Update - Thursday, May 14

People wanted Shadow form & RoJ nerfed..that didnt happen, so they are q.q'ing. Mark my words, the q.q shall continue till they nerf those skills...and SURPRISE SURPRISE, it will continue afterwards too...

Well if they need 2 eles per team how comes I have such a horrible time finding a team to play with? Are you playing the MB ele btw?

I don't find it any more unbalanced than a lot of Mo builds, or etc. A decent Mo (not even a good one) can prot/outheal even 3 such "terrible" MB high damage spammers spiking him in the same time. And you say MB eles are overpowered

And that is not to mention that a Me or a R can completely disable your entire MB bar rendering you as a player completely unuseful for x amount of time (they kindly give you a break to admire the scenery and walk around), time in which they still get to play and do other nasty stuff (isn't *that* unbalanced?). And given enough interrupts the energy pool goes down really fast tbh.

And OK "even if" they nerf it, what should eles do then? Shatterstones? Or just die and no one should play them anymore cause they're really lame anyway? Oh well. Nerf them all to hell, what can I say nothing will ever make us happy. Sad world.

^this.

As others have said, the update might not have been as thorough as some may have liked but it was targetted and moderated. First time in ages I've been able to debate with people over GvG monk bars.

Well, as most "nerf this" posts are selfish and totally ignorant to how others might like to play, being based totally on a "me me me" attitude, I might as well add mine.

Don't effing touch RoJ for PVE until after all of my characters have finished Shards of Orr in both modes.

Anet your fired this game should still be a beta lol

You're missing the point all together..
People want the SF nerf because it allows teams to complete areas like UW & FoW in a ridiculously short amount of time and...if you don't have SF, then you pretty much won't be able to play UW/FoW unless you find a group wanting to try something different, which won't happen.
There's 10 proffs in GW, Assassins, Mesmers and monks are the only ones that see much play.
People want SF nerf so more classes can come into play again.

a pretty meh update, lol

Shadowform needs a cool down period just like the Dervish forms that Anet nerfed to oblivion not long ago. So, give Shadowform a 120 second cool down period and I'll be happy. I'm sure most others would be as well. They didn't seem to mind nerfing Ursans out of existance when there were so many that enjoyed that skill so I don't see any reason not to nerf SF out of existance as well and bring back different options again instead of just the tired and tried old one known as Shadowform.

It's not because some people are doing UW or FoW with an Assasin team that it is the only way or needed to complete them. It takes skill and knowledge to do that in a short period of time with a full sin team. Nobody is forcing you to do it with a sin. You can still team up with your guildies or others and do it your way with the profession you like. We still do UW with normal teams.
It's not a reason to nerf SF.

^ This.

54321

[PvE Comment]

Love the buff on Elemental Lord.

I might actually dust off my Elementalist, and try this out.

Castigation Signet: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
Good adjustment since it was alot better then the other smitesignets

Peace and Harmony: decreased duration to 1..3 seconds; increased recharge to 12 seconds.
Needed a change, spam less

Word of Healing: decreased non-conditional healing to 5..100; increased conditional healing to 30..115.
Good work on that, most people agree I think.

Foul Feast: increased recharge to 5 seconds.
It was asking for reducing the insane power+recharge it has( just compare it with draw cond)

Lingering Curse: decreased healing reduction to 20%.
Good change, unless people love to ball up.

Hunter's Shot: functionality changed to: "If this attack hits, your target bleeds for 3..25 seconds."
Could of just removed the 1 sec activation, ah well

Melandru's Shot: functionality change to: "If this attack hits, your target bleeds for 5..25 seconds. If it hits a foe that is moving or knocked down, that foe takes +10..25 damage and is crippled for +5..15 seconds.

Good change, don't rly see anything bad about the small nerf since it still powerfull.

Protective Was Kaolai: increased recharge to 25 seconds.
Decent nerf since w spells still excel(resilient, wow, wos), maybe do something bout em also?

Strength of Honor: decreased damage to 1..5.
Well needed nerf since melee hits of 100dmg or close to it without activating attackskill is just wrong (not to mention maintaining soh is passive and not benefitial for the gameplay)

Aegis: reduced casting time to .25. Functionality changed to: "For 1..3 seconds, hostile spells and attacks against 'target other ally' fail."
Another skillbuff,yes BUFF that is a good one since it removes another layer of passive defense and we get an extremely powerfull skill as a reward( only down on it is the 30 sec recharge, but otherwise it would be way too overpowered)
Once again proper usage and awareness in matches gets rewarded.

