PvE skill abuse = excessive widespread use???

I've been thinking about what ANET considers SKILL ABUSE in PvE...

I remember when Ursan got nerfed, it was because "everyone" was using it to play the HM high end areas (widespread use). I also note that the recently buffed selfless spirit was just NERFED because almost EVERY monk would load it in their bar for HM high end areas (widespread use). And bear in mind the previous buff to selfless spirit enabled, due to the energy management, other classes could be healers (even Mesmers with fast casting - but THAT never really became prevalent in PvE anyway) So ANET didn't want the widespreaed excessive use to create other "effective" healing classes??

So I started thinking about Signet of Spirits (SoS). Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT advocating nerfing SoS!!!.. I'm just noticing that ALMOST EVERY Rit that plays in PvE is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED to run a spirit spam with SoS. This is observed by viewing party window adds GLF Spirit Spam (most frequently in HM missions - ZM of the day). So doesn't that put SoS in the same category as Selfless spirit - excessive widespread use & therefore Abused? In fact, I see many times people in party window LFG Spirit Spam where Rt is secondary...

So ultimately, is the term "PvE skill abuse" applied by ANET only when they want to rationalize a change to PvE???

How is that different from Cry of Pain? (And I'm with you: I'm not looking for anerf of either skill, just pointing out the similarity.)

Maybe bacause SoS is not a pve skill?

well, Vampirism and Summon Spirits are vital parts of spirit spammer build, which are pve skills.

Find it hard to see how they can nerf Summon spirits, and Vampirism isnt that VITAL.

it is part of the pve/pvp split and the pve version 100x more powerful than the pvp version.

spirit spam is imba imo. the buff was way overdone, spirits were already very powerful but simply just went under the radar because no one used it. this made anet think that spirits were complete crap and so they completely overboard with the buff.

so the only thing that widespread use of skills do is give anet an idea of which skills are overpowered and which are underpowered without actually having to play the game themselves and put in work to figure out how to achieve balance. then again its pve, so who cares bout balance?

they nerfed ursan because u would have a team of 6 ursan and 2 healers.....
u CANT have a team of 6 spirit spammers and 2 healers.....wouldnt work

but along with a good team a spirit spammer is a great person to have along, and i think that's why they wont nerf it cause it's part of the "team build"

lets hope......

they are to an extent but you can only have one set of the spirits up at any given time. its not like you can load up a bunch of Rits and roll through areas like Ursan did or the Cryway build did. with other PvE skills the whole team of 8 or 12 can run the same 3 PvE only skills to roll through an area. as ive said in other threads, had HM been better balanced when it comes to the make up of the enemy groups and their skill bars are taken in to account when skill buffs happen the need for PvE skills wouldnt exist.

They nerfed things like Ursan and Selfless spirit because they were so overpowered, not because everyone was using them. Should they nerf Frenzy cause every warrior uses it?

EDIT: Frenzy was a bad example. Really what I mean is that just cause a skill is a staple, it doesn't mean it will get nerfed.

its not imbalanced, its not like you can have multiple copies of the same spirit up. if you could then it could be considered imbalanced. the current build just gives the Rits a spot in a team, and its not like you can control what the spirts attack. ive seen it alot where all the spirits are up yet only 2 or 3 are actually attacking the target you first attacked.

i was about to say it's not a problem cuz only rits use it but i forget that my ranger uses it every week to farm nick's items...

but for skills like ursan and selfless spirit, they take the skill out of playing the game... although you can solo farm UW with spirits it does require some skill of placement i guess.

but in answer to your question i'm not sure what counts as abuse, you'd have to get an answer from a dev

spirit spamming is the same as an MM, you're just maknig more allies to attack or be used as a wall, it's just lucky for necros that they need only a few skills to sustain their minions whilst rits need a lot of skills to create the "army" of spirits each time. i use SS kinda a lot, even though its just a case of summon up loada spirits that kill it works it doesnt really have to be complex.

i guess abusing a skill is just when players center an entire build around a single skills/ that skill doesnt have many drawbacks (e.g. quick recharge cast time, energy, functionality is good)?

Widespread abuse is a significant factor in PvE nerfs, yes.

Every single monk bar brings selfless spirit -> nerf.
Ether Renewal eles are vastly more powerful than any version of selfless spirit monk but hardly used -> no change.

Before the skillsplit, permaform was possible with A/Mes and Me/As, but difficult because you had to time casting the echo'd copy just right, with only 1 or 2s of wiggle room. You could still destroy the chaos plains and it was faster then since you could get them all to ball. Note that Anet didn't care until they made it easy enough that everyone and their mother rolls A/Es and start messing with ecto prices.

Spirits are overpowered. I love using my Rit more than I used to because of it, but I see that my reasoning is not based on balance. I do understand why they changed what they did, and wouldn't mind seeing a SMALL revert. Spirits went from 3 or 5 second casts to 3/4 or 1 second casts. I'd be just as happy to use my Rit the way I currently am with 1 or 2 second casts on the spirits.

Signet of Spirits is definitely powerful, and the buff to spirits made spirit spam more powerful than before, and more importantly it made Ritualists viable as something other than just support (which is boring, IMO).

But on the other hand - if you're running spirit spam, then your entire bar must be dedicated to doing just that. SoS allows some compressions but even with that, at least half the bar will be spirits. All spirits have long recharge times, with SoS being the quickest at 20 seconds. Spirit attacks are strong, but the AI isn't always very intelligent and they'll target the wrong things or not attack at all. If you're not careful with your placements, they'll overaggro. They're very susceptible to AoE damage unless you are very quick with Summon Spirits. And even with Armor of Unfeeling, spirits are still very fragile and if they go down before they've recharged and you can recast? That's trouble.

And then there's also the fact that you can only have one copy of a spirit active at a time. It's not like running with a couple of MMs where there are minions taking over everything on the map.

So, powerful? Yes. Definitely so. Overpowered and/or imbalanced? No. If you could have multiple copies of a spirit active at once, or they had much shorter recharges, you could make the argument that it was too strong, but as it stands, it really isn't.

The things that were nerfed weren't nerfed because of widespread usage but because they made for easy HM and clearing elite areas by rolling your head across the keyboard, in record times (wich totally isn't what SF is doing nowadays, totally). People need to estabilish a clear line between what's an effective build, and what's overpowered.

I for one would be royally pissed off if anet decided to nerf Save Yourselves for example. It's commonly used by warriors/paragons in HM and elite areas but dispite it's advantage doesn't break the game appart like Ursan and SC's do these days.

This.

Anet nerfs stuff because they want diversity in PvE. When all mesmers focus their build on COP, or all UW Clears are done with shadow form, theres a problem. I agree with the Selfless buff. It is still a good skill, just not way op. And lots of rit builds do have sos, its just that sos is flexible so you can have many different bars running it as the elite.

I lol'd when everyone on the forums and in-game was celebrating the nerf of ursan and the end of "skill-less and too fast clears". Then came shadow form. It still brings a smile to my face.

I'm a bit upset over the Selfless nerf. Other than that, it's the fact of basing entire bars/builds/teams around PvE skills (ie Ursan) that becomes an issue.

PvE Skill abuse is when a player- or teambuild is completely centered around one skill or concept. This is no problem, as long as that build isn't idiotically way more effective than any other build that isn't using this formula.

Examples from the present and past include of course Shadow Form, Ursan Blessing, Cry of Pain, Discord, Ray of Judgment, 55 Monking, Assassin's Promise, Barrage/Pet teams, etcetera, etcetera...