May Skill Balances

Pack it up, like Yichi says.
Although reading the dev notes pertaining to skill changes satisfies me in weird ways.

Alas poor wtfisgoingon was banned? awwwww

Still hoping for Shadowform major nerfdom though. Really tired of this easy soloing with Shadowform on more than just sins though. I watched a video of an Ele using it and it's just too easy to even be allowed. They need to nerf whatever 55 Monks use for damage as well what is it that RoJ skill?

then im done with gw, latest skill balances have been nothing but crap :/

Guess you're going then. Apparently (according to various sources) the update is pretty crappy. "Some decent, some shit".

:X

izzy doesnt do skill balance anymore

Just buff pets and spawning power =V

I am not abdicating that anyone just pack it up because the update is crap. I am saying not to get your hopes up for the major problems in the game to be miraculously addressed and corrected given past track records, thus causing much disdain and many players to just throw their hands up and leave the game, or stop playing like they used to.
Good thing. The thread on assassins he has in campfire is nothing but troll bait by him ignoring facts about the class and pushing his own idea as factual. The thread should honestly be deleted.

I don't think ANET can afford to even lose a handful of people that play gvg. I think world of warcraft pvp is taken more seriously than guild wars. It is honestly a joke.

And i think some people still have a misconception concerning what balance means. Balance is when the number of build types is the greatest. This is because you can interchange one bar of 8 skills for another bar of 8 skills in your 64 skill lineup very easily because skills are so "balanced" in relation to each other. Spoken economically it would probably be best described as: When the utility for all builds is the same - and when the marginal utility from switching similar skills is equal. Of course this would result in a dual war, dommes, ranger, ele, 2 monk, flagger standard "balance" being viable because it can handle alot of situations -taking advantages of other build's weak points, while having no clear one of its own. Of course, everyone would not run this because we are not robots. People have preferences and strong points and some just like to be creative...build variety will occur.

After all the damage PvP has done to PvE over the years I could give a rats arse over what happens to PvP. The game in PvE is completely unbalanced. One cannot go into all areas, missions, and dungeons with each and every class and have an enjoyable social gaming experience. If you do not have a specific cookie cutter build for clearing section X, or doing exactly this part of the team for dungeon Y, then you and your friends will not be able to do that dungeon.

The elitism of these so called areas isn't about skill, it's about only using X and Y, and sometimes adding in Z. While the same two or three character classes dominate opportunities in PvE, PvP gets skill balances aimed at keeping them happy. PvE only skills that could have, rather distastefully, allowed equitty between classes if worked propperly were not. The answer, rather than fix them so that all PvE players could benefit equally was to destroy there usefulness.

If they want to update something for balance, how about making the game something that all classes can play equally; instead of forcing people to use the same 2 or allowing them to augemnt with necro if they want to have any chance of success.

Bring back some of the deleted pet skills... some armor penetration for pets would be nice.

instead of more moaning lets see some predictions. if you're right you win a cookie or something.

The new skill. Frenzy Mending!
[Frenzy] [Mending]
For over 9000 seconds, you have +3 health restoration, and you attack 33% faster while taking double damage.

I love this statement because it shows how pvers and pvpers share the same fate.

Take out pvers for pvpers and pvpers for pvers in your first 2 paragraphs and that is the exact same thing hte pvp community is complaining about. We have the same problem....but i thought they made pve and pv separate to fix it for you guys.

"If they want to update something for balance, how about making the game something that all classes can play equally" Is all i am asking for. Build variety and freedom is balance.

They made PvE EASIER for you, they gave you 'cheats' to beat the game, if they didn't give your class these 'cheats' it's Anet screwing up, nothing to do with PvP.

I'll calling it now:

Something will happen to Star Burst.

No need to call anything when it's been leaked.

The community will have the whine, I'll bring the popcorn, want to bring the cheese?

Your video was old then as only an assassin can keep Assassin Form up all the time now. You NEED 16 in shadow arts + glyph of swifness and other assassin skills. An assassin mesmer can also do it with a second or two less leeway for screwups with arcane echo +sf +other assassin skills.

