3/6/08 update

they dont know when to stop nerffing things what they need to do is give new life to the 100+ skills that are useless that dont see the light of day in pvp

Restoration:
0 - 15%
1 - 21%
2 - 26%
3 - 32%
4 - 38%
5 - 43%
6 - 49%
7 - 55%
8 - 60%
9 - 66%
10 - 72%
11 - 77%
12 - 83%
13 - 89%
14 - 94%
15 - 100%
16 - 106%

IMHO, I like the removal of aftercast on ele skills. Aftercast has made me stop playing ele altogether, you spend half of the time just sitting there, waiting for some magic grasp to release you.

Wow. A lot of changes

My comments.

Removal of aftercast. HURRAH! Ele gets a lot of nice changes. New lightening orb and shock arrows provides some nice new air options. Shock arrows seems better then mind blast now though. Mind blast is an elite, I'm not sure if the nerf was neccessary since the skill replaced so many better elite options. And I'll miss ward against melee (though its still useful).

Shadow Prison already sucked. Why nerf it even more? Siphon speed is also kinda sad. With all the "require hexes" sin combos, sins should have some sort of spamable hex. I mean, as it stands, they either have to go into their secondary or synergy with a teammate, which basically kills a large number of attack chains for sins, especially in casual PvP (AB/RA).
Shroud of silence did need the nerf.

New wail of doom. Kinda cool. Will have to play around with it to see if it is functional. Necro changes are all cool.

NOO! My augury of death/enchanter's condrum/shatter delusions mesmer spiker. Oh well, was a bit over powered. At least finish him still works for PvE.

Pious assault... it was so much fun while it lasted. Needed the nerf though.

Monk nerf on passive defense I can understand (though buffing shields up after nerfing it 8 months ago?)

Warrior buff on lion's comfort is great. That skill was never used because using it killed adrenaline gain. Finally a functionally useable strength self heal.

goody, lotsa changes.

Might tweak some builds again now.

All I can say is, Arcane Echo + Wail of Doom, goodbye Duncan.

WHAT!? I am outraged with Psychic Instability! Now it's as rubbish as Power Leak was when they 1/6thed its strength... please, PI is now ridiculous.

Thanks!

mustfeedthemachine12

finally crip shot...

Rofl at Wail of Doom, Enfeebling Blood, and Weaken Armor (which I plan to run in Sabway now?)

And at least now I can run fire at 14 for a mindblaster...

wounding strike <3

Wow, Necro got so buffed this time. Me likely.

An I already loved LC, now......it's SO much better then Heal Sig.

Yes A-net balances for PvP, no they do not change anything in PvE unless something really gets bad.

As for what changed, most of it sounds good.... except a couple points...

I am confused by Necro skills that cost 1 energy now? The best energy managers now have skills that cost 1 or is that some kind of typo?

And Ranger... nerf to cripshot is only suprising because it seems to be the only skill keeping rangers in high level PvP, so now do they actually use something different, do rangers dissapear from PvP completely, or is the change meaningless? I like that they bumped Pin Down a lil bit....and Hunter's, well I guess they probably have a quota that outlines a minimum amount of changes they make per year or something.

And too bad for "Watch Yourself!", gonna have to test to see how bad the damage is- it may still be useful....but the limited hits the skill can take sucks, gives an advantage to fast strikers like assasins. (which do not need help in any way shape or form)

Gives an advantage to Assassins? The poor things have no advantages left.

Look, Paragons got nerfed... well, I pretty much expected that. I think the Mending Refrain nerf was due to Ursan Roar, however.

Are you Ursan haters happy now?

This update is simply interesting.

I will only ask for one more thing.

WTB LoD back to original state - offering 4 armbraces

Whats in the 2nd update?

No Ursan haters are going to be happy until it's either nerfed down to size or removed.

Wounding Strike is like sex now, but with pro females.

yes, cuz if WY! only gives armor against 3 hits assasins will burn that in less than 2 seconds...whereas a ranger trying to go against WY! will be against the +20 armor for 8-10 seconds....with a FGJ! fueled adrenaline build it may not matter too darn much- we'l see.

