Update- Thurday January 28

Classy.
Ranged DPS wouldn't be broken or useless if Anet had nerfed it correctly.

And, I'm fine if rangers are limited to just interrupters/condition spreaders. But, if that is the role of the entire class, they should not have only one build that fills that role.

^^ this and FC Bloodspike in HA. Hands up anyone QQing here who has ever had to monk against R-Spike or B-Spike?

I'm stunned. People are so hard to please. Whatever Anet does, sterile disputes like this arise.

How people can complain about Rangers being useless now is beyond me. We've reached the point of no return, broken stuff is the only thing the average player seem to like.

If you are talking about r-spike in HA, this update didnt fix a thing.

Rangers can still Trap, Spike (ask anyone in HA), Snare, Spread Conditions, Interrupt, Split, and Pressure.

I'm not telling anyone to stop whining, but I AM stating that Anet simply toned them down. GA rangers are still quite powerful, they just deal 21 less damage and don't have nifty 1sec activation bow attacks to rely on anymore.

And any nerf to Paragons in PvP is a good one. (Though, I do agree that they shouldn't have gotten hit in PvE either...)

As for Cripshot being the skill of choice, I still see people running Melshot, Burning Arrow, and even MelArrows now.

I know, it's kinda pathetic. There was once an update that only changed like 3 skills, buffed all of them, and the thread was still full of "OMG HOW DARE A.NET NERF MY FAVORITE BUILD!"

The SF nerf thread is going to be crazy. I thought the Ursan qq was epic

Warning: The following a PvE player's impression of the update. Do not expect him to know what he is talking about.

Ok, so let's see.

Bloodspike is nerfed. Sounds good to me.

Rangerspike is nerfed. Good. Rangers are supposed to be interrupting and spreading conditions in PvP. If they're also doing the spiking, then what is the purpose of bringing along melee?

Quick shot nerf. Who cares? It's not like anyone was using it.

Soldier's Fury nerf. Again, who cares? I've never heard of anyone using that skill before.

EDA? Fine. It was obviously never intended to be used in ranged attacks anyway.

So...What are people crying about? I don't get it.

How hard is it to properly split PvE and PvP skills? How hard is it to keep PvP nerfs to PvP skills?

I mean REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY? REALLY?

On the PvE side, literally, a monkey could have done better than this update.

Oh, ok then.

Soldier's Fury was the only skill in this update that could have been reasonably splitted and wasn't.

Everything else is perfectly fine, since the biggest nerf are PvP only anyway.

Again... PvP/PvE split isn't a silver bullet meaning no PvE skill should ever be nerfed ever.

PvE/PvP split should be reserved for only when changing a skill in one format fundamentally breaks it in another format.

And yes... "a monkey could have done a better job" since this update wasn't supposed to matter at all for PvE... and in the grand scheme of things... it doesn't.

Yes, frickin really. I play both, and everytime they split a skill, that's another one (or two, if they changed functionality) skills that I need to learn, and re-check my skillbar when going from one outpost to another. It's already annoying; if I had to literally remember two versions for every skill in the game, I'd go crazy.

Well, I've seen threads/posts in other forums in which people complains about that Power Shot is now useless for high level chars in pre-searing...
Some people will always complain about something, but when they can complain about such trivial things means that the update has been done extremely well.

I think people are crying mostly about Soldier's Fury and ranger nerfs.

Soldier's fury could have been split, but at least it's more in line with Soldier's Stance. Still, cracked armor was a shitty way of fixing it. now there's no reason anyone would want to use the skill.

Ranger nerfs in PvE aren't bad, but it essentially tells the PvE ranger players where Anet stands on them. Rangers are crappy in PvE because interrupting is lol and spreading crappy conditions is lol. The good ranger builds don't even involve their own weapons. Why Anet keeps buffing Penetrating/Sundering is beyond me too. Compared to any other bow attack, even elites, it's ridiculous.

So, it's not so much the skills themselves, it's the idea that Anet finally has a split between skills and they're still doing it wrong.