Mirror of Ice: functionality changed to: "For 5 seconds, plus 3 additional seconds for every rank of Energy Storage, you deal an additional 5..35 cold damage whenever you cast a Water Magic hex."
Maybe the addiotnal secs would been 5sec for each rank, other than that a good nerf since s storm + f gust with the enchant on is overkill on a fc)

Steam: functionality changed to: "Target foe is struck for 5..50 cold damage. If target foe is on fire, Steam Blinds that foe for 5..10 seconds."
Well deserved balance, not that it rly changes alot, minor effect imo.

Shadow Fang: added an after-cast delay.
Nerfed for obvious reasons.

Warrior's Endurance: this skill is now a stance.
Needed a nerf,but I don't rly think that only thet elite is the problem(dismembers spammability is imo compared with the basically free energy skill attacks(power attack +protectors strike)
Might take a look at dismembers adrealine cost if u compare it with lets say eviscerate (5adr. versus 8adr., though eviscerate gives u a dmg bonus)


Feel free to swap ur thoughts



Coast

When he had Ursan, we could do it other ways, but ANet still recognised completing an elite area in less than 30 minutes is broken.
What's different about SF?...Nothing...except, ANet don't want to upset the player base again.
Please, don't try and defend SF, it's broken, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

And that's something Anet recently discovered? I'm sure when they created the skill some years ago, they knew that the others have a 20 secs recharge. If they want the signets to have the same recharge, bring them all to 15 secs in pve and 20 secs in pvp then.

I think, contrary to many people here, that this wasn't such a bad update. Some major changes, but everything OP got nerfed. Really looking forward to your reaction if SF finally gets nerfed. One of the better skills in the Monk proffession gets CHANGED (not killed/buffed/nerfed, just changed) and gogo QQ. Wait till SF.
Shadow fang needed nerf, got it. Most other skills that were used to create very powerful spikes/pressure got nerfed as well. So I fail to see what the big problem is.
Ok, PWK isn't great, and some skills got buffed and nerfed a bit too much, but hey, try to make an update that satisfies the whole community, that's freaking impossible.
I'd say this is a GOOD update, with 1 unexpected change, why is this whole update bad if 1 (or 2, or even 3) things are "bad". That "bad" is written that way, because I kinda like it, changes the way monks have to play..

Your kidding right? please tell me your only joking with this

BUFF = Skill has been balanced in a positive way

So please explain how the change from "will block 50% of attacks for xx seconds" to "For 1..3 seconds, hostile spells and attacks against 'target other ally' fail." is a buff exactly?

Lets see how this will now work... GvG team prompts a fake spike on a target, so prot monk twitches with Aegis 3sec prot and a downtime of 30 seconds, in the meanwhile the opposing team switch targets and systematically spikes down 2 others... Aegis is now recharged, I fail to see the buff in this skill tbh

unless ofc we can have 10 monks and Aegis chain 1 person FTW!

/sarcasm off

The other truly bad things are that they delayed to release this, ignored the players PoV about how PvE is stagnant due to the boredom of the SC teams, the OP of CoP, RoJ, SY, the lack of any possibility of PvE playing with a paragon or ritualist apart from 1/2 builds for each choosing instead to provide this lame balance

What's next? are they going to re-buff Ursan too so those that CBA to run perma can run Bear instead, in fact why not just call it a day, make every skill in the game OP and just concentrate on the micro-transaction additions to the game, as long as ppl have shiny crap to play with they will be happy right?

Roll on Aion imo

To take the comments about the update on a more META scale... do we really believe we get any SUBSTANTIAL changes till GW2?

I mean reworking complete mechanics. I still see no proper use for Necros in PvP outside of blood spike gimmicks or for casting Lingering Curse. They do not appear that often, and with 20% LC probably even less. And I doubt this will change till GW2!

The update also had some positive ideas and changes. Hunter's Shot lost the 1s activation time and thus some spike chain potential, but now applies bleeding all the time e.g.

Besides that, Coast already summed things up nicely in #333.

I have no idea how the new Aegis will work out, this was probably the most significant change.