An Elementalist can't keep sf going after all the other nerfs to it anymore, let alone any other class, unless I'm missing some weird skill combo that's letting them.

55 monks have a few ways of dishing out damage.

I'll never understand why people want solo builds nerfed...

My own experience showed me that 90% of these people are just lazy or jealous.

It's not like you can not do whatever you want, neither are you forced to play them. That's what is good in GW, you can play whatever you want in pve, and it has absolutely no consequences on other players.

You have [shadow form], [cry of pain], ["save yourselves!"]....WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT?

Swapping out the tonics? I'm confused since this is May 9th and I've already seen phantasmal tonics drop from the z-chest instead of unseen. What is this about?

Oops I posted too fast. Didn't see the May 7th add. My bad XD

You're an idiot... if you read what he said then you'd know skills like that while other classes got crap are exactly part of the problem.

It's not about solo-builds. Shadowform needs to be nerfed because you can't even run UW or FoW anymore unless you're a perma. No one is willing to bring anything else. Builds like that completely ruin the PvE meta.

I fail to see how PvP is at fault for anything you just mentioned. If anything it is the fault of PvE elitists and ANet's god awful balancing.

Have my babies plz.

Come now. I know you have been around long enough to remember all of the skills getting nerfed all to Hell due to PVP balance.

Because you can't find a good pve guild that does something else than speed clears ?

Maybe you can't remember, but there has always been a pve meta, even before shadow form : terra tanks + ursans, stance tanks + nukers + monks, barrage + pet, steelwall...

There have always been balanced pugs, and there will always be, 90% of them are full of fail. You won't promote balanced pugs by nerfing anything, you'll just make players invent another meta or leave.

I'd like to see more buffs in pve, looks like there are some in the upcoming update (elemental lord seems interesting).

GW PvP is about the appearance of variety and not variety itself. The nature of all video games remains modified Pong, since true analog programming is not yet possible - and perhaps not desirable. We will always prefer a world where we feel superior to the machine because of our ability to think with trinary logic. What is enforced is the strict limitation of effect, and this makes the classes unequal.

Each class has a flavor of effect and some of these transfer better to numerical effectiveness than others. Further, damage per second will always be more effective than defense per second where damage can also be administered as a free action superior to defenses. The PvPers always go against those of the same level with skill effects limited to the same range of defense and damage with free damage buffered against the same limited range of armored effects. Further, their concerns are carefully monitored to ensure that even casual PvPers can play with some sense of success so that more elite players continue to have someone to beat up. Hence, their skills are regularly neutralized in relation to one another. For years this meant screwing up PvE play, and no retroactive restructuring of PvE play occured to restore years of PvE skill bar destruction, and monster altering, because of benefits aimed at helping PvP players.

Further, PvE play has been marginalized by apparently deliberate nerfs aimed at forcing the use of specific skill sets and classes so that one cannot take for instance the majority of classes against Duncan the Black, into the Deep, into Urgoz, etc. If you do not have the exact class and build desired by the build nazis you won't go and there is no point in asking or attempting to go. And it does not matter if you can lay out 400 to 650 pts of damage in 5 to 10 seconds from just your primary character, you will not be able to go through unless you are part of a very specific team composed of the cookie cutter builds. This is because PvE play has been destroyed by nerfs demanded for PvP play. These nerfs go back as far as the early elementalist nerfs to ensure nothing would stand in AoE. It includes Body Blocking which has the most imbecilic effects, such as three pets being fused together in the crotch of an undead ranger and unable to attack or move to the called target.

It does have a consequence. Solo builds for a few classes only, means access to wealth and opportunity that those who do not enjoy those classes cannot get. Why should anyone be required to play something they don't like to be successful at the game? Further, solo builds farm points for reputation and achieve titles, they have advantages others classes don't get. Assassins and monks have the greatest advantages in solo farming, but I in no way ask that they be nerfed. I have one of every class. I play, with varrying degrees of skill one of every class. What is wrong with wanting to see every class treated equally and fairly. They are not, nor in reality have they ever been so treated.

