How to pick out a Good Skill vs a Bad Skill

NOTE: This guide is mostly written in a PvP mindset, however, most (90% of it, I'd say) applies to PvE as well. Anything that would change between the two, will be noted.

Do not bring up PvE vs PvP in this topic. This isn't the time or the place. Most PvE'ers do PvP to some extent, and most PvPers have PvE'd. If you're going to do this, gtfo.

Introduction:
I think that even to this day, 2 years later, there are players who don't realize what literally makes a skill "good" and what makes it "bad". Especially now with Wiki and stuff, copying builds is even easier, and the builds you see just seem to work, but knowing how and why they work is a great asset that will let you adapt and find the next best "thing" before anyone else.

Some players can tell you if a skill is good or bad at just a glance by a skill update. Sure, they aren't always 100% accurate, but, they are usually right. Why is this? Well, there is tons of factors in determining if a skill is good or bad.

The Factors:
Cost: This one is pretty obvious. What does the skill cost you? This isn't just Energy or Adrenaline or Sacrifice, no! This includes time. Time is valuable, and that includes in-game. The higher the cost, the higher the reward should be, if the two don't balance out, then the skill probably isn't too hot to begin with.

A good example of a skill that sucks because of cost, is Mending. Mending costs you 10 Energy plus 1 energy every 3 seconds, and 2 seconds of your time to cast it. Your reward is that you get healed for (at 12 attribute) 6 Health Per Second (HPS).

Let's say you maintain Mending for....a minute. You've effectively paid 30 Energy for Mending, and will of been healed for 360 Health in that time, and that is assuming you needed the health throughout the entire duration.

Let's look at another skill, Orison of Healing. It costs 5 Energy, costs you 1 second of your time, and recharges in 2. At 12 attribute, it heals for 60. This means, if you used it 6 times (to match the energy cost of the 1:00 mending), you will also be healed for 360 Health. This is the problem with Mending.

Mending, is an Enchantment, which means its easy to remove, and therefore it isn't as dependable as Orison is. The fact of the matter is, over time, all the Wammos out there would be better off replacing Mending with Orison of Healing.

....or other skills, as you will see!

Another part of cost, is the recharge. A low cost high recharge skill won't do anybody any good. You want low recharge stuff, almost always. Anything with a high recharge is just asking to get stripped, and will probably kill your build. An example are the Elemental Attunement spells. If they get stripped, you're probably screwed in most cases if you build around them. In PvE, this is less of a problem as you can stop and wait for them to recharge without worring about getting attacked, and can look to see what the monsters are carrying ahead of time with Wiki.

Flexibility:
How flexible is the skill? This one is kind of hard to guage. Is the skill usable and awesome for most of the professions? Look at the new Wail of Doom! It's very very flexible. It can own all 10 professions when used right, but when used wrong, owns nobody. Gale, owns all 10 professions. A skill like say, Vocal Minority, however, does not. It only owns Paragons and Warriors, and therefore if there are no Paragons or Warriors, you just wasted a skill slot. That's bad!

Risk & Reward:
I kind of mentioned this in cost, but your skill needs to provide a bigger reward than its risk. Look at Magnetic Aura. Its a 5/.25/60 Enchantment Spell, that provides you a 17s 75% chance to block. Lets analyze it:

Pros:
+75% chance to block is a lot.
+Low energy cost.
+Low cast time.

Cons:
-Enchantment Spell
-60 second recharge time.
-Very low duration.

It hits about even, with 3 Pros, and 3 Cons. In PvE, this means its not "that" bad (still bad though), in PvP this screams "don't take me". If it gets stripped (and it will. Trust me.) you have a 7 Skill skillbar, for ~55 seconds. Great.

Another thing to look out for, is Enchantments vs Enchantment removal, and Hexes vs Hex removal. Big cost Enchantments/Hexes generally aren't so hot because of low cost Enchantment/Hex removal. A 25e Hex isn't going to do you any good if your enemy can remove it for 0/5e, it's just going to hurt your energy + time pool. You wind up taking a huge risk for a little to no reward. Not good.

Let's look at a couple of other skills!