They nerfed Ursan? Oh, no! I'd better remove it from my Warrior's bar since it's obviously not been working over the last 2 weeks or so since I came back to the game. :P (in reality, I haven't actually noticed any real change to how often or what situations I'll use it in - it remains the same old "Oh, Crap!!" button it's always been for me on those relatively few occasions that the rest of my bar is inadequate for the task at hand)

skill balances are about pvp, pve "balancing" is a joke

"nerf this or nerf that so I can find a group with my xxx character" is just stupid, there will always be builds adapted to each pve area, and all the classes will never be welcomed in pugs

so, assassins, mesmers and monks are the only classes used in pve ? I don't think we're playing the same game

people don't want nerfs in pve, only a few QQers on this board want them, and they got it for ursan... now the builds are even more selective class-wise, and still as brainless as pve has ever been

go to spamadan d1, and ask people if they want perma to be nerfed, 80% of them don't even know what a perma is

Uh... PnH is there. It was nerfed the wrong way.

It's still a 0.25s skill that removes all hexes and conditions... with a 33% higher recharge. Boo-hoo. Hex stacks are still not viable, so a single LC necro will continue to be the only popular hex option because it works by making lots of bars purple, not by stacking.

So yes, PnH got nerfed against LC (funny, they both had their effectiveness reduced by 33%) but it still keeps hex builds out of the meta.

that means i can still farm uw :P

the assasin buffs are nice,better than teleporting to a random location.

So when's the next skill update gonna be?

This.
Most of the people that want the PvE end nerfed are the ones here on guru that want to dictate how others play.
Go to most towns and ask if people want these nerfed and you will get a huge amount of nos and only a handful of yeses.
And yes I have done this.
SF isnt that bad. you have to bring a shitload of skills just to get 1 thing accomplished. You have to consets to get those times in UW. Its not the skill itself thats the problem.

*Ai Tei [Merchant] has arrived in the Great Temple of Balthazar.

FINALLY !!!

August at the earliest I'm assuming, at this rate.

tryptophan signet is too good.

Meh, it has to beat out stuff like PI and Finish Him! to get on a bar.

I guess you must have overlooked Regina's posting a couple of pages before this, where she gave the reasoning for the delayed Dev-Update:

Given the masive thumbs down by teh community to this pathetic (lack of) update, I wonder if anyone from ANet community relations will bother engaging with us over thier conmplete failure to deliver on this one?

Seriously, from a management perspective, this update shoud trigger a few dressings down in the ANet board room, because any more like this and they may as well just cancel GW2 and shut down the servers, because they won't have a customer base left.

Very bad day in the office ANet, you need to figure out what we want and why you failed so badly this time round. All the pre release messages coming out indicated how happy you all were. The April update had some nice new additions, but without the skill balance its all pointless. I personally had high hopes for some BM skill updates, because as things stand, all the effort you put into the menagerie was wasted due to pets being pointless in the game.

and this means what? you didn't have time to do a real update so decided to release one that failed miserably? and despite the smallness of the update you didn't have time to write notes about it?

Or maybe once the "balance" was released you realized how bad it was so actually need more time to be able to try and provide the concept behind this balance in a way that doesn't prove that it is totally inept?

I would suggest in your next internal review you choose someone who actually understands skill balancing, that this person can be bothered to listen to the community about what is wrong with the game & look at the threads complaining about the broken builds in both PvE and PvP and give them the resources to actually fix these things before this game becomes a total mess.

It isn't hard to figure out what is broken in PvE or what is broken in PvP all you actually need to do is listen to your playerbase for once

I highly doubt you know for sure if things will go that way. And even if it does that doesn't make it right. A lot of people liked Ursan back when it came out and they nerfed it. Flawed logic, too bad eh? Perma sins make the game even more pathetic than ursan did. Running full dungeons without much effort? Sorry but that can't be what anet originally planned, though who knows what they think with all these lame updates.

I'm sorry but this forum doesn't represent the entire community. If it did Guild Wars has hands down, the worst community for any online game in existence.

Counter-Strike?

Not even close!

Keep in mind thats "IF" a fansite like this was the entire community. Obviosuly its not. Same reason polls on these sites are pointless.

Hey there! You seem to be new around the internet. Want me to show you around? Compared to others this forum is really well moderated.

You are right about it not representing the entire community. So what? If the other people don't care to post their opinion then it is not going to be heard.
Your argument is invalid.

The vocal minority have spoken.

This. A thousand times this...


And the people still whinging about shadow form really need to get the plague.

When a consumer isn't complaining, logic would denote they aren't upset with the changes. The amount of people who AREN'T bitching far outweighs the amount of people who are.

Proof?

Listen to the people that actually are complaining and see if those changes cause an uproar amongst those that previously weren't complaining.
If they care you get the opportunity to please both parties, if they don't then well, they just don't care as much ;|

There you go trying to use magical terms like logic.