Developer Updates - Skill Balance Changes - 18th June 08

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arena...eloper_Updates

[Dev Update] Skill Balance Changes - 18 June 2008
The primary goals of the balance updates made on June 12 were to round out PvE-targeted changes we made in the last update, to improve a few underpowered skills, and to address PvP play balance issues.

Some players have objected to changes in the last update to Ether Renewal and Shadow Form. We have not seen any actual negative impact from the Ether Renewal change, but we are still evaluating the high efficiency of Shadow Form farming builds. We will continue to monitor this issue and may make adjustments in the near future. Similarly, we know that the powerful Ursan Blessing is always the subject of much discussion. Some players feel it makes the game too easy while others think it is fun. We have not chosen to make any changes to Ursan Blessing at this time, but we will consider the matter as we move forward. Finally, we know there are continuing concerns about Wounding Strike from some PvP players, but we do not believe that changes to this skill are warranted at this time. We have, in this update, altered several other skills that are commonly used in conjunction with Wounding Strike in GvG. We will observe the consequences of these changes before revisiting the Wounding Strike issue.

PvE and PvP

Most of these changes improve existing skills. A few are power reductions that are not expected to be detrimental to PvE play. Three skills (Soul Bind, Rust, and Lightning Touch) are having their core function changed to make them more useful outside of niche circumstances. The following skills will change in both PvE and PvP:

Mesmer

Drain Enchantment: increased Energy gained to 8..17.

Drain Delusions: increased multiplier for Energy gained to 4; increased recharge to 12 seconds.

Wastrel's Worry: increased damage to 20..100.

The goal in changing Drain Enchantment and Drain Delusions was to provide better Energy management options for Mesmers without giving defensive characters a significant boost in Energy management options. Wastrel’s Worry is interesting in that it provides psychological pressure while also giving recastable, non-spike damage to Mesmers. The numbers before made it a bit weak, so we've increased its power to make it more attractive.

Necromancer

Fetid Ground: decreased Energy cost to 5.

Suffering: increased Health degeneration to -1..3.

Vile Miasma: increased Health degeneration to -1..5.

Soul Bind: decreased casting time to 1 second; functionality changed to: "For 30 seconds, every time target foe is healed, the healer takes 20..80 damage. This hex ends if target is suffering from a Smiting Prayers hex."

In recent months, we've seen a trend toward GvG teams with more consistent offensive power. Unfortunately, teams that rely on physical damage seem to be outshining others. To allow for more diversity, we've improved Suffering and Vile Miasma to increase the damage output of hexes. We've also tried to improve Fetid Ground as an option for dealing damage and spreading Poison. Because Health degeneration can be countered with strong party-wide healing, we've altered Soul Bind so that it can be used to reduce the efficiency of party-wide healing.

Elementalist

Rust: increased Energy cost to 10; decreased casting time to 1 second; functionality changed to: "Deals 10..70 cold damage. For 5..20 seconds, target foe and all adjacent foes take twice as long to activate signets."

Lightning Touch: functionality changed to: "Target touched foe and all adjacent foes are struck for 10..60 lightning damage. Foes suffering from a Water Magic hex are Blinded for 3..8 seconds. This skill has 25% armor penetration."

Arc Lightning: increased conditional damage to 15..75.

The prevalence of signet Mesmers in PvP caused us to review signet counters. We looked for opportunities to improve these skills without creating absolute counters that would completely eliminate the viability of signet Mesmers. With that in mind, Rust now does damage (making it generally more useful) but its effect on signet activation times is also reduced. Lightning Touch and Arc Lightning were improved to be more viable options for Elementalists using more than one attribute line.

Monk

Strength of Honor: increased recharge to 15 seconds.
Holy Wrath: increased recharge to 10 seconds.
Aura of Stability: decreased duration to 3..8 seconds.
Balthazar's Pendulum: decreased duration to 5..10 seconds.
Strength of Honor and Holy Wrath have seen more and more competitive play. With no recharge time, they were too easy to recast after removal, effectively eliminating the enchantment removal as a way to combat these skills. Adding some recharge time should address this issue. Aura of Stability and Balthazar’s Pendulum were too effective at stopping knockdowns; we reduced their durations to encourage more active use.

