Post-WC skill balance change ideas

Soon there'll be a World Champion, a new Ladder Season, and hopefully some skill balance changes. Here's my ideas of what should be included, with comments. What's everyone else's opionions?

All
Resurrection Signet - Reduce health restored to 50%.

When a skill is so important that nearly every non-monk has it on his skill bar, so important that you will be ridiculed for not having it, so important that your ability (or lack) to use it can determine the battle, there's something wrong. Reducing the health gain isn't going to change that it's usually more useful than a resurrection spell, but at least it forces the team to quickly heal the resurrected player lest he be immediately spiked down again.

Elementalist

Mind Burn - Also affect adjacent foes.
Mind Shock - Increase damage on both hits to 10...60, increase knockdown time to 3 seconds.
Mind Freeze - Increase damage on both hits to 5...50, increase slowdown time to 3...9 seconds.

While all the other professions get elites that are clearly better than any similar non-elite skill, Elementalists get three conditional, Exhaustion causing, slower recharging spells that at their best have only slightly more effect then non-elite spells. Sure, they cost a little less energy and they cast faster, but that's not worth it, especially when the conditional requires you to limit your casting of any other skills, especially since you'll be without elite energy management to handle the large Elementalist spell costs. All of them could use a boost.

Conjure Flame/Frost/Lightning - No longer lose all enchantments.

I'm pretty sure that effect was left on from when the spell didn't require a weapon of the corresponding type; I can't see any reason for it now.

Fire Storm - Increase damage to 5...37
Lava Font - Increase damage to 5...37
Searing Heat - Increase damage to 5...37, foes are set on fire every second (instead of at the end of the effect), fire duration scales from 1...3
Eruption - Increase damage to 5...42, foes are blinded every second (instead of at the end of the effect), Blind duration scales from 1...5 seconds
Maelstrom - Increase damage to 10...32

Now that these spells are just as weak in PvE as they are in PvP, they need a boost. Increasing the damage a little won't make them amazing, but at least they'll do enough damage that you'll want to avoid staying in them.

Glimmering Mark - Increase duration to 5...25 seconds, increase Blind duration to 5 seconds.

Besides how easy it is to remove conditions, even repeated ones, in order to use this skill effectively you have to target the two classes that are most resistent to your attacks. If you had enough time to switch targets in between blindings, this skill might actually see some use.

Lightning Javelin - Interrupt any action, not just attacks

Takes too long to cast and hit to actually target a skill with it, so its extra 5 energy are mostly useless and you might as well take Enervating Charge.

Obsidian Flesh - Change 'cannot be the target of enemy spells' to be 'take zero damage from all spells'.

I'm of the opinion that a skill whose supposed "counter" is "choose another target" is overpowered, and that's what this spell does to casters. (So does Spell Breaker, but at least that spell is a primary attribute, has a much longer recharge than duration, and costs a lot for its class)
This change, besides making more sense given the name, it also means you can remove it. Because of its long duration and low cost, you can combine it with Armor of Earth and a +20% enchantments staff and be nearly invulnerable and outside of trying to interrupt a one second spell there's not a thing the enemy can do about it. The penalty to movement speed makes it useless in GvG and weakened in tombs (due to the need to keep the Ghostly Hero alive in many levels more than yourself), but especially in the arenas the skill is overpowered.

Inferno - Reduce energy cost to 5.

Inferno is completely outclassed by Flame Burst, which affects a greater AoE and recharges four times as fast for only 5 more energy and a little less damage.

Swirling Aura - Reduce energy cost to 5 and casting time to 1/4

No reason the ranger counter shouldn't be exactly as powerful as the warrior counter (Magnetic Aura)

Ward Against Harm - Increase armor against other damage to 12...32

Except against fire, this spell isn't particularly useful, especially since against the damage against which armor is most important, elemental damage, Ward Against Elements is just as good and is also in a line with other useful wards and protection spells.

Glyph of Concentration - Ignore all spellcasting time increases (Migraine, Arcane Conundrum) not just Dazed.

Dazed is overcosted and easily removed, so few use it and thus few use this Glyph since for interrupt protection Mantra of Resolve and Mantra of Concentration are far superior.

Glyph of Elemental Power - Increase attribute boost to 3.

2 more attribute points doesn't do enough extra to be worth 5 energy and 1.75 more seconds on the spell you want to use it with.

Mesmer

Chaos Storm - Reduce cost to 10 energy, reduce recharge time to 20 seconds

See comments on damage over time spells above.

Shatter Hex - reduce energy cost to 10

They nerfed the damage and AoE and now it's too overcosted to be useful.

Shame - reduce energy cost to 5

They buffed Guilt; why should spells that target allies be more expensive to prevent?

Mantra of Recovery - Reduce energy cost to 10

Considering that many of the Mesmer elites are super versions of other spells as well as Mesmers having Arcane Echo and Echo, it's hard to find a skill bar where you'd want multiple skills to recharge faster, not use the elite version for one of them or one of the Echo spells, and have enough energy to actually cast those spells as fast as they're recharging.

Fevered Dreams - increase duration to 5...25 seconds

It's hard enough to spread conditions around with this spell better then you could with other skills (like traps against warriors) and its short duration doesn't help with that much.

Ineptitude - reduce damage to 5...41, reduce Blindness duration to 5 seconds, don't end when it takes effect

The damage is minimal enough and the condition easy enough removed that this spell isn't particularly useful, even in the random arenas. Making it like a super-Empathy may not be very unique, but it's a whole lot more useful.

Arcane Echo - don't allow copying Elite spells

Arcane Mimicry has a long recharge for a reason. Two elites are powerful. For many skills, it being two of the same spell isn't any less so.

