Nerfs are good.

Wow, use some common sense here.

Why nerfs are bad for dummies

Your average Guild Wars player, isn't intelligent. Your average Guild Wars player doesn't know you can customize weapons. Your average Guild Wars player doesn't know how to adapt. You can see these from the large number of coppy cats in HA or GvG or HB. You can see this in the large number of PvX builds coppy cats. Therefore when something gets nerfed your average player becomes upset, because that's all they are used to playing -the common cookie cutter builds - which are the ones nerfed. Upset customers are BAD FOR BUISNESS. This could hurt future sales. Less sales leds to less money. Less money leds to less people and less time for the development of games. Less money and people leds to a worse product.

I would ONLY agree to nerfing being good if the Holy Trinity was brought down to the level the rest of us are at.

You're forgetting a key point, here - Health and Energy does not change. So if everyone has 600 health, damage and healing skills are equivalently nerfed, you end up with deaths occurring less and less frequently, till they no longer occur at all. It really isn't rocket science, Yanman.

EDIT: The point is to balance skills around the mechanics, and sometimes to balance mechanics around other mechanics.

I would only agree to nerfing if Paragons were brought down from being more powerful then God himself....

They're On Fire + There's Nothing To Fear + Save Yourselves + Focused Anger + Stand Your Ground = Balance to Arena Net.....

Wait lemme get this straight

Healing A/B DamageX/Z Are not attribute points, but rather there strength in total correct? Thus they are all equally strong?

It somewhat matters and somewhat doesn't

If they were now balanced, and they were now all nerfed to be weaker, what it does is create a new effect. Battles last longer.

Your damage and healing are weaker which nullify each other. Your maximum hp however has not.

If the build's can barely kill because the damage they do pales in comparison to the minimum 480 hp= problem.

All those skills were nerfed, best damage skills max do 10 damage, best healing skills max heal 10 damage. Theres 480 hp, And Natural regen.
Theres a problem now. Thus Utility must come, that can stop healing or Damage, and provide effects to get past that so that you can slowly dwindle hp down.
The problem is if they nerf Utility now.

If you nerf utility, then even if A B X Z are balanced, the damage they all now do is low if there power out of /10 is all 4. With Utility nerfed to a power level of 4. Then its stale again. There is Utility, to stop... utility. Thus we have people who's hp would never go below 70% tops, unless they were being stupid.

Nerf's do matter, Even if all skills are balanced, countered well.

If there to weak to matter than who cares how balanced they are...there so weak it causes an imbalance. Your still only doing 10 damage to people with 480 hp...and then they can boost that up to 580 if they want. Maybe higher. Then Bam, what next Yan, doing 10 damage to try and destroy 580, but each 10 damage you do is healed evenly. You use utility to stop healing, but they have utility to stop you from shutting them down.

Its not just about power >.> Balance should be regulated through all of the games mechanic's.

And thus Just plain Skill nerf's doesn't cut it.

If what I said was jumbled up and confusing I can rephrase it.


Ah arcane you beat me to the punch, and did it nice and simple.

So even if you nerf game mechanics into relation with the other nerfs.

You did what you could've done by just properly balancing the skills.

You would have to nerf many mechanics (including degen)

And having lets say just 100 hp in regarding to the nerfs to damage and healing means that..damage must be doing about 2-3 damage >.> thats not very attractive to people and healing must be 2-3 aswell.

They're equally strong, but how you (ab)use them makes the difference in winning or losing. It doesn't mean A heals the same amount of damage that X heals. It'll probably be a bit less, so deaths do occur. But you shouldn't focus on the correlation in se, but rather the fact that you can always nerf, but buffing stuff usually makes other skills more overpowered.


Nerfing doesn't make other stuff overpowered, usually.
Buffing can.

Agreed, they keep the game interesting. GW is one of the best PvP games out there imho, would be a waste to squander that. PvE has the same creatures all the time, so I don't mind a shake-up at times. I lol'd at riverside earlier today, seems like even the mods have given up on moderating that :P.

Usually skills that get nerfed well are still good after a nerf anyway, more or less provig the nerf was a well deserved one (Crippling slash+enraging charge come in mind).


Sorry, but don't say you didn't have it coming...

Only nerfing skills, and no buffing, is only a good thing if you nerf the most powerful, and assume that the weakest are already balanced properly. Take Otyugh's Cry as a perfect example. If you were to leave it be, without its buff it was given, and you only nerfed skills, in order to balance them properly, you would have to nerf every skill in the game down to Otyugh's level.

By saying nerfs only, you assume there are no useless or underpowered skills at all. Yes, buffing can overpower a skill, but so can nerfing. If you nerf healing or protection or utility skills, but don't nerf damage-dealing, guess what you have: overpowered damage. It's all entirely about balance.

I dont think it's nerfing alone that improves the game. A dynamic game is a good game. A changing game makes the players rethink builds, strategies and change up their playing. A static game is a stable game, but also a boring game. People have to win and people have to lose. Losing is part of the game as much as winning is. Nerfs and buffs in the same way are important to this game.

