Guild Wars Skill Updates Jan. 17th 2008

Oh no, now only all of your attacks for half of the match are going to interrupt instead of ALL of them! I think warmonger's is balanced now, and still very viable. Factoring in Spawning, you can get to 18 seconds/30 (probably on a SS Rit), and if your fast recharge kicks in, then you can apply on recharge. So, it's still viable.

*cries for HEV* =(

There was an update?

This was too conservative. Something's up.

It is nice sometimes to fix things that are incredibly broken. Not everyone plays PvE. Balance is nice sometimes too.

This is one of their temporary skill balances which typically are testing some they were like, eh just maybe, then after the testing period you get the full fledged whacka-skill tool going and things are really put down to business

The only reason no one cries is because they hardly touched any of the skills that anyone actualy used.

Apart from Aura, Magebane, Warmonger, HEV.

Well, lack of ursan nerf finally answers how anet feels about pve.

hex eater was doing ALOT of dmg to all nearby foes , but anyway who was using that skill lol ?

yeh indeed ... 60 s i way too much

Nothing wrong with it.

I'm am totally stoked about the buff to Restore Life. It has always been my rez of choice considering I almost always run Holy Haste on my NM healing build, and the drop from 3 second hard rez to a 2 second hard rez is... W00T.

: ( at lack-of Ursan nerf

But HOLYSHITAMG at Hero hotkeys!! Also, finally being able to play in Asian districts is just too awesome.

Ah it's an awesome tank build... ?? And has kicked started DOA missions again. It makes for some pretty fun runs in elite missions areas.

I'm really happy about it staying as is

Awesome.

12 char

Useless buffs and semi-irksome nerfs. Oh, and they didn't nerf Ursan yet? What happened? Not enough QQing from new/casual players? ( /yourwrists until next update... lolol... j/p). Anyways, hero-sync's sound interesting. Other than that, that's pretty much my spill. /done

/yawn
what a pointless balance

First skill balance since November, I was really expecting Izzy to make a bigger balance, not just nerf a couple of skills and buff random stuff.

Other then warmongers, nothing was really changed. Magebane is still usable, and HEV wasn't used a whole lot. Coward does seem interesting now, though.

Yes there is. Winter is not correctly applying the elemental conversion so some things.

Patient spirit doesnt get buffed by healers boon, fix plz

Lol no zerg nerfs.

HEV, warmonger and magebane nerfs are bweh..
Though magebane was overpowered.

~Prof.

Kinda few random buffs, interesting. Warmongers and Magebane nerfs are good tho.
Actually, I was waiting for a huge balance (make a lot more skills usable), and a few nerfs (fear me -> only affects target foe :$, i've never had a problem with iway, not hard to own, but those iwayers get their rank really fast :/).
YAA and Coward buffs are nice, but (QQ starts here) 2 skills arent that much.
Anyway, pretty good job, could have been bigger balance tho (tbh im not playing atm, so they have time for other balances )

That they disagree with your opinion of it you mean?

I'm not the one to usually complain much but....Hex Eater Vortex...again? There goes one of the few good mesma elites :s

Well, it made casual hexing dangerous to one's own team and made hexing melee downright unattractive. It's still not unusable, but since it was the only Domination elite I'd bother with in PvE, it's time to start looking again. Regular old Shatter Hex at HEV's old numbers (10/1/12) would be an interesting start, but that may (again) pose problems in PvP. The enchant removal on HEV was pretty insane.

I guess people can live with that.

Some skills got interesting new changes and buffs. Hex Eater Vortex got the hardest nerf, but it did not get destroyed. The buffs on the other hand are to still unwanted skills and very mild.

Sight Beyond Sight is now very useful for melee chars in PvE.

The Assassin shadowstep changes are a good idea.

The Ranger bow attacks with activation time - no idea how this will work out, if they can be used for some kind of spike build. But one must take in account, the three skills that got the 1 second activation buff could now be used liked this:

Any attack - Penetrating Attack - Sundering Attack - Penetrating (it has a 3 second recharge and 1 activation now) ...

Still, it would cost 4/5 energy everytime, so I do not really see this skill becoming more popular. Magebane nerf is okay, it is still good.


A very mild and well thought out balancing. Unfortunately major PvE skill issues (Ursan etc.) were left untouched. But not bad, nothing to worry about, some nice buffs and better than killing off skills totally for sure.

Not sure if you guys understand but Ursan will never be nerfed.
Anet needs people to buy EOTN and one of the VERY few things that attract GWers is the skill Ursan.
It's all business.

"Nuff said.

I can say that I love the updates! Korean districts here I come!

