Update - Thursday, September 17

http://www.guildwars.com/support/gam...es/default.php

Automated Tournaments

Updated Automated Tournament map rotations.
Skill Updates

For more information on these changes, please see the Developer Updates page.
PvE and PvP Changes

Dervish

* Armor of Sanctity: increased duration to 15 seconds; increased recharge to 15 seconds.

Elementalist

* Ether Prism: increased recharge to 25 seconds; decreased damage reduction to 75%.
* Immolate: increased recharge to 5 seconds.

Mesmer

* Distortion: increased recharge to 8 seconds.
* Illusion of Pain: changed the description to more accurately reflect its functionality.
* Mantra of Resolve: decreased duration to 5 seconds.

Monk

* Patient Spirit: increased recharge to 4 seconds.

Necromancer

* Rip Enchantment: increased recharge to 15 seconds.
* Vampiric Spirit: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

PvP Only Changes

Assassin

* Death Blossom: increased recharge to 6 seconds.

Necromancer

* Signet of Agony: increased recharge to 20 seconds.
* Unholy Feast: increased recharge to 20 seconds.

Ranger

* Escape: functionality changed to: "Elite Stance. For 1..8 seconds, you move 33% faster and have a 75% chance to block attacks. Ends if you make a melee attack."

PvE Only Changes

Monk

* Selfless Spirit: increased recharge to 45 seconds.

Necromancer

* Signet of Agony: decreased recharge to 8 seconds.
* Unholy Feast: decreased recharge to 8 seconds.

Paragon

* Finale of Restoration: reverted this skill to its original behavior.

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug that allowed the Health gain from "Fall Back!" to be affected by healing modifiers.
* Fixed a bug that allowed the Health gain from "Incoming!" to be affected by healing modifiers.
* Fixed a bug that caused Signet of Creation to decrease Binding Ritual skills to 1/4 second casting times instead of making them cast instantly.
* Fixed a bug that prevented the Avatar of Dwayna from spawning in the International District versions of Sardelac Sanitarium and Druid's Overlook.
* Fixed a bug that caused Molotov Rocktail to wander outside his intended area.


Miscellaneous

* Removed duplicate version of Faction Rewards NPCs in the Alliance Battles outposts.
* Tolkano [Tournament] is now in the following outposts: Random Arena, Heroes' Ascent, Zaishen Challenge, Zaishen Elite, Jade Quarry (Kurzick & Luxon), and Fort Aspenwood (Kurzick & Luxon).

DEVELOPER NOTES:

Developer Update - September 2009 PvE and PvP Skill Balances

This is our last skill balance update before moving officially to a bimonthly schedule. The new schedule is intended to allow for more extensive testing and to allow the team to focus on content/feature updates and skill balance updates individually, rather than trying to work on both at the same time.

This update is modest in scope. Our goals were to address the most pressing of the outstanding PvP balance issues and to correct problems with our last set of changes. We are aiming for a more ambitious skill balance pass in an upcoming build.

A couple of skills buffed in the last update ended up being a little overpowered, one PvP-oriented change harmed a unique PvE build, and one revised skill had an inaccurate description. Selfless Spirit and Armor of Sanctity are being brought back into line. Finale of Restoration is being split into separate PvP and PvE versions. The description for Illusion of Pain is being corrected to match the functionality more precisely.

Since the rework of Vampiric Spirit some months ago, we've seen a steady increase in the prominence of Blood Spike teams in GvG. (These are teams that focus on spiking down opponents one at a time using life-stealing skills from the Necromancer's Blood Magic line.) In theory, a team must sacrifice defense, sustained offensive output, flexibility, and diversity to be able to spike effectively, thus making their play style something of a gimmick. It has long been our belief that gimmick builds like this have a place in the game. They can serve as an easy way for players to have some success while learning how to coordinate and play the game together. Our goal is to make sure that the effectiveness of builds like this falls off significantly in mid-level and high-end play. Unfortunately, this has not been the case with the current most popular form of Blood Spike. To address this, we've adjusted several key skills in the build in order to weaken the build and make it more vulnerable to skillful play without entirely destroying it.

