Next Skill Balance

Seriously? When I see a monk in Obsi or someone with a tormented weapon, I think "lol idiot" and I'm not surprised if it's a Monk with a crappy PvE-like build (I'm talking about PvP) or some "original build" user.

This basically sums up the silly argument. Some people prefer big numbers above others' heads. Some prefer big ornaments on their armor. Who is one to say their preference is better than the other?

I make far more just watching the world go by than I can by playing the game with SF. The problem with all of those ectos being dumped into the system is that their creation makes everything scarce more expensive. By my count, I made as much in the last eight months while hardly playing as I did by actively playing the game and trading during the preceding four years. (Assuming you measure wealth in ectos or the equivalent.)

That's great for me, but it also shouldn't be happening. There are ways to make it possible for you to farm the stuff you want without impacting the GW economy as a whole.

right oh,

I made 600k and 111 ectos over the wintersday festival. I stopped farming 10 days IN!!!.

Look there is a lot and I mean a lot of gold to be had in this game with a few simple rules.

Buying titles is standard these days and the only place that they need to mess with skills is in PVP. just make PvP skill better or worse leave the PvE alone.

Or leave the PVP alone and nerf the Pv Just leave one alone

Okay, well rounded player says:

PvE and PvP are two totally different games. (For some reason people think otherwise)
Being invulnerable to attacks is OP, if you think otherwise, be an hero
Midline spiking is OP, when only one warr is needed something is wrong. (in GvG)
Farming is more fun with non-invincible builds (don't argue SF isn't invincible. With some actual skill, it is)
In game monetary wealth means nothing at this stage of the game.
Clearing high end PvE areas in 20min is bad for the gamestate.
Nerfing SF will make people richer. (for those of us who actually have ectos)

I think that about covers it.

Yep, it is. Has been for a while. Doing Urgoz? Perma-sin makes one of the best sweeper's I've seen in a while. Enters rooms, spawns the pops, holds them on corners, and lets the team go at it.

FoW? Tombs? Sorrows Furnace? Dungeon after dungeon after dungeon? Same principle applies.

Vanquishes, especially in areas heavy on the physical damage? Perma sin gathers aggro, ranged dealers kill.

I'm sure plenty of people have used a perma sin in a team with heroes and henchies, since the other 7 can do the killing, in missions and quests. It's absolutely not the most efficient way to go, but with all the hero team builds out there, it'll pass. And no clumsy fiddling with builds.

The whole idea initially with shadow form was to last 20 seconds, but then leave you near death. I dont get why Anet made it possible to run perma SF in the first place, but it has been in the game a very long time, and lots of players use sins just to farm.

Whether it is good or not, it is PVE, and I could care less how anyone chooses to play when you can steamroll through the game with AI.

The best thing would be to allow henchmen into UW and FoW, I would surely enjoy H/Hing those places.

Because ANet fails at balancing skills. They propose a change, say 'oh, good work guys!' and implement it without thinking it through. After months/a year of people telling ANet to do something, they acknowledge it. They then proceed to take weeks/months to nerf it. But wait, it doesn't end there! They either completely kill it (smiter's boon), implement a change that doesn't make a difference (shadow form), or...I don't even want to say properly balance it. But no, that's not it. They then proceed to buff random skills, make more overpowered ones, and then the cycle starts all over again.

They can't balance, at all. They should have thought of that before making over 1,000 skills. If GW2 balance is anything like GW1, it's going to be shit.

This is because before PvE skills and the PvE/PvP split, when ANet balanced skills they didn't want to make PvE players mad, so they either balanced poorly or not at all.

What they needed to do was just blast every overpowered skill out of existence (like Smiter's Boon) and say to PvE players "look, we're sorry, but this was a major issue in PvP and had to be done. You can still win PvE by using 999 of our 1000 skills though!'.

Same old staff, brand new game [GW2]. ENJOY.

