Neglect

This is long. To see summary, check second line.
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I've clocked in a lot of hours into Guild Wars after a friend gave me his Collector's Edition of Prophecies shortly after launch. (he didn't like the game) I purchased Factions, Nightfall and GW:EN and this has continually frustrated me:

Why does it feel like half the classes don't see top GvG?
Why are 90% of the skills ignored laughed at in top level of play?
Why are skills which are too powerful nerfed into the abyss rather than a middle ground found?

I know the people at Arena Net (or wherever) are smart people. Look at the game they've created. It's a gem to many people, but you flip the coin over and it looks like the place is being ran by a bunch of 10 year olds.

They've already did a needed change. Separated skill effects into PvE and PvP, something my friends (who played GW) and I conjured up probably around Faction's release time, as a means of creating more specific balance. Good, but why are there so many trash skills or skills which are clearly a bad choice?

Let's take minion skills for example. Initially, there was no limit and a smart Minion Master (MM) could swarm mission after mission with minions and slice through quests with ease. A limit was introduced and a healthy PvE medium was found. How often do you see minions in a successful PvP build? Not often. At best you see the occasional Necromancer in RA taking Aura of the Lich with Arcane Echo for the lulz, banking on the hope of the 40% change to fast recharge Aura of the Lich two times in a row to try and get 4 minions up before the enemy is on his door step with axes and fire spells, ruining his junk.

Here's why minions aren't practical:

1. Risk/Reward
2. Effort and Energy required

Every skill, motion and even class draws from these fundamental items. Aside form Aura of the Lich, which is as best a minion every 45 seconds or 2 on the recharge, minion skills first require a corpse, then energy, then time. Minions require additional time for damage or the lucky body block. Minions do not retreat from Area of Effect damage (or AOE) and have a constant, building degeneration. (starts at -1 and continues to the cap of -10 and keeps moving up, but as a person, doesn't receive anymore then -10 in effect) Minions require a lot of effort from the Necromancer and the return is minimal. I can plop down the first 5 fire skills in a row, click a target and click 1-5 3 times in a row and be more useful.

Brining minions in PvP isn't an asset, it's a liability. You're much better off spamming Hexes then trying to cater a partial build to minions. You don't need to bring 7 minion skills to PvP, but if I bring Bone Minion, I want to see some use out of it the same way if I bring Patient Spirit or Lightning Orb. Let's face it, besides minions, what do you bring Death Magic for at around level 14. Nothing. Deathly Swarm has semi-impressive damage upon hitting 3 targets and Consume Corpse is nice, but there isn't much going on there.

These are additional skills which are blatantly trash, could easily go through a mechanic re-work for balanced use or simply need a little padding to be better and get off the sidelines from time to time.

Vile Touch
Agony
Destruction
Orison of Healing
Smiter's Boon

There are more, but I think the idea has been gotten. To prove how easy this is to fix, or bring closer to being better, I will throw down some off the top of my head ideas on these and how to fix them. (Vales are estimates)

Minions: In PvP, minions no longer have degeneration. Levels 12, 14 and 16 Death Magic give +1, +2 and +3 regeneration to all minions respectively.
Don't even think about screaming overpowered here. A zillion minions can die to a single AOE spell or fireball or something. If an organized TA team or top level GvG team saw a minion running around they would kill it in 2 seconds after wiping their teary eyes from laughing. PvE pet buff anyone? That was a good call!

Vile Touch: Lower cost to 5 energy.
'Nuff said.

Agony: Spirit deals 1-10 damage to each foe within ear shot each second. Each second this spirit deals damage it loses 1-10 health.
Same fix can be applied to Rejuvenation. These spirits die too fast. If left unchecked, these spirits are powerful, but the fact is you can kill them in 2 seconds with a single warrior or an an elemental spell or two is enough to overkill it. The recharge on these are 30 seconds so this is more than enough.

Destruction: For 5 seconds, Destruction accumulates 5-20 damage per second to be dealt to foes when Destruction dies. Destruction dies after 20 seconds.
This Spirit is simply too difficult to use. Aside from it's painstakingly small radius (even though it's 'in the area') it's impossible to time. You have to wait too long and even if you set it off by another means such as Gaze of Fury, you usually only get a few points of damage because you got lucky someone ran by it. In addition to a quicker recharge, this makes the Spirit a time bomb and allows the Rituatlist to employ a more deadly skill when choosing to detonate it rather then relying vastly on dumb luck to get a hit with it. Accumulateing max damage quicker is essential for this skill.

