Revert Splinter Weapon in PvE

That argument is pretty stupid. You are assuming Anet nerfed it for ONE reason only. It may be the case, but only they know unless they explicitly stated they nerfed ONLY because of VoD. However, you are arguing a skill is not strong in PvE because of a change in PvP. If you aren't seeing Splinter Weapon (Spliter?) as a strong skill in PvE, then you have some problems. I am not saying it is better than other options ALL the time, but I am saying the skill does function VERY well in many PvE builds. I see it being used by Rangers, N/Rt's for Sab and Discord teams, E/Rt buffers, and Me/Rt players as well. People playing with heroes and hench will often toss it on a hero if they dont' have it themselves.

The skill works very well as it is in PvE. Buffing it will only make it become overpowered..... like it was, which is why it got nerfed.

I actually think the nerf to Splinter Weapon was one of the best nerfs they have ever done. I would like to see this kind of nerf done more often.

This.


Honestly for general PvE there still wont be a huge difference; I recall many saying exactly that when the nerf did some around.

Changing it back would mainly bring it back for farming again, and with Perma Assassins still around probably for some speed clears like FoW.

/signed

It already destroys mobs in seconds if there are well packed...

Yep, it's sad just how many people don't realize this thread is trying to be ironic. Bah... I should just start playing Aion. Awful timing with the MoR revert A.net with that game coming out now (or really good, maybe it was an elaborate conspiracy by NCSoft to sell more stuff).

They did, it was in commentary that I can no longer find. It was changed for VoD the same that Finale of Resto was changed only for the tiebreaker.

I'm all for removing all of the overpowered stuff in PvE. But to do so would require so many nerfs to so many skills and create such unrest in the community all while really having a very small effect upon the game itself, that it certainly isn't a surprise that Anet isn't doing so at this point. Until the multiple flavors of permanent invulnerability, many many different builds that easily do more than 100 DPS, easily maintained party buffs that render teams practically invulnerable, PvE-only skills, and I could keep going, until those are all taken care of the idea of "PvE balance itself is a joke."

And why would I ever run splinter weapon in pve? AoE is just much more effective on casters than trying to do it on melee. What would I rather have 40 damage on 3 adjacent targets for 3 hits, or +20 damage that is affected by asuran scan on every hit?

Sure, nerf a bunch of stuff and it'll be good in pve again. And I'm all for those nerfs, but good luck getting them to go through.

Oh, what are you talking about, Hawk? I mean every word I ever say, ever.

Luckily for you, I have recently looked this up. Dev Updates, 11/08/2007.

ah, but i agreed on the basis that letting everything revert to it's pre-nerf state, at least for a weekend, would be fun. the actual list of changes i'd love to see is seriously off topic for this thread, and wouldn't be popular anyway.

I guess since people around here are getting pretty fed up with the "revert this, revert that" mentality, I may as well clarify why I brought this up.

Splinter Weapon pretty much has one use: throw it on someone who can dish out lots of attacks in a short period of time and nuke a whole mob of enemies to the ground. Always been that way. It became a lot less effective around two Novembers ago when ANet changed it due to GvG abuse.

When that happened, my main qualm with it was it totally nerfed the farm of "Battle of Turai's Procession", which was something I was using a great deal at the time. At the time, I'm sure there were a few other builds that had been using this for farming purposes. Since they'd said at the time, "Splinter Weapon has been a favorite skill in high-end PvE and will be watching this change closely," that made me feel like the PvP/PvE skill split would have been the ideal time for them to adjust this back in PvE. No dice.

So I find it a little ironic when they do things like revert Finale of Restoration in PvE for a Paragon farming build when the main reason for its change in the first place was from GvG abuse, and the same with MoR being reverted in PvE, regardless of its change being unintentional or not, when the initial adjustment was also for PvP reasons. And yet, Splinter Weapon just stays right where it's at.

It's not like reverting it is going to make it that much more powerful in PvE anyways, outside of farming. How often is it that you fight groups of five or six enemies in adjacent range clusters, outside of your favorite farming spot?

The issue I'm trying to put out is that ANet's stance has always been pretty ridiculous when it comes to farming, but if their current stance is that skills should stay as they are or be reverted back to more powerful states when they cripple here-and-there farming builds, why not bother to revert back all of the other skills they decided to stick on the chopping block?

