Update - Thursday, February 5, 2009

Updated Zaishen Rewards

* Updated Zaishen Chest drops to replace Cerebral Tonic with a new tonic for the month of February. More information on Zaishen Rewards can be found here.

Automated Tournaments

* Updated Automated Tournament map rotations.

Skill Updates

PvE and PvP

Assassin

* Mark of Insecurity: now disables your non-Assassin skills for 10 seconds.

Mesmer

* Signet of Humility: now disables your non-Mesmer skills for 10 seconds.

Necromancer

* Faintheartedness: reduced Health degeneration to 0..3.
* Lingering Curse: reduced Health degeneration to 0..3.
* Suffering: reduced Health degeneration to 0..3.

Ritualist

* Protective Was Kaolai: reduced armor bonus to 10.

Warrior

* Primal Rage: reduced movement speed boost to 25%.

Guild Battles

* Removed the additional Health bonus Guild Lords received from morale boosts.
* Amulet of Protection: increased the rate at which the Amulet of Protection buff reaches maximum damage. It will now reach maximum damage around 12 minutes instead of at 22 minutes.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug that caused Pulverizing Smash to fail when used on a foe who wasn't knocked down.
* Fixed a bug that required players to equip a hammer when activating Dwarven Battle Stance.
* Fixed a bug that caused Protector's Defense effects to linger after the skill user died.
* Fixed a bug that caused Dancing Daggers to count as a lead attack when daggers missed their target.
* Fixed a bug that caused Restoration and Lively Was Naomei to be disregarded when determining whether or not a party had remaining resurrection skills.
* Fixed a bug that prevented Symbols of Inspiration from copying avatar forms.

Miscellaneous

* Xunlai Tournament Agents now offer prizes for the January tournament. These agents can be found in the Great Temple of Balthazar, Lion's Arch, Kaineng Center, and Kamadan.
* The description for Frozen Soil now clarifies that creatures cannot activate resurrection skills within its range.
* The description for Rend Enchantments now clarifies that the skill causes Health loss, not damage.
* The description for Strike as One now clarifies that the target needn't be a foe.
* The description for Mistrust has been reworded for clarity.
* The description for Psychic Distraction now clarifies that targeted skills will be disabled for a few seconds in addition to the skill's standard recharge.
* The description for Agnar's Rage now clarifies that the skill affects foes within earshot.

oh, and the Tonic?






CHARR!!!!

So much for my Lingering Curse build... looks like I'll have to think of another idea for Curses on my Necromancer...

Finally for Lingering Curse!

I was right... and you guys delete my thread.

gg ;D

Necros aren't affected at all, unless you're too poor to afford a minor rune. This was just a hit to fastcast mesmer.

I fail to see why you all are QQing over Lingering. All the change does is prevent you from running goofy abusive stuff like E/N Water. Skill is still broken in several formats.

Charr tonic is better than most. Would be nicer if it stood up straighter. Height is always good on those things.

Since the reward has been given and we now knows the result for January, can anybody explain me why can't I make any prediction? It says "Before February 22"... But I can't vote at all :-/

Oh and nice tonic.

Wtf? PwK

PvE/PvP skill split please.

somehow i knew it was going to be a charr

After that second smaller build tonight I got 155 tourney points again...

Changes zero about LC necros with 14 in curses. That means it's still going to be ran on 95% of HA teams =/

I'm pretty sure Izzy is corrupt too. Let's see, rawr has one skill in their build gently slapped (PwK armor nerf). Build still has the same offense and defense. The FC curses quite a few pressure builds used had 4 skills nerfed with hum sig nerfed completely out and break point changes on the curses skills. I really hate FC curses and won't miss it if this means it's gone, but in all fairness rawr's stand rit should have been specifically nerfed at the same time.

As is this is basically bullshit, and I don't care if he does this in his spare time. That's anet's fault for continuing to employ someone so grossly incompetent and not putting any resources (on the PvP side) of a game they pledged to support. Everything but top level GvG is dead, HB is dead, TA is dead, HA is dead. I'm sure many would say GvG is dead too but at least there is still a semblance of competition, but that will probably be totally dried up in short order too.

All Izzy accomplished here was yet another build choice left in the dust. Two build GvG metas pewpew ranger or rawrspike. Guess they really are gearing up for this game to die by April.

AT least MoI got a bit of a nerf. "Mark of Insecurity's enchantment and stance duration reduction reduced to 30...70...80%." Besides from it being bad on non Assassins.

I was pretty disappointed nothing's been done to turret rangers. Put aftercast on 1s attacks already. We've been through this before back when bow interrupts had no aftercast, same old shit.

