[Dev Update] - 11 December 2008

Are you high, good sir?

This skill is finally usable in other way than gimmicky N/D tanks in AB. And spawning 9 minions after enemies thought they defeated you is FTW.

RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO [shared burden], [Lingering Curse]+[visions of regret]

That still doesn't explain how the other guy figured his warrior could maintain this skill constantly with a 1 second duration of the effect. If blurred vision experise 90% faster for 1 second you're still screwed.
I agree that monks can do some amazing things with this but the idea that a warior can keep this effect up continually is nonesense as far as I can see.

guys whats done is done now... monks are more capable of handling the meta blah blah blah... still there is only 1 solution to the problem

stop flaming and QQing and start coming up with solutions.. PnH was made with good intentions... i remember an ocasion when was in halls vs a hexway... they rolled us... end of story. why?

it was just too much.

now that hexway is taken care of, even though it requires the addition of a new monk into the team you might wanna start to come up with new builds... im sure gvg is gonna be fun with all these [paragons are as useless as ever though].

it is at this time when ppls real skill to play come into practice... show me what you've all got huh?

and ffs stop QQing its annoying

I used Peace And Harmony!

You Make a update to Make the lux/kurz titles easier then u go and make them harder? wtf

Ok so I never saw (when i logged on) any change with palm strike it was the same as before, wording and all....

Update took 2 of my favourite things (atm) away. Amatz Farm with permas and Fervor suicide bomber in FA.

Here is the breakdown on Hundrend Blades I got from playing, not this is in PvE so number for PvP might be different.

at 15 swordsmanship you get +25 dmg, this works out to...

+7 vs Warriors
+15 vs Rangers
+20 vs Casters

At best this is and AoE conjure skill now, nothing more. It deals less AoE than [splinter weapon] and less direct damage then [Brutal Weapon], which can be maintained permanently.

PvE is different, because you can abuse it with [Whirlwind Attack] to get multiple triggers on each foe (uncapped unlike splinter) and you can use those to fire off [Mark of Pain] bomb.

maybe players should just

- stop expecting monks to handle everything

and

- accept that deaths are gonna happen

yeesh, you have all been spoiled by guild wars where healing is too powerful, in other games things drop like flies everywhere you look.

maybe it's time guild wars became more like that.

no way i dont want to play serious sam but ty for the constructive comment, wait.. NOT

wat

12chars

My mistake I did not realize that you were only posting to berate the developers intelligence/decisions. Your first post sounded like you were still playing when you stated "this is still easy", It gave me the impression that you were still actively farming and not making a determination by just looking at the change in the notes. Obviously I was incorrect. Please accept my apoligies.

Note to ANET developers "please disregard ninja's comments from now on he no longer plays the game." Keep up the good work!

Boon Signet and PnH weren't exactly awesome e-management skills. I wish they had kind of kept the same functionality on Life Sheath and just improved cast time for PvP, but it's nice conceptually... removing hex and cond stacks AND reversing damage?

Also, very surprised A-Net actually fixed Primal Rage into something useable... do it with Mark of Protection and I'll really be impressed!

Overall, very neat update, lots of underused skills refurbished, nice to see they're still looking to fix up the game a bit.

except the cost of resurrecting and the penalty per death in GW is quite high. otherwise, i'd agree with you.

of course, if the only pvp you've been doing is AB and RA, you probably never noticed the above two.

If you're the type of person that likes to take everything lying down..fine. But don't expect other people to be the same...And really...why don't you stop QQing about that...whining about whining isn't gonna get the point across really.

By the gods, no my dear friend()

That skill is best used when lots of corposes are around, so there has to be death in order for the skill to be most effective. And "spawning 9 minions after enemies thought they defeated you is FTW" isn't FTW, really. OK, so you're one lone mm with 9 minions vs. the other team with what? real human players that can deal more than just the 26ish damage the minions deal?(they can defend too, btw)

Dunno, never liked the skill much and probably never will.

Uhm. But you do know the power of minions is in their number + buffs? Even humans can't deal with 9 minions dishing out 26 (hehe, at least ) + 10 damage from Barbs + AoE from Mark of Pain. That's 9x36 = 324 armor-ignoring damage every two seconds if everything is perfect.

Also with AotL you basically have a full army of minions in 2 seconds while using normal Animate Bone Horror you would have to waste about 45 seconds, not counting casting time.

And you DO have teammates. Minions like to block and annoy people. Especially if you have Dazed and try to cast anything, as 9 melee attackers = almost 100% fail to cast ANY spell. Even 1/8 (Healer's Boon/Holy Haste + Infuse Health) cast.