The last set of changes to Assassin skills, which included giving a few skills fast activation times, has introduced an overpowered Ranger/Assassin build that we're seeing in most PvP formats. We're making targeted changes to keep this character type in line.

Finally, we looked to make adjustments to a number of skills that had been identified by players as overpowered. Most of the changes are minor, although a couple of skills are receiving significant reductions in power.

Fine Tuning


Selfless Spirit: increased recharge to 45 seconds.

Armor of Sanctity: increased duration to 15 seconds; increased recharge to 15 seconds.

Finale of Restoration (PvE): reverted this skill to its original behavior.

Illusion of Pain: changed the description to more accurately reflect its functionality.

We recognize that we went overboard with the changes to Selfless Spirit, making two dramatic changes to the skill at the same time. We believe that removing the condition that caused it to end early was a good change but that it was a mistake to reduce the recharge so much that we eliminated the need to think about how and when to use the skill. We're raising the recharge once again in order to make the skill more balanced and interesting to use.

In terms of functionality, we are happy with our changes to Armor of Sanctity: in addition to providing damage reduction against foes suffering from a condition, it applies the Weakness condition when cast. As a self-contained combination, this skill has proven to be useful. Unfortunately, the short recharge and low cost also meant it was very difficult to counter and did not require a character using it to be especially tactical about when to use it. We've increased both its duration and its recharge so that it is not fundamentally weakened, but it is more vulnerable to condition removal, enchantment removal, and poor timing by the user.

Finale of Restoration took a very heavy hit last month in order to address its use in PvP. Although not a popular skill in PvE, it did have a role in a particular Paragon solo-farming build. We decided it would be worthwhile to split the skill into separate PvE and PvP versions in order to restore the old version to PvE players.

We've corrected the text description for Illusion of Pain to be consistent with that of other skills that have an effect when they end. It now uses the phrase "when it ends" rather than "after 10 seconds." This more accurately reflects the behavior of the skill when effects that alter a hex's duration take place. The reason this skill's text was wrong is that we'd originally contemplated having this skill work in a different way in order to enable some interesting skill combinations, but upon further reflection we thought it was more important to keep the behavior consistent.


Blood Spike


Vampiric Spirit: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

Signet of Agony (PvP): increased recharge to 20 seconds.

Signet of Agony (PvE): decreased recharge to 8 seconds.

Unholy Feast (PvP): increased recharge to 20 seconds.

Unholy Feast (PvE): decreased recharge to 8 seconds.

As mentioned above, our goal with Blood Spike is to maintain it as a functional gimmick build but to make sure it is vulnerable to skillful play. We targeted two aspects of the most prominent Blood Spike build: First, we changed the casting time on the elite skill Vampiric Spirit from 1 second to 2 seconds in order to make it more vulnerable to interruption; this should still allow Blood Spike teams to use it to start a spike, while giving their opponents a chance to disrupt the spike. Second, we significantly increased the recharge on the area-of-effect skills Signet of Agony and Unholy Feast. By decreasing the frequency with which these skills can be used to spike, we accomplish two things: first, giving the opponents greater opportunity to prevent these spikes with kills of their own, and second, significantly impacting the rate at which a Blood Spike team is able to kill the enemy Guild Lord. We did not see the casting time change for Vampiric Spirit as a strong enough reason to split the skill for PvE, but we did take the opportunity to separate Signet of Agony and Unholy Feast, which have typically been seen as underpowered in a PvE setting.


Ranger/Assassins


Death Blossom (PvP): increased recharge to 6 seconds.

Escape (PvP): functionality changed to: "Elite Stance. For 1..8 seconds, you move 33% faster and have a 75% chance to block attacks. Ends if you make a melee attack."

