Palm Strike Updated

[Palm Strike] Decreased Crippled duration to 1..5 seconds; decreased damage to 10..65.


Just a teeny tiny skill balance this month.


This might qualify as one of the top 5 GW skill balances of all time.

I take back what I said bad people can no longer use this skill which makes it a good fix.

Good update!

I'm just grateful for the item bug fix. (finally)

Thank you Anet!

It is hilarious they didnt even come close to fixing the problem this skill causes. It wasnt the damage and the cripple doesnt even matter when all these keyboard mashers do is kd chain everything anyway.

Nothing special.

What's wrong with a skill that enables a KD chain. It's just a compressed version of something like Leaping Mantis Sting and <off-hand>, followed by the same Trampling Ox.

Good balance.

The original PS was good, but its super strong, its just good. So this update fixes the real problem of spamming cripple on everyone and still makes the build good.

Besides, if you can't monk through PS, something is wrong.

Le sigh, better to just copy paste what I said about the first topic that poped up about this.

Edit: Complete opinion.
Unneeded nerf.

It's still as spammable just slightly less damaging but it lasts the turnaround so the cripples not that big of a problem is you're training or trying to keep a target snared (they can't block you xD)

Nothing ever stopped you from dshoting it ruining the entire build. And in HB all you have to do is not fail. Monking there (never played sin and I never saw a need for a nerf) I kite in circles around the shrine and when they reach me they stop to cast Palm and as they finish I mend touch out of their range as they catch up.

That alone puts most sins to rest since they 1234 and will not KD you. While higher ranked ones realize, doi I have another dual attack to KD. Although now it's more manageable and if it's really an issue kite between heroes or around your one hero or flag one around with you as you do this.

In GvG I found d-shoting both palms efficiently shut down most the pressure.

Now by nerfing this you did what to the rest of the smites and such? Nothing, nothing has changed nothing will. Even if you remove the cripple the rest of the bar is still quite efficient so maybe its not palm strike, maybe its the synergy in the bar, maybe something needs to be change to fix a huge chain of pressure. I always figured dual attacks were more powerful because they had to be lead up to and when you skip steps that's always been when problems arise. When skills like Falling Lotus Strike and Falling Spider skipped a step none the less only if the target was KDed and under enough pressure and instantly lead into another deadly KD like Horns of the Ox or Blades of Steel (yes comparing Backbreaker to Palms now) and everyone is always so quick to blame the elite. Maybe Shadow Prison wasn't so mindbogglingly overpowered when the chain was addressed aswell? When you can't start off with Black Lotus as an offhand and so on.

I see no further change needed, reducing the armor ignoring damage is pleasant enough. Maybe people need to stop thinking the only way to beat big damage is to run bigger damage and ditch some heroes for tactics, hmm naw those days are dead :P

No ones going to do anything but flame me as they disagree but there's 2 cents.
P.S. Tbh though I'd have preferred a 8-10 recharge and the previous effects and duration remain but a nerf is a nerf none the less ^^ at least it's still playable, that's pretty rare post-nerf eh?

update wise 2009 starts with a whimper
will anyone even be around to see 2010

The nerf was so that two Palm Strike sins can't keep an entire team perma crippled on their own in GvG.

...Yeah, the people who don't use guru.

Like what? 10 damage at 15 critical strikes and 0.5seconds of cripple? Don't make me laugh, this is argueably one of the best updates ever. (Though I won't mind if Anet switch back to the old version either)

I'm glad a famous Guild Wars player such as yourself is here to let everyone know whether an update is good or not.

I am giggling.

Perma-cripple was my biggest gripe actually, at least now those buggers are kiteable. Taking cripple off only to see it put on again rigt away is **** annoying.

Interesting... a skill was actually "balanced" instead of ruined or over-buffed. I like the update

I know weird huh? But in all seriousness, glad they "balanced" it and not destroyed it.

They can still maintain it as the cripple lasts 5 (6?) seconds now, and the recharge is lower than that.

True, but it's way more of a hassle, and they can only maintain it on 1 person. If a team lets that happen they're baed and deserve to get killed.

I don't think palm strike sins were running around crippling everyone anyway, that'd be a huge waste of the rest of your skillbar.

Besides...where's smite nerfs? MoI? Some say lingering curse, but i think thats quite okay as long as the other stuff gets nerfed back to a somewhat normal state.

