Developer Updates PvP/PvE Skill Balancing - May 21st

with 20% mod and 30 sec shadow form and deadly paradox 40 sec recharge 4 secs off without a-echo Q.Q

does that stack with an essence ?

Shadow Form - was already a strong skill for farming/running, now it's stronger. Still useless in general PvE play. Pointless buff, don't know what ANet were thinking.

Energy Drain/Energy Tap - Still fairly bad skills in an attribute line almost no one uses.

Discord - Maybe the odd necro/hero is going to run it, nothing special.

Ether Renewal - May be used in farming builds, that's all. Don't see why elementalist's need more energy management.

Light of Deliverance - PvErs have been wanting this skill back since it was nerfed. Still not as powerful as it used to be, but it's at least usable now.

Watch Yourself - Again, PvErs have been wanting this skill back since it was nerfed. Good skill if you aren't running Save Yourselves and you want to spec in tactics.

Ritual Lord - People still run spirit builds in PvE?

Penetrating Attack/Sundering Attack - Meh. Barrage rangers are still superior if you want your ranger to do damage.

Incoming - It's pretty much a lesser Save Yourselves that affects all types of damage (?) with a 20 second recharge. Still not worth a slot on my paragon/heroes.

Defensive Anthem - Casting time wasn't a problem for PvE, don't see why it was changed.

Overall, meh. Not that impressed.

I believe so.

DP buff would make the build even more ridiculous yet.

These were the other two that caught my eye. I need to see just how much Health per whatever LoD does in comparison to HB Heal Party. Though it'll be easy E-management and could replace the HB build in teams where a imbagon is running.

Incoming is still weak. If they reduced recharge to 10s or maybe even 12s it could potentially be worth it.

I lol´d really hard with this update. Now Ill farm UW with my forgotten sin.

At least Perma SF griefing has stopped. Cheers.

Now, let me lol in peace with the PvE buffs, please. I cannot asimilate them. Ether Renewal un-Ether Renewaled, LoD unnerfed....my brain hurts

LoD mimic monks with a HB Monk?

I think most players want to blow shit up, but feel like there's a danger of dying, also. If I could defeat everything without ever worrying about losing, it would get old quickly. Also, if I lost every time, that too would get old.

It's a delicate balance.

I'm guessing that's what ursan teams will be running again.

HB LoD monks with essence..easy and cheap HP spam.

"Incoming!" doesn't matter in PvE because it's just a crappier version of "Save Yourselves!" that blows your elite... but it's nice to see they're trying to at least make things viable, compared to how it was. It might be effective on a hero bar but meh... with LoD back on my hero Monks I'm never going to die again anyway.

EDIT:

Also,

Lol, welcome to my life.

Even 15s I think would make it worth it.

Right now at a 20s recharge I'm not to sure. Might be useful in areas with alot of spike damage or as a cover in areas with alot of armor ignoring damage until said damage source is removed.

When it's implemented I'll try it in some 4 man areas and see how it does.

It looks like they want us to but to do that, they're going to have to do a lot more than just buff [ritual lord]. How about giving the spirits more health and reduce the energy cost on [shelter]?

Nah would knock some ursan farms in the head... Slaver's. Make it so Ursans can't do Slaver and you would see some QQ, be interesting though.

On Topic:
With all of the "Restoration" I am wondering why [Mystic Regeneration] Mystic Regeneration didn't get restored.

1 second in pve isn't a huge difference though. But it seemed like they completely killed paragons for pvp...

At 14 healing peayers without HB, heal party heals for 72 and light of deliverance heals for 66. Heal party still heals for more, but not for much.

Yes, now ursanway groups can spam LoD more. Congrats ANet, you've helped ursanway.

If that happened, the vast majority would run unique snowflake builds with dark pact and firestorm because it's not AN ELITIST PVP COOKIE CUTTER ZOMG.

Lol can't believe I actually got discord to be 1sec cast...
"sabway" (understand, 3 necro heroes, but everyone keeps calling that sabway) with discord, malign intervention, animate shambling only, and debuff and fun as hell to plya and already was at 2 sec cast. Time to roll HM.
I'm wondering about a ZF/Ether renewal nuker, could be fun. Need 2 enchants(zf+er = \o/) and ER at 3e per enchant and you're set

What is point of buffs on mesmer inspiration skills anyway? That was probably last thing PvE mesmers need ...

this allows for som many possibilities with shadow form. Perma shadowform with mesmer and monks!

wow regina is looking at this D:

give us some news regina

Well the only skills im interested in now is...

[skill]Incoming[/skill][skill]Penetrating Attack[/skill][skill]Sundering Attack[/skill]

They atleast now have some possible use, especially Sundering/Penetrating which could be used in a nice [skill]Glass Arrows[/skill] build.

So, Anet thinks the problem with mesmers in PvE was that Energy Drain and Energy Tap were too weak? And the problem with assassins was Shadow Form?
lulz

The only selected skill that needed to be un-nerfed was Watch Yourself!, and that needed to be unnerfed COMPLETELY for PvE AND PvP.

