Update - Thursday August 7

Well, RA is absolutely packed with Way of the Assassin. None of them so far thought to stop attacking when I put Spiteful Spirit on them. They must be under the impression that they can kill me before SS kills them. WRONG. Insidious Parasite tears them to bits too.

Thunderclap ele's are pretty common too - it's easy enough to interrupt them, and you have time to prepare for the incoming daze if they do land one on you.

I haven't seen anyone really doing anything different with the other skills so far - a few Defy Pain wammos, and one Pain of Disenchantment necro, but that's all so far.

Aura of Faith has just replaced WoH on one of my hybrids.

The new Visions of Regret is nice, its generating 30-90dps on all the bad guys with a 50% uptime - I just don't think that its good enough to replace the AP/CoP combo. Thats one of the problems with having overpowered PvE skills.

A little miffed about Vow of Strength change. What was once a niche skill that could generate 130+ dps in PvE has effectively been changed for 20seconds you do +x% damage 0% of the time.


Would have been better if they capped the PvE skill ranks at 4/5 rather than up the minimum.

Stupid, what they did to Vow of Strength. That skill was just find the way it was. Now its freaking pointless.

Holy Cow!

Just tried out the scythe sin build with way of the master and way of the assassin. Wow.

I hate to say it because I love playing the sin and it's nice to be ultra-powerful. But, maybe, that was a little too much of a buff.

I dunno, the only characters I don't have are the Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer, and Dervish professions, but I still see the changes as mostly good. Being mostly PvE though I don't really pay attention much to Nerf and Build debates, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt.

Kind of wierded out by some of buffs given to the PvE skills though. Upgrading some of the sort of 'underused' Elites is all good and well (incidentally, I've ONLY used Flashing Blades on my assassin... since I'm too lazy to get better elites for her), but the heck?

Now you can use attack skills, so it's sort of good.

Yeah, for pve. Won't work so well in pvp now, with the way conditions are used. Attack skills are nice, but its still going to boil down to using the same two attack skills as before. Not to mention Sins can now super abuse it.

Onslaught is semi useful, just a shame its still in wind prayers.

I just thought they were going to fix non used elites. Why not Genth or something. VoS was perfect the way it was imo.

I COULD take the gracious way and just STFU - but I am pissy little princes so IN YOUR FACE B!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...&postcount=287
As you can see - I didn't state I was going to be happy.
I just said I'll be acting like a child.

I guess this says it best:
OHAI!

VoS wasn't perfect though, the attack skills are a necessity.
Plus intelligent PVEers will just use AoHM anyway.
Grenth's is perfectly fine haha.

Well at least Thundercrap got made interesting.

I've never used PvE skills much (other than the ubiquitous Save Yourselves, which I've only gotten LAST WEEK), but I did find the boost to Ebon Vanguard Sniper Support wierd. 10% chance to do AT LEAST 540 or so damage normally is overkill, especially since the chances of that 10% activating goes up when most of the party takes it...

You could work around the no attack skills thing by using the multiplacative nature of VoS+AoHM and then stacking up +damage skills like EBSoH an IATS - and you got a cheap IAS in the form of Heckets to boot. The new version allows you to use skills but now it does exactly the same amount of damage as a blank slot.

I think the following change would have been more useful:
Vow of Strength: For 20 seconds, VoS does nothing. If you attack a target not suffering a condition this skill teleports you back to town so you can put enfeebling blood on your team's bar.

([Ebon Vanguard Sniper Support]+[Assassin's Promise])x8=GG!

I know what you're saying, but I dont agree completely. In no PUG I ever ran did I direct someone to wiki a specific build and spec it exactly, nor did in any I ever join did someone tell me to do that either. We'd ping builds and discuss a bit, maybe make or request some changes, but really there was a fair bit of interpretation allowed. Depended on the area and the activity in question, but all but a couple very specific team build concepts had a lot of room for interpretation.

Compare to Ursan. It has/had only one configuration really: a couple monks and the rest Ursan, even in any class or build. Classless. Terrible for the game. Its still that way, but at least nerfed a little bit so that we might see other kinds of groups once again. In my opinion, while it could be much better, this is a good start back in the right direction.

You may be talking DoA only (?). Depends of course the kinds of players you have in your PUG. I have always had good luck there and miss the older PUG days so much. Individual mileage possibly varies. Guild groups are another story completely.

I do agree with you though on the overall blandness to some extent. Far, far too many underused skills, and why would anyone use them? So many are redundant, and so many are underpowered with each balance, that it is no wonder so many teams want a certain set of skills in the mix. We need more skill variation in GW2, and the room within them to differentiate and balance, so that there are many more possibilities that are viable build-wise.

In regards to the AI change. Is it just me, or do heroes/henchmen seem to aggro from much farther away now?

Good overall update. I like the fact that the lower levels of PvE skills have been buffed to reduce the requirement even more for grind.
Ursan was overpowered. But I didn't have a problem with it. Now no more profession discrimination. And it is slowed down.


Sniper support, Can anyone say HEADSHOT!

They also changed ursan into a form now. You can no longer mimic it.

Same grp build works with ursans. Just did 2 runs. And now I am faster in pools with the mini buff to SF.

Next up! Ursan sniper group LF 5 ursan snipers, 2 HB, and 1 Imbagon. Mesmers, sins, rits, dervs, and rangers need not apply because they are are useless during the down time.

I noticed it too. I accidentally called a target that was far away from the group we were currently fighting. ALL of my heros/hench ran all the way over to engage it. I had to flag them back. Weird because earlier I was wondering what kinds of hero/ai bugs would creep up with all of those ai updates.

Lol Yeah, They idd nerfed Ursan, rave & wolfen Blessing but buffed many other skills, like SY! but great update overall