Lets nerf our favourite Class Assassin so that it does not have any skills at all. Cannot use secondary skills
cannot recieve enchantments, cannot dual strike, cannot take chants, no effects from wards/environment
weapon spells don't work.

Go Make a build.

Exaggeration but the point still stands.

Ensoriki, Yan is one of the top players ever. Keep flaming him, he obviously doesn't know jack all...pfft

The assassin still hurts. It still puts more damage in 4 seconds than any other class in the game can.

Look, if it's from a pve standpoint, you still have infinite mobius thing.
If it's from a pvp standpoint, you'd agree that the mechanics of the assassin fundamentally damage the more tactical aspects of pvp play and thus should be handicapped in order to make it a less desirable if not overly dominating option.

Unfortunately, nerfs also make certain skills invisible for a while. Just a matter of time, until someone creates a new 'BA' build to take down everyone. Then it gets spammed like wild fire, then we get more nerfs.

I wasn't flaming him, or atleast I didn't intend to make it look like flames.

Im just saying, if all there is, is nerfs thats what you get.

Class's who can't do crap.

There has to be control.

The current assassin mechanics perhaps, but it could be changed. (pvp)"

And I doubt yan cares about anything I say >.> I doubt we've actually held a conversation between each other.

That is all.

There's a nice avatar *saves to computer and opens photoshop*

By the way, are there a lot of other games as nerf heavy as Guild Wars? Because, I mean, I thought the Fire Prism cap and the damage reduction of the Seer Council in Dawn of War: Dark Crusade was bad, but, heh, that was before I played Guild Wars, game of the weekly nerfs.

I don't like to generalize.
I'll just say nerfing synergies that fuel cheap ass builds is good.
Nerfing skills out of gameplay altogether is bad....in the long run it will make the game stale.

So each skill update I hopes to see the skill balancers figure out ways to blast cheap synergies rather than completely removing skills from the game.

Buffs are better than nerfs. Think of how many skills no one even looks at exist and just sit there, taking up space, or making their way onto a weak AI's skill bar. The more buffs these get, the more they are usable, the more variety, the better everything.

Probably been mentioned before, but I don't mind nerfs when the skill is still useful afterwards, it isn't made into complete trash. See Shelter for details on how to destroy a skill.

Funny. You admit you use a slippery slope fallacy, and still use it as an argument?

When they nerf a primary attribute, it means an entire profession becomes playable only as a secondary. I don't think that's good. Not at all.

Ensoriki, you're automatically assuming that each person on the team with a specific damage/healing output, goes for only one, unique target on the other team each, as if a match consists out of 8 1v1 fights...

There's something called spikes, I'm sure you've seen it at least, that a team coordinates a spike, for example a Warrior using Shock -> Eviscerate -> Executioner's Strike, with the midline Ele (a BSurger, for example) supplying a Lightning Orb + Lightning Strike, and if possible, maybe a quick Burning Arrow from a Ranger if he/she hasn't gone ganking.

It creates a surplus. the 10 becomes 20, 30, 40, or even more (through things as timing). Pressure would lower their capability to cope with the spike (say, dropping their healing capability from 10 to 6 due to a lack of energy, or crappy positioning with a knockdown from Horns of the Ox being the result (to bring an Assassin example in here)). If the team works together right the number/balance within the match itself will change the whole time, which is the direct result of the player's and his/her team's skill, and ability to adapt to whatever might be happening (e.g. split tactics, full gank, etc.).

PS: Snow Bunny, you're funny .
Yanman isn't that good at all. He leeroys into into the enemy base without selfheals and back-up. That one time he played sin in GvG with some people in a pugguild match, he had 45 DP after 6 minutes. I, the other sin, hadn't died at all. Lawdy.

/agree with the basic tenet. Skill updates refresh the game and keep it interesting. Sometimes they play havoc with your fabourite builds, and that means find a way about things, or play a different class for a while. If the nerf is truly absolutely 100% unfair then they will realise in time and shift things back in another update.

If there were no updates you would have to play "ele tank monk",game and that is just dullsville.

Tell that to ether renewal.

I think that game updates, skill buffs and nerfs are good as long as they don't destroy certain skills, as they keep the meta and game mechanics fresh.

I like nerfs sometimes. I don't play for long periods of time so when I come back I have to relearn most of the things. I don't like them but I know they're needed to keep the gameing moving espacialy now that they aren't going to be coming out with anything new. It's the best way to change the game without actually changing the game.

Again, the point is Health and Energy is a static mechanic. I mean, unless we're talking nerfing that, too. That huge spike of 40+ damage against a single 480+ target is just so devastating, isn't it? Oh man, talk about a quick kill. Headshot!

Seriously. The skills are not just compared with themselves for effectiveness, they are also compared with static game mechanics, including, but not limited to: health, energy, armor, weapons (including modifiers), conditions, knockdown, blocking, life steal, degen, you name it. These things are independant of skill changes, though can see changes, too.