However I'm not judging too harshly until I see what they have in store for PvE in the February update.

Can this be copy/pasted into every single post of this thread please?

Seriously, at least 75% of the split skills in this entire game don't need it at all. Just make both versions the PvP version and we're set.

Well, I must be the only one playing BHA in HM then. Or relying on interruptions when I cannot interrupt myself.

Sure, what for, when you can have skills like Pain Inverter in your bar? /endsarcasm

Do you even bother reading before you post?

what a brilliant response.

Ah well. Even a monkey would have nerfed Shadow Form at least 1 year ago.

ITT: PvErs angry at a PvP update.


Oh no, Soldiers Fury was slightly nerfed, this changes everything! How do I play a Paragon now!

I agree. There goes my favorite (and only really usefull) elite skill / para build... Should have split this skill too. Leave PvE alone please!
I say if this goes on: split pve and pvp entirely. I'm sick and tired of getting my PvE enjoyment messed up every time some pvp stuff gets changed. I really don't give a *&$%'s @$$ about PvP. Change ALL YOU WANT in PvP, but leave PvE out of it. Only change those skills that really break PvE, please. Soldiers Fury was in no way overpowered in PvE. It's a skill that needs shouts/chants to even work properly, and now you get another drawback? Scratch one elite for my para.

And for all those PvP people out there, that apparently need to bash PvE player's opinions every time again: mind your own business. YOU like PvP, that's fine, and if you have opinions about skills in PvP, that's fine too. But please refrain from having opinions about PvE if you don't even care about PvE.
NO, PvP skills shound NOT be the same as PvE skill, because PvP is not PvE. The game is entirely different, thus so should be the skills.
I do not appreciate sarcasm just because I'm losing a usefull skill on my Paragon. I'll find another elite I can use, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it, ok? If I think this nerf is totally unnecessary for PvE, then it's my choice to complain about that, just as you lot QQ about PvP nerfs ALL THE TIME as well. And you don't see ME posting "oh noes QQ my precious pvp skill got nerfed, how am I to play profession X again QQ" all the friggin' time, now do you?
kthxbye.

Summary: More crying over cracked armor added to a skill. If you love it so much that your prepared to write an essay about it then continue to use it, 10 seconds of cracked armor isn't the end of the world.

I think quickshot needs another bit of fine tuning before we can call it fixed. Earlier I ran a few builds using needle as a dmg buff along other attacks and while it didn't cut off other skills very long, its at the point where I question if the other is still worthy of being an elite.

But it is a pain when you're running heroes with foul feast/draw conditions who will continually waste time and energy removing cracked armor. I don't see why a pve player would or should stop qqing when a pvp update nerfs a skill that could've been split.

It hardly ever was in the first place, which is why no one ever used it. Now if you go back a few years, it used to let you have more than one arrow in the air at the same time, which is where it got its name from. Now Anet could just rename it to "Sorta Quick Shot."

I'm now reading the 2 sec recharge of every skill after using it is a bug. Sheesh and you'd think it was actually there as a feature!? O_o

time to /glare with angry fiery eyes at the test krewe. DO A BETTER JOB.

that is why I ask

I don't understand this logic. Can you explain it a little better?

Yeah Test Krewe, even though you're the Test Krewe and don't actually have any power at making ArenaNet do anything and can only offer input they can ignore on a whim, and even though this was the best PvP update in a long while, do a better job.

Thanks.

Seriously: that skill was not great to begin with. It was basically "snowflake" build skill, anyone trully concerned with power and pew pew (and/or support) output of their paragon used something else.

Soldiers fury is skill that you use because you like it, it is not crutch that stands between victory and defeat or anything. If you won before, you will keep winning. If you were loosing before, you will keep loosing.

Simply, there is no reason to qq about its nerf: If you like it, keep using it, if not, you have hundreds of skills to pick from.

(And seriously, if you have hero with draw conditions /facepalm. If you have fould feast, shouldn't you be happy about new condition you can spread to enemies?)