Epidemic - Increase AoE to 'nearby foes'

You can't hit enough with this to justify the large energy cost

Monk

Peace and Harmony - increase energy regeneration to +2

Weak compared to other energy management elites AND it has a drawback. +2 is still weaker than some, but with high Divine Favor you can have it on two targets simultaneously so that balances it out a bit.

Unyielding Aura - no upkeep (lasts forever until removed), fix the bug where when the caster dies the resurrected players stay alive.

It seems like a bad idea to waste your Elite on a resurrection spell when you could spend it preventing your allies from dying in the first place, especially for a spell that, if it manages to last longer than the non-elite Vengeance, actually costs you more energy (ignoring Blessed Signet). The spell also has a gigantic, emissive effect that practically screams "REMOVE ME!" at enemies.

Restore Life - reduce casting time to 6 seconds.

8 seconds at touch range against a team resembling something competent is never going to happen.

Rebirth - Increase spell range to 1.5x normal spell range

Being able to cast it at long range might make this spell useful in PvP for stealth resurrections. Or not, but it's worth a try.

Shielding Hands - reduce recharge to 15 seconds.

This would be a good spell against teams with lots of small hits... if only you could cast it often enough to actually have it available when they're doing those hits.

Symbol of Wrath: Reduce recharge time to 15 seconds

See comments on damage over time spells above.

Holy Wrath - Energy lost per attack scales from 10...5 energy.

10 energy is just a little overkill. 5 energy is probably overkill too, but at least it's consistent with other spells that burn your energy on some action, like Spinal Shivers and Thunderclap.

Scourge Healing - Make it work on healing granted by Divine Boon.

Then you can use it as a boon prot counter, so people might actually use it.

Light of Dwayna - Increase range to the aggro circle.

This spell, besides being expensive, has too low of an AoE to work with anything except suicide builds where you can choose where you're going to die.

Resurrect - Increase energy restored to 25%

So if you manage to get this spell off, the resurrected ally might be able to contribute sometime soon.

Necromancer

Chillblains - Reduce energy cost to 15, increase recharge to 20

25 energy and a condition that requires yet more energy to remove is too expensive for a spell that will, if you're lucky, remove one enchantment from two or three enemies and cause them negligible damage.

Defile Flesh - Reduce sacrifice cost to 10%

20% seems a little hefty for a spell that really isn't preventing *that* much healing.

Weaken Armor - Reduce armor vs all, not just physical

So Elementalists and Necromancers using cold spells can take advantage of this spell to get some damage boost options like the other damage classes.

Consume Corpse, Necrotic Traversal - Increase recharge to 5 seconds.

For the same reason that Putrid Explosion got it.

Ranger

Otyugh's Cry - Add additional effect of giving all allied pets +33% attack speed.

So you might actually bring it to PvP, especially in a pet build where you could give it to one and have all pets do more damage.

Revive Animal - Increase AoE to the range of the aggro circle

For the same reason as Light of Dwayna.

Point Blank Shot - Add the effect of not being evadable

Doesn't do enough bonus damage to justify the reduced range.

Concussion Shot - Reduce energy cost to 15

Dazed is overcosted by a lot.

Power Shot - Increase damage to 15...30

Longer recharge than Penetrating Attack and that skill does more damage.


Warrior

Belly Smash - Add +1...16 damage

Who cares about Blinding knocked down targets? There are better skills to be using, like ones that cause damage.

Hammer Bash - Increase knockdown time to 3 seconds

Considering how much adrenaline some hammer attacks take and how long it takes to get there, an attack that loses all of it really needs to be worth it.

"I Will Survive!" - Increase duration to 6...18

So if you have enough conditions, it's at least better than Healing Breeze... not that making that the case will stop any W/Mo's from carrying it.

Hundred Blades - Add damage bonus of +1...10

So it's clearly better than the non-elite Cyclone Axe instead of requiring complicated enchantment setups to get it that way.

Desperation Blow - Attack time of 3/4 second

So (maybe) it'll have a use as an "OMG they're about to die I need to attack RIGHT NOW!" skill.

Skull Crack - Reduce adrenaline to 7 strikes

Dazed is overcosted.

Nice. You should include some more IWAY nerfs, other than the res sig one.
You should nerf eoe and pred.

I enjoyed reading that, I like the idea of the traversal spells having 5 second recharge. May give you a chance to actually get some wells up.. but its actually a little boost to IWAY.

Res Sigs should stay 100% hp, but boosting hard resses is better idea

Aoe boost is nice idea, especially the eruption lol

Ele attack elites are pretty pathetic atm, defo should take the conditional out or the exaustion

Oh well balances will be here soon i hope, lets see what they been upto

The change id like to see most is balance out disrupting chop more. This is the skill i fear most as a monk and the only reason i use an axe. To balance it with hammers id like to see hammer bash also increase recharge if interrupted or for something different maybe if using spell when knocked down loses double energy for spell.
To balance with swords they already have savage slash which interrupts for plus 1-32 damage so maybe drop the recharge of this from 10 to 5.

I also agree with the Elemental elites needing a boost.

Also with Res Sig it really penalises caster more than warriors. Rezzing with 25% energy isnt a big deal to most warriors like it is to casters. Although the better players have found ways to counter this i still think maybe make it so rezzed player cannot gain adrenline for 10-20 secs. Just so it penalises warriors as well as casters.

Skull Crack- The only time I've made this elite useful was using flurry as an ias because any other ias would have already killed the target before dazed could even take effect. Otherwise, it’s nearly blind luck if you ever want to pull off a daze on a monk. The fact that dazed is a condition makes skull crack even less useful. Take out the clause that requires you to interrupt a spell and make skull crack apply dazed on a target regardless if they are casting or not and reduce the adrenaline cost.