Aegis
Pros:
+Party wide 50% chance to block for only 10 Energy
+10 Energy
+It's an Enchantment Spell, but removing 8 Enchantments on an entire party is harder than removing 1.

Cons:
-Recharge time
-Mirror of Disenchantment owns it.

Aegis, provides a bigger reward than its risk. Generally, monks will Glyph of Lesser Energy it, making it even better. Aegis is awesome. Take it.


Glimmer of Light [E]
Pros:
+It's 5/0.25/1 means you can use it thru Daze easier.
+It heals ok.

Cons:
-It only heals ok.
-Single target heal, that you have to spam.
-Will drain your energy for only a moderate HPS.

GoL kind of sucks. It's a decent single target heal, but its only decent. There are better Elites.


This brings me to my next factor....

Conditionality:
This is going to sound loco, but you probably want some skills with conditionality. There are very few "non-Conditional" skills that are good. A Conditional skill is something that requires a Condition to achieve a bigger effect.

Examples include: Zealous Benediction, Cure Hex, Agonizing Chop, Word of Healing...

Non-conditional skills are rarely good, because if they are very good, then they are generally overpowered.

Example of non-conditional skills include: Galrath Slash, Wail of Doom, Healing Signet.

That isn't to say all non-conditional skills suck! Some of them are pretty good! But you need to factor in numbers for those skills. Stuff like Eviscerate, Blinding Flash, Heal Party, and what not, are good, without being overpowered, they are just about right. And you should probably take them too! But Conditional skills with common conditionalities are very very good too.

Conditional skills are generally only good if the conditions are the following:
-Has a hex on them
-Has a condition on them
-Is casting a Spell
-Is below 50% Health
-Has an enchantment on them

The reason being, that all those things, are very very common. Take Rip Enchantment for example, Enchantments are very common. Take Vocal Minority....Shouts....not so much. Not nearly as close to as Enchantments at the very least.

Your Team:
The biggest factor of them all, your team build. Most skills become suddenly better when paired up with other skills, that's just a fact. Searing Flames grows exponentially stronger the more copies of it you have on your team, for example. This is where most people fail, too many people get caught up on *their* build, and forget everyone else's. Don't think of yourself as a 8 Skill Bar person, think of yourself as a 64 Skill Bar person. (Doesn't apply to PUGs)



You may use this topic to discuss what I have said, and post about skills you think are good/bad and why, and how we could improve the bad skills into becoming good skills, maybe? But please keep PvE vs PvP out of this.


Thanks.

I don't have much to add accept I found it easy enough to see what EotN skills were bad when they were first posted on the wiki! I wonder why the skill creators didn't notice that. Maybe they don't play the game as much.

I think the way to make bad skills better is to change their functionality. With so many skills doing basically the same thing it's very hard to justify one over another that is so much better, when the one that isn't as good is only better in a really obscure situation.

Isiah's page on the official wiki is overflowing with skill discussions on what is bad.

I completely agree with you, and I want to see more functionality changes like Wail of Doom.

As for the Eye of the North skills, I think they didn't want to make any too good to screw up the metagame for PvP, and as for the PvE only ones.....I have no idea?

Whoever thinks Winds is actually a seriously good idea needs to pass me what they are smoking, haha.

Yeah, I believe Isiah said something to the effect that in Nightfall the approach was to try and add strong skills, then tone them down over time and they were going to avoid that with EotN.
I really like skill functionality changes. When I noticed the update changing functionality on a bunch of ritualist skills I was interested in coming back to play the game. It's like a mini expansion to me.

I'm not too sure what to say. But to me, most skills aren't just "bad". And you don't use only "good" skills; you use skills THAT FIT with what you're doing the best.

Aren't you?

Mending, for example, isn't a bad skill when you're making a solo-farming build. No?

If the monsters don't have any enchantment removal, and the healing will be enough to heal you, because you need energy, then sure Mending is okay, but thats about the only time it doesn't suck.

I said "for example" for a reason.