As a final note, I'm serious about asking for this change and am trying to provoke some discussion here, but regardless of whether it gets changed or not, I'll probably just go back to farming raptors.

It's already a very powerful skill in PvE, it doesn't need to be reverted. Just because ANet made a PvE/PvP skill split doesn't mean ANet should take already powerful skills and revert them to an even more powerful state.

Perhaps this is the reason it was nerfed, BUT it is likely that its abuses in farming had at least an equal weight in ANET's decision to nerf this skill. In previous days it was overpowered and worthy of perhaps even Elite status.
Elite status would have put an end to splinter/barrage builds, which were splinter weapon's main farming use, anywho.

I would just be happy they even let splinter weapon exist as a buff to barrage or other equally potent combinations.

This skill should NOT () be reverted without change to elite status.

FURTHER, yes it became alot less effective when they changed the skill to a less powerful form. That is called "nerfing" the skill, and is the expected outcome of nerfing.

Also, if we made changes to skills just to suit every little farming or pvp build we would end up......wait.....EXACTLY WHERE WE ARE NOW. Inconsistent power distribution across the different professions in game in different areas and as a whole. Perhaps it was always this unbalanced.

Not to mention every change will likely end up screwing someone over. This is not to say you shouldn't fight for what you want at the expense of other players.

Perhaps you should just feel guilty if you do get what you want.



Perhaps the best thing anet could have done is to have kept a little less hands on approach when it came to skills. If you really get down to it some things have always been relatively overpowered compared to others. Anet does not do a perfect job of balancing skills. Changing this skill back will change relatively little in game (of course some mobs would hurt more )

lol. So i guess go for it.

Are you kidding? Splinter weapon is powerful enough as-is.

/notsigned

2 things to say. I really love splinter + barrage the way it is atm (didn't experience the OP skill so I don't know how it was like, Im sure it was great =D). But it has its advantages in its current state and its pretty powerful.

/notsigned

Skill balances are to change specific skills to Anet's fancy...they focus around "every little farming or pvp build."

There has always been a large rift between pve and pvp because of skills, and Anet had to balance between the two. Now with the split, anet should revisit skills that they have nerfed/buffed and change accordingly. The revert war has been escalated starting in the spring, where anet decided to buff skills such as Expert's dex, Lingering curse, Weaken knees, PnH, Palm Strike to create overpowered builds. Stop trying to tie the MoR revert with the power creep; they are two completly different concepts.

Looking at all the broken skills now (Searing Flames, HB+Mop combo, RoJ, CoP, signet of spirits) i fail to understand how a revert to splinter would degenerate the game any more. Give it a 10e cost so rangers can't abuse as much and take off the enemy limit.

/signed

/not signed

it's still a strong skill, other skills should be balanced better, PvE has already waaay too much ridiculous imba, no need to add more.

easy to implement and we already got a flavour of it. Will make people play not only UWSC sins. /BIG signed.

@OP signed of course. If SF is fine and reserving mantra for whining farmers was fine then all other classes deserve some additional love....

BTW nobody mentioned putting ursan back to its previous form yet?

Fort Ranik is not too hard?

powerfull enough, that's why it is still one of most used Rit skills.

/unsigned

^ This

/signed for adding a couple more enemies to the PvE version, but I don't think we need ALL adjacent. It is a very powerful skill as it is.

Here, I'll fix it for you:

During the terrible VoD fortressway meta, Spliter weapon was one of the many skills that rewarded good ability to ball up NPCs and abuse their AI and play "farm the NPCs" instead of playing GvG. It was nerfed for VoD farm because it was an absolutely retardedly overpowered skill in VoD mechanics. The same VoD farm that iQ regularly brought glyph sac meteorshower to farm. Currently Spliter weapon is just not worth bringing because there is no VoD to ball NPCs and abuse their AI, that is not a ridiculously stupid skill.

If the rational arguments are ignored guess what you will get. How many times we have to repeat ouserselves in every buff this buff that unnerf this unnerf that threads? Maybe when we have all OP skills back then people will realize how bad it all is and how dull the game can be when you play easy mode all the time.