Bull's Charge- I've tried using this skill but most people are smart enough to sidestep when trying to give a warrior a hard time and prevent critical hits. Against flag runners, this skill couldn't even keep up let alone even hit them. It's basically sprint and bull's strike combined into one skill. Change it so that it knockdown moving targets regardless whether they are fleeing or not, and make it so it cannot be evaded or blocked.

Dwarven Battle Stance- there are definitely better hammer elites out there than this one. Maybe include a speed buff of 33% along with the interrupts?

Healing Hands- I find that using this skill isn’t enough to negate an attack from a warrior or a ranger. Even sadder, I’ve found that sometimes it could barely neglect the damage from a wand. Decrease it’s recharge time and buff up the healing to maybe 70.

Energy Drain- the long recharge on this skill makes it a horrible energy management skill and energy denial skill. The fact that the energy gained is dependent on how much energy the target has makes it even more unreliable for energy management. Reduce it's recharge time to 20.

Practice Stance- a passive elite that seems to benefit only choking gas. All non-elite preparations have a lasting rate double that of their recharge rate, so this elite doesn't really give any huge benefit to them. I suggest that it loses the 50% last longer clause and is replaced by a 75% faster casting rate to make all preparations benefit.

Poison Arrow- there is the debate whether to take this elite over apply poison; the preparation is better and more energy efficient when you want to poison a team of 8 players while the elite is good for poisoning single targets. I believe that elite skills should be way more superior than a normal skill, but it seems that this is not the case. Take away the energy requirement on this elite and there is no longer fuss over which is the best.

Mind Freeze- the weakest of all mind spells. It has the same damage and duration as ice spikes except target moves 90% slower. If I wanted an elite that keeps the target from moving, then I’d take arcane echo and water trident. At least with that combo you can keep someone stationary for 20 seconds. Increase the elite’s duration to 10 seconds.

Fevered Dreams- all the hexed person has to do is move away from his teammates to totally destroy it’s usefulness; I’m not going to rely on my opponent’s IQ in order to spread conditions. Increase it’s aoe to that of a ward.

Flourish- the elite isn’t that bad on a warrior, except for the fact that it takes 1 second in order to cast. That one second is all a target needs in order to escape a warrior or disrupt it. Make this skill have an instantaneous cast and this would be a more worthy elite.

Gladiator’s Defense, Mist Form, and Defy Pain- elite self-protecting skills are totally worthless, except for obsidian flesh because at least it protects you against both physical damage and spells, in pvp. Most people are smart enough to switch targets if they see some sort of self-protect skill. If I wanted to tank in pve, I’d bring the countless other skills found in tactics, earth, protect, expertise, and inspiration. Make GD and DP capable of affecting adjacent / nearby allies and allow MF to be used on target ally.

Why is it I only see upgrades for the current skills and not one nerf except the res sig?

Ohh let me try some

Dual Shot - Increase recharge to 10 Seconds
Energy Surge - lose 1-4 energy, aoe 20 damage per energy lost
Burn - same as surge but not aoe
Signet Weariness - Lose 1 - 7 energy aoe
IWAY - Put a Cap on the max time (10 - 20 seconds or something) and not affect pets

For one thing, Obsidian Flesh and Arcane Echo were also nerfs.
[EDIT: And Consume Corpse/Necrotic Traversal]

For another, I don't see any dominant "must use" or "must be able to counter" skills in PvP except for Resurrection Signet. Nor any truly dominant builds - IWAY is very popular but isn't that hard to beat and the IWAY skill itself isn't the reason it's powerful anyway. (The trick to beating IWAY is more in being able to beat it with a build that can beat other things - creating an only anti-IWAY build is pretty easy.) I'd like some ranger builds to be a little weaker but I think the problem there is not that ranger skills are too strong and more a matter of there being too few anti-ranger skills - something that hopefully will be addressed in chapter 2.

I'm more concerned with the large amount of skills that go nearly unused because they're simply not good enough.

He's right, res sig needs to be nerfed. Any other res is almost useless in pvp, and the only two that are really used in pve besides res sig are res and rebirth.
Reses need to return to the monk.

Can't believe I forgot this one:

Holy Veil - Increase recharge to 15 seconds.

Fixes the balance with Remove Hex, although Holy Veil still probably would get used more because you can pre-cast it.

Most of what has been presented would be interesting changes, but i believe that most of them are not neccacary for balance. It would shift some of the flavors around a little making it more interesting for awhile. There are some things i disagree with though.
All glyphs need to affect more than one spell at a time, in order to be more comparable to other profession options in addition to being delivered faster. Just ignoring the cast time increases from hexes will not make glyph of concentration worth it, because you only begin to break even on the time lots using the glyph on spells with a cast time of 3s or more. Repeate use of such slow casting skills in addition to repeating the use time of the glyph and the energy cost is just too rediculas to really consider. It would always be better to risk the chaos storm like drain from resolve even in that instance. The attribute boost increase is interesting, but if the glyphs are one shot affairs it would need to be signifigantly higher than that as well. I would guess in the 5-8 range. Unfortunatly it would be easy to abuse with wards and some select enchantments like obsidian flesh or non-elementalist primaries. Personally i think that all the glyphs should be varaible in nature and moved to the energy storage skill line, but they would be radically different if a change like that occured.

