Update: 13 Nov. 07

The Black Lotus Nerf was fine. But it's the damage nerf from Horns and Tramp Ox that I don't like .

My opinions are posted here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0&postcount=10

This nerf clearly didn't help HA.

Instead of sway, everyone is now running zergway again, and that is even more lame and even more pointless then any sway could be.

My god this thread fills up quick.

Ok back to the topic.

The pet mechanic - Now that SR still has a time cap on it and spirits no longer contribute, your telling me that pets corspes had to be changed to unexploitable to nerf bat sway? When I look at that, I see energy from spirits and minions solely from dead pets were what allowed sway to win? Sway was beatable, a pain maybe, but beatable. I would like to see how big of an effect the removal of exploitable pet corpses would have on sway with the SR change to spirits as well, but thats highly unlikely.

Instead, what if the exploitable part of pet corpses were put on a timer like SR? Or exploitable only the first they die in a pvp match?

Personally I think changing to exploitable only on the first death in pvp and/or pve for pets would solve both problems: the complaints and sway.

But hey thats just my two cents.

The majority of this update I like, but others just seem a little extreme.

Just because I don't use SP doesn't mean that I don't use skills that have unfortunately been associated with SP. Like I said, I use a constant knockdown build to keep somebody interrupted/knocked-down/useless, so HoTO and trampling ox were like my bread and butter, along with "You Move Like a Dwarf!", which incidentally has great synergy.

The reason that I play my build instead of the death blossom-moebius spam is because keeping an enemy monk knocked down constantly and killing him at the same time makes it easier for the rest of my group to kill the other monsters, without worrying about irritating healing spikes/protection/rez. Plus, the rest of the monsters tend to leave me alone, meaning I don't need to be healed every 2 seconds, which I'm sure the monks on my team would find irritating (and sadly stereotypically fitting for an assassin).

Plus, if the point of the update was to nerf SP sins, wouldn't just a nerf to SP itself be sufficient, instead of nerfing all the skills SP sins use?

you know it wouldn't be hard to implement certain nerfs only to pvp exploits:

"pet no longer leave exploitable corpses in pvp"

"spirits no longer trigger soul reaping in pvp"

it would be easy to make that kind of change if they wanted to control exploits without infuriating everybody

also clear explanations as to why they changed skills or game mechanics would make many players happy. many time i feel they fail miserably at this.

Maybe if you could beat my level 9 Koss in a 1v1 you'd know that none of the nerfs matter in the long run D:

The nerfs don't really change much so its still weaaak.

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

Only about a year late.... now remove the sorry arsed timer please.
Did they not state these 'balances' would be evaluated during the course of the week?
I can understand the B/P teams feeling a little arsey about this after so long, and the no corpse thing strikes me as a hurried fix to a problem not everyone can understand, but everytime an update is announced and implemented,the same things happen,the community here ends up in a shitstorm, with arguments and counters and so on and so forth, all this illustrates to me is that in GW2 that PvE and PvP, need separating in some way.
Dont ask me how, it seems the game format is crying out for a sensible answer to this.
The Ursan Blessing skill is the most ridiculous addition ever to the game in its present form, that needs addressing imo and quick.
Other than those i mentioned i dont think the update is that big a deal, just means people have to consider skillbars a little more thoroughly.
So before i get flamed to hell and back, i am not taking sides, i dont PvP, just enjoy playing the game my way, but that does not mean i enjoy mashing the c button and space bar repeatedly either, that is not entertainment.
For me trying new builds in areas is what i like to do , cos face it after two years and three chapters and an expansion, what the hell is left to do,if you dont PvP??.
Each to thier own.
Peace

Obviously HoTo / trampling would be something to moan about because they DO affect moebius builds. But you were referring to the assassin update in general, of which most don't effect moebius builds at all.

Because then they would use Dark Prison. After that? Death's charge + some kind of snare. Etc etc..

This one is a very strange mixed update.