But that is not the issue some care about is it? Dull and easy game is not the problem when people play to farm.

It is all again about farming... Some do not care how OP some skills are or can be and how broken the game may become. The points is to get easier ways to farm... People are tired of replying to this crap so they post sarcastic arguments. You will see more and more of them.

How many nerfs did break the game? How many buffs did? Compare those two numbers first. Also what ANET said the reason for nerf was does not mean it was not OP elsewhere.

And to all people with hidden (or often obvious) agenda "buff this skill so I can farm more" - it is all clear what you want regardless how elaborate arguments you use. It is just pathetic. To break a game even more so you can farm something easier....

Anyway all those Sardelac threads become another farmers v non-farmers discussion. I do not mind people farming however I do mind when they break my gameplay by farming oriented wishes...

Why is it pathetic to ask to bring back a solo farm? There hasn't been any new content for a long time, so the only thing left to do is grind for money. You can either do that in PvE by A: running dungeons, B: playing through the game and doing quests until your eyes bleed out, or C: Farming mobs. Unlike 600/smites or permas, turai nets a large amount of common drops to net money. No item is worth over 5k, save for 2 mods and sup vig. It is also slower much slower than raptor farming. It gives rangers/rits a viable farm that nets a decent amount of money, not some super run that pulls in at least 70k an hour.

What about energizing wind...should we keep it nerfed because solo trappers could farm "easily." Just see how long a run lasts in the UW...I can guarentee that it's more than 30 min like what ursan and sf can offer.

As I said before, increase the energy cost (spirit silphon will augment for rits) and give other professions skills to farm with...It's not like reverting will ruin the game. Until pve skills and consets are removed from the game the game will never be "hard"

That is the whole point. Doing the campaigns all over again is dull but running around the same area to farm is not? Are you sure you want to play GW not WOW?

No I do not want to get more buffs. I already have to gimp my heroes cause playing the game with those op skills/builds is boring. No I do not have fun when HM mobs die before I reach them with my warrior.

This game is now looking more like a barbie contest. Who gets the most expensive clothing and gear and title under cool cape is the leetest. All is about getting this stuff. I do not want to make it easier cause it makes the game boring for me.

It won't ruin the game, but giving PvE more overpowered batshit skills isn't exactly making the game better. You're implying that the game will never be hard because of PvE skills/consumables, so why make the game even easier? There's no need to revert splinter weapon.

By the same token PvE is extremely easy. Drawing the line at splinter weapon when [insert any number of other things] is running rampant, doesn't make a whole heap of a lot of sense either.

Now, I'm all for the large change that would change PvE away from the incredibly easy and overpowered push button builds that dominate it, but we all know that would be so poorly received that Anet isn't going to do it.

I do generally side with "not wasting time on irrelevant changes," but I also explicitly hate when skills are changed because of something else Anet didn't or hasn't addressed. VoD NPC balling as was the case with splinter and the tiebreaker as was the case with Finale of Restoration.

Reverting splinter would not "break the game". LOL if you seriously think it would.

Splinter Weapon wasn't breaking the game (PvE) before it got nerfed. Reverting now, wouldn't make a lot of difference to regular PvE where its rare to see mobs of 4+ adjacent monsters, standing there stationary waiting for the multiple Splinter bombs it would take to kill them.

If anything, it would make PvE harder, not more broken - because monsters with Splinter Weapon could really punish bad positioning by button-mash players.

You could ball up enemies to make Splinter more effective... but again that requires "smart" play rather than button-mashing, and I think smarter play is a good thing to promote. And even with good tactics, reverted Splinter wouldn't be able to insta-kill mobs... so I don't see it as OP. In order to "break the game" all mobs would have to clump together, and stay there while the player goes through 3 or 4 cycles of casting Splinter Weapons, and getting off their buffed attacks. Does that sound realistic? Not to me.

So why bother to revert? Because it would make monsters with Splinter more dangerous, promote smarter play, and yes - to revive some old farming spots. Is that such a bad thing? It would mean more options and professions to use, for those who choose to farm. More variety is good, and it's not as if Turai margonite farming would overshadow eg. Raptor farming. Far from it. (Turai farming = 12 kills/minute, Raptor farming = 27+ kills/minute)

This. Splinter Weapon in PvE was not a matter of mashing buttons; the player actually had to try to get the enemies in one place.

because most other dmg spells from rits in the channeling are plain trash

These arguments could be made equally about any number of skills that don't see use, with the added bonus that you'd be bringing new skills into viability instead of simply making an already popular skill even better.

