PvE only skill change suggestions

According to the recent Developer Update, they are planning more of a PvE balance update (and lets hope ArenaNet doesn't continue to nerf Shadow Form more to the extent I won't able to farm bosses because I want newly created characters to get elite skills early in the game. The Underworld nerf was okay, but going to the extent of nerfing Shadow Form is too much). Apparently, I studied and examined many PvE-only skills. Some aren't commonly used, some are. I'm giving a few suggestions on nerfing a few skills that is too commonly used (like Ursan), and buffing those that isn't used a lot. So here are some suggestions:

Ursan Blessing: Give 5...25 damage reduction instead of +10...20 armor

Ursan Rage: Increase recharge to 20 seconds. Deal 50...120 physical damage. Knocks down all adjacent foes. If more than one foe is knocked down, disabled for additional 15 seconds.

Now I notice that the biggest strength of Ursan is having the ability to knock foes down with a ten second recharge. In order to effectively nerf it, I was thinking of increasing the recharge of Ursan Rage and disable the skill when more than one foe is knocked down. Also, I feel that the armor bonus would allow 60 armor profession guys to serve as uber tanks. I mean, an ele wearing full Prismatic armor having 9 attribute points on all four elemental attributes would make the ele a supertank, better than a warrior (100 armor for ele against all kinds of dmg as oppose to warrior who have 80 armor and only +20 armor against physical dmg). So I was thinking of having damage reduction instead of armor gain.

Lightbringer's Gaze and Signet: have it affect the Prophecies Titans and the foes in Fissure of Woe and Underworld, after all, they are kinda servants of Abaddon.

Critical Agility: Increase recharge to 45 seconds. For 4...10 seconds, you attack 33% faster and gain +2 armor for every two ranks in Critical Strikes. Reapply whenever landing a critical hit.

Eternal Aura: Instant recharge does not effect Dervish elite forms.

Honestly, I can use it to keep up on Avatar of Dwayna or Balthazar in PvE.

Vampirism: Spirit life stealing should correlate to how much health you gain. For example, if the spirit steals 4 health, then you should only gain 4 health.

Selfless Spirit: Reduce recharge to 30 seconds.

Asura Scan: Decrease casting time to one second, increase recharge to 15 seconds.

Mindbender: Increase recharge to 30 seconds. For 6...16 seconds, you move 20...33% faster and your spells take half as long to cast. You are Dazed and Crippled for 20 seconds when this enchantment ends.

I found Mindbender to be a bit overpowered, particularly dealing with foes that can interrupt.

Radiation Field: Inflict Poison instead of Disease.

Although it would kill the idea of the nature of radiation, Disease is simply too powerful.

"By Ural's Hammer!" Minions do not count.

This shout is just too useful for warriors and minion masters.

Great Dwarf Armor: Increase recharge time to 20 seconds.

Snow Storm: Increase recharge time to 45 seconds, decrease energy cost to 10. Change to: "Create a Snow Storm at target foe's location. For 5 seconds, foes adjacent to that location are struck for 20...40 cold damage each second and are Crippled and Blinded for 3 seconds."

"I Am The Strongest!": Have a 20 second duration.

"You Are All Weaklings!": Decrease Weakness time to 3...7 seconds.

Club of a Thousand Bears: Scythe can hit multiple foes with this attack.

"I Am Unstoppable!": Increase armor gain to +40.

I still coming up some more ideas on buffing and nerfing skills, but most of my ideas involve nerfing than buffing.

Anyways, any ideas?

i like your ideas but fact is its not gonna happen best thing is they buff them they are not gonna nerf any of them anytime soon

Lightbringer's Gaze and Signet:

I think both should be altered to affect all foes and merely have a secondary affect that triggers against abadon's servants. As is, even against the right enemies, these are lackluster and boring skills.


Critical Agility: Increase recharge to 45 seconds. For 4...10 seconds, you attack 33% faster and gain +2 armor for every two ranks in Critical Strikes. Reapply whenever landing a critical hit.

This would completely undo the very deliberate change that made this skill basically sin-only.


Eternal Aura: Instant recharge does not effect Dervish elite forms.
Honestly, I can use it to keep up on Avatar of Dwayna or Balthazar in PvE.