Removing the Soul Reaping trigger on spirit deaths has been needed for a long, long, long time. As one of the big blood spikers (Kastro, I think) commented back when the Soul Reaping energy gain from spirits was cut in half, "Half of infinity is still infinity." It's been made quite clear by the HA meta's shift to Necro primary healers that this mechanic was overpowered; it's just impossible to run those healers out of energy, which makes it impossible to run a traditional pressure build, which leads to a stale HA meta.

Removing the pet death energy gain may be a bit much, but Izzy probably has better statistics that I do on the proportion of energy gain coming from spirits vs. that coming from pets. Although this does significantly hurt B/P buillds in PvE, there really were only two places where those ever saw much use: Tombs and Urgoz.

A prior poster asked why this change would be necessary (why not just not target the pets) - the problem is that the other team will res the pets, but not heal them, and if you run AoE (which is efficient in the compressed sorts of maps HA employs), you'll inevitably kill the pets without meaning to.


By contrast, the sin nerf is lousy. On the one hand, sins probably needed a nerf; on the other, this wasn't the way to go about it. Izzy has once again proven that he knows WHAT needs a nerf but not HOW to properly implement nerfing it. There's a large set of possible nerfs; somehow Izzy seems to consistently converge on the most sub-optimal ones.

Black Lotus Strike: Killing this dead was totally unnecessary. No one used it when the recharge was 25 and it worked exactly like it does now. (Granted, Shadow Prison didn't exist then.) Why not try extending the recharge first? If a sin can only spike with its chain 3 times in a minute (at a 20 recharge) instead of 5, that's a MASSIVE hit to threat potential. This is where Izzy should have started. If that doesn't do the job, then you move on to more drastic measures. You can always cut the energy gain; assassin spikes are expensive, so forcing sins to wait around and not use other utility between spikes definitely hurts their threat potential. If that STILL doesn't work, then you consider whether you feel two-offhand, two-dual chains are unbalanced. They seemed to be fine in the Factions meta, so I don't see why this mechanic is the problem.

Impale: Again Izzy fails. Here's the problem with this skill - it deals 160-180 damage instantly. That's sort of a lot. It compares to the sort of damage you get out of Eviscerate if you don't crit or if the target isn't a 60 armor squishy, except it's a lot faster. Izzy overbuffed this skill last year; it just took Hero Battles to expose the error.

Adding a 1 second cast fixes the speed at which the damage lands, but this doesn't solve the actual problem, which is that the skill deals way too much damage. Originally it dealt 60-80 and it went unused; at 160-180 it becomes very viable, because the amount of damage it adds leads to an extremely large chain of total damage.

Strip the damage. Let the Deep Wound stand. Then you've got a viable skill.

If you've ever used Impale, you know that the 1/4 second cast is very nice but non-essential. Typically the target runs from you by the time you Impale, and cooldown prevents you from getting additional licks in after you Impale the target (so if the Impale doesn't kill it, you aren't going to finish it). So the only situation in which the 3/4 second actually matters is when something else can land a heal on the target during that 3/4 second.

However, if you're killing something with an Assassin...you guessed it, no one else is healing it! An Assassin spike isn't something you deal with via Infuse (if playing properly) - it's something you pre-prot. So the 3/4 seconds isn't a large change at the margin, and the intent of the nerf (fix it in Hero Battles) will not be attained.

Horns of the Ox: Is a two second knockdown REALLY that overpowered? If it is, other options for making this skill less efficient exist. This skill would take a more significant efficiently, yet remain considerably more viable as a damage chain skill, if one were to let the damage stand and increase casting cost and recharge.


This situation is much like the LoD nerf last week. While LoD had been SCREAMING for a nerf, a two second cast time just wasn't the way to do it. Monks just don't have two seconds to stand around in GvG; unless the invested two seconds leads to certain spike prevention (Aegis), investing two seconds is a huge risk. Plus, a two second cast is quite easily interrupted or even perfectly Diverted.

There were a TON of ways to hit LoD and keep it viable. Cut the healing output. Up the recharge. Add a funky mechanic (perhaps: lose all enchantments). Unfortunately, Izzy chose the harshest possible nerf.