That makes sense..sort of. One of the best IAS in the game isn't that good anymore, because the AI is stupid. Besides, Foul Fest is made for skills like that. Infinite energy FTW.

to begin with i am a noob considering pvp, i have never gvged for real and have only r-1 in hero so do not flame me because i am a newbie in pvp that mostly do jq, ra and fa!)

i have always played my ranger and it is my main no matter what.
as i told you i dont have any idea how op rangers where as spikers in gvg, but as ranger in general it is 6 skills cut in stone for the common ranger (you know which (poison+interrupt)).

its pretty nice and balanced considered that if you remove the interrupts you are worthless as long as they got any kind of self heal and if you remove poison you dont do any dammage either.

but you get bored on it and it takes quite a long time before your target actually die and as long as they got a monk your not worth a penny since you can only interrupt their less than 1 sec cast heals if spamming random.

i found it FUN to use quickshot (YES!! blaspemy!) + "insert quick attacks names here" + conjure + kindle and pew pew all those blasted necro capper at jq, it made you do dammage, not a pressure with is griefing on both sides.

the problem came in gvg i suppose with organized teams + vent and the such.

yeah bows a ranged but they are kinda easy to dodge for those angry at the range.

but now it dosnt matter since i got my strike as one/poison/interrupt/crossfire etc build to do something funny with my pets

LMAO, dont kid yourself, If Anet kepts its focus on GW Being a PvP game with a pve training content, then GW would have become a better PvP game.

Now because Anet messed up we have a game that has a okay PvE and an okay PvP.

If GW kepts its PvP roots then the PvE players would have left this game and then the game would have the same split in PvE and PvP players but the PvP'ers would be in the majority,The only reasons PvE is in the majority now is because most of the PvP players have left and moved on to better games.You also cant keep PvP players playing just with shiny stuff, PvE players have no problem playing just for shiny stuff.

I actually quite agree with the Developers and what they say in the Update Notes:

I never noticed this before, but Soldier's Fury was one of the few IAS skills that didn't have a significant drawback (no, being under the effect of a shout or chant IS NOT, expecially on primary Paragons) and was also fully mantainable even at 0 Leadership.

Yup, Soldier's Fury was a GREAT elite before. Now it's a bit less inviting, but its strong point are still there. It might look like an harsh nerf, but all it did was to put this skill more in line with similar skills in the game, while forcing players to pick a role: defense or offense.

I'm all for changes that induce reasoned play. Sorry if you ever tought that doubling your adrenaline gain and increasing your DPS while retaining all of your defense capabilities was absolutely ok for a single skill. Talk about bar compression...
This change has actually NO impact on Paragons in PvE. Even if it has for anyone, well, Remedy Signet is there for a reason. Not to mention Protective Spirit.

^^I like you, and yeah I agree with the devs, if anything this is actually a buff tho in PvE because you should probably have Foul Feast in your build somewhere which gives you additional energy fuel and more conditions to spread to the enemies. <_<

Good point! Since a year or 2 it is Anet's policy to split skills which don't affect PvE much, but need balancing for PvP. But the test krew -correct me if I am wrong- is focused on testing PvP solutions. We need another platform to monitor if the solutions suggested also affect PvE (from Pug and causual gamer to harcore players). Or keep it simple and split the skills without PvE feedback. Unless there was a change in policy to split skills, which I sincerely hope is not true.

Test Krewe does PvE too, iirc.

Skills that NEED nerfing should be nerfed. A lot of people seem to think PvErs are complaining that the skill nerfs make the game harder. (C.f. :but you stil haf shadaow farm loololoolol"). The truth is, the skill nerfs only make PvE EASIER. Nerfing skills only E uses is a good way to constrain P to the same builds that are already meta.


I shouldn't have to suffer bad updates because of your shortcomings.

What would be awesome is if they went back and reviewed every single skill update from before the skill split.

Though they can't give us one skill update in 5 months, so I seriously doubt that'd ever happen.