Why does my fast cast mesmer want to try this one with [skill]signet of illusions[/skill]

YEEEEESSSSSS!!!! Ursan did not get nerfed =D

Oh i'm sorry, i'm just happy that I can do more things with my ranger than shoot arrows.

No Anet, when you buff Power Shot, make it 5en or do up to 36 damage. It's still gonna be shit till you do one of those things.

Good for everything else, nothing I use though.

Hero skills would be cool if I was any good at doing multiple keys at the same time, I can only do that if they're close to me and all those keys are used up. Oh well.

LoL of true but maybe they don't wanna shake the tree too much since GW2 is coming and keep everyone mostly happy ? *shrug* Kind of shocked myself.

- Exactly and it was a wise decision to start buffing un-used and crappy skills like Power Shot and Wastrel's Worry instead of nerfing popular skills. And I'm especially happy that they didn't give in to misguided whining of community about Ursan Blessing.

Same here. Nice update all around.

Again, agreed.

I like the hero keybinds, makes aegis chaining heroes so much easier!

I guess Pious Assault is a "double" version (i.e. energy and recharge) of Wearying Strike, with the negative of losing an enchantment versus self-weakness. Interesting, but I'd still rather have Wearying Strike.

The problem is there are still overpowered skills, and the unused skills that were buffed are still crappy (power shot, heaven's delight, sight beyond sight, etc).

I like the general approach of looking for weak skills and trying to make them a little better. I expect they could do a lot more of that.

AoM + Wearying Strike is still better, yes, but if you use the energy boost on rend with some other enchantment, Pious Assault now looks like a fairly good skill.

Also, Sight Beyond Sight is now useful for characters taking on Shards of Orr.

Hmm...4 second resses? . plus, Heaven's delight may have some use now that it's earshot, even with the 2 second cast. a bit overpowered imo, compared to HP.

I do not understand why there is so much complaining about the way Ursan Blessing is right now. From what I can tell, all it does is make your character an extremely heavy damage machine, but at the cost of having no defensive skills at all.

I've been in Ursan-way groups, and all it does is shift the burden so the entire team is now dependent on the monks. In most scenarios, everybody has a role and everybody has to work together as a group. In Ursan-way, there's nothing but mindless ganking and the hope that your monks can keep the team alive.

It isn't totally fool proof. People that don't know what they are doing cast Ursan Blessing and then start Leeroying everything in sight. Then when they are killed they immediately blame the healing because they are convinced that Ursan Blessing is completely invincible.

If you really think about it, Ursan Blessing is basically built around the same principle as Touch Rangers. You do a crazy amount of unblockable damage in a short period of time. But like Touch Rangers, Ursan Blessing suffers from a number of limitations--in fact, almost the same ones as touchers. With absolutely no defensive skills or self-healing, things like knockdowns, crippling condition/slowed movement hexes, energy denial, and large damage spikes are very effective.

And even if I'm wrong and the skill is overpowered, who really cares? If somebody can steamroll the entire PvE game, how does that affect you? All that does is maybe make titles easier to get and rare loot drops in price. Maybe that's exactly what Guild Wars needs. I remember when Guild Wars was really simple, people played this game just because it was fun, and gold was practically useless. Now it's become a game centered around title grind and hoarding rares.

Beneath the gameplay and UI changes, is this update imo more or less crap.

Some nice Buffs for certain Professions, but these get overwhelmed by imo senseless and pointless nerfs.

Assassin:

Caltrops: for the reduce of the recharge time, imo should be raised the slightly the range, reduced the Energy Cost to 5 and reduce the duration of criplle to 10s. Also the targeting should be changed to "Up to x Targets and their next 1-2 adjacent allies in your range will get crippled".

Then buff "slightly" the Elite Skill "Hidden Caltrops" so that it will receive a synergy power, when used together with "Caltrops" ... so that the Elite keeps worth it to be called an elite skill.
***
Viper's Defense: should receive a duration nerf now...
***

Dervish:

these changes make this skill totally overpowered.
Deep Wound now combined with automatically activating other damages/conditions ect. through loosing enchants is too much imo.
The raise of 5 E to 10 E won't change this ...


Elementalist:

Chilling Winds: should get raised energy cost to 10, increased cast time to 2 and reduced reload to 5s, also the increasement of water hex durations should be limited to may +75%


Mesmer:

Burden skills should get e cost reduced to 10.
Cast time of the similar elite skill should be reduced to 1/4 s, therfore the e cost of the elite will be raised to 15E.
Also the Player should receive, when hexing a foe with Shared Burden" ever for the duration of the skill 10% Energy of Skills, the foe uses, while beign hexed with Shared Burden, by buffing the skill like this, the name of the skill will receive finally a sense, also too the usage of it at all and the mesmer will receive 1 good e-management skill vs. other casters ...
For this Buff, will get the duration reduced to 15s, due to the point, that this hex can hit more than 1 foe at once.


