:

Breath of Fire: reduce Reload to 15s, reduce damage to 10...25, reduce cast time to 1s

Chain Lightning: make this an Elite Skill, raise effect to "up to 4 foes adjacent to target"
lower damage to 10-70, take away exhaustion, raise energy cost to 15 and raise reload to 20s, reduce cast time to 2s

Crystal Wave: remove the condition remove of enemies and change it to condition remove of nearby allies, reduce energy cost to 10, raise cast time to 1s, reduce recharge to 15s

Deep freese: reduce energy cost to 15, skill will cause now exhaustion

Double Dragon. skill will have no range limit anymore, skill will hit twice without this 2 seconds phrace, damage gets reduced to 15- 80

Dragons Stomp/Earthquake: energy cost gets reduced to 15, recharge raised to 25

Ebon Hawk: reduce cast time to 1

Elemental Flame: change it, that enemy will burn, whenever hitted by a hex spell and when this spells gets cast on enemies, that are buring, then they will suffer on 15-25 damage for every second, they burn., raise energy cost to 10

Eruption: raise seconds of effect to 10, lower blindign to 5s, reduce energy cost to 10

Ether Prodigy: take away the hp loss, after skill end, change it into a skill disable form, like:
Whewn this skill ends, for every remaining energy point this skill will get disabled for 1 second
take away exhaustion, raise energy cost to 10, raise recharge to 10

Ether Renewal: raise duration to 20 seconds for the next 1-5 spells, raise energy cost to 25, make it a Ward Skill and rename it to Ward of Ether Renewal

Elemental Attunement Skills: raise energy gain to 1-3 Energy + 40% of Skill Cost, raise cast time to 3s, raise reload time to 60

Freezing Gust: raise slowering duration of that hex to 1-10s

Frigid Armor: make skill buffable for partymembers, not only self buff, raise e cost to 10, reduce reload to 15s

Frozen Burst, raise reload to 15s, reduce energy cost to 10, raise cast time to 1s

Gale: take away exhaustion and miss chance, raise reload to 10s

Glowing Gaze: make it hex spell and ele receives 1-5 energy for every second the hexed foe burns.
this hex lasts for 5 seconds, raise energy cost to 10, reduce cast time to 1/4, reduce recharge to 5s

Glowign Ice, same changes like above, change water hex condition trigger to Slow Down trigger, means enemies must be slowed down

Glowstone : again same changes ... and correct especially here the recharge, when nothign gets changed about these skills, glowstoen gets quicker recharged, then the other 2 skills oO whats imo a failure

Note: where is the similar skill for air magic > Glowing Sparks for example

Ice prison: reduce duration to max 15s, reduce recharge to 15s

Inferno: increase range to all enemies in location, give skill exhaustion, raise recharge to 20s, reduce damage to 30-110, raise cast time to 2s

Kinetic Armor: reduce energy cost to 10, raise duration to 10s, cast spells give 5s plus, recharege deduced to 45s

Lightning Hammer: reduce energy cost to 15, raise recharge to 8, raise damage to target and up to 3 adjacent foes, suffer half damage of the main target

Lightning Orb: reduce energy cost to 10, raise recharge to 10, skill will become an elite and all enemies that stand in the line of lightning orb will receive damage
skill will cause exhaustion

Maelstrom: reduce energy cost to 15

magnetic Aura: reduce block chance to 66%, player has to be enchanted with an air element enchant, reduce recharge to 30s, reduce duration to 15s

Meteor: reduce recharge to 20s, reduce cast time to 2s

this would end in a huge novel, if I write now further, because these 2 classes have so much skills, which could need buff/nerfs