The game has both PvP and PvE, and it was originally intended for people to play both. People who play all of the game - and, believe it or not, there are a lot of us - shouldn't have to suffer because you're married to one form of it alone, particularly when a nerf of a particular skill has such a negligible effect on general PvE. There was literally one skill in this update that you can make a case for a PvP/PvE split, and that's only because the hero AI won't stop taking cracked armor off of paragons. And yet, that hasn't stopped every decent imbagon from running Aggressive Refrain, even with hero healers, because para IAS skills are just that good in PvE. Unremovable + basically free = what the heck are you complaining about?

To say that it's a "shortcoming" to not want to check every goddamn skill on my bar every time I switch from PvP to PvE is asinine, btw. It would be a huge pain in the arse for anyone who plays both modes; it's already getting tedious with all the skill splits, particularly on some professions (like ranger) where it seems half the decent skills require splits in order to not be OP-ed in PvP. To extend that to every skill for no reason other than because they can screws over the large segment of the population that does play both PvP and PvE, and for what? When is the last time (since they started splitting skills) that they really killed a skill for PvE just because they didn't want to split it? Note that "kill" does not mean "nerf"; skills can be OP-ed in PvE too, and most of the time if it needs a nerf in one mode, it could do with one in another.

This is everything but true. Assuming no monster is broken by a skill nerf (For example if a monster has WoH as a self heal, and then they make it other Ally only again, obviously that monster will become f*ck easy to kill) every nerf in PvE land essentially makes the game harder.

This however is A GOOD THING. PvE'ers have become so lazy, PvP'ers aswell, they "forgot" that paying attention in PvE can ALSO increase your chances of winning, whereas right now, you simply have to roll your head over the keyboard.

I've actually seen people say: "Don't nerf farming builds, because then Elite Areas will become impossible" with the meaning of impossible here being: they'll simply do too much damage to your team.

I'm really sorry, but if people are too stupid to 1) Send in a high armor target to initially lock the mob, 2) then follow that mob and PROT PEOPLE they go for (NOT REDBARRING IT) 3) kill that mob, then they don't even deserve skill updates.

Right now, there is nothing left of the original gameplan, which was to have people start out in PvE, then play through it, learning the mechanics, and eventually venturing into PvP.
All these autopilot builds took away the need for people to actually "learn to play the game", because they could just wiki a farm build, and brainless spam that all day and night.

So to a certain extend, the slacking attitude in PvE affected PvP for the worse aswell. I remember in the old days (here we go again), when new people joined HA, there was no such thing as people bitching about rank discrimination. Instead, people manned up, and formed their own groups to the best of their abilities.

Rite now, you have some retarded PvE'er complaining every second day "I CANT PLAY CUZ OF RANK DISCRIMINATION IN HA QQ" instead of simply forming up their own team. People stopped learning to play the game, but instead how to get carried by a farming build and/or PvX wiki.

And the same initial problem exists in PvP aswell, because the same people who didn't learn anything in PvE, yet ventured into PvP were allowed to run redicilously easy farm builds (Sway, IWAY, SFspam, etc) so they now reached the end-game, and succesfully "beaten" it (By getting R8+) yet still suck at this game. *I talked to an R10 IWAY'er yesterday who was argueing that the +5 HP mod was better than a Stonefist Insignia on a warrior o.0*

Bullshit.

Desolation vanquishes just got a ton easier.

Remeber those Cavaliers? Guess what they use besides two reses: yep, Soldiers Fury. And spamable GFTE. Now they essentially have permanent cracled armor, which means that they take bullshitton damage more. It even includes self-inflicked ai monk condition removal overload people qq about.

Mobs do not change their build when nerf lands. They will keep on using nerfed version even when players will move on something else. Similary, mobs will not take advantage of buffs unless they are lucky enough to already use buffed skills, because again, mobs will not change build to take advantage of buffs. Players, on the other hand, will.

Mobs can only ever get weaker when compared to players.

I will repeat for clarity: no pvp based ballance will ever make pve harder but it will instead make it easier.