Wow what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO. Nerf rits?

Also inb4 fanboys saying QQ plz.

Bleh, was kind of hoping they would make NPCs respond to RoJ as AoE...Those Afflicted Monks sure annihilate Togo and Mhenlo in Vizunah Square!

Double reward points was fun.

Same here

MoI got a bit of nerfed? The skill is completely dead again.

EDIT: nvm, someone's been messing around with wiki adding "reduced enchantment and stance to 30...80%". Actually Izzy did a good job on this one.

i wish anet will update the AI for all of these elite skill changes period. as of now, the AI does NOT know how to use any of the changed skills. heck, the AI still thinks Healing Burst is a touch range heal.

Hm, cool. Wasn't expecting RP this early in the month

double reward points...
i didn't get any this is the 2nd time i predicted and nvr got any points...GG...

another nerf for the rits? PwK

nerfing rits at this point is like kicking a dead horse once then going HA HA.

like the bully kid from the simpsons

PwK nerfed .... why??

AT least Izzy knows what is wrong with Guild Wars, but I think his way of going about fixing PwK best exemplifies his sheer misunderstanding of the game. People don't run PwK because of the armor bonus. They run it because of its cheap party heal and because it lasts a long time.

Glad to see they reworded Frozen soil. For some reason the description (but not the actual skill) was changed before to say that it only affected "resurrection spells" which would imply stuff like res sig would work through it (res sig still didn't work through it, they just changed the wording incorrectly, not the functionality).

Its nice to know such a minor detail that was pointed out on a guru thread was noticed and fixed.

Signet of Humility wasn't the problem with Me/Rt Tease heroes...or is there more to this nerf that I'm missing?

VV That makes sense, wasn't thinking. Anything to make LC builds slightly less retarded is a win in my book. Not that it will matter too much, but whatever.

You're missing the fact that no one ever cared about HA. They mostly nerfed it for Me/N curser, same as all involved necro skills.

Yes, but the armor bonus along with +10 while holding an item gave rits nearly constant AL of 94 which needed to be toned down.

They really need to finish changing alot of skills they changed, LC and chilblains do not act like all other types of aoe. When the target dies, the spells fail to cast when compared to all previous aoe, which goes though even if target dies. I'm sure there alot of other skills that were not completely changed, but being primary necro, these are the 2 that stick out like a sore thumb.

So the health degen was the problem with Lingering Curse? interesting :S
It's still dirt cheap and it still lasts forever ><

so izzy wants everyone to run rawrspike in GvG?
where is the nerf to rend enchantments?

Spikes or split pretty much.

There's DoT aoe, which casts even if the target dies, and theres 'Boom' AoE, which fails when there's no target. Which makes me wonder, does a Rodgorts cast fail when the target dies?

Hehe not really, but when you factor in the amount of players you could hit with lingering+suffering over a time period greatly adds up, even with the -2 degen removed between the two now decreases overall health degen throughout a match. What really put the nail in the coffin was the nerf to sig hum, pretty much the only way hexes or even condi degen can create pressure. Mark was pretty dumb in getting buffed to what it was but in the end the majority of the meta had tools to counter it, warding at the stand and or pnh monks. All this update did in the grand scheme of things was remove build options. Oh do I wish we could go back to last April. It's updates like these when I really start to question the previous motives of updates and current, you buff pressure one month then nerf it, while whole other extremely more stagnant and broken 8v8 builds run rampant, yea yea rawrspike.

Gud nerf, should bring a sin now to apply it, and MoR means no PS. I agree that countering wasn't much of a problem, but there's anough dumb hexes as it is already. Why do they poo all over hum sig? Is this some nerf to Me/broken-secondary-of-choise? I don't like this nerf. Can someone maybe elaborate why this one was a problem?
I personally would have hit LC's cost or duration, but meh.

Eek, nasty nurf, they must hate rits in GvG big time. Can't really comment on that because I fail to see how PwK is a huge problem.
Gud nerf, toned down yet not destroyed.

Rangers need damage nurfs though, RoJ wasn't fixed (it's bugged y'know). And I agree with echoman that these nurfs only limit cool options.

LC just changed like I said, but the major hit is Signet of Humility which I didn't expect.

The change of Signet of Humility not only stopped some common M/E, M/N, M/Mo builds but also made it impossible to use by non-mes primary class. There must be a better way imo.
For example, it disable all of your non-primary skills for 10 sec, maybe...

PnH needs to be tuned down a bit.
5e, 0.25s, 7r, self-targetable is superb.

BTW, nothing changes to WW?

yet another month goes by with PS completely imba, gg