Update - Thursday, June 11

When I'm up against some ice imps' group I know I'll have to keep reflagging everyone otherwise they'll stand on maelstrom like sitting ducks.

The problem is that if H/h would scatter they might aggro other groups and that would be even worse.

<sarcasm>Also dont forget to nerf the 600/smites and the 55 builds. Make it so that Protective spirit has a really long recharge maybe like 60s or something. I hardly have the time to farm nowadays anyway, so I dont like if other people do.</sarcasm> If you nerf SF to prevent sins from farming, you should nerf PS too to prevent monks from farming also.

<sarcasm>Why limit minions to 12? Why not 1, and bring back the old OOU and necros have to protect it like a darling pet? </sarcasm>

And forget town ownership and tying that to Factions. Every guild should have a chance to own Cavalon/Urgoz. I dont faction farm either.

First of all, not getting a skill update on time is not that big a deal. I understand that things have been busy, especially with the new XTH, and life (in-game and real) will go on. But come on, do you really expect news like this to go over smoothly when it comes this late? I can understand that you and Regina, in some ways, have your hands tied when it comes to giving us news (both by not having reliable news to tell us, or by limitations on what you are allowed to tell us). But honestly, A-net needs to learn to cover its ass when it comes to deadlines. Couldn't you have told us a few weeks ago that the update might be delayed? Probably you were still hoping to get it done and didn't want to create needless griefing, but at least you would have covered your cheeks and set up a win-win situation where you can only meet expectations (if you were late) or surpass them (if the update were actually on time). We are a hyper-critical society, and thus need to be spoon fed vague, nondescript tid-bits of information that don't really mean anything but make us feel informed and comfortable. Saying "it'll be done when it's done," doesn't actually make us feel like you are putting quality ahead of speed; it merely makes us feel like we're not even worth lying to. Not that I support lying to us, but it seems like you've forgotten how to soothe the mob.

That said, I look forward to the updates. I'm sure they'll be great when they get here. Sorry for the lecture. It probably shouldn't be directed at you guys, but at someone else who isn't the face of the company but who still controls the information. Sorry 'bout that.

LMAO...10k every 30 minutes or 20k per hour! You have got to be smoking some bad weed if you think that is a good farm at 20k per hour. You can use 3 year old builds like the slow w/rt and farm the smites in uw and make 30k per hour. 20k per hour is pathetic which is why I do not understand why they would nerf that kegging farm. It seemed like an easy, fun way for new players to make some money. It was not very profitable and not broken. It helped the whole gw community by lowering the price of unid golds. I did not do it because 20k per hour sux, but I see no reason why it should have been killed. Nerf the raptors too while you are about it. There was no difference between kegging and raptor slivering. Both were sucky farms but fun. Take the fun out of the game and you kill the player base. I completely agree with the poster earlier defending ROJ as it is. ROJ is not broken, it finally makes smiting useful. It makes playing some areas fun again. Nerfing that is going to be a big loss to the monk profession and serve no purpose to nerfing some crazy money making schemes because there arent any. Ectos are holding firm. People are being cheap. I dont see silly money being made anywhere. There is no reason to nerf any of this stuff. Let the poor keg farmers have their fun back. Anet people are like frigging grinches stealing the fun out of everything. They probably don't play much and just get input from some stingy, mean, clipped hair players who hate that other people might have some fun blowing the snot out of something or puting the holy lightning jesus bolt up someone's .... I want everyone to get rich so I can sell them some junk I have sitting around in storage. Nerfing all the fun out of the game will keep everyone poor and my storage full of worthless crud. That will benefit no one. The complainers fail to realize when others get rich they buy stuff and that makes other people rich. It all trickles down. Any please... LMAO ... 20k per hour a broken money machine... LOLOLOLOL.
Lighten up Anet employees.

^^ this +1

you know your meta is screwed when secondary professions are stronger than the primaries. All this has come about mostly since ANet stopped their cash tournys. SInce then PVP has been a joke.

to be honest, keg farming was a lot more than 20k/hr. In an hour you could get say 50 golds, 7k/5 golds ->70k, then add in tomes, glacial stones, the odd black/white dye, it could be at least 80k/hr. Do that on a party/alc/sugar drop weekend, you could multiply that figure.