Then there is the issue where you cant use multiple glyphs in conjunction with each other, like you can do with stance, spirit, shout, preperation, and enchantment combinations.
It would need to last longer too, because its only a slightly better version of serpents quickness currently and costs more.
Not all spells are created equal either. Many of them have a near 24/7 effect with this or glyph of renewal. You didnt talk about it, but it would be nice if the blackout effect generators, power block and blackout, had their skill listing updated so that blackout is described more like knockdown where the interupt is a byproduct of the blackout effect rather than the result of being interupted.

Even 6s is an eternity in pvp for someone who is a target and potentially required to heal or protect. A mesmer knocking it down to 3s or less seems more functional, but they are a soft target, splitting their skills strangely, and still need to be in touch range. If any reduction is made, it would probably need to be more than that.
Rangers also have built in efficiency. If you are going to argue along these lines then most of the 15-25 energy elementalist spells should in fact be 5-10 energy as well. If you want to talk about overpriced skills start with the 10-25 energy ones that also cause exhaustion.
1-16 damage wont change that situation.

Wear stonefist gauntlets or allow the knock down time to be increased past that point.

W/mo characters would still be better off with the crap skill mending, because i will survive only adds 3 pips for each condition. Since 3 pips only counters bleeding; disease, poison, and burning are going to rip right through you anyway. Then there is the issue of degen via hexes on top of that. Basically the skill needs to more closely reflect melandru's resiliance minus the energy regeneration for it to be moderatly useful in pve. It would still be a junk skill in pvp though.

1-13 would place it very close to eviserate in general purpose work, due to the lack of a deep wound applied. 1-10 would probably be adequate initially to see how much of a change it caused in trends.

You're correct, particularly with these glyphs, but there's no way Arenanet is going to change their functionality drastically, and as for increasing the numbers, with balance changes you always want to go in baby steps. 3 is also not quite as useless - for example you could use it with Thunderclap to go from 6 energy per knockdown to 4 - making it a win if you get it going for any useful length. I also imagine it could be useful on mixed spike teams where each character uses a different skill on a coordinated target - using the glyph there is like free damage when you are expecting that the combination is going to kill the target.

Probably, but anytime I used it as a Mesmer I had too many problems trying to find the energy to cast the spells as fast as they're recharging to worry about whether or not it was lasting long enough.

Probably true, but again, baby steps.

The 15-25 energy elementalist spells often have useful or powerful effects - e.g. Meteor Shower. Concussion shot, even with high expertise is still quite expensive for a Ranger for an effect that is almost completely useless outside of random arenas. It needs to be at least cheap enough that you can afford to spam it a little more, similar to Blinding Flash for Elementalists.

Not really, but giving it some damage might have a chance of convincing some people to use it in the arenas where the condition can sometimes actually be useful.

Possibly, although you're forgetting that some conditions don't inflict degen such as Blindness and Deep Wound. Additionally Burning is always very short and the health regeneration is going to outlast it. Also it's a Shout so your stance slot is free (unlike Melandru's Resilience). I actually forgot about MR working with hexes as well, but that might be overkill for this skill.

Concussion shot is already a good enough skill as it is, with high expertise it's cost is reduced by more than half. If you're still running into energy problems and have the intention of spamming it, why not throw in Marksman's Wager for energy management?

Weaken armor is good as it is now-any added buff to include elemental damage might make it be a bit too powerful since lightning already penetrates 25%.

If one is truely intent on using desparation blow, then maybe one should bring along balanced stance and charge to utilize the shout and stance aspects of the two skills. As it is, the skill is fine and does not require a buff.

Another nice balance would be to increase the recharge of that one pet skill, that interrupts and causes 20 second recharge, to 10 seconds.

Increase ether lord degen/regen, but possibly shorter duration? As it is it's fairly useless, and u'd almost never use it because of losing all ur energy.

I'd be curious to hear in what situation you think Concussion Shot is good. In my view, it is nearly useless unless you can spam it, and you can't spam it because it costs too much, so it's underpowered. I compare it to the Elementalist skill Blinding Flash, which has a similiarly crippling effect on warriors and rangers if it manages to stay on and has the same situation of needing to be cast repeatedly against a team with any condition removal at all. The difference? Blinding Flash costs 15 energy. (And before you mention Expertise, Elementalists have attunements that do nearly the same thing)

Why is a hex giving warriors and rangers (who also have armor penetration on some attack skills) a damage boost balanced but one that also gives some elementalist and necromancer skills a damage boost not balanced?

A good point on using Balanced Stance to counter the knockdown; I had overlooked that. Still seems a little weak, but that's also due to the fact that the condition you get is random which is what makes the skill unique so I don't think that should be changed.

Why? Unlike Distracting Shot (which does have a 10 second recharge), you cannot 'aim' Disrupting Lunge because the pet will do it on its next attack instead of having a 1/2 activation time. The faster recharge seems like reasonable compensation.

Mysterial are you a fan of IWAY or something. You should really add some more IWAY nerfs in there. It's is getting way too old for most people and needs to be nerfed. We need some more originality in tombs.

Attunes can be removed though, and have an annoying recharge time, they're not the same thing.

The problem with dazed is that it absolutely destroys all spellcasters, and they are usually the ones that are going to be handling condition management. The way you're talking about it, anyone could grab 2 rangers and shut the casters (2/3 of the classes avaliable) rendering most of the team useless.Blind doesn't affect the skills that remove it, but in most cases dazed will.

EDIT: Apart from that though, I do agree with alot of your other points, some great suggestions in there that I'd like to see implemented.

1) IWAY doesn't need to be nerfed, but in any case, I think nerfing Resurrection Signet will do quite a bit, since they have no way to quickly get themselves back to full.

2) Nerfing the FOTMs doesn't create more originality in tombs and it never has. It just causes new FOTMs to be created that then are used by the majority playing there.