I lol'd hard. By my reckoning, ArenaNet already did balance with the sole focus being PvP.

too many people are fixated on the negatives on having pvp and pve share the same skill pool, that they never notice the one positive: balancing based on pvp keeps the power creep in check. without it, there's is NOTHING restricting each skill being buffed into the stratosphere. generally, pve players just want skills that blast monsters into smithereens and watch as the loot drops, and anet will bend to that pressure without needing to balance for pvp as well. many of you won't believe me, but think of it this way: this whole mess with shadow form would've never happened, if the skills aren't split.

unfortunately GW2 will probably go the same route. unless anet manages to find another consistent standard to balance against, GW2 pve will rapidly become unplayably easy.

You clearly missed the point. Yes ANet balanced solely for PvP, but because they were worried about hurting PvE players' feelings, they did balance PROPERLY.

Except they weren't.

I honestly doubt ArenaNet is capable of balancing properly at all. For four years they did balance for PvP, with PvE being an afterthought if it was thought of at all.

I'm just surprised they wasted that time instead of just giving up early and leaving PvP to be static - goodness knows the PvP community would have deserved it. But they were too caught up trying to make it an e-sport game.

There hasn't really been a decisive skill balance for PvP since rawr spike was hit hard almost a year ago. Since then it's just been the usual assortment of random skill buffs and small nerfs. Also worth noting that it's been a full four months since the last skill update of any kind now.

No one can be blamed for having nothing else to do than to set goals on high-end items It's not all that hard to get them, either, given time and dedication is put into it. There's nothing idiotic about it, besides, it is all a matter of personal taste.

Back on topic though, I thought the today's update was the skill update, for a moment...

I never said there has been. Fenix and I are discussing the time before stuff like the PvP/PvE split, when ArenaNet was regularly fumbling around with PvP balance and did not care at all what happened in PvE because of it.

There's nothing wrong with being excited over a rare or pretty skin. It's when it leads to jealousy over someone else getting the same skin that it becomes a problem.


Actually, there has already been a poster in this thread who linked back to the dev update and showed that they knew it would be maintainable. Very interesting that you need Prophecies, Factions, and EOTN for the build to work. Now that the SF craze has levelled and everyone who want's a permasin, has the campaigns they need, anet will now nerf it into oblivion.

Wanna bet the next big OP build will be spread across multiple campaigns, and that one won't be nerfed until sales drop again.

You are wrong. They said the exact opposite in 1 skill balance log when pve/pvp split started , i dont remember wich one but they did.

Yeah they are not gods but if you can , send some apply or ideas to enlighten them. The thing is that the split was needed since the beggining , is not the same hitting a lvl 18-24 mob that fighting lvl 20 humans and we all know that but players had an easy time to overcome the "issue" ..... but with the introduction of HM, PvE balance turned into BS a bloody lot of skills.
PvE-only skills were a good adittion but it was mainly a bandage , it is obvious that you cant balance a skill thinking in pvp when you are going to use it against a lvl 26-30 mob with 33% fast cast , movement and bloody lots of armor and crit chance+damage.
HM as an idea was great , i think GW2 will have something like that but i pray for it to be different from GW1 HM.

Their actions prior to the split indicate that they definitely did not care about PvE, regardless of what they may have said.


Absolutely. Or of course, for ArenaNet to have given PvE a second thought instead of balancing PvP First, PvE Never.

This is an exaggeration. Prot Bond. AoE scatter. Minion cap.

Classic Tank 'n Spank was simply the most efficient way to exploit the stupidity of the Prophecies AI. This had nothing to do with skill imbalance.

The Prot Spirit 55 was bad, but Spirit Bond was when we started having serious problems.

Unless someone buys those expensive things just to show off.

Seriously, obsidians and chaos gloves are freaking awful.

After you max HoM, get GWAMM, and still hate PvP what is there to do?

Wait for GW2?

Get better at PvP?

PvP is pretty crappy right now, regardless of your skill level.

