PvE skill reversion, what do you want to see?

I think skills that need to be reverted are ones that made certain pve monsters pretty much unable to do anything. A good example of this was the energizing wind nerf and the effect it had on oakhearts.

Other than those skills I don't really think much needs to be reverted. Some skills that were nerfed have not lost all usefulness in PvE and thus really don't need to be reverted. A good example of this would be splinter weapon. Its a favorite combination of mine, obviously as a ranger. Now I would love it if I was able to do massive splinter bombs like before but tbh the skill hasn't lost all usefulness as a result of the nerf. Its still powerful and it does its job.

However, some skills have been beaten so badly that they're completely useless in PvE. THese are skills I think definately need to be buffed. I mean whats the point of having them if they are so poor that it would be almost disadvantageous to use them since u take away a skill slot that could have been used more effectively. Watch Yourself definately comes to mind for this category also to a lesser extent, LoD

Sure it does. If a mob has X monsters and I have rank Y Soul Reaping, I know for sure that I'm going to get X*Y energy out of that mob. Perfectly predictable. As opposed to the random crap with the timer now -- am I going to get X*Y? 3*Y? 0?

You need to engage your brain here. The way the timer is implemented, killing faster means you get LESS energy gain than killing slower, not the same.
At 10 SR:
7 sec per kill --> ~1.43e/sec
6 sec per kill --> ~1.67e/sec
5 sec per kill --> ~2e/sec
4 sec per kill --> ~1.9e/sec (!!)
That's right, your energy gain decreases if you get your team playing better so they're making those kills a second faster. You would be better off actually playing worse so that you got more energy. Making you worse off than the status quo when you do X, is the very definition of "punishing" you for doing X.

Did you EVER see a group kick an elementalist to make room for a necro? How about a ritualist? A monk? A warrior? If they're so superior, why have we never seen class discrimination in favor of necros?


Actually, they were nerfed immediately after the Factions preview because of the whining that they would be too strong in AB.

I hope they buff a bunch of skills used by "hard" monsters, so people will complain that xx monsters are too hard because ANet buffed skills for PvE.

Yeah! Increase Fireball's max damage to 200 and make the radius 10 feet. Deep Freeze should do 150 damage and shouldn't be able to be removed and should cause immense lag for 3 seconds and slow for 15 seconds. Oh and Spirit Rift should be upped to 350 damage with cracked armor, weakness, blind, deep wound, bleeding and disease for 120 seconds! Woohoo.

There are plenty of viable builds in PvE, the problem is that the vast majority of them are outclassed by Ursan and SY. The issue here is not that everything is underpowered, it's that those two skills are overpowered. There are two ways of resolving this: buff everything up to the level of Ursan and SY, or nerf those two back to the level of every other skill in the game.

The changes you proposed seem to fall in the former camp, but they don't address this fully. Even if they were implemented, Ursan and SY will still dominate PvE. Maybe MMs with a horde of 30 minions will give them a run for their money, but that's about it.

A better proposal would be to nerf Ursan and SY, allowing old builds to see play once again and start tweaking things from there.

PvE has design issues that prevent class balance from ever happening. Mesmers are terrible because PvE doesn't favour precise, single-target shutdown. Assassins are terrible because they are low-armored frontliners who are slow at switching targets (limiting attack chains to short recharge skills). I can't see a way of fixing this unless PvE is completely redesigned, or class distinctions are eliminated and everybody turns into a bear (and even then, some classes are still better than others).

I don't mind buffs. However, I don't like buffs to things that are already powerful, or random, pointless buffs to skills with no clear goal.

I am with Sab all the way (and with the few that are not a big fan of the skill changes split between PvE and PvP).
However it might have something good in Dev's actually putting thought into balancing PvE ... and that would start with Ursan, SY and Consumables (which I see as the biggest problem).

As much as I agree with your post, I had to say that there are a couple points I want to make.

Firstly, Ursan and SY are so commonplace now in PvE, I'm not sure there could be a change that would cause people to change builds. Simply because the skills are so easy to use. SY would only benefit from a change such as the AL reduced to around 40-60, as opposed to 100 (this would still be more than half damage for your party, so still excellent for support).

Ursan on the other hand, would require MANY changes to fix it. Not only damage reduction, but there would have to be changes related to the way the skill works. Health bonus would have to be reduced/removes, armor bonus would have to be reduced/removed, and the way energy works would probably need a change. Currently it's far too easy to maintain Ursan, and for a team of 6 to roll through everything. Even if damage was HALVED, people would definitely still run it, as it's easier to run 6 ursans and kill slower, than run balanced and play smarter.

So realistically, unless Anet are prepared to destroy the skills (very unlikely, knowing their track record for appeasing PvErs), there will have to be strong buffs to other skills in order to compete. Other forms of party defense, other damage output builds, etc etc.

Maybe the way you play. Personally, my Assassin doesn't go near the front lines and doesn't have to worry about attack chains.

[Barrage][Distracting Shot][Sharpen Daggers][Critical Eye][Way of the Master][Critical Defenses][Heart of Shadow][Antidote Signet]

13 Critical Strikes, 12 Marksmanship and 3+ Shadow Arts (how much more depends on if you rune in a way to save a 20 point block, of course) and a Zealous bow of some sort (love my Ironwing Flatbow I just got today after Shiro). Can replace [[Heart of Shadow] with [[Viper's Defense] if you prefer to punish the relatively rare swarmings, or maybe [[Shadow Refuge] for more reliable healing. Doing a lot better with this build than my Barraging Ranger.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand...

Strange. Been playing for a few months now and have yet to see [["Save Yourselves!"] used by anyone I've grouped with and, outside of EotN regions, I've probably seen Ursan used in a PUG I was in less than a half-dozen times.