Seems to me that people have not yet caught on that Aura of the Lich allows an MM to raise minions without the need of corpses. This has some major consequences (perhaps unintended), particularly for PvP.

I did prefer the previous Life Sheath to the new one, it was different and had good functionality, they should have just tweaked it to 5/1/5, and 180 damage prevention at 16 prot.

It has some consequences for trying to do Hell's Precipice in HM. Not only do you have to face a high-level foe using the improved Hundred Blades, but the Risen Ashen Hulks use AotL, so now you have to content with high-level bone minions jumping on you while trying to deal with the titans. Difficulty of the mission has gone WAY up, and I hope they rebalance the NPCs there.

Not needing a corpse is intended. The description actually says that, but I don´t now what consequences a skill has that raises one minion every 45 seconds.

Isn't a difficulty increase in Hell's Precipe a good thing?

"Knock lock" Rurik and Titan Fists, and do one or more of the following: interrupt AotL, don't die, bring minion counters, etc.

on the whole topic i would like to say

GOOD JOB ANET

they've are starting to really get this game fun again especially in pve build making and low-level pvp. Palm strike is a little 2 good but the rest of the update was amazing. even RA is no longer a one sided fight. i love you guys now. no longer will the nerf it and the problems is done practice like we saw in the old days. now it's buff the format into super diveristy and the problem is drowned out but all these other build. Build wars no more

I hope you were high / trolling when you writing that.

Oh right. You're a big man because you wont take this lying down. You're going to make all the difference with your pointless whinning.

The guys point was that you should stop moaning and make use of the update, and he was right.

This update was very good, in my opinion. People should remember that the point of these updates arnt to make every single skill par with one another and eliminate a meta. The meta will never go away, it would be stupid to think otherwise.
The points of the updates are to make the skills in the skill pool all viable options for people to use, and allow for many different styles of play.
Yeah there were a few problems in this update - but there are many many many more options for people to use now, and for that i'm greatfull.

Here's my thoughts and/or rant depending on point of view, and yes, I'm griping about the SF nerf, so if you don't want to hear it, please go on to the next post instead of flaming me for griping. Thanks.

I've been playing the game for a year now. I am not one of these people who's been playing since the beta and have 8 million ectos stored across 50 mule characters. I am also not fortunate enough to have joined at a point when some items or mods were still rare enough to garner a nice price in order to make enough money for elite armor. Enough people have sold off or given their items to their friends and guildmates prior to quitting the game that most items aren't worth a lot. You think ectos have deflated? Try _everything_ has deflated. That's great if you want to buy a survivor rune. It sucks if you're trying to sell stuff to get the 75k required for armor. And before anyone points this out, yes, I know elite armor isn't supposed to be easy to get and that it should indeed require some effort to get. I expect that and accept it. I don't mind working for something worthy--and female Vabbian necro is worth every single moment of work I put in gaining the money required for the gems and plat--it's gorgeous.

The only way to make any kind of decent gold in the game is to solo farm, because playing with a party certainly isn't going to get you much of anything. Our guild went on 2 runs of Curse of the Nornbear last night. Two runs, and I got a single white banded spear. That was it. One gal got lucky and got the sole gold drop of the party in 2 runs. If that kind of drop rate is supposed to be funny, I'm not amused. Frankly, the drops and drop rate in EotN suck _unless_ you solo farm. In addition, for an assassin, farming the raptors in the raptor cave outside Rata Sum is one of the best ways to get Asuran points, and a very nice way to get normal and elite assassin tomes. Yes, I know Anet made it much easier to earn various points with the new books and adding more points for quests, vanquishes, kills in general, and such, and I do greatly appreciate it (although I now need a bookshelf for the library. ). Solo-farming also gives me something to do when the guild is either not online or are busy in other missions/quests. I hate PUGing--I apparently have the best luck at finding PUGs who a. have no clue what they're doing b. have no idea what organization and communication means c. leave at the first sign of trouble because they really only wanted to leech or d. think that the height of intelligent conversation is the size of Brittany Spear's/femme fatale du jour's boobs. Thank God for heroes and henchmen. This still doesn't eliminate the fact that solo-farming makes more money, anyway.

So what has this latest SF nerf done? Made it nigh-on impossible to farm _anything_. I have an energy pool of 65 on my assassin in Asuran lands at rank 8 and can clear the raptor cave, but not without standing around for an entire SF cycle waiting for energy to recharge sometimes. Where I was able in the past to maintain SF at 15 with a second or two leeway between recharge and recast, that's no longer possible--you have to have SF at 16 to have that bit of cushion.

