june skill balance update

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10378710

"well, I've been talking to Izzy about skill balance lately and I've been considering doing a skill balance next week, separate from the maintenance build so that we can address a few issues, but nothing is set in stone" linsey murdock - june 9th 2009

linsey's own words about thursday update

If Linsey's doing the update I will surely say that we may have a great update, she's a pretty balanced player (plays both PvP and PvE, unlike the balance forums were PvE is left to rot).

- Guilds now can have 200 people instead of 100.

I do alot of UW/Fowsc'ing, but I really woulnd't mind a SF nerf at all, so long as they buff a lot of under used/under powered elites for PvE. I like changing metas, so long as we're left with some options.

While PvE is fine & dandy tending to casual players, I hope Anet doesn't forget that the Veteran players are the backbone of the game and it's overall value.

My inputs would be:

Nerf E/Me Mind(less)blast Distortion ele's (OP'd blockage),
Tone down LC in some way (either: increase e-cost to 10, make a 2-second cast or decrease AoE effect to Adjacent range; too OP'd in 4v4 as 1 monk just isn't enough and encourages defenseballing and excessive anti-hex speccing),
change a few skill functionalities to spice up PvP (not PvE too much as they already have plenty of efficient skills and templates that own),
Gladiator/Champion Emotes (I think they're long overdue and most desired for the longest time now).

Just my two cents.

so no skill update on thursday?

ArenaNet isn't so small, I'm imagining well over 100 people, the GW1 Live Team is small though.

I'm Hoping they buff some Elites, Word of Censure?, never used it.

NO!
Monks have already his uber skill (roj) no sense to buff some other elite.
Now stop to buff offensive skills of monk.
They are designed to be healer/protector not a warrior or assassin.

Noooooooo! please don't give the update team ideas to buff skills, if they read your post they will be thinking "Hmm, that Word of Censure does need a buff" and before your know it...

Word of Censure
5 energy, 1/4sec cast, 2sec recharge
350 Holy damage to everything on the radar
(damage is tripled if used whilst weilding a Black dyed Voltaic Spear & Torment Shield and quadrupled if used with a perma-sin tank in the party)

Then they will leave it like this for 12 months before nerfing it after continual posts telling them it is OP.

Honest, that's what they will do!

I'm for it...farming would definitley be less tedious

That's how they like it. Harder.. not smarter -.-

Fixed that for you mate.

So YES!, Word of Censure needs to be reworked. The only reason why people started to think that monks should play as a support role only, is because Izzy hated the smiting line in the past. Basically because he had too much trouble to balance it for PvP.

I see no reasons why Smite in PvE shouldn't be buffed.

I think that about sums up Anets policy of farming builds in PvE.

3 things i want to see:

Remove permasins, SF was already overpowered enough when it could be used with Sliver Armour to farm bosses. But its gotten to the point of idiocy now its been used to clear elite areas because your almost completely invunerable.

Fix RoJ so things actually flee from it, this should've been done last month, god knows wtf they didn't for. Although that won't stop it being used with You Move Like a Dwarf in certain farming builds.

Stop Wrath/Retri dealing 74 damage despite the fact the Monk is taking 0 thanks to SoA. It'll drastically limit its killing power and slow it down.

I wouldn't mind seeing Cry of Pain nerfed too, stop it being echoed so it gets cast 10+ times.

Limited resources.
There are things that suck more in this game so they should receive priority treatment over what is one of the best classes in the game already.

Oh noes!!! Somebody finally found a way to make damage dealing eles useful in PvP. It's heresy, nerf it quick or I might have to spend time thinking of ways to counter it

i am more worried about e/d dwaynas touch and featherfoot. both are too strong. reduce the healing power to 130 max and reduce the condition time reduction to 33%.

'Limited recources' is a problem for GW1 as a whole. What sucks more is all in the eye of the beholder ofcourse.

Monk is also one of the hardest classes to play in GW. Because monks are forced to 'the' support role, they might aswell run around in pvp with a sign: 'kill me and your team wins'. The smiting line shouldn't suffer from this situation, especially in PvE.

I can see another Rit nerf in PvE because, as everyone knows, it's the most OP class with its big-breasted females. That's why Monks and Sins are buffed too, because they have small breasts so they have to compensate.

Ok, back to seriousness, if Izzy should buff a line in PvE it's either Blood Magic or any in Rit, but that's not gonna happen...

Monks don't have small bewbs. More like: Just right. (but i get distracted)

Id love it if they made rits useable again (i loved the old ritual lord build, could be made even better now)

Are you seriously arguing that Smiting in PvE is worse than Communing and Spawning COMBINED?

Take away RoJ and Smiting Prayers would be, upier.

At least Communing has some PvP applications. The only reason any of the other Smiting Prayers skills see play is that they become the best available alternatives after you've already dropped twelve into Smiting for a RoJ.

Of course, if Smiting Prayers ISN'T underpowered then PvP is immediately thrown out of balance.

Nah, Smiting still has SoH. I use that much more than I spec into the Communing or Spawning lines.

RoJ+Strength of honor makes smiting godly in PvE.

The next update should have several minor tweaks - nerfs to LC, WK, MB, MoR, and VoR.

Not big nerfs, just enough so that the metagame isn't completely dominated by them.

It is incredible.

I hope the next skills get a hit.

Vampiric Spirit.
Mind blast.
Weaken knees.
Aura of restoration.
Ether Prism.

Spawning is near useless yes.

But Communing is still powerful. A Communing/Channeling 'Signet of Ghostly Might' build is quite a good damage dealer in PvE. Asumming 4 spirits and Painful Bond w/ SoGM you can do maybe 100-150 every barrage with a 33% IAS.