Warrior

Bull's Charge: increased movement speed to +33%.
"Charge!": increased duration to 5..13 seconds.
Symbolic Strike: increased conditional damage to 12.
Recently, there has been a strong trend against sword use in GvG. Swords have always been a unique weapon in Guild Wars because they can do lethal damage without an elite skill. By improving Warrior elites with unique abilities (area-of-effect speed boost, and speed boost with knockdown, respectively), we hope to make swords a more viable choice again. Symbolic Strike has been improved to give players more options for dealing sword damage and to encourage synergy with Warrior signets.

Ranger

Antidote Signet: functionality changed to: "Cleanse yourself of Poison, Disease, Blindness, and one additional condition."
Barbed Arrows: increased duration to 24 seconds; removed easily interruptible; you now have -40 armor while activating this skill.
Antidote Signet's specific condition removal has traditionally limited its appeal. To improve its versatility and overall effectiveness, we've added the ability to remove an additional condition of any type. This should also ease the pressure to take Monk as a secondary profession just for Mending Touch. Bleeding has always been intended as a secondary condition for Rangers, not as easy to spread as Poison and Crippling. The drawbacks on Barbed Arrows were far too severe for the skill to receive serious consideration, so it is now easier to use.

Paragon

"Can't Touch This!": decreased Energy cost to 5.
Barbed Spear: increased Bleeding duration to 5..20 seconds.
Bleeding is typically a condition with a longer duration, but the Bleeding inflicted by Barbed Spear was too short to easily spread it around. We've remedied this by increasing the Bleeding duration. "Can't Touch This!" is a very specific counter which did not warrant its higher Energy cost. We've reduced that cost to compensate.

PvE Changes

improvements here are appropriate for PvE but would not benefit PvP play balance. The following skills will change in PvE:

Mesmer

Energy Drain: increased multiplier for Energy gained to 3.

Energy denial is not typically a good strategy in PvE, so our recent changes to Energy Drain have been aimed at providing better Energy management for the caster. The previous change did not go far enough in this regard. This change should more clearly accomplish our goals.

Dervish

Mystic Regeneration: decreased recharge to 5 seconds; increased the maximum number of enchantments counted to 8.

The past changes for Mystic Regeneration were based on PvP play balance needs. Because those changes were neither necessary nor beneficial for PvE, we are reverting this skill to its older, more powerful state.

PvP Changes

The significant power reductions here are important to address current PvP play balance but are not necessary for PvE. The following skills will change in PvP:

Mesmer

Mantra of Inscriptions: decreased signet recharge reduction to 5..35%

We've altered this skill to slow down damage, Signet of Humility usage, and knockdowns coming from signet Mesmers in GvG.

Warrior

"For Great Justice!": functionality changed to: "For 20 seconds, when you hit with an attack, you gain 1 additional strike of adrenaline."

When used with other adrenaline-gaining skills, “For Great Justice!” provided enough adrenaline for excessively long knockdown chains. By adding a fixed amount of adrenaline, this skill should now add to a Warrior's efficiency without enabling degenerate combinations.


Ritualist

Ancestors' Rage: increased duration to 2 seconds; decreased damage to 5..50; functionality changed to: "For 2 seconds all foes adjacent to target ally are struck for 5..50 lightning damage each second."

Splinter Weapon: decreased damage to 5..30.

For some time now, Ancestors' Rage and Splinter Weapons have been key skills for the Ritualist. These changes are intended to temper these skills without removing them from play. Dividing the damage from Ancestors' Rage into two hits should make it less effective at delivering a sudden spike of damage while still maintaining its role as an efficient source of overall damage. In GvG, Splinter Weapon has continued to enable teams to slaughter NPCs during Victory or Death. Reducing its damage should help mitigate this.