LoD back to its amazing state.

Healing Hands revert.


from 25rc to 15sec rc...

that nerf costed me my troll farmin build. Not happy.

ANet's been pretty inconsistent with their approach to appeasing PvErs, to the point where the no one has a clue what they'll do next (not even the devs, I don't think). With that said, I don't think they have the balls to completely obliterate Ursan/SY either, but a slight toning-down is certainly possible. That would be a good start, if they actually plan on introducing back the builds that Ursan/SY have displaced.

That's pretty much my point. The concept of the Assassin works so poorly in PvE that you've simply bypassed all the problems inherent in the class, and turned your Assassin into a Ranger.

Similarly, I can turn a Mesmer into a Me/N with Curses, but that doesn't mean Mesmers are perfectly fine in PvE.

Well, I guess it's a bit late to answer the OP, but here goes:

Hard to say - I guess these were the builds I look fondly back on. It's hard to say how this would work with all the changes since then but some of these I would *love* to see:

Minion limit - I still VERY fondly remember having huge armies. I find that the changes to Verata's Sacrifice and Blood of the Master (especially with AI and the possibility of multiple MM's in a few missions) would be interesting on top of that. I think that, PvE wise this would still mostly be "balanced" as the old method of long lived minions is no more - BOTM would quickly become a one skill insta-death of the MM This is the only one I *really* want but I don't really expect it.

The paragon. The paragon definitely has it's "Imbagon" thing going and no question that is quite powerful - however I *really* liked playing some of the early holding builds that were out well before PvE only skills (see a thread by Lord Helmo for the build I am thinking of). Unfortunately I do not see this one happening as it would make the paragon too good in PvE with the PvE only skills out there. Even though it wasn't really a core part of the above mentioned build I would like to see the recharge for "Go for the Eyes" removed.

Spiritual Pain - LOTS of fun with that one. Because of the general lack of spirits this wasn't used too much. However it was powerful enough that it was worth wasting a skill slot in general for those cases - also nothing like the satisfaction of all the gold numbers floating in the air.

Splinter Weapon - lots of nice gold numbers. Again, not really overpowered in PvE and more than just the barrage'rs used it. IIRC the reasoning given for it had to do with VoD or some other PvP specific environmental effect.

*shrug* IMO skills that are generally unbalanced in PvP are also overpowered in PvE and both should share the buffs/nerfs. The ones I don't like are ones that require a specific team build to take advantage of, a specific PvP area effect (say Victory or Death), or a specific PvP circumstance (too easy/too hard with respect to killing the guild lords). Obviously those PvP instances aren't happening in PvE and it's too hard - in general - to get those really powerful PvP team builds outside of a few larger guilds.

I hate (but I do understand so I normally do not complain as there was no other choice) when my OK build with my hench/heroes is nerfed to oblivion because four of us, two monks, a MM and, and a SF ele wins at VoD in a GvG battle. Especially being that I and 99% of the GW population will never have said team setup nor will we ever have the VoD affect on us (again - read above - I fully understand and support PvP based balances).

I'll be happy if they separate them intelligently from here on out even if there are no skill reversions. Especially true if this continues into GW2. How ti works out will be interesting.

It's remarkable how many people are asking to revert skills that were actually changed because of PvE.

PvE has rarely been the reason for nerfs, but apparently they hit hard when they did.

Personaly I'd change very little. Keep the differences between PvE and PvE small.

On the other hand a few skills were completally killed because it prooved imposibble to balance them in PvP. (thinking about poor old "incomming".) I'm expecting Anet to revert those and only to a workable sollution for PvE.

Sins are fine in pve. Highest single target DPS of any class. Crit Agility + Nightstalker insigs make your armor comparable to a war. More mobile than a war since they tend to use Flail (-33%speed) in PvE. Fast dagger attacks mean "SY" is charged faster. Put Dark Fury on someone and it's almost got 100% uptime. Moebius + Club of a thousand bears is perma KD on anything below 50%. If low armor is a problem for a PvE sin, Crit Agility probably isn't on your bar. If it gets disenchanted and you die from low armor, get new monks.

btw bow sins are bootleg ranger replacements.

I'm not sure why people want GftE!'s recharge removed. Critical hits do not turn the tides of a losing battle in PvE. There are plenty of other ways to abuse leadership's absurd energy returns if for some reason your build is energy heavy.

Splinter Weapon outdamages any elementalist skill and it only costs 5 energy. There is no reason to revert it back when it is still one of the best skills in the game.

I don't see a need for huge changes so hopefully it will be kept to an absolute minimum.
I certainly don't want every skill to be buffed to insane levels but I would like skills which were necessarily nerfed due to pvp brought back into general pve play whilst having the stupidly overpowered pve skills toned down.

Buffs ? Skills such as Ineptitude/EoE/Energizing Winds to increase variety/fun a bit more.
Nerfs? Overpowered skills like UB and SY! to limit their "general" use. I can't see any real way to stop their use but halving the damage output/effectiveness might make it used less and encourage more builds [not a regional limit , just punt the skill into next week]

There should be no change at all to any mechanism's like SR or Minion levels for PVE , frankly that's an idea beyond stupid in my opinion. Too much skill separation is bad enough without contemplating completely differing game mechanics.

and again talk about SY and not about sin.
especially this kind of ... "If it gets disenchanted and you die from low armor, get new monks. "
i personally like to see some people reversion but hey "welcome to the ursan world"

EW back to org. form....trapping FTW

I don't know if someone posted it already, I would like spirit bond to be back to its old version ^^
ie : removing the 10 hits counter

Thats cos UB is used for steamrolling the allegedly Elite areas of the game, get your self to DoA, ToA, check out the lf ursan spam.