Don't get me wrong--I totally understand why Anet nerfed it again. It's to slow down UW/FoW/other elite area runs. I just think there were other ways to deal with this besides making it impossible to maintain in non-elite areas without 9 million points in energy.
You could a. remove essence of celerity
b. add more enchantment stripping monsters, or strategically place them differently.
c. you can increase the energy cost slightly instead of decreasing the recharge time.
d. you can alter the drop rate for ecto or scale it (yeah, I know, that'll get me flamed for sure).
e. you can create a new armor/weapon/quest sink for ecto so that the demand goes back up, thus bringing the prices back up--and new content would be very welcome, I'm sure.
f. create an environmental effect in UW that slows the recharge time of elite assassin enchantments (since you're only wanting to nerf Shadow form, you may as well be specific about it).
g. create an environmental effect in UW that increases the energy cost of shadow form

There are a number of things you, Anet, can do to affect SF farming in UW without altering SF itself. You've succeeded in keeping it maintainable permanently, but you've also succeeded in making it not 'fun for farming'.

necro running Succor on the perma with FoC and party heals will make a FoW run no slower than before. UW...that's another story. I'm unsure about even running with perma up, much less solo perma-ing areas in UW. I'm sure cons make it easier but still. It's hard to pay attention to SF enough with glyph of swiftness....that 5% can and will make a difference so you have to refresh SF IMMEDIATELY, and I know I don't pay as much attention as I should to my SF. My SC days are pretty much over.

Agreed. I also don't see how bringing MM's back in RA will cause an enormous impact, they sucked then and they still suck now...

Since Hundred Blades is a skill that came painfully close to being right, but still isn't, I'm repostin my comments from the Warrior forum thread o nthe farming build using HB + MoP + WW

1. I was initially perturbed that this skill provided yet another totally broken farming build. Then I realized that it really has very little economic impact. This build doesn't let us farm anything we couldn't farm before; it just lets us kill them same poor raptors faster. And, as we now understand, loot scale means that killing faster gives you no advantage over killing slower aside from a better rate of loot-scale-exempt items -- usually vendor trash golds. So, unless you can start farming smites with this, it's really not the horrible, degenerate, Oh-my-GAWD-nerf-it-NOW!! build that it seems to be at first glance.

2. The new hundred blades STINKS in general purpose PvE.

First of all, armor-sensitive slashing damage barely tickles monsters.

Second of all, the extra damage is not in the form of "attacks." That means no adrenaline, no zealous/vampiric triggers, and -- worst of all -- no useful way to buff the awful base damage. (BUH and EBSofHonor do buff it, but BUH doesn't get around the armor-sensitive problem, and EBSofHonor is too pricey to run on a warrior.)



So, how do we fix this skill? Two ideas come to mind:

1. If we want to make it useful for PvE and kill the farming build, then I think the "leaked" 3-swings skill concept would work best. Same as the old skill, only 3 swings instead of two, and give it a 4 sec recharge. The base damage would still suck, but it could be buffed. Also, 3 swings would make it a decent adrenaline engine even against a single foe -- not quite as good as dragon slash, but good enough not to disregard it out of the box.

2. If we want to make it useful in PvE and don't care about the farming potential (see above for why I think we shouldn't care about it), then I think it would work best as something like this:

"For 15 seconds, whenever you attack with a sword, you make an additional attack at your target and all adjacent foes. These additional attacks deal 50% less damage than normal."

Again, that gives us something with low damage on its own, but buffable into something quite nice. Also, it gives good, if inconsistent adrenaline. And, finally, it maintains HB's original ability to deal slightly increased damage to the target foe.

Jae, Keg farming is still doable, so I don't see the problem you're having. Unless you think the Raptor farm is the most profitable (lol).

My views on it. (I'm sure I already posted in this thread, just not as thorough as this is gonna be)


Monk: Boon Signet needs a recharge of 5 to make it worthwhile using I think. Otherwise HBoon and WoH still beat it out. I like where Life Sheath is at the moment.

Warrior: I haven't yet tried Hundred Blades in PvE, but I might try bringing a smite mesmer with me so I can use SoH. Enraged is nice, I'll be using that every so often in PvP. Whirling Axe still loses to Eviscreate for now. There might be some places you can use it in PvE and PvP I suppose. Primal Rage is still gonna lose to other elites as well, like Crippling Slash, Eviscreate, [Hammer elite]. Maybe if they added something else to the skill to help it out. Even if the double damage wasn't there, it'd still only be useful in a couple situations.