Don't put words in my mouth, we were talking about smiting only. One doesn't exclude the other though.

But to make it clear: I'm for a rework of all underused skills, elite skills and underpowered attribute lines in PvE. 'Word of censure' is only one example of such an underused and worthless skill. At the same time I support more balance in PvP.

yES.. since these skills became meta, i have basically given up on HA or Gvg. when Lingering CUrse and Weaken Knees got a boost, it basically enforced the LC / PnH / SH meta that is just so boring same old same old.

And enemies will kill them (in HM) in about 1 or 2 hits. Usually 1. And AoE means the spirits all die.

I miss the days when assassins were useable in groups. Sure there's Shadow Form, but that's it. Only other option is crit scythe-ing which is nice against melee...but nothing else. Before hard mode I remember dying far far less than the average warriror. Now assassins require all of the monk's attention.

I hope they power-up sin skills in PvE.

nerf distortion
nerf mindblast
nerf glass arrows
nerf vor
nerf lc
nerf e/rt flaggers
give us a meter for lord dmg, so we can see who did the most.

Becouse this will ofcourse never happen, just making some skills OP so that the meta shifts will be fine.

You think Anet cares?Less players=less server costs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan Now assassins require all of the monk's attention.

Assassins in PvE have never been spectacular, but they are fine right now; and they aren't that hard for Monks to keep alive either, assuming that there are no PEBCAKs.

Depends where and when you put them. If you wait till minions are engaged then Summon them in they should be ok, its not a build to run everywhere of course but its far from useless.

Assassins in PvE have gone from being fragbait to completely overpowered. They don't need anything thanks to Critical Agility.

Then the fight will be pretty much over by the time you get them up.
Spirits are reasonable usuable when you have long battles in the same location, but that's pretty rare.

Is there a skill update today? I heard there isn't Xuani House update but what about the skill update?

My ten cents (note that most of this is PvE, because the only "PvP" I do is the JQ):

Assassin: Seriously, enough. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that being able to permanently maintain practical invulnerability is completely overpowered. Shadow Form is easily the most overpowered skill in the history of the game (at least Ursan required a team).

"Oh, but shouts and touch skills can still affect you!" How many enemies in a mob are going to have touch skills? Not enough to kill a perma-SF, that's how many.

It's not that hard to fix. Just remove the health loss (so non-perma-SF is viable) and make the skill disable itself for 120 seconds like the avatars. Hell, give me an hour with the source code and I could probably do it.

I mean, really, it's not like Sins don't have other things going for them in PvE (MSDB, critscythe, and probably many more powerful builds).

Ritualist: Fix Spawning Power. It is the worst primary attribute in the game by far. Don't worry about the other rit skills (although they need a buff as well), the key problem here is that there's really no reason to play a primary rit, because N/Rts can be a better rit than a Rt/X. I really don't care how you buff it, so long as the result gives us a real reason to play primary rits.

Some noteworthy suggestions for improving spawning power: more armor for spirits, armor penetration for rit spells, quicker recharge for rit skills (probably balanced by an overall increase in rit skill recharge, so that primary rits are unaffected but X/Rts are nerfed), tie max number of rit spirits to Spawning Power (much like Death Magic).

Dervish: 3 out of the 5 avatars suck. Sorry, but it's true. AoG, AoL, and AoB don't have enough effect for a dervish to compete with warriors and sins, so there's really not much reason to use them.

Also, dervs suck with scythes. Warriors (thanks to strength) and sins (thanks to critical strikes) are better at using them than dervishes are. Please fix this. Of course, the only way to make dervishes the best scythe wielders would be to buff mysticism so that it affects a dervish's ability to use a scythe (it might seem like too much, but remember, critical strikes gives even better energy management than mysticism, WITH a combat benefit to boot). Maybe tie the number of enemies you can hit with a scythe to your rank in mysticism?

Outside niche builds, there's really only 3 dervish builds I know of that aren't redundant: AoM, AoD, and WS/RS+SY!. If you try to play a dervish as general melee and aren't using something like this, you're redundant, because a sin or warrior will be able to do everything you can do and more.

Paragons: Honestly, I don't know very much about Paragons, but I do know they need a buff. Please give it to them. And make sure it's a buff to primary paragons, and not secondary ones.

Monks: For PvP, fix RoJ so that enemies recognize it as AoE. There's a good chance that due to the way AI works you can't change it for PvP and not PvE, and if that's true, change it for both. My dervish runs RoJ in the JQ, and he's more effective with it than he could ever be as pure melee. I've even heard that Warriors are using it. That should say something.

Elementalists: I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ether Renewal yet. You know, that skill that when combined with Infuse Health, Mindbender, and Glyph of Swiftness allows an Ele to infinitely powerheal for 500, making monks (as well as protting in general) obsolete? Yeah, nerf it please. Make Ether Renewal only affect Elementalist skills. No profession should be redundant.

Rangers: Pets are kind of crappy. I think one of the primary reasons for this is because when a pet dies, it disables your skills for a while. Please remove that, and maybe you'll see more people making use of that fancy new Zaishen Menagerie you worked so hard on.

I've noticed a couple people calling for Save Yourselves! to be nerfed. Honestly, if we're talking about reducing it's effect to +60 armor, I wouldn't mind. But if this is +40 or +20, then I have a huge problem with that, because it would be a huge nerf to both the WS+SY build I mentioned earlier (one of the few viable dervish builds), as well as to the Imbagon build (the ONLY viable Paragon build). So, please keep that in mind if you look at this skill.

Im guessing the skill balance is still on for tonight, its always the 2nd Thursday unless said by anet staff and the skill balance hasn't been mentioned so.....