There's another point to this skill besides recharging forms? 99% of dervish skills recharge FASTER than eternal aura, so make no mistake, recharging forms is EXACTLY what this skill was meant to do.


Selfless Spirit: Reduce recharge to 30 seconds.

Agreed. As is it's inferior to a divine favor skill. I can't remember the name. All monk skills sound the same to me. Divine this, holy that, blessed the other...


Radiation Field: [/B]Inflict Poison instead of Disease.
Although it would kill the idea of the nature of radiation, Disease is simply too powerful.

Not really. If your pve fights last long enough for disease to travel far then you're doing something wrong. Even if we assume disease is powerful, this is a clunky way to inflict it.


"By Ural's Hammer!" Minions do not count.
This shout is just too useful for warriors and minion masters.

Minion's already don't count, which is contrary to the description. At least that was the result of my testing it about 2 months ago.


Snow Storm: Increase recharge time to 45 seconds, decrease energy
cost to 10. Change to: "Create a Snow Storm at target foe's location. For 5 seconds, foes adjacent to that location are struck for 20...40 cold damage each second and are Crippled and Blinded for 3 seconds."

Snowstorm needs something, but I think I'd rather see it either cheap or spamable or both rather than inflict conditions.


"I Am The Strongest!": Have a 20 second duration.

No. Infinite duration is very useful mechanically from time to time and doesn't really impact the balance of the skill in actual combat.


"You Are All Weaklings!": Decrease Weakness time to 3...7 seconds.

Nah. And have it inflict damage or something. This is a lackluster skill atm. Why waste a pve slot on area weakness when I have hero necros nearby with spamable area weakness spells?

The eternal aura idea is soooooo stupid. ETERNAL=everlasting...which is WHY they implemented it for elite forms. Wth else r u gonna do w/it? insta recharge VoS O.o??? Most derv elites recharge fast enough...except for elite forms. As for UB, 35 sec recharge seems kinda overkill :/

The Lightbringer skills definately need something to make then useable in other areas.

SnowStorm should be the equal of FireStorm in my opinion.

The rest of the skills seam fine to me as is. Though UB is powerfull unless you have a full party using it that power is balanced when compared to good builds for most professions. Adding any recharge time to its skills would make it unusable unless you are in a party with other UB hitting the same targets for fast spike kills.

If all skills aren't killed - then at least change the concept so that PvE skills have their own attribute points to spend. It's still bad - but at least it's SEMI in touch with the concept of GW.

Agree. Should have introduced Norn attribute, Deldrimor attribute etc. etc. Still would have been cross-profession, but at least you would have to put points into them.

That's the point of the skill. In PvP, you don't fight Level 28 mobs with double damage and +25% attack/running speed. In PvE you do, so these are tools given from Anet so they can make PvE content more varied.

PvE players would rather kill a dragon in a crypt than kill a rat in a farmer's basement, although they are technically the same thing. PvE players want to feel epic, and PvE-only skills let them do that. I'm not saying that PvE players crave a BAMPH!, but that having strong skills to use against strong monsters is simply more fun than using weak skills against weak monsters.

Looks like someone doesn't read dev updates.

ANet are currently testing changes to PvE skills.

I dunno, killing the end boss of EotN in five seconds with Pain Inverter didn't make the game feel particularly epic to me.

Nerf Ursans blessings if you must, but leave the other skills alone. Your suggestion piss me off, the fact that I do not use ursans, yet other skills should be nerfed. Enough already, we do not need this game to suck anymore then it has become because of nerfs and PvP.

It's a F*cking game for crying out loud, and should be enjoyable, who cares how powerful skills are, I want to enjoy myself before GW2 comes out and GW goes to the way side. Your suggestion, although are logical, are not nessassery. Most casual players, play to have fun and are not ultra farmers like some players.

Anets attempt to nerf their game in my eyes, make them look bad, and I will be damned if I will buy another product of theirs if this is the way they approach things, by lessoning the game, or watering it down.

Why don't you come up with more creative ways of making the game more of a challenge, maybe give the charr ursans to use, or put the monster skills bars on a rotation basis, maybe also make them hidden so you don't know what skill they use.