Orison of Healing: Cast time dropped to 1/4. Recharge dropped to 1 second.
Nothing needs to be said here. It could probably even use a 10 or 15 health bonus. With skills like Patient Spirit this thing is just terrible.

Smiter's Boon, Aura of Faith, Ether Renewal... Bah! What is with these skills which last 2 seconds and have AMAZING effects? Drag their durations out and lower their effects. This is beyond absurd. These skills are the epitome of situational to the point where, once again, no one uses them. Smiter's Boon is just another example of a strong build kicked in the balls too many times. Who in their right mind will take Smiter's Boon now? 25 energy? 1:30 recharge? It better at least insta-kill your enemy and spawn 3 Flesh Golems. Oh wait, your Smiting Prayers heal for two times as much Divine for five flippin' seconds... woo...
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Summary:

You don't have to jump from one extreme to the other! There are other variables between overpowered and trash!

Skills are seeing neglect and as a gamer and designer this is frustrating. To be honest, I'm out of the loop on the big picture of the GW meta, but I know this has been an issue since day 1. Please take a look at this, ANET!

Discuss.

Those cases you chose are intentionally made so that they are never used, because they were unwilling/unable to dedicate the time to "fix" them. This is even called "Smiter's Booning" a skill now.

1. Just because a particular spell is not as effective as another, or not as effective as you want, doesn't make it trash.

2. When you have as large a number of skills as you do in GW, there is bound to be some skills that are not as effective as others.

3. Some skills are obviously intended for use earlier in the game and are not intended to be useful always to everyone.

4. It is not logically possible to "balance" or "fix" EVERY damn skill in the game!

5. It is not logically possible to "balance" or "fix" every skill to the liking of every player. Everyone has their own idea of what skills should be "fixed" and what should be done to fix them.

The number one problem is that you think there is a middle ground for everything. there isn't. The mechanics of certain skills makes them either overpowered or useless. Smiter's boon is the perfect example of this. If the skill is at a point where it is good enough to be used, it is overpowered because it is a mechanic that should not be in the game. It provides healing to the smiting bar. That is something that should not be possible. If you are a smite monk, you should smite, not smite and heal. When you are able to do both, imbalance is in effect. So you either tone the skill down so it is never used, or you allow the terrible mechanic to be abused.

A.Net could rework the skill altogether to make it an entirely new skill, but they would not be able to tweak the skill in its current form. Once you realize that not everything can be put into balance, you will realize why some things are best left dead.

when balancing a skill you must take into account the effect it has if a whole team is running it or if just one player is running it. if say, for instance, Vile Touch was given boosted damage, many necromancers could shadowstep to a target and use vile touch -> then another touch skill and the foe dies instantly (most likely wouldnt end up happening, but still). This is what makes paragons so hard to balance for pvp. If you boost the skills to make a paragon semi-effective on its own, then a group of 8 paragons becomes too powerful. Also seen with bloodspike builds. On their own, a blood necromancer does pitiful damage, but in a group of 6 with 2 support characters they can spike down anything. Some skills are just too hard to "fix" but have them remain balanced for use in a situation where 8 people can all use a skill to over-power it

your suggestions on minions and vile touch are rubbish.

vile touch would be yet another skill in the arsenal of the handful of Touchers, and would likely see no play even in pve (necros DO still have 60 AL)

even in pvp, minions with regen would still be totally useless. the purpose of a minion is 1. to be a meat shield, 2. to trigger things like barbs and MoP, and 3. to power a necro's soul reaping ability.

but their terribad AI makes them totally useless in high level pvp, even with hp regen. not to mention, even if there were enough deaths in pvp to warrant bringing a MM (which there aren't), it still wouldn't justify dropping a more useful team member.

unless of course you intend on running a full necro team to exploit soul reaping and the benefits of a suped-up minion factory.

I find this quite funny. Everything that you bring up is "trash" or has problems I have been using as long as I have been playing (not following the popular use this/that build) and I have been enjoying the game quite fine. I think this is just maybe a QQ about you wanting something better or you are now upset because you played the game out and it lost it's lust for you.

I find myself wondering that quite often (particularly with ranger skills). In my opinion, every skill should be viable in at least one area. But, when am ever going to use crap like traps and nature rituals?

I disagree about the MM part, though. MMs do well in PvE and large-scale PvP (FA, AB). And, if something does well in most areas of the game, I don't think it's going to be a primary target for buffs. I would prefer that Anet focuses on buffing skills that are useless everywhere (90% of Wilderness Survival, Tactics, Mysticism, etc).

- There is no question here, and this is the Q&A forum
- This is also not the forum for suggestions
- This reads as a QQ whine/whinge thread which is against the Forum Rules.

Thread Closed.