There's an overpowered Ranger/Assassin character that has become commonplace in PvP. This character came to regular use after changes to Jagged Strike (fast activation time) and Fox Fangs (shorter recharge and increased damage bonus). Examining and using the build ourselves, it was not clear that removing the changes would actually bring the character into balance. A change to the activation time of Jagged Strike would have some effect but not a dramatic one, and increasing the recharge on Fox Fangs would simply encourage players to use Wild Strike in its place. We believe this may be a situation in which the overpowered character was viable all along but had simply not been discovered yet. Without the short recharge on Fox Fangs, players could simply use Wild Strike.

Instead, we believe the core issues are with two other skills: Death Blossom, which has a much, much shorter recharge than any other non-elite Dual Attack and which is the source of much of the actual damage in the build, and Escape, an elite stance which provides faster movement and a 75% block chance with very little down time. For Death Blossom, it seemed clear that increasing the recharge was the correct answer. For Escape, we had a more difficult decision to make. We knew we needed to temper the skill for melee Rangers. At the same time, we hoped to maintain its viability for bow-wielding Rangers, who typically choose bow attacks as their elite skills but sometimes find success using Escape. After considering many softer approaches, we chose to make a very direct change, making Escape end on a melee attack. We recognize that this will also affect Ranger/Dervishes using scythes. Ultimately, we decided that the sustained offense output allowed by Expertise is not reasonable to pair with faster move speed and a 75% block chance two-thirds of the time. There needed to be a greater trade-off between offense and defense for these characters. Because this is largely an issue in PvP, we split the skill so as not to affect PvE.


Minor Adjustments


Ether Prism: increased recharge to 25 seconds; decreased damage reduction to 75%.

Distortion: increased recharge to 8 seconds.

Mantra of Resolve: decreased duration to 5 seconds.

Patient Spirit: increased recharge to 4 seconds.

Rip Enchantment: increased recharge to 15 seconds.

Immolate: increased recharge to 5 seconds.

Defensive skills for spellcasters always pose an interesting playbalance challenge. Some amount of viable defense is important for allowing these characters to have a place, but ultimately we want casters to have some fear of going toe-to-toe with other characters. To start, we're slightly increasing Distortion's recharge so that it is not easily maintained. This should allow physical characters to get in a couple key hits on a character using this skill before they get back that 75% block chance. Additionally, we are changing Ether Prism so that the damage reduction it provides is not absolute. The 75% damage reduction is still a powerful effect but leaves some opportunity for opponents to get a kill. While examining this skill, we found that its energy return was a little higher than other similar, viable energy-gain elites. We've bumped the recharge from 20 to 25 in order to address that. Once we're happy with this skill, we'll look into whether or not weaker energy-gain elites can be brought into line with it.

Mantra of Resolve is the sort of skill that can cause problems in how the game plays. We've made dramatic numerical changes to this skill, essentially changing its function from giving long-term protection against interrupts to allowing a player to only protect key skills from interruption. By reducing its duration to 5, we hope to accomplish three things: First, having much shorter duration compared to recharge will require thoughtful usage of the skill. It can still be used to protect key spell-casts but will not provide blanket protection. Second, by requiring the caster to use the skill right before casting a spell, we give enemies a chance to see that Mantra of Resolve is in effect. We didn't feel that it was reasonable for someone's interruption attempt to be countered by an invisible stance that was activated a full minute or more earlier. Third, we wanted to make the energy cost of the skill matter. Even though the skill only takes 5 energy, needing to use it right before casting a spell should be a meaningful change.

Patient Spirit has been a staple of Monk PvP builds for a while and has garnered some criticism from players for being overpowered. We think it is an interesting skill and did not want to make changes that would make it unusable. Instead we've simply raised the recharge on it to encourage players to use it strategically.

The balance between enchantments and enchantment removal is something we've tinkered with a lot over time. We're mostly happy with the current state of things, but we're adjusting Rip Enchantment, which was the only skill of its sort with such a short recharge. We're increasing this to 15 seconds to match corresponding skills.