It harms a single spellcaster and is conditional (you have to catch them casting a spell). Most condition removal spells are under 1 second cast times so still require effort to consistently interrupt unless you're attacking with warriors as well. Additionally, anyone can grab two rangers, load up on their fast recharging interrupt skills, and destroy them just as badly. It's not like it would make rangers do something they couldn't already do with ease. Finally, Arcane Conundrum has half the effect of Dazed (arguably the more important part), is not conditional, and is cheap.

I do agree that there's risk of going too far in the opposite direction and overpowering Dazed, especially in the arenas where condition removal is more rare. But right now just about nobody uses it, and I think there's a reason for that.

Res sig is balanced by DP. No need to reduce the life gain. If you killed the target once you should be able to do it again but much easier the 2nd time.

Mind burn does not need to be aoe "on fire" last for 7 seconds making it over 100 dmg in degen then another 100 from spell's dmg. Mind burn is fine the way it is.

Mind shock is fine. 1 second casting with 140 dmg is just fine.

Mind freeze does need a boost but not in dmg. I'd rather have the increased slow duration.

Ward vs Harm does not need to be 32 armor. At a 20 armor increase you are reducing all dmg by 1/4. At 32 armor you are reducing by 1/3. That's insane.

Mantra of Recovery needs to have a longer duration to be of any use. At 15 seconds you are going to get 1 more use out of most spells. For 15 energy on a mes is a huge investment.

Sheilding Hands is a very powerful skill that is often overlooked because of recharge. Peronally I have no problem with 25 recharge but I think 15 is a little much. Being able to reduce dmg by 15+ (on avg) and have a 3 second window that it is down is way too much. 20 recharge would be much better.

Consume corpse and transveral are just fine the way they are. Purtrid was given recharge due to armor ignoring 120 dmg aoe. It was not nerfed because of fast corspe control.

Point Blank shot does 100+ dmg so ya that sounds like we need to increase the dmg. Its fine the way it is.

Concussion shot at 14 expertise is 15 energy so its fine the way it is. Every ranger should have 14 expertise.

I like the suggestions on the 3 Mind skills. The Mind skills have way too many conditions and the recharge doesn't justify it. Energy cost is alright. Exhaustion prevents Ele from casting it often and if the Ele is low on energy, those Elites won't even be good.

If it was balanced by DP, you wouldn't be required to bring it to win in the arenas. If it was balanced compared to the resurrection spells, those spells would see use in PvP.

I don't remember the last time I got Mind Burn to last the full 7 seconds on any team with a monk. Also important is that it costs 15 energy instead of 10 (which hurts double when you have to have more energy for the spell to be worth anything) and that it's a single target spell in a line dominated by AoE. If you think 7 seconds of burning on multiple is too much, I'd still take 3 seconds of flame in an AoE instead of the current effect.

Let's compare it to Lightning Orb.

Positives:
-5 energy, -1 casting time, instant hit instead of projectile, knockdown

Negatives:
+15 second recharge time (!!!), conditional, exhaustion, elite

Exhaustion for knockdown is a standard non-elite spell trade. Longer recharge time for minor reductions in cost and/or casting time is a standard non-elite spell trade. Are you going to tell me that it being instant hit is worth a conditional and your elite slot?

The only reason to use Mind Shock is when you need a second Lightning Orb. If there were enough good damage spells in Air Magic to fill a skill bar, nobody would ever take it.

The increased slow duration is definitely more important. But I don't think it would hurt to have the spell be the only water magic hex that does damage worth having. It is elite, after all.

No, it's reducing all elemental damage by about 1/3. Warrior and ranger damage bonuses ignore armor and so you're actually getting less. For an elite spell, taking Ward Against Elements' damage and applying it to warrior and ranger damage, half of which ignores it, is a bit weak.

Perhaps, although in a spike-heavy game like Guild Wars Protective Spirit is superior in every way, especially because of its fast recharge.

In what case does Point Blank shot do 100+ dmg that another arrow attack won't do the same at longer range?

Concussion shot is meant to be a well-timed interrupt on a caster. If you really have trouble trying to interrupt pesky mesmers and protect monks, bring along arcane conundrum or nature's renewal to double their casting rate.

Warriors and rangers both only have one skill that can penetrate armor, primary profession only. Whereas, the entire lightning line has 25% armor penetration. If the penetration clauses stack, then we're looking at 45% armor penetration. Fire and earth lines have the most hard hitting spells; most fire spells do 119 damage at 16 fire while earth can augment damage or cause armor ignoring damage. (Yes, I know that armor ignoring damage would have no affect with 20% armor penetration.) Only ice has the most pathetic damage out of all the ele lines; however, this flaw is fixed by the high-damage spammable spells only water eles have. If you wanted to increase the damage done by water skills, then add in some points into the necro curse line to grab soul barbs.

Disrupting lunge is too spammable at its current state. Need I remind you that rangers have the primary attribute expertise which can reduce recharge times? Given that it is totally spammable, add in call of haste and your pet can disrupt most spells instantaneously just like a mesmer, which seems too good of a shutdown build if you ask me.

Any sort of buffs to perm rezzes (excluding unyeilding aura) would seem kind of unbalancing, I wouldn't want a resmer just to bring up most of his teammates that my team had just killed. In my opinion, rez buffs just makes glyph of sacrifice less useful.

