Update - Wednesday February 6

Liking the trolls buff... but Im not sure why its been buffed...

also, glad i kept all those party items now! I had an urge to set off all of my snowman summoners earlier today.

EDIT: Wtf?! 1 energy skills?!
might want to check your coffee machine Anet, i think someones spiking it.

I LOVE ALL THE NERFS I LOVE YOU ANET!!!!!!!!!!!!

/endsarcasm

And 1/4 the healing ... costs twice the energy to reach the old health gain and twice the time. Easier to dose though, and faster casts. Depends on the use.

For those having a coronary over "nerfs", may I point out the line that goes on all skill updates:

I'm a Mesmer. I’m trying hard not to feel that a-net really see me and other pve role players as a cash cow.

Necro Touch Bomb/Touch rangers FTW! lol Now Rangers can spam free life-steals... Touch Rangers are now Mosquitos on Steroids! lolol 1e skillz are definitely a first for guild wars. Too bad, I don't see it lasting long before we see a new update today or tomorrow reverting those e-costs. No changes to Assassins? Power Leak's no longer a Dominating Interrupt... It's ineffectiveness should be reverted imo. Also, What's so mystic about mystic regen, now? Not to mention a multitude of unhappy farmers... Good buffs on heal signet & troll (wish troll would be cut down on cast time though... mebber 2-second cast time like heal sig?). Good Glyph buff. I expect to see alot of players pull off nice builds with that buff. Other than that, not too shabby. Oh, and Ineptitude/Clumsiness ftl... They were kewl while they lasted... but now they got blasted... RIP Anti-Melee Shutdowns. x_X

I wonder, does mystic regen count as one of the three enchantments itself or no?

woot free necro skills, love it.
Just why are you guys saying inpetitude was destoyed? just need to be aplied on time now. And hurray for mistyc regen! Was about time, now they'll be killable... well maybe not but at least moe killable (Ah! the good ol' E/D).
Just too bad for clumsiness and Avatar of Grenth.

LOL!! Necro buffs are crazy fun so far, shame it won't last. A big 'BOO-URNS' to the Mesmer nerfs

the last time I checked, it did.

wtf mending refrain?

and rip pleak

Massive butthurt to Mesmers today. Izzy hates Mesmers or something.

As a PvE Mesmer main, I've read the arguments on both sides of this raep. And I don't like it. I'm probably not the only one.

Power leak didn't need to be castrated as badly as it did. Scaled down to be a little less powerful maybe, but not into uselessness.

And seriously, with nerfs like this, a compensatory buff in something would be nice so that we can use something.

The Modus Operandi must be that if something tastes good, spit it out.

Rise of the Touch Ranger, Chapter II. That's the other thing.

All in all, I give this update a D. Deep Freeze saved it from an F.

If mesmers are going to be this nerfed in GW2, I might abandon the profession for something else.

I feel peeved off with this update for my Mesmer - Ive just this week gotten her an Obsidian top - I dont want to play with her now.. ( )

Im taking that its only the hex amount of time that ineptitude will cause blindness that got took down and not the actual amount of time that the red dots (or blue smurfs if I'm PvPing) will be blind?

Screw this I'm going back to Backfire and Empathy again - Mesmer obviously isnt obviously to do anything else.. like interupt or NRG denial or anything like the class was (as I've been mislead to believe) designed to do? (Ok Im a bit sour about the powerleak thing)

Hexbreaker is going right back on my skill bar.. For all my toons - every single one of them... right now.

1e for Necros? erm..... ok. I'll have to try that out and come back to you.

I think that Tarkin has already found one way to abuse it - I'm sure by the time Ive woken up tomorrow a lot of new builds will be owning AB.

I'm happy about the Mystic Regen nerf tho - That skill was broken with abuse from Elementalists - Eles arent supposed to have that much regen - (My mate is gonna be QQ'ing tomorrow when I tell him - muahahahahaa)

No word on a new mini, and you'd think they'd say something. As for the no boxcamping:

1) All this does is waste my time as I try to post 480k+ runs; it eliminates the 476k-478k runs I would normally post. Anyone who boxcamps for more than a few seconds is bad at GW. Yes, this balances the game for people who just want the gamer points and dislike having someone who combo's at 1 minute fly past them. However, it does very little to alter who will appear on the 100 scoreboard. All this does is reduce the frequency of the best players' appearances in the top 100 a bit by removing their second-tier runs.

2) There's a way to post 476k+ times without boxcamping anyway. The path of play is radically different, but I've seen it done.

As for the skill balance - overall a decent update but the errors are amazingly flagrant:

1) Power Leak - ouch. I agree with the general comments about using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. Increasing the recharge and nerfing the energy loss somewhat would permit the skill to continue to change games; killing the energy loss makes it a pedestrian, high-cost interrupt. Suddenly Web of Disruption starts looking quite attractive - this wasn't the way to accomplish that.