We've continued to take a close look at the Fire Magic Elementalists that have been prominent in Guild Battles recently. We do not believe this character is very far out of scope but, after further testing, decided to slightly reduce his sustained damage output. The highly efficient damage skill Immolate seemed like the best candidate for a change. As we have often done when a skill plays well but feels a little too good, we did not alter any of its costs or effects, but increased its recharge by a couple of seconds. We do not believe this change will eliminate the use of this skill or the characters who bring it.

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Admin Edit: All right a few points for people.

First, bypassing the word filter with f*ck is NOT allowed. I've been editing your posts (which probably mean they don't make sense now) but I'll just delete from this point forward.

Second, we don't allow "I Quit" posts. They will be deleted. They do not contribute and provide no constructive feedback.

Third, if you honestly feel you have nothing to contribute or can't provide anything other then "this is a crappy update", don't post. Real discussion and conversation can occur in this thread but a one-liner like that is not going to help.

Fourth, personal attacks or insults directed toward others are deleted.

You are more then welcome to post your thoughts and feelings in a constructive manner, to discuss both the pro's and con's of this update but one-liners, cussing, personal attacks and "I quit" posts don't help.

Nerfing MB eles... good

Nerfing R/A rangers that way... VERY good

Nerfing raptor farming build 1 day before Talk like a Pirate event... BAD


Edit: Over all, very good update. R/A builds still have some varients out there, but they aren't as good. Most of these nerfs were needed and are very good for the game balance.

Good update!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i would've liked mantra to be pvp only update but all others are excellent

Nerf to Escape is quite done well.

LOL at Death Blossoms nerf.

well i guess since SF was nerfed i gotta...what?....IT WASN'T NERFED?!?!


ps - i dont SF farm D:

Other than the MBele/Escape ranger nerfs, this build seems kinda dartboardy but I'm confident that linsy & co have a plan.

you know not 1 skill got buffed right?

tbh the only thing they should of done was the distortion & escape ... rest was pointless nerfs by anet cuz they felt like commin on here lookin at all the QQ

well i dont see anything bad in the update(mantra of resolve kinda makes me mad) but is this what we can expect for once every 2 monthes updates from now on? wow

<_< waiting this long just to fix their mistakes...

nothing new to the game at all, only less options.

Seems like an ok update. Selfless spirit was a bit broken. I loved it, but it cannot be denied how broken it was.

Overall, it isn't too dartboardy. Everything had a reason for a nerf. And I'm happy heal support, as well as solo builds, are back for paragons. I wish there were more buffs though. Specifically dervish.

"* Mantra of Resolve: decreased duration to 5 seconds."

Screw ,,,, you ,,, anet

Only good updates- updates that bring more op shit to the game.

Barely. Immolate nerf doesn't change much and it will probably still be run. Distortion is still half-maintainable, and besides E/Ds with Featherfoot Grace are more common.

Decent update though.

I really don't see the point of nerfing mantra...the only good thing is R/A thats it...terriable update.

>escape made so it only does its real purpose: running, not tanking
Awesome!
>selfless spirit nerfed
ArenaNet, I am disappoint. I liked those 0-energy Rt heals.
>Shadow Form untouched
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

Did you even read the developer notes? Its pretty obvious they are going to the bi-monthly schedule after this update so they can make more impactful skill updates.

Overall, pretty good update. It certainly adjusted alot of skills that needed em. Escape in particular was handled with class.

For the most part, I give it a thumbs up. Still think the 1/2 activation dagger attacks need to go, and I'll have to see what this does to the E/Me template, plus the E/D is still basically at full strength.

I did laugh when I saw the devs listed Mantra of Resolve in the "minor adjustments" heading when it gets its duration shifted from ~70 to 5

so 2 months for that? I'm underwhelmed..........

was hoping most for z tourny rewards to be put back in.....wonder what the status of that is

I think the Mantra of Resolve change should be pvp only. Small but good update overall.

Errrr, Mantra = Kills most 600/smite dude.