Monk:

Divine Healing + Clone Skill:
Heal should get reduced to max 200 now, therfore also the recharge time gets slightly reduced to 25s and the cast time reduced to 1s.


Renew Life: increase range to earshot for the ressurection part. Let it ressurect all dead party members in earshot, but for every +1 more than 1 ally ressurected, the monk will need 1 more active enchant on hisself and also for every ressurected +1 more, than 1, will increase the recharge time by 10seconds.

Example:
Res 1: E Cost 15, 4s CT, 5s RT
Res 2: E Cost 15, 4s CT, 15s RT, 1 Enchant on Monk at least needed
Res 3: "", "", 25s RT, 2 Enchants on Monk at least needed

and so on ...

Also Skills like the old Ressuction Signet and Revive need finally buffs..which people use please still these weak old crap, since res skills exists (at least for pve), like the Sunspear res Signet, Song of Ressurection, Renew Life and so on...
And the monk needs finally Ressurection Skill, with that he's able to revive more than 1 player at once, especially in these moments, where enormous spikes killed in same time several people...thsoe damn moments, where reviving single persons 1 after another simple takes way too much time
***
Restore Life: this skill could be really buffed by increasing the heal of energy to maximum 100% to increase the interest on using this skill.


Necromancer:
Signed of Agony: wow, what a buff.
imo its enough to start bleedign therefore, that we make damage, but theres absolutely no need to sacrifice life points for this weak damage ... that any monk can heal away in seconds. When we must sacrife hp for it, then reduce it at least to 5%, reduce the range to 1 target and its adjacent foes, and raise again slightly the damage to say 85, recharge gets raised to 20, and skill will loose its silly cast time
***
Wail of Doom: reduce the duration of the skill disable to max 15s


Ranger:

Magebane Shot: revert the silly increasement of 5E to 10E, this way this skill isn't it anymore worth to be called an elite skill, people will just use other interrupt skills, which cost 5E, or increase the duration of the spell disable, when interrupting a spell from 10 to 20s ... or give this skill instead of all its interrupting stuff a total new effect, which fits fsar more to the name of this skill.
How about lettign this Skill deal "Exhaustion" to the target in heigth of the skills Energy Cost, when hittign the target with it...
this way the ranger receives an elite skill, with that he's able to totally shut down a caster foe over time, simple by taking away all the foes energy.
Redce Energy Cost again to 5 and this skill causes then every time, when the foe gets hit by hit, 5 Exhaustion, reduce then the skill recharge from 5 to say 3 and good is. Skill will not interrupt anymore, but will be unblockable and flies with double speed.
But when this skill will miss, then the ranger will suffer on double exhaustion.
***
Power Shot could need finally a better buff, then only reducing its CT to 1
How about making the skill unblockable ? how about giving it a Armor ignoring feature of 20%, if it hits a foe, that suffers on "cracked armor"?
How about a feature, that lets this attack do double damage, when the health of the ranger is below 25%? How about a feature, that will cancel stances of warriors ect. if they get hit by a power shot successfully ? oO
really, this core skill is so boring and weak compared to other ranger skills...
This is just a totally uninteresting 0815-Skill ...
***

Precision Shot: remove the easily interruption stuff, increase CT from 1s to 5s, double the damage to+ 50 Damage max, raise the Energy Cost from 10 to 15 and let this attack always be a critical hit.
This way. this skill's name will make finally sense... oh and yah, reduce RT from 6 to 2s


Weak Skill Balances.. they tough again only the top of the iceberg..just only a few skills, where mostly pvp players whined about for, for being unbalanced either in GvG,HA, TA or wherever of PvP, but forget as usual like ever hundreds of other skills, that wait now still the release of GW for a Skill Balance, especially due to the fact that through the implementation of FA, NF and EotN many of the very old skills became just useless, cause of much better counterpart skills with similar effects.
They became so useless, that you have really to ask urself, why Anet keeps those skills in the game >.> when so or so nobody, other then noobs will ever use these skills anymore, until even those noobs will find out, that there exist similar skills, that arwe much better, then those old core skills, either cause of lesser Energy Cost, lesser Cast Time or lesser Reload Time, or maybe longer duration time, whatever ...

Best example for pve weill be ever the Ressurection Signet ?
Who really uses this old skill further, since the Sunspear Signet exists now, since the release of NF ? (not including now players, that don't own still NF and thus don't have the Skill


my 2 cents