Incremental changes are best for the purposes of game balance; the more severe your changes, the less likely you can predict their outcome. While on the surface it may appear that an unpredictable meta is a good thing from the devs' perspective, in fact an unpredictable meta is more likely to quickly evolve into a stale one. Fix the issues creating a stale meta by small changes, and you're much more likely to have new options become viable alongside some of the old ones. This leads to happier older players (who prefer their old builds) AND to more diversity in the meta.

Shadow Prison is not the only build that uses those skills, they messed up alot of builds that weren't OP as well... that sucks.
Why not to just nerf tiger's stance ffs........

Yeah, but now that black lotus strike is a main attack and gives less energy, SP sins can't go directly to a dual attack and get energy at the same time. Either they can use black spider strike to go to the dual attack (in which case they wouldn't have a lot of energy to use on high power dagger attacks), or they could keep black lotus strike (in which case they'd have to drop a skill from their bar to make room for a new off-hand attack). It seems to me that with the nerf to black lotus strike ANet succeeded in nerfing the SP sin, so I just don't see the need to nerf HoTO and trampling ox as well.

[skips past most of topic]

To every one saying that these changes made assassins suck or whatever.... speak for yourselves! I have a dagger assassin, she doesn't even use those certain ones at all and is doing just fine without them.

To those complaining about Ineptitude, you act like that's the only elite skill mesmers use. I assure you that's not true.

For all the other changes, I have no problems or gripes about them.

I am oddly obsessed with this thread now...

Do we all agree anet has planted chips in our brains to simultaneously hate them and play their game anyway... I think I have a RL aggro bubble now.

Horns of the Ox and Trampling Ox were nerfed because they were overpowered. Not only were you able to knockdown your opponent, you could deal massive amounts of damage at the same time. Now you have to prioritize between the damage and the knockdown.

If you've ever used the new impale you know that its a useless pile of trash and that anyone with a decent ping can interupt it.

Stop pretending like you know what you're talking about.

If you're having to interrupt the Impale, you failed earlier in the process...

No?

Its not like you camp a target anyway.

The new impale is garbage we've already dropped it from our bars and so has anyone else who isn't retarded.

jeez... Maternity Wards have less QQ than this thread.
Boo-freekin-Hoo.

Ok, my first reaction to the no pet corpse "nerf" was the same as most of the posters here - OMG they just screwed up B/P builds.


Then I went and tried it out. Folks, if you're not planning on letting your pet die and thus actually use some points in BeastMastery, you've just created a tank that can out tank a wammo in ToPK. If you have fight pets rushing forward to meet with the incoming grasps, there's more then enough time for Barrage rangers (augmented by orders) to take down at *least* one. From there your MM can fire up the army and its good to go. Can anyone honestly say that beyond a slightly faster startup on each map that the pets *had* to die in ToPK in order for your group to be succesful? I think not.

In fact, I'm happy now that I can avoid the skill lockouts every time fluffy kicked the can. I'm happy that I can actually use the pet as the weapon he was designed to be.

Just because the most understandable gimmick of the B/P team is gone, doesn't mean that the concept itself is broken. Let it go. This isn't the huge nerf to PvE that folks are making it up to be.

there's still more to be done (rao thumpers, splinter weapon, DA sins) but this is certainly the right direction. SR finally got fixed, shame they didn't do this a year and a half ago. Iway is going to return (i just went to id1 and i saw some iways) so I'd like it to get nerfed very violently as it is ricidulous. Make the skill iway only affected by dead party members (not allies) and there you go.

have no toilet to flush you money down.