LOL not what I expected, did a good one on Distortion and Escape, other ones I dont see that useful, and SF lives lol time to sit here and watch the QQ'ers come here and argue, I love this, sometimes I think Anet doesnt nerf something like this for a while just for kicks.

EDIT - Oh no didnt notice MoR, it can cause some problems, in the areas of certain 600/Smite builds and Obisidian Flesh builds.

Oh no they di'int!

That is waaaaaay too long for the recharge! 45 seconds and the max duration is 20 seconds? Not Fair at all. We just got it right on the last update now they take it back?

Why not nerf Shadowform instead?

PvE/PvP skill split for Mantra please.

Not a bad update, could have been better though. ANet need to take more chances and do more unconventional updates.

That means they are taking steps in the right direction. When the game is at a level of extreme power creep like it is currently, you have to lower the overall power of the game play. right now skills cast too fast, recharge too soon, do too much damage, and heal for too much.

This allows guilds to create builds that revolve around 2 pure offensive characters, 2 pure defensive characters, and 4 mainly defensive characters with two or three skills dedicated to offense and still get kills. If you fill your build with a ton of defense, it should not be possible to kill anything. If you fill your build with a lot of offense, it should not be possible to stay alive for long periods of time. In the games current form, you can overload defense and still kill at a very high efficiency. The entire game needs to be toned down so that this is no longer possible. Buffing un used skills and counters to the overpowered skills doesn't fix the real problem. All it does is change the meta from one overpowered build to the overpowered builds counter and then the next counter and the next and the next and the next......

wait? so eles cant raptor farm anymore? and right before halloween too >.> guess i have to stick with vaetiirs.

i like the r/a nerf

Over all, seems like a decent update, but given the bimonthly schedule, I was hoping to see a lot more skill changes to keep us better satiated. The change to Mantra of Resolve, at least on the PvE side, was very unexpected, though...

Also, it still bugs me how the developer updates rarely explain why certain skills (looking at Patient Spirit) aren't split.

erm... patient spirit? alternative healing pls?

what the?

It gets a buff from a recent update to make it viable (from 60 sec to 20 sec) so it was actullay GETTING use (on almost every PvE monk UA bar). So Anet says... Hey, this PvE skill is getting over used regulalry in every PvE party where a monk is present. Guess that means it needs to be made less likely to carry on a bar. Sure makes maxing out those lux/kurz titles fun huh?

Get real ANET, nerfing selfless spirit back to almost what it was when it was completly useless ONLY negatively affects a party (in particular Hard Mode). so now a monk has to go back to carrying glyph of renewal to make it a viable spot on a bar.

good, now they just have to hit SF and get that crap out of the game for good.

a step in the right direction but pretty insignificant considering they still have 1000 miles to go

I don't see R/A's going away completely, but I guess they're a little less invincible now at least

immolate nerf does absolutely nothing

armor of sanctity is still retarded in general as a concept

mantra of resolve nerf is the only thing in this update that actually accomplishes something significant

Then take out Sugar / party / alcohol title, because GL farming that without powertrading.

o and also i cant freaking do this weekends event...why would they do that to resolve a day before the freaking event.

Factions hasn't sold well enough yet.

So long PvE boonprot, come back and visit sometime...

pve -only buff to unholy feast..hmm, maybe I'll bust out my melee touch farmer again..............................or not. lol

600/smite with a Famine/QZ

Add Dwarven Stability, and Mantra is permanent.

God damn it I hope that doesn't include Vloxen and CoF, because I can't H/H the first in HM and the 2nd is an awesome way to max the deldrimor rank. >.<

This is another great suggestion. Remove all of the retarded farm titles.

Protector titles? Sure, they are somewhat fun.
Cartography? Yeah, they are fun up until about 70-80%, until you have to start grindscraping the edges of maps.

The other hundreds of titles that require Monks to cap Defy Pain and the avatars, the titles that require people to sit for DAYS spending millions of gold on an alcohol title? So stupid.