GW is a dress up game. Regardless of how ugly you think it is, it's the most expensive armor, and right now waving your e-peen around is pretty much the only thing to do in GW.

Guild Wars was never intended to be the only game you play all of the time; the opposite is true. As far as the PvE goes, the devs expected players to pick up the expansions, play through them and put it away, or move to PvP.

All balances should stick to making a separate pvp list for all skills so that pve will remain unaffected, anything that steps aside from this is meddling with the system.

On the contrary, whenever a skill is separated, the system is meddled with, becomes more convoluted and the game deteriorates ever further.

Edit - gigantic QFT:

This is just your opinion. I'm sure you'll find many who agree with you, but then, you'll also find plenty of folks who don't agree.
I for one like bits and pieces of obby, and I quite like the chaos gloves, mainly due to the fact that like most from my era, I started gaming when there was no such thing as glow or transparency, so for me, it's always something I'll have a soft spot for.
I can tell you honestly that it has squat all to do with dollar value, and everything to do with self-pleasing aesthetics.

You don't have to agree with me, which obviously you don't. Just don't expect me to agree that it's all about epeen.

screenshot @ thommis in hm.. it didn't happen.. see this is why wiki is so degenerate- just because it says so doesn't mean it happened XD and no you didn't do it

When *you* say that PvP now sux, does it mean that it's not as good as what you could get 10+ years ago, in games like Team/CTF Quake3?

Or does it mean that lag/response isn't primary issue, but rather that only certain classes/builds are usable?

Or, does it mean that every encounter is lop-sided, due to terrain/team advantages?

Hmm... Haven't PvP'd in this game in about a year, and prolly don't plan to anytime soon - but still curious.

OH MY RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOING GOODNESS.

I've tried to stay out of this conversation, mainly because I cannot be bothered, but shut the hell up about keeping pve-user friendly in terms of skills.

Do you understand how boring the game is? How easy it is? How you can take 8 characters, load them up with impenetrable defense, and 2 skills apiece to spike down targets every 2 seconds? That's insane - in any other mmo the developers would be ripped to shreds by the company hyenas.

There's no sense of accomplishment in the game. When you defeat abaddon/lich/shiro/great destroyer, you don't feel like "wow, i just owned, and it was legit", like you might when beating a game with an actual CHALLENGE.

You all complain that the game's stagnate, and that everyone has the best armor and gear. Well wake up motherRED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOers, it's your fault. When you have skills that are so pathetically powerful that you can blow apart the most difficult areas of the game in 11 minutes, then accumulation of wealth becomes blase.

You want the game to be fun again? Offer the playerbase something to play for - this doesn't mean simply introduce new areas/quests/gear, it means making such areas worth playing. PvE is BORING (MONOTONOUS, MEDIOCRE, PERFUNCTORY, MINDNUMBING) because it's so easy. Remember Thunderhead Keep in 2005? Good, that's how it's supposed to be.

Some people might say,"well I like to blow off steam and relax". Well good, then go play Baldur's Gate or something. Get it straight people, Guild Wars is an MMO. It's a game with thousands of players, a sizeable proportion of which are trying to be better than each other. If you want to relax, then enjoy playing through the Gates of Kryta in Normal Mode with your W/R beastmaster, swinging your purple weapons in your 1.5k Droks armor.

Most people are here to play. Give them something to play for and make them work to achieve it.

You win the thread. the entire thread.

I'd go so far as to say that once you get to level 20, there is -no- reward to playing the game through, at least for me. After getting a good build and any half decent hero build, I'm owning pretty much every area like a hot knife through butter, and it just isn't fun.

Also, Guild Wars PvE in the state its in is not an MMO. It's a single player/multiplayer game with a universal economy type thing.

This is EXTREME MODE!

With mixed monsters in each group, every single one of them with dual professions (kinda like the Charr and Stone Summit in EotN). Randomized monster encounters (not the 'snap! you have been attacked by a Pikachu!', but actual random mobs in an area), and banning of consumables, PvE only skills and titles.