I dont think P-gons got nailed that hard, Mending Refrain costs 5 more, and the other changes are buffs. (song of restore is now more expensive, but does more)

I'm not going to lie, the moment I saw that Sins received some nerfing I got a little bit of happiness from it. Shroud of Silence, for instance, needed some kind of evening out because it was way too much to deal with, but even now it can still be useful and doesn't suffer too badly. Siphon Speed though - almost made me cry with elation. That skill was so ridiculously overused (aka spam it on everyone on the enemy side, laugh, rinse & repeat, throw in a few combos for larfs). And speaking of overused .... augury ... oh how I am SO glad you won't be hanging around like a zit all the time now. Selective use of it I'm sure will still come into play, no more of that senseless like before though, less we're talking about caster Sins (15 energy Deadly Paradox, ouch). I probably sound like I'm a total sin hater, which isn't the case, I've just had to Monk against a lot of these gimmick builds stemming from their line of skills for too long. Maybe it's Anet to blame there, either way I have less to worry about now, cept the ole' Beguiling Haze spikers (the Dervish version now much less effective).

Eh ... the poor Dervish. First Mystic Regen (which should be in Mysticism, btw, prevents everyone and their Mother's using it) and now Pious. I suppose I see the reasoning, yet I question it at the same time. I don't play in larger scale PvP (such as GvG or HoH), but to me the effectiveness of the Derv has taken another step down. I guess if you're looking for general aoe pressure then the Dervish is a hard hitter that looks cool while fighting, however anytime I've seen a Sin I've also seen a Dervish die crying. Guess AoB will see more use, lawl.

Most of the other changes seem to make sense, though I will never understand why they messed with the Ele. Flame Djinn's was fine after the initial nerf to 25% (meaning they couldn't run around in something like AB with insane speed and cap everything). I'm not completely sure about all the changes till I go through my characters and test things out, old builds, etc. And yes, I have an Sin too.

Oh, and the Guardian change hasn't effected my Monking any, I tested it out right away. I suppose melee pressure might be a little more stiff, though. So far I don't think the change is unreasonable. I went into AB and went around protting who I could, etc, and it worked as good as I ever remember it ... then again I didn't spam it too often before, either, so who knows. I met a couple Sins in that match, one threw on Seeping Wound and Augury of Death, the other Shadow Prison. Pretty much tanked the SP for the 3 second duration (lol) and removed Augury the second it was on me. Always pre veil, folks, it rocks!

Damn, I've gone and wrote an essay, I gotta get back to GW to try out some more builds, so catch you all later.

P.S. And if you didn't notice, this is all from a PvP perspective.

Huh.. and I only just started using a MB/Rodgorts build.

*cries

Meh, I'll adapt.

My opinion on the elementalist nerf/mini-buff

One second increased on Mind Blasts recharge, lower energy gain if you used major or sup. (but who does anyway???)... fair enough

Rodgorts invocation, unfair nerf. It was chained with mind blast so in a way they double nerfed the most popular ele fire build.

Flame Djiins haste, who came up with this crap? Bad nerf.

Removal of aftercast delays, ok.....

Lightning orb, nice buff.

Shock arrow, nice buff.. might be useful now

Ward against melee, sorta lame.. but not utterly destroyed

GoLE, no complaints I suppose.

Paragon nerf again.. wow.. just wow

Hmm...

It looks nearly like a 10 to 1, nerf to buffs ratio...
Lots of nerfs, only a few buffs. Lots of unnecessary changes, and some look like they are trying to get them to be used more. Still many others are officially dead.

I agree with Zesbeer. They should try to breath new life into the hundreds of other skills that see virtually zero usage rather then release massive nerf hits for PvP. I think concentrating on reworking other skills to achieve game balance would keep the metagame MUCH more fun then dealing with constant nerf balance...

meh, interesting enough they are keeping the 1en necro skills so far. hmmmm...

cheers.!

I would love to see the rationale behind some of this... that WY nerf is idiotic in so many ways I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking...

Oh, wait.. they were thinking somebody was abusing it in PvP, so just break it for everyone.