2) LoD: At 1 sec. cast time it is no longer epic fail, but 10 recharge is simply too long for what it does. 8 recharge would be much, much better.


3) Heal Party: Has Izzy lost his mind? HP is balanced at 2 sec. cast time. It won't be at 1 sec. cast time unless either the healing or the recharge gets hammered into the ground. That is WAY too efficient for a non-elite. No one will take LoD when this and Glyph Lesser are available; if you can solve the party heal problem without burning your elite, you will. Also, this just encourages bad play: did HA channeltanking need this buff?


4) Glyph of Energy: Note to Izzy: I shouldn't be able to pop off a spell that causes exhaustion (or costs 25) every 7 with impunity. Among the horrors that this enables:
1) QZ Chain Lightning spikes.
2) Dragon Stomp and Quake every 8. Literally. 2x this + Resolve + Earthbind = shut off opposing backline...
3) Sustainable Hammer spikes without Attunes.
4) Chilblains spam. After all the buffs, spamming it at Monks would be sick. What pre-prots?
5) Nightmare spam.

Is this REALLY a good idea?


5) Troll Unguent: Why? Doesn't every Ranger in GvG take this already? Why not buff Mend Touch to 1/2 second cast while you're at it?


6) Avatar of Grenth: At least this is a step in the right direction. Doesn't quite make me want to take this over my alternatives, though. Don't get me wrong, I like never getting blocked...but there are better ways.


7) Song of Restoration: This didn't see enough play? *scratches head*


8) 1 CC sac skills, especially BiP: Wasn't PvE BiPping skilless enough? I can understand wanting to make these skills more viable in PvP and resurrect the battery Necro...but 1 CC BiPs on a Paragon is cheating.

I heard one of the stealth updates was that new PvP chars start in Isle of the nameless. +1 for less lag when zoning into an outpost with 100000 people when rerolling. Also moar QQ from people because of mesmer nerfs because of how "Anet only cares about GvG QQ."

I whole heartily agree with you. However, A-net believes what ever they do is for the best and the community suggestions come in at the end; when a feature has already been beaten to death.

Anyways going with Avatar of Grenth, I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not. In some ways it’s like doing Holy Damage to those who already have enchantments on them. I have to wait and see on this skill change before I say it was either good or bad.

Ooh... hadn't thought of that. The monsters' tactic attributes can always be adjusted if they decide to keep the change.

Avatar of grenth looks alright, but i doubt it will see much play.

Troll will never be good with 3 seconds cast, its stuck in the past.

Whats the hidden shadow refuge nerf about? Ive never seen that used O_o

Thank GOD for the nerf on Mystic Regen. That skill is probably the most abused next to Mobious Strike. No more E/D BS.

Power Leak........NOOOOOO!!! Well, time to throw my Aneurysm build in the trash I suppose.

No Not Mystic Regen!!! Q_q

Interesting update. While I'm glad they added another bonus to using those festival items, I do wish they'd fix the HoM's outstanding problems (or at least the horrible way titles and the like are displayed) before adding more displayable stuff to it.

Like the Mesmer skills that are buffed. I wasn't aware Ether Feast was a bad heal, although I really only started playing my Mesmer again a couple days ago. Can't say much about the nerfed ones. Doesn't matter to me, though I had thought Ineptitude was nerfed already.

Really like the Necromancer buffs. I'd thought Demonic Flesh, Blood Ritual, and many of those others were good enough as they were. This new 1 energy thing is going to make them even better. And the other buffs seem useful as well.

Like the Monk buffs. Glad they brought back some of LoD's old usefulness without making it overpowered. I'd thought Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight had already been buffed, but I guess they're even better now too.

Don't care much about the Elementalist balances, but they look alright.

Like the Warrior and Ranger self-healing buffs. I'd always felt it was a little weird to be using those skills so much, but they're even better now.

Ouch to the Dervish. Can't say I'm too displeased, though, these seem like they were done in the sake of good balance. Strange choice for Avatar of Grenth, but whatever. Too many people like Grenth anyway. Give the other gods a chance.

Paragon and Ritualist look alright. Seems like good balancing here too.

Bug fixes are always nice, even though I liked the "Devona in Pockmark Flats" one. And not to complain, but what's up with fixing a minor issue in The Dragon's Lair, of all places, after this many years? Better late than never, I suppose.

The thing about new PvP characters starting in the Isle of the Nameless bothers me, since I get the feeling that they had already done that before. If it's to stop bots or something, first of all, I don't see how, and second of all, why would they change the spawn again? A little indecisive.

Overall, pretty neat, despite some strange decisions and a disturbing lack of UB nerfing. I've always been a fan of buffs that make old and/or useless skills worth something again.