PvP has been at fault with two main leys of pressure: 1) Insistance that PvE only exists as training to play PvP and these PvE slackers need to just give up their foolish idiotic PvE play and get PvPing because GW was never meant to have a PvE game anyway, and 2) years of skill balancing that was aimed strictly at a PvP world after which the real interest and needs of PvE play were not only not considered, but were punished or even made more difficult because we have no interest in PvP. Useful PvE only skills were made totally and absolutely useless, such that I won't even bother to carry them on any skill bar. Outside of Cry of Pain for VSF, Ether Nightmare, Necrosis for hexers, Pain Inverter generally, and Light of Deldrimor in dungeons, I will occasionally use the Faction Rit skill. I would never use either the SS or the Faction monk skills for any reason whatsoever, they are useless. Ursan Blessing was nerfed so as to be useless, rather than enhanced so that anyone could use it. And yes, these were poor decisions by ANet/NC West - but the first two are the foundation upon which this cake was iced.

Wealth is not a problem, for various reasons :

- if you want to enjoy your playtime regardless of money, you can do it with any class, but if you play for money, you'll be looking for efficiency and ready to use the adapted build to reach your goal

- anybody can roll a new character to farm with, it's only a matter of days

- you can powertrade and make much more money than any farmer, there's no class requirement for it


There's no reason to solo farm faction, solo farming is slower for reputation titles.


I think people should see the difference between playing for fun, where each class is equal (I have many characters, and I still enjoy them all), and playing for money, where some classes have the advantage. There are no requirements to have fun, but there are to be money efficient, which seems quite normal to me...


By the way, if the blood spike nerf (eg : life stealing becomes damage + healing) applies to pve, this will be a huge buff to 55 (and 600) farming. What do you think about it ?

There should not be a difference between playing for fun and being rewarded for play. That there has always been this difference is the main reason GW has always had a failure in social value versus interest in e-baying. The game is structured so that you can either play to have fun or play to be successful but you cannot at the same time accomplish both unless the social group you are in is only interested in zerging.

Further, too many people make the mistake of associating wealth with accumulated bank account. Currency is only oil in the engine of the machine, it is not wealth. Infrastructure for efficient execution and support is wealth. GW has limited oil and even more limited wealth. Currency is kept insufficient in order to keep players hungry or starving - to ensure they are unsatisfied and will therefor continue playing to acquire more. It is unfathomable that one should make a game to be worthy of playing for the sake of playing. Further, there is a great derth of wealth, skills and equipment are kept lacking in order to ensure the need for repeated effort and continued failure, rather than probability of success. Developers fear player success equals player boredom. I do not play because of the near impossibility of certain scenarios. I play because of 1!, the friends I have here, and 2) the lack of artistic value, plot, and theme anywhere else.

If this is what they are planning to nerf I am certain they are about to destroy another class and probably my favorite necromancer build. So far they have an unbroken record of destroying anything of value and use. Atleast my necro got to finish getting the protector titles before they made her worthless.

I think the fundamental problem is more simple: PvE is an optimization game. As such, PvE isn't really a game at all, in the technical sense - it's a problem with a solution. Even if all classes were viable (and in fact, they are now), the "solution" to any given PvE task is going to be some optimum build, or, more accurately, a nexus between maximum effectiveness and ease-of-use. If history is any guide, this problem is unavoidable where there is any variance between a player's options. Even with Ursan, the small, inherent differences in each class meant that certain classes were still preferred over others despite identical skillbars.

Solo farming has never been a focus of balance in the sense that "every class should be able to do it". It has previously been, and in some senses remains, an "undesirable" player activity from a designer's standpoint. As such, we generally see nerfs to make farming overall less rewarding, rather than the reverse.

Yes, I think that rewards in GW aren't adapted, but that's the way this game is, what we need is a change in the game mechanics, not a nerf. Let's just hope they have learned enough to make GW2 better.

