PvE skill reversion, what do you want to see?

I couldnt agree with you more. I woould also like to see the beast master nerfs undone. Oh and add back in the orignal form of Searing Flames while you are at it.

When it comes to necro related comments on this thread, these are my 2 cents worth(ok, maybe it's more than 2 cents, i have alot to say):

As an avid necro player, I was very upset and vocal on these forums last spring when SR was nerfed. For those who think it was nerfed due to it being overpowered in PVE, it was due to the SR-factory spirit-spamming N/Rt builds in HA and later in GvG and the resultant waves of protest that brought about the nerf, being "overpowered" in PVE was a lesser issue. We never saw eles QQing that pugs were rejecting them over necros, did we? At the time I thought it was such an atrocity that a game mechanic that had been around for over 2 years had been changed so drastically. In retrospect, I have to admit that it was overpowered. Before the nerf I was convincing tombs groups to allow me to monk for them on my necro using HB, HP, heal other, jamei's gaze, etc. Here I was with a monk primary attribute elite skill that should have been useless to me, but HB lasted for 10 casts of healing prayers spells with zero in divine favor. All I did was stay back just out of agro, spamming HP for heals worth 104 points and hitting the odd low party member with a heal other/jamei's gaze worth around 226 if I remember correctly. Back then Heal Party with 16 in healing prayers was worth 84 points, so as a necro with eternal energy I could out-monk any monk when it came to tombs,since there was always so much stuff dying. On one of my first runs doing this I had a run with no party members dying on me. Although this is an unusual way to play necro, it illustrates how overpowered SR was at the time. That build was killed by the SR nerf and rightly so.

Today we have a very powerful EoTN energy management skill in "Air of Superiority". For those not familiar with this skill, every time you receive XP from a foe dying(even if it's zero XP), you receive one of 5 random benefits - lose all conditions, gain health, gain 5 energy, double XP from kill, recharge your skillbar. So if you have an energy management skill such as GOLE and your skillbar gets recharged, that is huge. Shots of 5 energy every 5 kills is pretty nice too. I used to run Assassin's Promise to receive these two benefits, now I get it from AoS and save my elite skill, although the triggers are random. This kinda makes me wonder why all the HB/HP monks aren't using this skill, GOLE would be recharged often with it. I often run FoW clears using a tombs style BP ranger team build and no matter how hard I spam my curses bar (barbs, mark of pain, SS, Reckless, etc.) I do not run out of energy.

The point that I'm making with this long-winded post is, what we have lost through nerfs has been more than made up for with what we have now in PvE only skills (Ursan, cough cough....) and also consumables. While there may be some skills that we personally want reverted (for me it's weaken armor, i loved the old hex stacked with barbs!), some of this stuff should stay right where it is. Anet has obviously done certain things over the past several months in order to hold its customer base to the game until gw2, but lets hope things don't get out of hand since this game is easy enough as it is.

You can't see why getting energy randomly makes the build non-intuitive? Please engage brain.

Stop with the STUPID arguments please. By that reasoning, we should have timers on EVERY primary attribute.

Expertise - Timer
Divine Favor - Timer
Leadership - Timer
Crit Strikes - Timer

Hell, lets put a timer on Adrenaline too!

Because when you're doing well, the game should invent things to make it harder. Let's go a step farther, lets have a "character-timer", where your character dies after a certain random amount of time.

SR was made to power MM builds. It does that very well. Its a PvE attribute in a PvP game. So, on that matter, it was probably a mistake to include SR in a game like GW. The mechanic itself is fine, it's just out of place in GW.

If you aren't running out of energy, then you aren't trying very hard. Energy on every corpse is what SR is about. You're being ridiculous again.


Sigh. It does NOT ensure that. Where are you inventing this stuff? The minion cap HUGELY destabilizes SR returns. It causes SR triggers that do not generate corpses, often it causes multiple triggers at once (which not only overflow, but it ALSO burns your SR until the timer resets)

How is it a 'problem'? I suspect your answer is just a subjective thing - "I hate it, so it must be bad."