My point is, I wouldn't recommend anyone to read up the skill description and judge it as that. Many skills work very good for some places in PvE, but completely useless in the others. It's all about adaptation and picking what works best for what you're going to do.

yeah, well, like I said, this is with the PvP mindset in mind. Any skill probably has a use somewhere in PvE, but I'm going with a "in-general" kind of deal, y'know?

But some (and thereis a lot of them) skills as simply bad:

Too average when you can have specialized skill for your job.
Simply straightly inferior to other skills.
Way too narrow and specialized.

Hell, some normal skills are way better than elites.

Example: Visions of Regret. Elite skill which is very limited by targets you can apply it to. In theory, awesome when you doo. Wrong. Even if all you meet are mobs of arenaline skills-only warriors and paragons, empathy does more damage overall. And is way better because it can also target 3 other physical attacker types. And you can slap it on caster and eventually get ~100 damage from it because they do wand.

Similar rationalizations exist for all the bad skills

This is a pretty good guide, Necrid. I read through it trying to think of something to add, but couldn't come up with much.

I know you said to consider your team, but you might want to add a bit about considering a skill in the context of your own build. For example, if an ele is using Searing Flames, Glowing Gaze is an extremely good idea. If you already have a couple of good spammable heals on your monk bar, consider bringing some skills that prevent damage, remove hexes, and remove conditions.

Also, what Gareth said above is quite true: Aegis is amazing if you have all 8 party members in earshot, but gets less beneficial as the number of people around you shrinks.

Yeah, I didn't really mention Glowing Gaze functionality and stuff like that when it comes to your own build, because they are a part of the Conditionality part, really. Stuff Like Sever Artery - Gash, Searing Flames - Glowing Gaze, etc, are really obvious even to the novice player, so I didn't think it needed mentioning.

Also yeah, Aegis sucks in 4v4 compared to 8v8, but I didn't want to make this too long of a read, so I removed many mentions of 4v4 and stuff, because "in general" you'll be playing GW in 8v8, 90% of PvE is 8v8, and HA/GvG is 8v8, so yeah!

EDIT:
And thanks for the kind compliments! I used to play GvG a long time ago, but, unfortunately, due to computer problems and what not, I've been out of the serious GvG game for quite awhile. I analyze games and what not and keep up with the meta game, and sometimes go from guild to guild (most of them running joke stuff, heh), just to help people. I like helping people get into the game, it's good.

did you just promote mending?.... /sad...

mending is a bad skill.... now if you run mending with watchful spirit... now thats just godmode... xD

Yes mending is a bad skill even on solo farmers


Lol i remember when i used to think it was good and use it on a balth derv in RA



the good old days...

Interesting thread and ideas, but a few quick points.

Weighing Good vs Bad isn't only a risk vs reward, it's about knowing what's coming at you. In PvP, you tend to not always know, but you have some foresight into what builds are popular, and perhaps you might even know your opponents from prior matches, so you can weigh Good vs Bad with situational issues. In PvE, you can always either scout wiki, or learn from experience what conditional skills might be useful, and a majority of skills can have a good use in PvE at some point, even if only for a map or two. And, of course, what makes a skill good vs bad (such as ease of removal) can change between PvP and PvE, which is a given, but might bear some explanation.

You also should have explored a bit more about using skills together. A bad solo skill makes for a good skill combo. I realize you said this, but you didn't go into much detail other than just stating it.

On a side note, you missed mentioning Divine Favor on Orison of Healing as a potential added reason it's better than Mending on a Monk Primary. Which leads me to another thing you should mention, in that some skills work better only when used by their primary. Monk skills are the easy example, but Elementalists need to worry a bit less about energy cost with Energy Storage, Rangers have expertise which helps them keep energy costs down, A Paragon with a high leadership can deal with a high cost chant, etc.

Basicly, you went into good detail with the good vs bad, and missed in other areas that you could have done better with.

mending is good with sinsplit

while the guide is not bad, it is too short. You can write 3 books about skill selection. It isn't really interesting for the better players, while the newer ones wil just see a wall of text that doesn't mean anything to them.
nice effort tho.

Not defending Mending, but 6 Orisons takes you a total of 6 seconds. You didn't take that into account.