The point is: there is a line. It's a relatively arbitrary line, but it's a line that Anet (or perhaps just Izzy) has in mind, nonetheless. All the major game mechanics rest on this line (as long as they are perfectly happy with them), and every skill balance works to bring all skills closer to this line. Some skills are above the line, others are below the line. If you do nothing but nerfs, you entirely ignore all those skills below that line, and will either be left with skills on the line and skills below the line, or you nerf them further to bring them all to the same level - which would then be much lower than the line (all equivalent to the worst skill).

Or... and this is my point... You nerf the ones above the line, and buff the ones below the line. That is why skills are nerfed and buffed. Now, please explain where I am wrong.

I stopped reading your post here, because clearly, you didn't read mine properly.

Then perhaps you should explain yourself. If you are not talking about what I am addressing, then you are not talking about what you quoted (or failed to read it properly). Try again.

You react to my post by addressing something completely different than I am, yet then you say I'm the one doing that? Try again yourself. And read the posts I reacted to with my first posts. Then perhaps you'll understand. Also, stop being such a little kid, this is about to change into a 'no u' thing.

PS: no u!

OK, look, what does it matter? Can my post have substance, and a quote, without it appearing like some kind of attack on what you said? Besides, I re-read it, and the post you quoted, twice, and I still don't see where I'm going wrong.

Like I said, perhaps you should explain yourself. Make it a little clearer for the dumbasses like myself. Or you can just read what I typed instead of stopping halfway through because you thought I was attacking you.

Saph, at least I did something that match. Or that one time I solo-healed the guild lord at VoD with my ZB sin...You can't do that now can you?

I think the 'ideal' that Anet intended to reach was a system nicely balanced but heavily varied, so that you never knew what you were going to face: it might be something your particular group is poorly set up to beat, but with decent communications and tactics, and maybe a bit of luck, you could still win. The point is, it would still be INTERESTING.

You'd come out of a match thinking "that was a really WEIRD combo that guy used..kinda worked, though".

Things like that.

Sadly, however, that sort of aim (while noble) isn't really compatible with basic human nature.

What you end up with are either gimmick builds that exploit mechanics to produce nigh-unbeatable brokeness, or the same old "w/w/m/m/e/r/me/other" 'versatility' build: something that can pretty much cope with anything, by virtue of neatly minimising any obvious weaknesses..at the cost of also neatly minimising any potential unexpected strengths. It's a bland but effective set up.

So you won't get "fun and different" vs "fun and different", you'll get "broken" or "bland", and that'll be it. And then nerfs come in to fix the gimmick, and you're back to bland vs bland.

If anything, they want to encourage more gimmick play, since that's at least shaking things up a bit: it's just a terribly fine line to tread between 'beatable' and 'unbeatable' gimmick balance.

Guilds like EvIL used some of the most 'generic' setups, rarely ever changing, yet brought some of the most dynamic gameplay to the field. It's not only a question of the builds, but of how they're being run, and how mechanics effect the viable tactics - which in turn influences the builds run.

not used anymore? it's on most shadow prison builds when it's not lightining reflexes...

I feel the same way as you do. I wrote this in another forum and I think it applies to what you are saying.

I think the trickiest part of balancing skills is taking the synergies that fuel a cheap build out of play, without decreasing the number of viable builds, which were balanced, but happened to use some of the skills the unbalanced build did.

A skill update should strive to take the unbalanced aspects out of the game while maintaining or increasing potential build variety. If a skill update does not accomplish this the majority of the time, than very gradually the game is going to get stale, and people are going to notice the distinct lack of options/variety in whatever mode they play.

The game will become nothing more than a stagnant mess where skill updates only change the fotm and nothing more. I bet some people reading this are saying it's already happening. Maybe it's unavoidable at this point. I don't know.

As long as there's no sledgehammer involved, it's all good...

This was the wrost planned nerf ever... ruined all my builds.
It was mainly to fix the hero battles arenas but it f***up alot of builds and forms of pvp and pve as well... that's not something smart...
I'm in favor of bannin SP build from HB and revert all the skill nerfs...

If they don't revert the changes after the weekend I'm quiting cuz that sucked too much

So wait. You just basically said that you're so bad, that now these overpowered things are nerfed you are unable to play the game, because the rest is so much better at using builds that take skill?

Also, it's impossible to 'ban' the SP build from HB.

But we can ban HB from GW amirite?

While many skills have recieve a nerf an equal amount of skills have been buffed to make themselves useable.

Unfortuanatly not everyone will agree with what skill needs a nerf vs a buff.

Definitely agree with you there. It adds spice and encourages us to constantly experiment different builds. Always keeps me excited when the next skill update is going to happen

It's not that I hate or disagree to all the nerfs but calling nerfs are renewing or refreshing the game is kind of .... don't know what to put but you are promoting laziness. New items, new quests, new areas,... even very small or few are what most people prefer to see. So instead of adding those things, you are suggesting ANET to keep adding updates in the form of NERFs and it's good enough to make us happy?