The vast majority of mainly PvE players, if they ever dipped into PvP beyond the bare minimum the game forces on you (ie, the transition between Pre- and Post-Searing), would think "Hmm. This skill I use in story mode doesn't last the same amount of time in the arena areas. Oh well.", replacing "doesn't last the same amount of time" with "has a different cost", "doesn't do the same amount of damage/healing", etc., as appropriate. Then they'll continue using the skill or, gods forbid, take a look at their other skills to see if there's something else that might work if their preferred skill is inadequate, just as they do now when they find that the PvE skills can't be used. And, in the case of reversions to more powerful forms, for those who don't bother with PvP much, I figure the most common reaction will be "Yay, they buffed a bunch of skills!", assuming they weren't around for the original nerfings for the sake of PvP balance and thus will be "Yay, they reverted a bunch of skills!", or some similar phrasing using a simile for 'revert'.

As for the mainly PvP players, other than those who'd be jealous when they suffer a nerf to their favorite skill(s) for the sake of balance and start whining about it (which, frankly, seems to be the favorite pastime here), I'm fairly sure most of them will either shrug and get on with their playing, since the split won't affect them in the least, or perhaps even have fun in PvE with the change in balance.

Then explain it for my tiny brain. Explain how getting energy randomly on a timer is less intuitive than getting energy randomly without the timer. I have stated time and time again that I think SR is a broken mechanic because of its random energy management. The timer doesn't change that at all.

Because the timer is clunky, and the SR mechanic is broken, I completely agree with an entire re-vamp. I do NOT agree to simply removing the timer and claim that will make everything better. It simply won't. That is what I am addressing. Until then, the timer works fine.

Totally agree, and that really is the heart of the issue. It simply was not designed well within the mechanics of Guild Wars.

How am I being ridiculous? "Energy on every corpse is what SR is about," yet we both agree SR is broken. Therefore, "energy on every corpse" is broken. How is that unreasonable?

The old timer (once in 5 seconds) definitely did that. The newer (and current) one almost entirely solved that issue except for the ridiculous overhead of energy that came without the timer. Besides, 15 seconds with a full energy bar is plenty of time to use it up, ready for another flow of energy.

I honestly don't see either a problem, I just think these minor annoyances are just less of a problem than that. Of course they're both subjective. If they weren't, we wouldn't be able to argue as the facts would prove themselves.

protective bond

damnit i just got my feet wet, must be all the QQing necros making a lake

this thread is PVE **SKILLs** not pve mechanics.2 pages of utter tripe about soul reaping doesnt belong here imo

It wasn't random pre-timer. You could actually manage the SR returns. You know when you are about to cast, you know when a minion is about to die, you know when you are animating against the minion cap.

You could predict SR returns, and that would allow you to decide what to do next. Before the SR timer, I routinely had skill decisions planned 5-8 skills deep. Yes. I knew what the next 8 skills were going to be, presicely, and what energy I was going to get back at step 3 (for example) that would feed into step 4...

The timer reduces this to probably knowing what the next skill will be.

Neither me nor Chthon are advocating removing the timer alone.

• Remove SR Timer
• Remove SR triggers from minions entirely
• Reduce costs of Animation skills

the first thing that came to mind is bring back the old spirit bond without the limit of 10 attacks

My first though was [Anguish].
Now it may be useful without having to combo it with other skills.

its not going to happen, ever. Soul reaping is still stupidly op, no need for a revert.

Oh god.

If they were going to nerf ursan, why would they wait for this? You dont need PvE/PvP separation to nerf a PVE ONLY skill.