The nerf will not change much for pve, as the damage will be armor ignoring. You'll just have to be more careful when facing protection prayers skills.

When GW first came out, with Prophecies, the Mesmer class was undesired in PvE except in a very few missions. I know. I had to hench my Mesmer through nearly the entire game until she was absolutely wanted for the Last mission. Monks were always in demand because people didn't understand the limitations of the skill bars on Alesia and Lina and the necessity of using a BiP or Claude to keep them batteried. When they ran out of juice they would wand, agroing on them and losing the hench monk. Because they didn't pay attention they preferred live monks where someone else could do the thinking for them. But before the attempt to force all players into PvP by Factions, the classes were relatively equally preferred.

Factions added a lot for the Mesmer class, but destroyed class balance with the Assassin. Nightfall made this worse by making the warrior nearly obsolete with the Derv. However, Nightfall returned some level to the playing field with heroes, allowing the underpowered classes to compensate with heroes they could rely on or customise to work with their skills.

Hero and Hench AI has limitations of reaction and motion that make them vulnerable to computer assaults. It compensates with more efficient coordination on called targets. It lacks the counters and preps that a live team can perform for each other in well practiced interaction. I and my neighbors have been playing together for almost 4 years. We do not need to communicate certain things, like when to pull, etc. This kind of reliance is not possible with the majority of players in the game.

The problem with farming being made less rewarding is that GW is only a game about farming or PvPing at this point. That is all that the game has left to it. All they add to it is more farming. Since they continue to make things too difficult to do in groups, especially with the AI being more difficult with more real players in the party, just like in Diablo, certain areas are improbable to impossible to play except with limited elite farming style builds on a certain kind of limited class or combo of classes.

This is an inaccurate statement. Back when there was no PvE and PvP split there were countless skills that Izzy would refuse to touch because of the impact the change would end up having on PvE. Obviously no matter what skill you choose will effect both PvE and PvP in some way. Izzy always tried to foresee the effects the PvP skill changes would have on PvE and refused quite a few changes because he ruled it would hurt the PvE community too much. I am also pretty sure people like Divine Ambassador and Ensign would also try to help Izzy in accessing the impact these changes would make on PvE and were against a few of the changes he had made that did end up hurting the PvE community.

PvE was considered, and if it wasn't there would have been a ton more changes and you would be about 100 times more furious at the current state of the game than you are now.

Now the rest of your points are valid, and you have every right to argue towards balance in PvE. In fact I encourage you to do so, because I would be hypocritical to say that me fighting for balance in PvP is ok but you fighting for it in PvE is not.

The whole PvP killed PvE thing is dumb and completely incorrect though. Anet is the one at fault for both the imbalance of PvE and PvP, not the opposite communities. They could have split the PvE and PvP skills from the get go, but never made it a top priority. They could have made the PvE only skills for every class equally as powerful like you are demanding, but they did not. PvP had nothing to do with that. You have the right to be upset, but be upset at the correct people.

Still Number One,

The statements I made are not inaccurate. Izzy has always remained focussed in PvP play. Skill balancing has always been focussed in PvP play, even after the skills were separated. Choices on how to rebalance skills for PvE after PvP and PvE skills were separated were Not Made on the basis of optimizing PvE play, but on the basis of limiting PvE opportunity - that is a PvP foundation for decision making. It is a PvP orientation and it is a PvP platform. This was the basis of decision making for destroying PvE ony skills, again for PvP based rationale.

At no point has the decision for change in PvE skills been based in making opportunity for the PvE player better and enhancing success for all classes equally. Instead, a few favored classes continue to remain favored because the community has had to retrench around them as the only remaining methods for attaining small and meager successes in the short time remaining before GW 2 is released. Look at VSF farming, one of the most popular sports in the game. So popular that Sins have had to be nerfed twice in order to slow down and prevent the one form of group farming that everyone could participate in successfully. All the had to do was get a hold of Cryer and they could go. Even warriors could get in groups if they could Cry a bit. But that was unacceptable, got a nerf something everyone could do together, by golly.