It really seems like this skill balance was created by putting all prior skill balances on a dart board and just throwing blind at it.

BTW: now that ether renewal has been un-ether renewal'ed, what nerf will we use to describe skills that get ether renewal'ed?

Lol I'm shooting mah lazor! I mean I'm making pve assa again tomorrow.

Everything useless, nice job buffing ursanways.

So they finally added random generated skill changes I was asking for.

This preview of tomorrow's update isn't news enough? :P

Some questions that popped up elsewhere:

Q: Which version of the skills will be available on Isle of the Nameless?
A: Currently PvE, though the developers are evaluating this.

Q: Which version of the skills will monsters be using?
A: PvE

Another thing I'd like to make folks aware of is that the game update will be going live in the afternoon rather than the morning.

ShroudOfSilence'd
Srsly, inferior version of warr's knockdown.

Honestly, that's pretty much what it is.

Needs to be a way to test both PvE and PvP skills there, seeing as both PvE players and PvP players use the NPCs on Isle of the Nameless.

Well, looks like a-net blew it again. Sigh... And I had such high hopes.

Most importantly, they missed the things that really, really needed fixed. (Top of the list: Soul Reaping timer. Reasons. See also.)

Just about the only thing they got right was LoD. Not total crap, but not the reason to never use any other elite that it used to be either.

And maybe Ether Renewal. That one I will have to try before i decide what I think.

WY needed fixed, but they did it wrong. They should remove the counter altogether.

Rit Lord needed fixed, but the spirits in the RitLord build needed their energy costs and life totals reverted too. Without the spirits working, the build is still ruined.

Shadow Form was the wrong skill to buff. The whole nigh-invincibility-in-one-skill thing was already taking things too far in the "mindless" direction for farming/running/tanking. This makes that even worse, not to mention making HM Afflicted Assassins the bane of all existence.

The Shadow Form change is even worse in light of the nerf to Glyph of Concentration, which powered less-mindless farming builds that are now broken. So, in addition to buffing the most mindless of farming builds, they broke a bunch of others to encourage people to migrate to it...

Buffs to e-tap/e-drain -- still fundamentally useless in PvE.

Buff to discord -- elevates a third-rate single-target-damage caster build to a second-rate single-target-damage caster build. Sill useless.

Penetrating/Sunder Attack remains a redundant pure-damage bow attack. I doubt this buff makes it the best of the pure-damage bow attacks. And, in any event, it won't solve the problem that there are a bunch of redundant pure-damage bow attacks, and one will always be superior to the others.

Incoming -- Still outshone by TNTF. Perhaps a meaningful improvement for the "I'm so great that I don't use PvE-only skills" crowd. (But don't they think that they're already so great they don't need a skill buff either?...)

Defensive Anthem -- PvE didn't care about the recharge; we care about the uptime ratio. Which isn't improved.

And the nerf to Steelfang Slash. Ouch. The "godmode" warrior diminishes and the imbagon gets better by comparison. This only decreases build diversity, and that's bad. We don't need the pool of top-tier builds shrunk; we need it increased or eliminated altogether. Either nerf Ursan, imbagon, and "godmode" across the board, or elevate other builds to that level.

We were still hopping for "Haha, late Aprils fools about the whole PvP/PvE split".

Kinda figured monsters would get the PvE versions.

But the Isle of the Nameless sticks out. I know both PvE'ers and PvP'ers that use this to see how much damage their doing (a al Master of Damage), and if they nerf some of the PvP damage skills, this will skew the results. Is there a way to implement a switch at Nameless so you can switch between PvE and PvP skill versions?

Grenth aura!

Why can't there be a key that changes pve to pvp skill description? Just like right ctrl changes languages.

So that would be when for GMT people if its in the middle of the night that is BS

Nothing fancy to be honest. That doesn't mean the game should be easier than it already is. Even though I like the change of 'Incoming'.

Wanted to see the less useful spells and atrribute lines to get some attention. Open up the game a bit.

It's ok I guess.

They're exploring solutions that will allow players this flexibility.

Light of Deliverance is still not reverted back to it orignal state as in recharge time 5 sec and to 80HP.

Would also be nice if they wound un-nerf Ward Against Melee duration or recharge a little for PvE. Maybe the next update can make some more skills helpful in PvE that aren't farming favorites?

Maybe more PvE un-nerfs would help people see more options to play other than Sabway or Ursanway for really difficult areas. That way nobody cries from their easy button stuff getting nerfed and it brings other possibilities into play so things don't get too boring for everyone.

Otherwise, thanks for making Watch Yourself helpful again in PvE.

Just the thanks and hopes of a non-leet hero/henching player.

Notice how the PvP versions have (PvP) next to their name, but the PvE versions have the untouched names. Does anyone doubt that Anet thinks PvP is secondary to PvE now?

I think that's evening/near midnight for us.
But why is it BS ? It's not like the update will only be there for a few hours..

Or, the PvP version gets the (PvP) tag because it's the only version they care about enough to make its own leet tag for. Seriously, could be either. I don't particularly care.

so uhm....why not just write---the next spell??? since that is all it does now, ugh.