Just which part of
"You gain X energy everytime something dies, but not more than 3 times in 15 sec, but we count the 15 sec in a funny way, so it's really not more than 3 times in the 15 sec counting from every third trigger, and not any 15 sec, and in fact you can get 5 triggers in the same 15 sec period so long as the first of those five comes one after a multiple of three, and triggers that happen when your energy is full don't count, and you never get energy from spirits"
is intuitive to you?

At first I thought you were just trolling with a stupid truism, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Are you maybe thinking that the SR returns "level off" as your killing speed increases? Well, they don't. They fluctuate in a jagged fractal pattern that looks like a staircase collapsed 45 degrees. You can actually end up with SIGNIFICANTLY less energy for killing the monsters at a given pace than you get for killing at a slightly slower pace. Your energy returns don't "level off" -- they actually GO DOWN if you kill things faster.

Now, this is just... well plain wrong. More energy isn't a huge problem for most people. I don't think most people think, "Oh, I have all this extra energy -- DEAR GAWD whatever will I do?!?!?!" There's a potential for creating a class that's so superior that other classes have trouble getting parties because of it (like Ursan), but that's unlikely. After all, it never happened before in the 2 years of SR having no timer. So there's no real reason to worry about it happening if the timer is removed again.


I think Carinae addressed most of your other points better than I could.


Thank you. This is a perfect example of what I've been trying to say about the timer's randomness ruining any possibility of "managing" your energy.

I'd like to say that I would gladly accept the mere removal of the timer. It's not my first choice, but I vastly prefer it to the status quo. My hierarchy of preferences is:
1. Remove Timer + Remove SR from minions + Dramatically reduce minion costs
2. Just remove timer.
3. Status quo (leave timer).
I understand that the devs tend to be pretty lazy when it comes to balance updates, so I would be happy enough with the mere removal of the timer.

FoC, give it either a 5 en cost or leave it at 15en but give it a recharge of like 6 seconds. would love a new curses elite to use.

also minion limit up to 15 would be nice (but i doubt it)

how about agonizing chop?

Not sure if you caught my response to Carinae, but the timer doesn't change the erratic energy return SR gives by nature of the mechanic. SR is not intuitive, period, and it never was.

Soul Reaping gives a "reward" of energy whenever something dies. The timer gives less of a "reward" as you kill things quicker. The timer is not "punishing" you for killing things quicker, it is giving you less of a reward. I'm not sure how much clearer I can explain that.

But that is exactly the problem right there. The very fact that Necros are superior damage/support in just about every area of the game even with this supposed 'handicap' is proof enough that if you remove the 'handicap,' you're going to be left with a literal infinite energy machine.

You are absolutely right - everyone who qqs about ursan and every other skill thats needs to be nerfed can be summed up nicely in that one liner you used.

Inde, please put this single line on the main page of the forums...perfect, just perfect.

Okay... you guys need to stop talking...

1) They said that they were going to separate SKILLS not ATTRIBUTES so stop talking about soul reaping - its still lame but it works fine.

2) Again, minion masters were nerfed because they were imbalanced in PvE, so they're not gonna rebuff them and also because of #1. Ya it was nice having 50 minions follow you around while throwing on mark of pain on mobs, but change is good and I've accepted the new minion master system now.

3) They aren't gonna buff all skills that suck in PvE because chances are most of them suck in PvP as well.

4) Anet won't make all your skills extremely powerful just because it will be a PvE only version.

5) Other skills were nerfed because they were overpowered in PvE, so they won't come back.

actually, do your research kid. mms were killed because of HA Minion Factories and Self-saccers before the match started. not because ZOMG LUK GUIZ 50+ MINUNS LOLOLOLOLOL

Um lol, minion factories failed and they weren't really a problem in HA. Most people sucked at them anyway. Sure that could have had a small factor, but at that time minion masters were demanded in like every group and they kinda wanted to change that up a bit. And its minion master, not mm which sounds like a piece of candy lol.

I would like to see Ursan reverted to back when it was even stronger. /endsarcasm.

EoE sounds like a fun reversion lol.