The parity you are going for here is not quite the same, as blinding flash does not effectivly stop all skill use comming from that character. People can also move out of the meteor shower AOE before they take a single hit, in addition to limiting its effect to only one hit as well. Many npc monsters do this well enough. If the character is not forced to stay in the same position for more than 1s, when the spell casting finishes, they will avoid the majority of it without many other circumstances in place. The issue of stray bow fire is more user error than anything else, while block/evade attacks have to be compensated by everyone who attacks normally. Then there is also the issue of exhaustion which is to discourage non-elementalist primaries from using the skill, but since there is only 1 exhaustion removal skill which is eliete and a glyph its not exactly a widely viable option.

The mistake with alot of the ranger skills creates a trend which lead people to believe that they should be spam masters. We saw this with spirits, we saw this with interupts, we still see it with damage style spikes. Not all skills should be this way. It is functional and it does require the opponent to take measures against it, unlike elementalist skills that merely require the player to move 2-3 steps to get out of the way or spread out from each other.

The reality with this skill is, unless the ranger is split 4 different ways, the expertise level will be either 14-15 or 11, making the real cost of concussion shot 10-11e, or 14. Then you figure in a zealous string reducing the cost by another point bringing the totals down even more. The problem is that efficency is far greater than pool size especially when combined with regeneration options like a zealos string mod. What you have is a skill that will last longer than its refresh time and completly shuts down a character that and casts which doesnt happen to be a interupt mesmer or a protection monk.

Migraine and arcane conodrum do not give a free shutdown on the character that recieves this effect, while concussion does. They are more difficult to maintain and require normal interupts as well. If the character is running migraine, then it is not running power block or mantra of recovery in order to have better interupt and shutdown coverage unlike a ranger who merely just has to keep attacking. Also, for a proper mesmer parity, you would have to figure in the actual cost of the interupt spell being used for each spell being cast, which adds 10-15 to the already existing 10 cost and cycle slower than bow refire rate or other interupt skills the ranger posesses that interupt anything. The only point of real contention that can be argued is the existance of martyr, but since condition stacks are so easy to apply with a ranger i dont feel it is a point in favor of cost reduction for rangers.

Yes, but the premis is to survive, which implies the damaging conditions not the disabling ones. Also in the burning instance, the shout lasts longer than the condition does, but the regen from the shout is conditional to having the condition in the first place. In short, even with it including hexes, the skill is just trash. It is better to just have +3-5 pips of regen constantly than subtracting 3 from each potential damaging condition. If you get hit with something like virulence you are still hosed in either skill used, however with a monk secondary provides options to wipe out all of those conditions while keeping the regen.

A more amusing buff to the skill would be to make it like IWAY and increase attack speed if afflicted by a condition. It would be pointless though if the conditions involved happened to be cripple, blind, weakness that the bonus regeneration actually is noticably beneficial with.

Attunments are just free energy for anyone running the inspiration line and are not up 24/7 like expertise is. It is far from the same. Blinding flash does not also prevent the character from using skills like concussion shot does and it needs to be spammed unlike concussion shot. If the problem is the arrow reaching the target fast enough, rangers have options to adjust that situation as well in addition to picking a shorter range bow with a flatter firing line. The skill does not need to be spammed to be effective. Being able to apply it to every caster on the opposing team with 1 ranger would be a massive mistake. The skill does not need to be altered its self and is only kept in check by things like martyr and a couple other select skills in 8v8 play.

Because it is a baby sitting skill and is not too difficult to just keep spamming it on one character like a necro or a ele without even watching their new and improved skill icons under the name. The idea is to force similar timing between all interupt skills. Pets need improvements in other areas before something like this would need to happen though.
Penetration does not stack. Not all air spells have penetration.

Lightning hits harder than fire and earth hits harder than lightning against rangers and warriors.

You could do that, but i highly doubt you will be focusing all of the hex inducing spells on the same target. Ice spear without any outside help will out do fire spells, excluding stacked damage from meteor shower + something else. Water cant really spike damage, but thats about it. You could use frozen burst, but that would place the ele in melee range with the intdended targets.

There is a reason it is a one-time skill. I don't think it is because it gets an ally back at half-health.

Getting a bit strong there, 100 damage with a 7 second burn is not bad as part of a spike. Make it AoE and you end up with 5 mind burn spike eles who can kill whole groups in 5 seconds.

120 damage aoe is still nothing to sneeze at. Yes, the AoE is smaller, but cut it down to 10 energy and you may find it a bit to strong. It casts fast enough to be a good hex removal spell, which is what it is ment to be in addition to the damage, but I do not think it is ment to be spammable as well.

Agreed, the skill is pretty much pointless right now. As has been suggested, a bit longer duration (or a shorter recharge time) may also be in order.

I have to disagree here, arcane mimicry has a long recharge because it copies an elite that you do not have on your bar, it can provide you with a second, different elite, rather than the same elite. I can think of no spells off the top of my head that you would want to make a duplicate of, especially with the 15 energy cost, that will provide a good advantage. Would you please name a few?

Won't change much. Skill lock is still the problem, not the range. It also has a 6 second cast time, an eternity for your teams mesmer who is under focused fire while you try to res. If you are the last one left standing (and so are trying to stealth-res your team) then you are just wasting time. You got killed once, and now you have dp.

Good idea, 25 energy is way overkill, even if it is the only skill in the game against spell breaker. Unless this is on a warrior, the caster is not likely to be next to the target anyway.

Bad plan, warriors and rangers are a heck of a lot easier (read: many more counters) to shut down than an elementalist. Hence one reason it only effects the warriors and rangers.

Putrid got it because battles became a button-mashing challenge between the necros. Winners team gets a deadly explosion. No such problems exist with CC or NT.

Expertise for the win. When I use this skill I don't have energy problems, but then I also don't try to spam it. Dazed is to powerful a condition for an easy application, and you are talking about making the skill cost 7-8 energy (most rangers have about 14 expertise)

The skill still would not get used, 1. . .16 damage on a knocked down foe is a tiny increase, and is not going to make any difference.