Deja Vu much?

mmmm, keeping an eye on stuff will they? well see, other than that those more powerful updates weeks back still overshadow most of the stuff in this update, about aura of stability the only time it sees use is in GvG and HA and usually its pretty hard to actully cast it b4 the kd, so that a really pointless update imho

"we are aware of these issues but arent goona do a thing about em"

they were implemented long ago

I'm actually quite impressed. Especially at how they noted some major concerns of the community in the opening paragraph.

But next time ANet, please put these explanations up at the same time as the update.

I think 'yet' should be an operative word. We'll soon see if the hammer falls on the ursan curtain.

Anet has a bunch of monkeys with their ears and eyes covered. I guess the motto is: Hear no evil. See no evil. Change no evil.

Anet has people reading community forums? lawl. Spangly Boy added that stuff in.

I lol'ed.
Imo by the time they DO fix SF ectos will be worth nothing (even though u have to wait a long time just to sell some at a ridiculously low price), but until that time i will be taking advantage of it :P
Off topic bit: Rare material trader is now ftw

EDIT: woops just read the other post that wasnt there wen i started writing all this.
Verdict: I fail @ reading :P

Must.. finish.. A/E Sin... before.. nerf >.O

Some actually pretty decent updates.

Aura of Stability is the only wtf?

Hey, don't tell the masse's that i'm a propaganda cog

I had wondered why my signet Mes seemed a bit off colour this week tho....

Ah shit. If they're going to make changes, I really, really hope they modify the farm spots (like they added dying nightmares to the UW, or scarabs to the desert), rather than nurf the skill.

I don't give a flying toss about farming - it doesn't affect me in any way, shape, or form that some ranger (or whatever) is running around in the latest fancy trousers - but I like SF the way it is now; it looks like an interesting skill to use in general PvE.

But because of all the whiny, jealous old ecto hoarders crapping themselves that their assets are going down in value, Anet is being pushed into catering to their whinging, simply because they're the vocal majority. What a dissapointment, and a waste.

uh oh...looks like id better up my farming game before the nerferise my assassin

This is what happens when some people, SOME, open their mouths and complain how the game is so unbalanced do to skills. Now because of it we may see the A/E getting nerfed? Like Unsarn?

So, could someone just cut out the not needed things and say WHAT was changed?



Lol, maybe I'm stupid, but I made sin just for A/E farms and I WANT HIM NERFED. Nerf that crap to hell. That's not normal that I can solo any boss in factions/nightfall/proph and many non-boss foes in all campaigns, UW, FoW and DoA with bonder. NOT NORMAL.

Oh, and using 1 hand, without any effort. Imo make it so glyph recharges 0....4 skills, so at high levels it recharges more, but it can recharge 1 spell from 5-6. At least.

Nothing changed, just the devs give reasons to the last update.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but weren't some of those skill changes already implemented in last weeks update?

Yes, this is last week's update. Last time the devs went above and beyond and posted explanations before the update went live, as a preview, and people got their panties in a bunch. So this time they did it after.

To all of these types of posts. The original skill change stuff is still there otherwise the 'added' developer commentary would have been quite useless.

This is Anet's "response" to Avarre's thread from earlier. Let this be a lesson to those who say that rants achieve nothing.

As someone who very much agrees with Avarre, I appreciate these notes. I may disagree with a lot of what they're doing, but it's nice to know that they know what the problems are, even if they're not properly fixing them.

I don't think skills should me changed in PvE, however in PvP? Why do people change or care what skills are powerful or not? It's not like were PvPing with others.

I understand PvP some skills are so powerful you don't stand a chance and you would want PvP skills balanced.

I don't see the need or the point of nerfing skills in PvE, maybe I am missing something? Is it pugs? Most people dont like their pings? or whatever reason behind it.

From what I read in that opening paragraph:
'We are considering doing something about SF because its f'ing ridiculous but since some people love Ursan we aren't considering any changes at the moment.'

I would of prefered they said something about a change to ursan but a SF nerf is more important at the moment.

Hell yes. Being heard and noticed is always the first step.