What no one has been asking is Why was everyone and their brother going so much it had to be nerfed in the first place? Its because the skills and drops suck so badly through out most of the game that people were flocking to the one place they could farm together as a social group and be successful. Now that it is over, the traffic is slowed and the server is not getting tromped on. But GW learned nothing. People cannot get together and effectively go and do things that are rewarding in the game. It is not possible for any random group to go do Urgoz, the Deep, Slavers, Sarrows, UW, FoW, etc. Should any pathetic skill bar be able to waltz in and clear it? No. But every class should be able to go using a chosen skill area of their profession and contribute successfully to the group.

Most will end up leaving GW 1 like another incomplete and bad relationship. The fault for poor skill balancing on PvE starts with treating it like a training ground and then continuing to ignore its needs and interests once the two were separated.

The statement about PvE never being considered was inaccurate and I explained how in my other post. The rest of your points are valid and I do not refute them. The fact still remains that even when the skills were split Izzy did his best to not ruin PvE for the sake of PvP balancing. Whether or not you believe he did a good job is a completely different story, and honestly no matter what he did to try to balance PvP you or someone would have been upset about it because it did not serve the purpose you want. Can't please everyone, and all I can say is continue to post your opinions like the PvP community does and hope someone from Anet reads it and agrees with it and does something about it.

They nerfed Light of Deliverance and forgot that Mhenlo, the only healing henchmen in EotN, used it and became useless in HM. So I don´t think that Izzy EVER thought even one second about PvE, when it came to "balancing".

Forget Mhenlo:

Redemptor Karl:

[reversal of fortune] [mend ailment] [draw conditions] [life sheath] [rebirth]

Factions healer henchmen:

[blessed light] [jamei's gaze] [healing breeze] [divine intervention]


Does anyone still seriously consider that Anet even gave the slightest crap about skill balancing affecting PVE?

90%+ of the factions henchmen have been beyond useless since both HM and the Life Sheath change, but Anet dont care to do anything about it.

Both the Prophecies and Factions henchmen are beyond terribad, and yes I have already whined about this more than anyone else has over the last few years. But Anet do not care in the slightest to make the game as enjoyable for the solo player as it is for everyone else.

Never mind though, I have my second account now so will just be running 6 heroes everywhere once my new character has gotten through the game. Will be relying on plenty of runs. I'm basically just going to set up the three monk heroes on my second account to Heal, Prot and Smite and use them on my main account instead of 4 henchmen.

There's been a suspicion that anet made the henchies terribad so people had to form up for the later missions of the game rather than hench their way through.

But NF and EOTN henchmen are perfectly fine (well almost), so this logic is not true.

If it was so, then they wouldnt have made decent henchmen in NF and EOTN, I mean, comeon, you have a freaking [visions of regret] henchmen in NF now, they sorted out Mhenlo in EOTN when LoD got nerfed, but they cant do anything like this whatsoever for either prophecies or factions?

No, Erys Vasburg does not count because he is only available in something like 30% of the game. And the Rit hench still get your party wiped too often in HM.

Makes no sense. It would simply be nice to see Anet put some thought and effort into rethinking the henchmen skill bars for Prophecies and Factions, for which many people have already gone ahead and suggested good builds for them, but Anet simply dont care about doing anything for the terrible henchmen skill bars in Proph and Factions.

That means you're just bad at the game. Surely you can't just grab random skills and go in. If that was true, you'd whine about the game being too easy.

Also, in PvE you KNOW what you're going to face, so OBVIOUSLY you're going to bring stuff that counters that.

In PvP, you don't know, and there's no AI just 'I'. Therefore there needs to be balance in PvP.

Absolutely not true. They didn't build PVE as a training course. That'd be comparing apples to oranges. PvE and PvP are hardly anything alike, and nowhere in the game is anything mentioned with regard to PvP.

Then there's the PvP/PvE skill versions. In other words: PvP balancing doesn't hurt PvE.


So tell me, how did PvP hurt PvE exactly?