Theyz Changin Ma Skillz!

This has probably been put in the wrong place and been mentioned before but here goes anyway.
A while ago Anet announced that they were going to be making changes to some of the lesser used elite skills, which seemed like a great idea. But when they said "making changes" i presumed similar effects but different conditions/ what have you. But with some skills they have completely rewritten the mechanics. I'll give an example.

Flashing Blades: I believe before they fiddled around, it didn't do damage to the person that was blocked, it was just 75% chance to block whilst attacking, now it does damage to an attacker when they're blocked (like an Assassin's Glad's defense). That for me is fine, slight change, making the skill slightly more appealing.

On the other hand...

Thunderclap: Every time target take's lightning damage they are knocked down. I WAS PERFECTLY HAPPY quick-casting lightning strike and javelin/using a lightning weapon and keeping opponents on the floor. It wasn't imbalanced, easily removeable and only dangerous in skilled hands.
But now it does some damage dazey thing, i wouldn't say that this is a change, more a comepletely different skill thought up and put in place of another. And I don't like it.

But what I'm more annoyed about, is Melandru's shot.
Used to: Deal + damage, and gave 5-15 energy back if target was enchanted. Great, energy management for Rangers, good if you have a high energy skill set (like myself) and need a way of getting energy back easily, NOW, there's no energy gain at all, Also it no longer fits in with the theme of the "melandru's" skills, melandru's assault for the pets deals + damage to enchanted foes, and melandru's arrows inflicts bleeding and extra damage on enchanted foes, The new melandru's shot is just a glorified Hunter's shot.

But that's it for my rant, feel free to flame/approve/whatever.
I just wanted to make this point myself.

Yeah, that's what I first thought.

I was all "...Hey, I thought Melandru-style skills were supposed to hate on enchantments or something..." when I saw the updated version - IMHO, Crippling Shot should have been the glorified Hunter's shot. Melandru's was fine pre-update, except I kind of wished it had a lower recharge time.

Do rangers really need better energy management? i thought expertise covered that. Guess not...

Hey, it's always nice to have more options instead of less, wouldn't you think?

Expertise helps a lot, taking 4% off the energy cost of ranger skills every rank. At 13, you have 52% energy reduction. Although I always have mine at 9 (36% reduction) and I do fine with energy.

Although, I will say that Melandru's Shot has gone out of place with the Melandru skills *and the Melandru skills are anti-enchant/hex, not just enchant, [Melandru's Resilience] supports that *

some skills have been a complete overhaul yes, but what you really show your skill is your ability to adapt to such things.

[order of undeath] not being a tru "orders" skill

i think teh point of teh op was more bout the skill changes completely different that it no longer matches teh skill name??

order of undeath was never a "true orders skill" any more than it is now. it used to be the only order that was not a party-wide enchantment. it is still the only order that is not a party-wide enchantment.

it was an "order" for minions...

had teh exact same function as [order of pain]...jus for minions (and wit a bigger life sac)

Things don't always work out. I didn't complain when they nerfed mah SF. Deal with it. Besides as some people have mentioned RANGERS DON'T NEED ANYMORE E MANAGEMENT...i mean cmon look at touch rangers...15 e skill turns into 5

Is it supposed to be a given number of skills ?

Basically, with that update, they have added some elite skills and removed others.
By a strange coincidence, it happens that the added skills have the same name as the removed skills, strange strange if you want my opinion.

But...
If the idea was to "improve" not-enough-powerful elites, why not keeping them ingame (well, I guess there are some ppl like me liking to use crappy elites sometimes) while still adding new skills ?

--> Most of the job was done while creating the new functionnality, those new skills, isn't that true ?

--> Removing (even crappy) skills still triggers lack of variety. And removing elites does not help in fighting against imbalance builds : if the new elites are better, you still can just have only one on your bar !

But this sucks. I've always had an open elite slot on minion masters and this kind of fit nicely in.

Furthermore we used this in minion factory 2007 and had a few hilarious times in gvg with it.

They may have figured Prepared Shot does the job now? *shrugs*

So instead of being an awful version of marksman's wager, you've got something that can actually kill people easily since the cripple is twice covered. Yeah, big loss there.

[Vow of strength] still pissed about this. I have barely played GW anymore since then. B/c all we got left to use is [Wounding Strike] and that boring as hell anymore.

They took it away it us, and made it a skill for sins. And they have yet to "improve elites"........

maybe use [Prepared Shot] ?

it is even better than old [Melandru's Shot] anyway.

^ Yup.

They change skills, theyre not worse than they were before. Melandru's was obsolete when in competition with Prepared Shot. Thunderclap was only used in one single gimmick build.


Adapt.

They changed some truly terrible skills into semi-decent ones. I honestly don't see what you're complaining about.

Thunderclap was only dangerous against bad players, regardless of the skill of the player. Now, (in RA at least) it removes a monk from the game on it's own with minimal cost. Melandru's Shot was Prepared Shot but bad. It filled no roles on a ranger's bar that couldn't be better filled with another skill.Now it's a CS alternative. You're complaining about unusable skills being made into usable skills.

With ANet, no change is set in stone. As we have seen in the past, if a skill change doesn't work well in general play, they will change it again.

But you need to present a clear and precise explanation of your objection and how you think it would work better.

Posting vague complaints and saying you quit because of the change just gets you ignored.