I just want to give a thank you to Regina: It's good to see someone voicing our concerns!

Again, why do people want to change PvE skills? Whats the point?

Yes true, I'm happy for that. It's just the explanations are ridiculous.

"We're looking into it. But we don't plan on changing anything. So to make it look like we care, we'll tell you we're looking into it."

It won't Happen the QQers/people that want to skill to be Nerf just so they can Laugh is a small PERCENTAGE......plus we just have haters out there because there class is being left in dust and can't farm half the places SF can, Shadow form will remain as it is........it's only good for Farming, I would never use SF for regular PvE, I have ran into enemies that strip it off.

To be fair, at this point they're screwed no matter what they do. Since they left it alone for so long, the vast majority of PvErs now use it for damn near everything. Since it's a grind based title, all those thousands of bears had to endlessly grind out the title, and will be awfully angry if all that time was for naught.

On the other hand, the corpse of PvE doesn't start smelling better if you let it continue to rot.

I hope they leave SF. I just dusted off my old assasin and am planning to give it a try at farming some much needed cash. I could care less if it "ruins the economy". People will just find something else to use for trade, like Zkeys or something. I think SF makes farming a less exclusive club to try out. As a casual player (read: about 5 hours a week or less) it would be nice to be able to farm ectos for a pair of chaos gloves for myself rather than spending thousands on ectos from others.
Meh. just my opinion. Oh, and they can leave Ursan alone too.

Bragging rights, some people who took advantage of over powered skills or an exploit have achieved what they wanted and don‘t want others to get it as easy as they did. While some really would like to have seen balance.

Ecto’s prices fell to way before SF, there is LS then HM then ursan to thank for that. It would have been nice to see these things addressed way before now. Nerfing them now with out some kind of penalty for the abuse is rather pointless. Why penalize new players and casual players for lack of change now.

All I saw was lots of 'we know skill x is a problem, but we didn't change it'. Or 'we know skill x is a problem, so we changed skill y'.
I love the necromancer part. Like necros are ever going to get close in power to physical damage. And if they do, it won't be because of Suffering for sure. I also like the "we give more options to eles not using a good skillbar." Why would you run Lightning Touch when there are skills in the water line being far more effective? The monk part is fun too. "with no recharge they were too easy to reapply." And with 15 seconds recharge they aren't? You only need to keep it on 2 people after all. And with the enchantremoval on such long recharges, it doesn't matter anyway. The warrior part about swords doesn't make much sense either. Maybe swords aren't used because all other weapons are just better? And if I'm going to use Charge it will be on a paragon, not on a warrior for sure.

The Dev Update for the HoM was pushed back for this....
I can say i'm alittle disappointed. I was excepting a update about nerfs to shadowform or ursan, not a rational for last weeks update what most people understood y things were nerfed.

That will really be the "Coup de Grâce " for GW.
Wonder how the game will be with only 1/10 of the current player base left?

The rest seams like reasonable changes.

Hopefully nothing that will completely ruin the viability of SF farming. I'd like to see something passive in with the skill, so that SF isn't this end-all farming skill, but is still viable.

Like severe movement restrictions, cast time increase, skill disabling, ect. not necessarily all of them though.

And adding counters to elite areas wouldn't be too difficult. [Signet of Humility] FTW

I agree, I think the skills in terms of PvE should be left alone. I know old time players may feel it's unfair, however thats life. Example, Unsarn wasn't added until EOTN was released.

I do strongly feel that PvP skills should be balanced because your playing actual players and why not make it fair.

A/E shouldn't be nerfed, because it's again PvE, why do people care about how some people farm? The community needs it, the ectos and what not.

It's like this I think in every MMROPG. I suggest Anet leave the PvE skills alone and keep the PvP skills balanced.

I'm glad they took the time to do this. At least this shows us that they know what the community's worries are.

Now to hope they'll actually do something about it one day..

Some people are more jealous than others. The people who choose not to take the time to come up with decent builds or ideas complain because thinking hurts.