Ranger: Archer's Signet is just not good enough. I mean those conditions are removed fast, most of the time in PvP. A longer poison isn't going to change a game often enough to make AS useful. Broad Head Arrow still beats out what Concussion Shot can do with Archers Signet, because BHA is guaranteed. The 2 trap skill buffs are okay, but trapping is only used in one area for the most part, Zaishen Elite, apart from the minor occurrences in AB. This would have been nice when UW trapping was still running wild. The pet skill is meh as well, because Heal and Rampage still beat it out.

Mesmer: The Symbol buff is useless as there are much better elites in the mesmer line. Shared Burden seems to be nice, I haven't used it yet, but if I don't want to run Signet of Illusions, I usually don't have an elite Illusion skill to use, and now I do. The buff to Power Leech is overlooked because of VoR I think, plus Power Block. Although it might have it's uses in PvE.

Elementalist: Double Dragon is something I'll be using in PvE now. In PvP other elites beat it out, such as Mind Blast or SH. The 2 Energy Storage buffs seem nice but not enough to waste an elite slot, but I'm sure they can find a use on E/Mo type builds. Blinding Surge is gonna be more annoying now in RA, and a bit more useful in PvE.

Necromancer: Aura of the Lich was a decent buff, I mean it seen uses before that but I never had a reason to use it. I probably still won't but I think it's a decent addition to PvE (both monster and player) and AB settings, FA too. Cultists is something that I've never tried so I'm not gonna comment on it now that it's fixed. Lingering Curse has goods and bads. It's annoying in RA, not as annoying in FoW, useful in a couple Curse necro builds, but I don't know if it'll beat out SS/FoC/Corrupt Enchant. Same with the other skill that was buffed in the Curse line.

Assassin: Palm Strike buff is something I like. I was using it before it was buffed so now it's even more usable. Although it might get nerfed because of that. If so, do the recharge time to 6-8s. Or change energy to 10. I haven't really tested the other 2 yet so not gonna comment on them.

Dervish: Onslaught might see more use from me now, not sure yet. Because I don't know if it'll beat out Forms or Wounding Strike.

Rit and Paragon I don't play.

No, there are more profitable areas to farm--this one just happens to be fast (relatively, I don't use the fastest possible build), convenient, pretty death-free, and decent for asuran points and on holiday weekends, the goody drops. The occasional saurian scythe and elemental sword drops from the locked chest didn't hurt any, either. I'll just have to branch out and try new things, I guess.

Palm Strike needs a much higher recharge.
Mark of Insecurity can gtfo the game. Durartion/Recharge ratio is a joke. Keeping both monks hexed with this should not be possible.
Lingering Curse can gtfo the game. Again, duration/recharge ratio is a joke.
Recurring Insecurity's flawed design needs to be changed so that it cana ctually be removed.
Shadow step buffs seem like a step backwards.

Basically this just looks like an update to keep people happy with lots of pointless buffs that don't actually fix anything but potentially introduce even more problems into the game. The obvious one being the ridiculous emphasis on build wars, especially around hexes and super charged hex removals.

ITT bad players QQ because anet changed their favourite bad skill (AotL, PnH, Primal Lol, etc)

Listen, this is a load of crap. I myself said I was happy with most changes except one which is Incoming! and I really don't get that. But the guy who was whining about whining really won't get his point across.

If you say we just need to say yes thank you Anet to everything they do then I am sorry but I am not that type of person. If it's good then it's good and if it's not then it's not. People have different opinions.

And in the end if this guy wants to take the moral higher ground and take a stand against a type of behaviour that he condemns by using the exact same type of behaviour then he lost the argument right then and there. It's the same as saying I am against violence so I am going to beat you up.

A lot of people are QQing about Palm Strike.
I say leave it as it is for PvE, and give it a 8 sec recharge for PvP.
I mostly PvE and so I don't care about PvP.

That's the point, Monks are already reliant on secondaries for energy management so why in the hell would you remove one of the only tools they have to do it themselves?

Because my naive friend some of us have learned to play and used Peace and Harmony to its full potential in private farm builds. This is really a deliberate nerf disguised as a buff aimed at players who knew how to use that skill.

I seriously doubt that:

a) You can't find a replacement skill for PaH for your build, it being elite and all
b) Your build is any more efficient than other existing builds
c) The change even considered your build at all, even a little bit