It already is worth it, stoneskin gauntlets take it to 3 seconds (I think) Up it to a base of 3, and the gauntlets are a pointless addition. Let it go above 3, and backbreaker becomes a skill worse than hammer bash, despite elite status (and backbreaker is already fairly bad compared to devastating hammer)

Totally agree, this skill needs a buff, and this looks to be a good way to do that.

My axe attacks under frenzy go about this fast, I still would not use this skill, especially with the knockdown effect. Maybe instant attack speed but provides no adrenaline?

Probably won't make it get used any more, but it also does not seem to make it overpowered, so sure, why not.

put skull crack back at 10 addrenaline and make it unconditional dazed hit, and you lose all addrenaline when you use it

decrease cool down on warriors cunning to 45 seconds,

increase the aoe on "Charge", make it last a bit longer

turn flourish into a shout, decrease cool down

turn unyielding aura into a hard res removing enchant burden

increase cost of migrane to 15, decrease length

give the sword line an extra decent addren attack

make dual shot 15 energy attack

make crude swing a 4 addren attack and remove the easily interrupted part

decrease addren cost of mighty blow

make cleave an attack that cant be blocked or evaded

With the right skill set, a beast master can cause some major problems for the enemy team. However, I do admit they have pretty crappy AI; it takes several seconds from you wanding/attacking another player before it switches targets.

I consider fire to be the hardest hitting line for an ele but very inconsistent damage, while lightning has more reliable damage with its armor piercing ability. Ie: Fire will do 119 damage to most casters except when they have fire resistance or have high armor. Lightning is guarenteed to hit high on all casters even against a bit of lightning resistance. (Assuming people don't take stances.)

I'd hardly call 5 fire eles with mind burn (buffed version) a spike. It does inconsistant damage and the burn effect would just overlap. It'd be just a Rodgort's Invocation on steroids. Most likely though, the 7 or 8 second burning would be cured before it reaches its full effect. Probably be used to supplement spikes or be used as just another counter for iway.

And it comes back with every morale boost. Good teams can get morale boosts without too much effort.

And if they are all bunched up like that they sorta deserve to get hit hard by something. Burning doesnt stack, so multiple fire eles cant really optimize like this. Feast of corruption only costs 10 energy, doesnt cause exhaustion, heals, the only conditional effect is a hex and does over 100 aoe damage. Currently just using immolate twice is better than mind burn, but fireball is better than immolate, so....

The energy drain is worse in the long term from rebirth than the skill lock. It wouldnt matter if it did lock the skills or not in most cases since you have no energy anyway.

I hope you arent serious. Rangers are one of the most difficult to shut down. There is no such thing as mass or long term ranger hate in the game. They share the same counters as warriors, with a few exceptions making the list far smaller than warriors in addition to being ideal to counter necros and eles. Necros and eles also require fewer skills from fewer people to counter them individually and when they are countered, they are rendered completely ineffective.

It would have to be able to go above 4 as well should that occur. It would have to cap somewhere under blackout, but going that high is rather strong anyway.

This thread is so covered in quotes, it makes my current headache even worse.

Some good ideas though, but like some others have said you need to put some IWAY nerfs in there.

res sigs are fine as is and if they did do what some are suggesting it will decrease the skill level of pvp as ppl can make halfway decent spike builds without having to deal with the team ressing back as efficiently
dp is powerful enough when it comes to death and a res sig is a part of the gameplay itself that shouldnt be counted as anyother skill that can be overpowered or underpowered

Unconditional dazed is overpowered. Every group would take three or more warriors with skull crack and just daze all the monks. Casters would become useless without defensive spells up before the battle has gone on for long, and if the dazed lands anyway then no more defenses will be coming up.

I wouldn't say without much effort. If you know your ghostly is about to die, heal him. If they are in need of the boost, then you should have no trouble. Same thing with GvG flag stands. If they need the boost and you don't, it should not take much for you to keep hold of the stand.

True, but I don't think you mentioned the AoE size. Are we talking ward range, or something smaller? Also, it was not the burning that was the problem, but the 500 aoe damage. With FoC spike, decent teams will guess what is happening when the entire team gets hit with suffering, and so will spread out. Mind burn will just slam you. If you ment that only the burning is aoe, then I see little problem with it.

The only mass caster hate that comes to mind is signet of weariness and panic. Scourge sacrifice is not really caster hate against anything but sac necros, and nothing else comes to mind for AoE shutdown. However, rangers can easily be shutdown with blind. Yes, blind comes off quickly, but blinding flash comes back darned fast as well. You are of course right, rangers are harder to shutdown than warriors, what with all the anti-warrior wards, cripple, etc. but there are numerous hexes that will take a ranger down to physical damage, or force him or her to not attack. Besides backfire, a caster always has the option to cast. Energy denial is no easy feat, and usually takes a dedicated build. Blinded rangers cannot interrupt, and it will be a very good ranger who can stop blinding flash or ineptitude. There are also plenty of stances that prevent rangers from hitting, and one stance to prevent interruption.

IWAY does not need a nerf. If you cannot kill them, then I am sorry, but plenty of guilds have no trouble with it. Also, nerfing IWAY will do nothing but bring another flavor-of-the-month out, which people will soon be calling for nerfs on.

The point is more to make having one or two characters with /Mo secondary balanced vs res sig on everybody instead of the current situation where even a resmer with high healing is a waste of time in everything that's not GvG (and even there, questionable).

It's not *that* underpowered, but if it's not meant to be spammable, I'd rather they enforce it with a large recharge time and make the energy cost something that your average Mesmer can afford to spend.