Please make it so. 5th year April update would be nice.

Play another game?

this:3:3:3:3

Then you're playing for the wrong reasons. Obsidian armor or the latest rare weapon does't prove you're good at the game. With gold sellers, the duping exploit, and many other "bugs" found and taken advantage of over the years, I'd guess at least half of the "leet" e-peen crowd did little or nothing to "earn" what they have.

And that doesn't bother me in the least. If it makes them happy to have it no matter how they got it, good for them. If it makes you feel better knowing you earned it rather than bought it, good for you. If I run around with different armor and weapons other than the newest "wow" item just because it's what I like, good for me. What's not good, for anyone here, is when people worry themselves over how someone else is playing, what someone else is getting/earning/not-earning, how someone else defines "fun" in this game.

I'll keep saying this over and over even though it doesn't seem to get through to anyone here. HOW ONE PERSON PLAYS PvE DOES NOT AFFECT HOW ANOTHER PERSON PLAYS PvE. I keep referring to SF because that is the latest build of contention, but these statements should really be: 'insert build here' has no affect on your gameplay.

'insert build here' cannot make you stop playing one profession and start playing another. 'insert build here' cannot keep you from finding at least one other person to group with so you can go anywhere in the game and round out your team with heroes. 'insert build here' cannot make your 'insert item here' any more or less valuable that it already is (it's worthless, it's pixels, get over it).

No clue what on earth was wrong with my previous response but oh well. I'll be terse this time.

To say you can beat any part of GW with 2 skills per skillbar and 11 minutes is completely ridiculous. Everyone in GW payed the same amount as you to play. How they choose to play is up to them. If it doesn't fit your definition of "fun" that's for you to deal with. Play the game any way you want to. Make it as hard on yourself as you can, and get that warm glowing feeling you seek. I don't begrudge you that. If that's your definition of fun, go for it. Stop trying to force your definition on the rest of us. Let us define our fun.

I disagree with the level 20 thing.

Back in 2005 or whatever, finishing THK and the rest of prophecies was a MAJOR achievement, let alone the titan quests and sorrows furnace. Hell, needing to get the entire guild together to clear out FoW was great.

As the games have progressed though, they have became more and more of a joke. I mean...Factions started becoming easy, not THAT easy, but easy enough to hench most of it (before heroes). Nightfall, while I love the Para, the Derv, and especially the heroes...the game really declined. I finished the game within about 3 days of H/H on my assassin. Then again on my Para with H/H, then all of my other characters.

When EotN came out...I finished the entire "campaign" on my assassin within the first DAY of release. Then I H/H'd all of the dungeons, including Duncan, then finished the game with my other characters.

There was no "achievement" in the last two games. EotN was an utter letdown on difficulty...though a lot of mechanics were a huge improvement. I love the concept of dungeons...and a lot of bosses actually have meaning behind them rather than just differently colored mobs, but it just lacks any feel of accomplishment. There's really nothing to strive for.

Prophecies, and Factions to a lesser extent, game me a feel of accomplishment while playing and finishing. Finishing THK for the first time (was with hench after failing over and over with people...), it was a pretty huge satisfaction.

As the game progressed, it didn't really scale with the "vets" who knew what they were doing...it either kept the same difficulty, or in the case of Nightfall and EotN, made the game easier. HM was fun for awhile...but it's obviously just fake difficulty, it just makes monsters stronger, faster, and have more health.

What would have been cool, is if GW had done what the "Director" does for L4D...dynamically spawn stuff based on how you are doing. Relying entirely on enchantments? Spawn things with enchantment removal. Weak against hexes? Spawn a couple more hex enemies. Blowing through everything at breakneck speed? Add a few more enemies to the next group.

Hell, using that system, it could almost even keep track of people's rankings on how good they are at PvEing.