A shame they have to nerf all the good sin skills, looking really hard to spike with them, its like making a monk only able to heal half a bar or only prevent half a spike. God now EVERYONE will play the flippin assacaster, just put all the IAS to 2 seconds at zero strengh and buff all the good skills again =D.

i agree on some of the updates,all sin updates are ok....but HORNS?!its now even more conditional and costing than trampling ox.
they didnt even touch assacasters too,wtfisgoingon.
theyre still stupidly powerful and have been since nf came in

Is it just me or are Anet Retards? AFAIK the game aint that bad in terms of balance. I have done some HA, RA, TA, GvG and almost everything PvE and I find they are nerfing stupid things, I mean, pets not leaving corpses? It contradicts itself (They are fleshy, get poisoned etc, but dont leave corpses? WTF?) and its getting stupider and stupider.

That's not the main complaint, as far as I can tell.

The main complaint is it's ugly and stupid and makes no sense within the context of the game.

I almost feel bad for sins....almost. I'm bummed about trampling since it's the ONLY one of those skills I tend to use, but oh well. Back to the drawing board!

I'm pissed that they made Ineptitude recharge longer; I personally thought it took long enough. Oh well.

WoH needed the down grade, but it some instances its still a bit strong. I still think it either needs to be returned to its original heal (100 unconditional) OR remove the self heal ability. Just my personal opinion.

As for necros; the loss of SR from spirits should have been implimented a long time ago. This, as well as the pets no longer leaving exploitable corpses is probably due to pvp misuse. My suggestion: return reaping to trigger on every player or pet death, remove it completely from spirits and minions. This will reduce the energy "unfairness" that is the concern in pvp. As for pets leaving un-exploitable bodies, I'm assuming this is to curb the use of minions in pvp. Is there not a way to code it so that pet bodies present in pvp are not exploitable, but pet bodies in pve still are? This might possibly create a balance most players could live with. As it is, numerous people seem to be in an uproar about the pet change.

As for changing Mhenlo's elite in GW:EN, all I can say is thank you.

edited: wordage, don't want to offend anyone. ^.^

I would like to know why they never nerf rangers!!

OMG that pisses me off!!

Fried Tech.... jking?

Pets... are still a Ranger skill (whether primary or secondary)
And EW killed the solo Ranger trapper build

=

Uber nerfed rangers

When has anything in a game made sense? All the pet whiners make no sense.

Because rangers are extremely balanced

You're right. I really dont care about the pet corpse in particular. I dont pack my pet anymore anyway. I can take a lvl 20 ice imp, that has aoe damage and slows down the mobs for one skill slot instead of my pet which takes 2.

It's just the continual bashing of pve for the sake of "balance" in pvp. And really, pvp'ers aren't looking for balance, they're looking for consistency. Change scares them, as it does pve'ers. "OMG, that team isn't running with a balance build, WTF are we going to do? Let's get Izzy to nerf whatever they're doing and force them to run a balanced build, then we can beat them with our skill at VOD."

Whats with the Korean account bans?

Methinks some people cry too much. This Necro nerf did little to me in PvE, and I'm a Spiteful Spirit necro. It's true that the SR timer removed would be better though.

Like was stated before: If you need a pet in PvE to exploit a corpse from, you need more damage in your build, or you just shouldn't be bringing an MM period.

Wow, this thread exploded to over 30 pages in less than a day. the only thing that i see as remotely controversial is the 'sin, ew, and pet nerfing.

Just you, mate.

Tylos.

You win this thread.

Top 10 Post of All time here folks.

Epic Post. Epic.

Please, keep playing the game "properly". Those grawl ulodytes REALLY need to get Searing Flamed some moar.

omg they actually got rid of energy gain from spirits...thank you...

Look at the bright side they did not nerf the drop rate for lesser guardian spears. Because if that happened I would have to dust off Baulders Gate


Honestly if they didn’t stir the pot now and then it would get stagnate. Pull up Wiki and start brain storming

WoH is still too over powered imo. Needs to go back to target other ally.
As for as the rest big deal.
I never use any of those skills they nerfed for assassin anyways.

Pet not leaving corpse oh well. In Tombs my pet rarely died anyways.
To those crying about tombs and the pet you obviously werent that good at it if you really needed to rely on the pets to die to get minions.
There are ALOT of exploitable corpses for MM to use there.

I'm quoting this just so people know to not take this seriously, SB.