Most non-Enchantment Elites are useful to double up. Never hurts to Migraine two casters at once, for instance. Or just to beat hex removal. It's true that it gets pricey, but so does Arcane Mimicry.

Well, now it's a button mash for an energy advantage instead of pure damage. Close enough. It's still the case that Wells are rarely seen outside of against IWAY (due to the huge volume of deaths going on) and even then teams don't get them off very often.

You are correct, I forgot that stoneskin gauntlets max out at 3 second knockdowns.

an unconditional dazed wouldnt be overpowered
in ca/ta a good warrior would still have a target dead before you would even be able to daze them
in 8v8 you have other monks to help out and simply remove the daze

You might want to read over what I said again, specifically the part about groups taking more than one warrior.

To me, that hints at a problem with the regular res spells, not res signet. Problem is, cut res signet down, and groups will be dead meat once a player goes down because they will never get him back up again. Buff res spells to much and we have battles that last forever. While I cannot say if things should remain the way they are now, it is possible that ANet knew about this when they made the game, and res spells are ment primarily for PvE while the signet is ment for PvP.

The better fix for this is not to prevent elite copying, but to lengthen the recharge or increase the cost. In a game where skill combos are the path to victory, it can get old fast if plenty of skills have strange prevention abilities like "not usable with elite skills". Much better to make a player commit to the combo fully (higher cost) or not as spammable (longer recharge) than remove the combo altogether (excluding combos that are overpowered, such as if a combo existed to make a player invincible, or one that could kill a player every time, no preventable effects used.)

Yeah, but we are starting down the path of strategy versus skill effectiveness now. Dividing up the enemy team by using a runner to try and stop the morale boost would more than make up for the 1 man lost and renewing the signets/long recharge skills for the entire team.

Yeah there is a big difference between having an AOE effect and having a large AOE effect. I believe that sort of thing is more trial and error than anything else. Also, the hex does not have to be delivered from a necro, or in the necro lines. It could easily be something simple like ice spikes or complicated like panic. The point is, it ignores armor level so it hits relativly hard against everything, while fire only hits hard against unprotected casters.

Also any decent team will spread out if they notice an AOE strategy, not just FOC, which is a major drawback inherent to many of the elementalist spells that are static in nature or really slow on delivery, reuse, and heavy in cost.

Not if the caster is under the effect of dazed, or in conjuction with migraine/conodrum while in conjunction with easily repeated skills like those that are delivered from a ranger. Blind does not compare to things like concussion, its not even in the same discussion realistically. Weakness comes closer, but only really applies to warriors, because if the ranger is interupts the importance of damage can be viewed as secondary. Rangers also typically have stacked damage sources, so that the primary weakness damage hurts but doesnt cripple them entirely. So in essence you potentially must compesnate for physical hits and fire elemental damage. You are also listing mass caster hate against single target physical damage hate. Again you have no real parity here.

Ineptitude is more like comparing against diversion, except you are not losing a skill for a long period of time. It can also be compared to mark of subversion, guilt, and shame. It will take alot more than blinding flash to stop a ranger, but repeat diversion, blackout, daze, or backfire (some have removal issues while others do not) will stop a caster. You dont need all of the above to accomplish that feat, merely any 1 of those skills, while in order to stop a ranged physical attacker like a ranger it takes a few skills in conjunction with each other, time, and no removal to achieve the same effect. Energy denial is closer to the style of build required, in terms of skill positions used by 1 character, to what it takes to "shut down" a ranger never mind groups of them.

My suggestion will make Skull Crack the instant attack like Disrupting Lunge. Leave the 10 adrenline. It will greatly improve this skill IMO, not like it's a great skill... condition is so easily removed. In fact, how many skills in the game cause Daze? Skull "Crap" and Concussion Shot?


Weaken Armor adds huge damage even on warriors. If anything, I find the casting time too long. 3s is asking for interruption. Barbs only has 2s.


Hundred Blades should add some damage. Maybe +1-6. +10 is too much. That's like +20 AoE. +12 damage will make HB really useful.

I don't think reducing Resurrection Signet to 50% health is going to affect normal builds all that much. It's 1-2 quick heals away from full health and it's unlikely that the enemy is going to spike him down again in that time. It's a little more energy and attention burden to get someone back up, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It also still casts the fastest and is slightly harder to interrupt because it is not a spell so I think even at 50% health most teams would run it anyway.

What is DOES affect is the arenas (where Resurrection Signet is the decider in way too many battles) and no-monk builds like IWAY that can't immediately heal the player that was resurrected.

I have this odd feeling that nobody read my comments on the numerous crappy elites in this game...

Skull Crack is nearly impossible to pull off without an ias skill and even then it's just pure luck against many of the fast casters within the game. Right now, this doesn't even deserve to be an elite.

Mind Burn (buffed) is not overpowered; the only time you'll see people bunch up adjacent to one another is if the team balls up or there are warriors on the team.

Preventing dead pets from triggering IWAY and Increasing the cooldowns on ranger interrupts so they cant be shot so close together would make me happy, anything else would be a bonus.

Edge of Extinction needs to be nerfed, and now.

I suggest making the damage output drop linearily as you move away from it. Ideally, a EoE team would need to start getting right in the middle of the battle to be effective.

This would also make IWAY teams drop EoE out in the open where they can be seen and interupted. Additionally, when the HoH turns into a giant EoE bomb, you would not have to abandon the entire Hall just to try and stay alive.

As it is now, EoE on the field means that either team has about a 50% chance of winning. This "skill" removes team play, hard work, and gaming skill, and that should equal NERF!!!