Could you have made a more stupid post? No, i don't think so.
Shadow Form is Invincibility in 99% of all areas, and neither 55 nor 600 can claim that as their own. That's why it deserves to be removed, either in it's current shape, or, if it was up to me, entirely.
Nerfing 600 is harder, as it actually depends on the symbiosys of skills (Prot Spirit, Spirit Bond) and the whole way damage is dealt and calculated. As neither Spirit Bond nor Prot Spirit is broken in itself, there's no reason to touch those.
About nerfing 55s ... go ahead, remove "Cities of Ascalon" Cestas from the game. Retroactive. I'd support it, even though in the face of 600hp and PermaSins it's hardly a shadow of its former beauty.

You missed the whole point of the change. Back into your cave, troll. Not even worth replying to to be honest.

What's that? Town ownership was introduced specifically for factions and it's two elite areas. There is no way i can think of it could fit into all the others.
The change is supposed to make town ownership and battle for em more rewarding, as the acess to elite areas with scrolls and fireworks in your home town have lost their significance.
So change the system because a petty "1 2 3" perma sin player lacks the motive and the ambition to achieve town ownership?

As i said, hard to make a more stupid post....

God dammit buff all the Fire AoE and crappy stuff like chaos storm first! All of them should have nearby/in the area range, or have auto cripple in PvE. Every failed Z Quest I had been in was because of some dumb fire ele using stuff other than meteor shower and scatter all the mobs, wiping the team, and didn't even scratch the monsters in the progress. The ele is becoming more and more reliant on some sort of "energy skill gimmick" to achieve anything useful in both PvP and PvE (Mind Blast + distortion, Ether prism + heal, ether renewal + enchants, using the mesmer skill CoP and monk skill RoJ with high energy storage)

Same with the rit, their god damn spirits are like a mob magnet attracting all the monsters to the back while doing absolutely nothing useful other than "tanking" 2 hits. And no, having 50 more hp from spawning power does not help. Instead they got a nerf on nearly every useful spell.

Same with sin, 70 armor with no decent self protection enchant and the requirement to do a full chain to have any sort of decent effect = monk's worst nightmare in hard mode. Shadow Form is like their only saving grace.

Way too many of the cookie cutter gimmicks stems from the power creep and nerfs making many classes borderline useless...buff first!

keg farming is gone didn't see that coming

I thought there was supposed to be a big skill change?

Dam I'm too late, still need 3k golds for wisdom title. I hope this hasn't too much effect on the price of unid. golds or I can get out there and farm a couple million extra or buy some extra accounts to get more z-keys. The golds that come from keg runs are inscriptable, so some mods and inscriptions might see an increase in price too. I was having fun selling mods cheap to people.

The current updates weren't so exciting, but they were satisfactory enough. For instance, this:
Now we don't have to worry about that CHEAT in the game anymore. Although I must say it has taken them, what... a few years to apprehend this issue?

And yes, this update wasn't what everyone else was looking for, but judging on the amount of things they put into this one and the quality can you blame them for delaying the skill changes?

Wow! Bravo Anet for the Budger nerf! Took almost freakin 2 years! GG. But it made me smile and restored some faith.

But there are TONS of other just as absurd and degenerate things that need this kind of treatment - a nerf bat, that at this rate we may expect a relative balance in PvE in 2040 :S

Split seconded with really pretty please :3

Perhaps I am just being ignorant but you have an entire month from update to update. How do you not come out with a skill update in that time? A month is a good junk of time and to come out with nothing but finally getting rid of the festival junk in Kaineng but no skill update is a bit confusing.

I wish someone would actually explain your chaotic process of coming out with an update. Is it like making an Amendment to the US constitution? That's how you guys working over at A-Net make it seem.

when did they say we would get one this month never read that anywhere's

Guys.... skill balance, if done, is done THE WEEK AFTER THE POINTS AND ZAISHEN UPDATE WEEK... we went over this last month...

My faith-o-metre is falling...

Paragraphs pls.

Personally I think the Korean server merge is incredibily broken.

Whats so hard about making RoJ cause scatter like all the other aoe skill? It will stop the complaints, and still be worthy of an elite status with 40+ damage armor ignoring and 3 seconds of burn every 5 seconds.

Back to raptors for event items then... sucks but is doable. I guess. ):

Seeing that they will nerf RoJ makes me sad, but glad I got my BDS in time. 8D