But for gods sake, leave the skills alone already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thats the entire point of the skill.
do you remember form dervishes when NF came out? the entire party ended up waiting for their form to recharge every time it went down.

according to wiki, thats already how it works...

shhhhhhhh! no

would be nice, but very powerful

the skill is already godly, it dosnt need a buff


no offense, but most of your ideas are entirely pointless

Yea, i intently wanted to see these skills being nerfed, just to play a fair game with ANet, if they nerf Shadow Form, then they should go nerf PvE only skills.

Wait...

You are asking for PVE only skills other then Ursan to get nerfed?

Lollollollollol!

Shadow form didnt get nerfed, it got buffed too much and broke the price of ectos so had to be fixed. Both the shadow form and ether renewal buffs were stupid in the first place.

I would like to see a buff to some Healing Prayer's elites, specifically Healing Light, for either PvE or PvP.

Oh no, I read what they said.

They stated they're looking at PvE-only skills, and they're trying to alter the grind association with them. They never said that they were only doing that.

They're going to change them. People have been complaining how overpowered some are. ANet have already nerfed 2 previously. Put 1 and 1 and 1 together, and you get some buffed and nerfed PvE-only skills.

Please, continue trolling guru for epic lulz.

Your math is flawed.

The quote is poorly worded at best and whoever at Anet wrote it cant write very clearly. It doesnt in anyway imply that anything other then ursan is getting nerfed, in fact, they could not be changing anything at all. Just because something is being tested, doesnt mean it is going to change.

Keep believing what you want because you cant understand dev quotes.

The nerfs suggested in the OP are simply horrible and would only end up killing a lot of the PVE skills, just like the intensity nerf. I disagree with all the ideas, especially the ursan nerf because it wouldnt be nerfed enough.

Anet are losing players everyday in this game. We need ideas that are going to improve the game and make it more fun, not completely destroy every PVE skill in the game from over nerfing. But at the same time, UB, shadow form and ether renewal are all a bit too excessive.

I hope you realise a) how wrong you are and b) how badly you are trolling. You may think that you are cool, with your self-proclaimed "trolling guru for epic lulz", and the fact that you're quite clearly trying to get a rise from everyone. But here's the problem; you're doing it wrong. Your view on this issue, is based on misreading, and so much so that you are assuming WE are misreading.

Man, this thread got de-railed.
This is a good one. Maybe I don't face enough Torment Demons, but I rarely see this skill used.

You change makes this skill usable by other professions, and the fact that this skill is Sin-only makes is balanced enough.

As was said, recharging forms is the point of this skill. Without that it's useless.

Firstly, what? Second, this skill doesn't need a change.

This could do with a buff, and this would be good start.

Why exactly? This isn't particuarly powerful as is.

Ouch. This nerf would have this skill never see the light of day.

Why? Disease is hardly OP, and Radiation Field isn't really the best way to apply it.

I thought minions didn't count. If they do, then I could see this happening.

This would accomplish nothing, except it would make more people grind to get a higher Deldrimor Rank. Hell, most people wouldn't even need to.

Snow Storm needs something, but I would prefer to see lowered energy cost, more damage or a wider AoE before it starts inflicting conditions. Crippled on an AoE also seems a bit OP.

Unlimited duration is fine, doesn't really hurt anyone. Your change wouldn't do anything and this skill would still be used in the same manner.

If anything this skill is want for buffing. Enfeebling Blood far outclasses it.

They should fix this for ALL attacks that only hit one target for Scythes.

Couldn't really hurt. Might make this skill useful for more then just running. Doubt it though.

Altogether almost all of your proposed changes just ain't needed. I didn't comment on Ursan, because I reckon someone else would be better to talk about that, but I found that to be the only reasonable one.

/Notsigned. This only makes it more durable.

I like the idea, although Ursan Strike shouldn't be armour-ignoring. I would rather just /delete Ursan, Volfen and Raven though...

/Signed for this.

/Signed.

Only reason Eternal Aura is used in PvE but you have a fair point. Godmode is good enough from 60 seconds.

/Signed though.

[enfeebling blood]

This isn't a bug. All scythe attacks do the same, although I would like to see that mechanic changed to scythe attacks hitting one target only.

/Notsigned. This for ~2/3 upkeep is too powerful, especially when it has no downfall, no cast time, no decent counters and isn't elite.