Could be random bad luck but my game crashed for like the first time in 3 years soon after the update while doing Ruins of Surmia HM. The update could of introduced a bug, not sure.

Yes, obviously that wammo spamming Watch Yourself in random arenas made him impossible to kill while he had Watchful Spirit and Mark of Protection up... so it had to be nerfed.

Seriously, it was fine before the nerf... and the nerf before that... and the one before that nerf too.

OK, now revert the amount healed too. Two updates ago you set out to buff this skill, and now you've ended up nerfing it.

1. Wow, craptastic now. Really, that's a terrible overnerf.

2. If it stays, there's NO reason to keep the ugly armor-stack limit in place.

OK, then why not take the 3-enchant limit back off?

I did not get why it was nerfed last time, and I certainly don't see why it needs another nerf now.

Every attack in this game feels so puny and negligible. Maybe this could be remedied by scaling everything to be 10x it's current value... Damage, health, energy... Add a big fat zero to the end of everything! XD

Sounds a bit like tennis then. theres a new sport in gw, pong condition, the first who dies loses.

I almost hate to blow this, but I wonder if you can get the remaining duration up long enough to blow the variable size?

How stupid is this just take out Victory is Ours and make ViD damage increase to 30%... gg anet.

Cant say i like this one, dealdy arts was over nerfed.

How does the 106% work? You get some free energy to spend the first time you use a skill after being rez'd by DPS?

OH noes they killed flame djinn's again...but shockwave got buffed :P woot for the terra tank!!!!

here are my evaluations on all the skill changes:

About time the hex ninjas are nerfed, these guys are a sorry pain in the ass for warriors. Now to deal with critical defenses sins.

Mesmers now have some nice buffs, but personally, I find Shatter Enchantment+Enchanter's Conundrum+Shatter Delusions a big spike damage and hinder the ability to cast enchantments.

Mystic Degeneration is a big ouch for a dervish. Now you have a set duration. The set maximum enchantments were reasonable. But having a set duration and 12 second recharge makes dervishes more useless. A message to ANet: RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO YOU!!

more buffs on necro sacc skills with 1 energy, too bad I deleted my necro for a paragon.

Ouch on the song of restoration. I guess ANet hates paragon, really. and double ouch for mending refrain. I was going to use that for ursanway. (I wasn't planning to use song of restoration for my spear of fury build anyways. so ha!)

I liked the old function of lion's comfort. I guess ANet warriors to use healing signet as a heal despite the penalty.

death pact signet: I was using this signet as my rez for my ranger, but after two nerfs, I'm no longer going to use it.

sprint: nice buff for warriors.

loved the aftercast removal for most of the ele skills and the buff on lightning arrow and lightning orb. disliked the unnecessary nerf on flame djinn haste. Storm djinn hasn't been completely touched on, so I'm using air spiker for AB.

Now if only if you guys can give more cracked armor infliction skills for rangers and sword and axe warriors.

10 energy Cry of Frustration?

*hears angel chorus*

Rangers - Those fugly arse R/D's went untouched...did Anet like forget that people like to play rangers still?

Dervs - Why curbstomp Grenth's Aura??? If anything reduce the range of its effect. Sigh, that was a fun build too. And derv-tele spike is pretty much toast now too.

Eles - meh on the MB and Rodgort's. Yay for lOrb and no aftercasts.

Necros - Sure ok

Mesmer - Uhhh sure.

Warriors - I knew Anet always favored the dammed wammos. *glare* Seriously. Do you really want to see more warriors in pvp that bad?
But wait -here comes WY! *BAM* and its going, going, its gone!

Assassins - I can see why, so they are alright.

Para - Still the most imba and broken class in the game. lolz at everyone cyring at the huge nerf to two little skills. A little energy increase won't hurt that bad.

I seriously wonder why I still play sometimes...

I think I like this update after all.

What. The. Hell.

At you.

BASE DEFENCE JACKASS.

Is that Simple Thievery btw?

I know it IS possible to interrupt Base Defense... it's really hard but it is possible, but the AB would likely be over by the time you got it.