They do if the rest is shut down, and its ***** annoying.
As for the rest, they should at the least fix that bug that makes patient spirit fail when MoI is on a target.

Erm.....what the hell is anet playing at? people in PVP were whining about this, I was happy with it with PVE! especially in hm...what's the sodding point of the two seperate rule systems nowdays?..jeez.

PVE fails, it doesn't need balancing, just faceroll on keyboard and you win PVE.

On Topic: This is a nice balance, to be fair id like to have seen it smiter's booned (play monk, perma cripple ftl) But now at least the cripple is very manageable

Lol that's a blunt way to put it, try faceroll your keyboard in hard mode lol. As far as I know the pve/pvp split only applies to skills that are staple on PvE bars (watch yourself, FGJ, Mantra of inscriptions). Palm strike isn't used particularly much in PvE so I guess anet just didn't bother.

wait and see how the meta evolves after balancing this...

but where are the nerfs to rend, mark of insecurity, lingering curse... ?

is it that hard to give lingering curse a 50...15% life sac scaled on soul reaping and lower duration a little ? kill those damn fast casting spamers

It was nerfed in a good way , they didn't kill it completely. But I would have lowered the damage a bit more.

Someone Clueless: "So what's the reason Palm Strike is so overpowered?"
Someone Intelligent: "The recharge."
Izzy: "Ok, let's nerf everything else about it."

ANet still fail at balance.

uh yea so now spirit bond dosnt trigger it. thats a nerf? i heard thats a buff

OMG GAIZ Y NERF IT CAN BE C\OUNTERD WIT D-SHOTZ

In a decent wording, counterability doesn't stop it being overpowered. I could cancel Palm Strike if I wanted to - what then?

lol nice joke, palm strike buffed....


(for the people that think it is nerfed.... think off spirit bond)

Actually it was nerfed in the worst way possible.

Lowered damage? Well no one used Palm Strike for the damage really. It's a nice damage boost sure, and it sometimes gets you kills at the end of a chain sure, but the lowered damage at the spec you run it in is VERY LITTLE and doesn't make a difference.
Lowered Cripple? This is actually a buff in-a-way because it means [Plague Touch] and [Plague Sending] and other such skills won't gimp you that much if it gets thrown back to you, plus it can still be maintaned nearly in the appropriate spec.

In fact, they didn't even nerf it at all for the reason it's OP. All it needed was a lower cripple duration and a little bit higher recharge and it'd be fine, but as of now it's pretty much the exact same skill.

Its still spammable so nothing new. we needed longer recharge but whatever. LC and tease are still out there. The guy who sacrificed 3 mins of his life to do this update might want to look at them too.

For once, I didn't cry out over seeing an Assassin nerf. In all technicalities, the nerf is one of the most accurately done:

- The cripple time was lowered, making it EXTREMELY HARD to use it solely for crip-spam.
- The damage was lowered, but not destroyed, making it act more like the off-hand it is.

I will admit, before the cripple duration was nuts for the simplicity of the attack (no lead attack required, hitting through blind, unblockable), and following up with...anything was nuts. Good job ANet, you managed to "balance" a skill for once instead of completely nerfing it.

Coincidentally now the dmg is under spirit bond range, thanks Izzy.

one skill... thats it? A month well spent i guess...

Initially I thought there was a chance this would actually be balanced now...nope it's still retarded. Izzy may as well be filling bags of shit and lighting them on player's doorsteps rather than sending an update like this out the door. If I had a choice between keeping some of the skill buffs that I liked from the 3 big 2008 updates, hoping Izzy ever gets around to fixing the broken garbage, or undoing all of them I'd choose the later =/

It's apparent that Izzy can't balance skills. Why does he still have a job D:

This is how anet is going to balance skills from now on. They will do one skill a month in order to at least get that one skill right.

too bad they didn't do it right and in turn buffed it in areas.

-PS now goes underneath spirit bond
-Cripple duration is long enough to pull off the chain but not enough to be able to foul feast/plague send it back to them, one of the viable counters in TA

It was neither the damage or the cripple duration that was the problem with PS, it was the recharge.A simple change to 6-8 recharge would have fully balanced this skill, yet Izzy once again shows his ability to find a problem skill and yet still fail to see where the problem lies within it

I think it is a good update. The fact that it is more kite-able than before is good enough. But yeah, everybody have their own opinion...