While that would be a good thing, it's not quite the same. We're asking to REVERT the skill... so the live team would need no discussion, no choosing which skills, no balance testing needed etc. Just flick the switch so it's back the way it was.

Did the "issue" why they "nerfed" it changed ? Maybe you think you know why and you dont. They did it for something , if that "something" is still there they wont revert SW. Anyway , not needed at all , it doesnt feel like a nerfed skill that has to be changed again.

It was a PvP issue. It's common knowledge. Everyone knows why it was nerfed... except you. If you'd bothered to read the thread before wading in, you would have known too.

That "something" was in PvP. I don't think it's still a problem in PvP, but regardless - we are not asking for the skill to change in PvP. We are asking for a revert in PvE - where it was NOT considered a problem.

You are wrong. I read the thread and check me on second page. You and that "everyone" think that , some other ppl dont. For anything else , read #27.

Nah it wasnt and btw pvp version has longer recharge and does less damage. Pve version is strong , therefore theres no real need to make that skill stronger. Like i said before not needed , not at all.

You are wrong.

There was splinter weapon, hit everything adjacent to your target.

GvG, VoD, splinter weapon annihilated NPCs that back then humped each other.

There was no PvE/PvP split, both were nerfed.

I'll just yeah bro Shayne on this. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arena..._November_2007

Splinter Weapon: Functionality changed to: "For 20 second[s], target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next 1..5 attacks deal 5..50 damage on up to 3 adjacent foes."

Splinter Weapon has turned the Victory or Death period in Guild vs. Guild matches into an NPC bloodbath. This in turn has lessened importance of early tactical maneuvers to kill NPCs earlier in the match. The new target limit should keep its power in check for this situation. Even so, we know that Splinter Weapon has been a favorite skill in high-end PvE and will be watching this change closely.

According to the end of this dev update, if had a decent chance of being reverted, but since GvG wasn't changing and they most likely forgot about it after the PvE/PvP split, this actually should be changed.

And I don't need to read Magma's Posts, most of them are more arrogant than you.
Are any buffs needed?

It wouldn't break it, but it wouldn't exactly fix anything.

It wasn't breaking the game, but it was extremely powerful. And it would make a difference, because any decent player can pull a group and ball them up. It's been said before, but I'll say it again. PvE is already easy enough, we don't need to make a powerful skill even more powerful.

You're right, it would make the game more difficult for terrible players who ball up in AoE. For somewhat decent players, it wouldn't make a difference. For decent/good players, it would make it easier.

The way splinter weapon currently is already promotes more tactical play, so don't think reverting it will make much of a difference. It wouldn't insta-kill mobs, but you're missing the point. You're asking to take a powerful skill and make it more powerful. That makes no sense. If splinter weapon was terrible, then yes, a revert would make sense. But no, it's already powerful enough.

1) It would only make enemies who have splinter weapon more dangerous to terrible players who are all adjacent. To everyone else, no difference at all.

2) As I already said, the current splinter weapon already promotes more tactical play.

3) We don't need to bring back the old splinter weapon farming spots. The ability to ball up a massive group of enemies and kill them like it was nothing by yourself isn't something that should be brought back into the game.

Going by your logic that more variety is good, then we might as well revert every nerfed skill in PvE, and remove AoE scatter. Who cares how dumbed down and easy the game is as long as there's variety, right?

Bottom line is, powerful skills do not need to be made more powerful. It's really as simple as that.

There is an important point hidden in the above: Splinter Weapon has been split between PvE and PvP. If ANet didn't think SW was powerful enough in PvE when they made the split, they could have reverted it for PvE then. That they haven't implies that they think it's powerful enough.

No im not , next Q.

Yeah whatever but the thing is you missed the current state. And drax got the point :

Bingo , thats it.

I guess throwing random BS on me when i didnt talk to you makes you better. Buffs needed ? yeah to underused and underpowered skills that arent good or strong now , splinter weapon is not one of them.