Preliminary Skill Update Notes: Feb 19

It's safe to say the community is filled with morons. As a Paragon main I would much rather have my heroes waste all their energy removing CA than having -40 armor. If I die, my heroes will screw everything up. If Anet knew how to fix the heroes to make them stop being stupid, this wouldn't be an issue.

I'm sick of Anet nerfing Dervs and Paragons to no end. They always make little comments with the updates claiming it's balancing and talking as if they know what they're doing but they obviously have no clue.

Paragons have ONE build for PvE and Dervs are not even taken into parties for elite areas. Both professions have 80% USELESS elites and you do nothing about it. Get your acts together and stop pretending you see nothing wrong.

More people should listen to this guy. It's a surprise Arenanet hasn't hired him as head balancer.

Obviously, lawl, I threw it together for the heck of it. Really Mesmer hero AI is only really suited for inturrupts or some other thing their AI makes incredibly easy to do. I run like backfire, empathy, res chant, ether feast, [broken pve skills] and whatever I feel like at the time. And don't say broken PvE skills are the only way Mesmers are effective, because just about every profession is more effective with the broken pve skills, mesmers are just very good at spamming them.

How often are you really getting cracked armor on you in PvE?

I use this build on my Mes, which work fine in nearly all HM areas I do.

OQREAckTeDlTZTeDYAyCoLWLWHA

Induces a large aoe cripple, weakness, daze, deep wound, bleeding, disease and potential cracked armor (potential could be changed to definite by the change of one skill). I'm looking forward to the Oppressive Gaze update for an added possibility of poison to the mix.

What irritates me? Mesmers get no love. Dervs get no love, for Para's they go one further. More I look at it, more the new Para nerf makes less sense to me. It is a nerf. There's no 2 ways around it. I had no drama whatsoever with AR causing cracked. Foul Feast+Plague Sending on one or more of my heroes meant that it almost guaranteed CA on most mobs, most of the time. Now they'd take that away from me and add a 20al penalty that can't be removed, and take away the condition I happily used to my advantage as often as possible. Smart move, can't help but wonder if it was planned, to remove just a little more of a Necro Heroteams grunt.

Mesmers, well, I've said over and over and over and over and over, ad nauseum. Give back VoR. That's a start. Then we can talk about debreaking the rest of it. Shit's me to tears that if other class users make a point, it's kewllll. If Mes users make a point, it's instantly QQ. Bullshit! Here in Australia, we believe in this thing called "A fair go".

Mesmers aren't getting a fair go: Give us goddamn VoR and at least some of our grunt back.

Dervishes aren't getting a fair go: Teach 'em how to use their scythe as well as a warrior or sin, and make their primary have a point beyond Avatar's and minimal e/hp gain.

Para's aren't getting a fair go: Nerfing an already nerfed skill that basically guarantees that Para's will never see the sunny side of Squishy Armor, and taking away a condition that could be leeched and spammed, downright stupid. Completely un-thought out move, and a sure sign that certain ppz with the Powah! have NFI what they're doing.

N-F-I

Rit's really need buffing, so do Necro's and Wars.. /facepalm

I hope SoS will be moved to spawning power. I dont even care about the other updates if that happens.

That's because elite where not designed with Paragons and Dervishs in mind same with the sins and rits.

I hate to sound negative with all the work that went into areas, but it's the truth. FoW and UW always had the holy trinity w/ necro's and rangers and some times the mesmers but that was mainly with guild runs. It's the same with urgo's & deep. And well DoA which should have been the home of para & dervs where rejected.

As far as the skill update goes I really thought the list would be longer due to the fact that it's months late. But then again I've gotten used to all of it.

I am just kinda holding out for GW2 info which is lacking.

I still don't understand this mentality. People admit they're underdelivering in GW1...so we give them a new toy to screw up every which way and hope they'll put adequate time into skill balance this go around?

I mean...the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior...

George Bush Jr. was elected twice.

You learn when you succeed, and when you fail.

Sometimes this game has gotten better, and sometimes it has gotten worse. Some of its errors were new ideas that didn't work out, others were ancient relics that led this game astray long ago. Heck, four, almost five years ago, they thought PvE was an introduction to PvP content. That alone should tell you how much has been learned over time.

It might be hopeless optimism, but I think Anet has learned a few things about gaming in this past half-decade. Things like keeping the economy under control with decent gold sinks and restraint to prevent massive wealth inflation. Or providing late game content that is not PvP based. Or creating incentives and rewards for doing all sorts of actions in little niches of the game. Or trying to make sure every class is viable in PvP and PvE alike, and not letting one hurt the other. That doesn't mean they can fix all the problems we have right now, but it might mean a clean slate will see massive improvement.

It's important to recognize that a lot of GW's flaws were entrenched in the system long ago, and that it didn't all come crashing down because of later events. Sure, nostalgia may declare otherwise, but there were quite a few flaws in the original game, and many of them have actually gotten better. Others that DID come from later events were usually slapped down, although, in all fairness, some remain.

These days, most of the problems can be summed up in a few short complaints: 1) There are still balance problems (this thread), 2) there's too much wealth and not enough to spend it on, thus the market is wonky, and 3) not enough new stuff to do, because this game is almost five years old.

GW2 promises less skills (hopefully better for balance) and no new classes (thank Dwayna), a brand new economy no longer inflated like a Cobalt Shrieker's sack, and plenty of new things to do. On the whole, I'd say that's worth a little bit of optimism.

So in April we will get 10 skills updated, one for each class, woohoo.


Well I have to be honest, some of the changes sound nice, but I am very disappointed, You don't want to kill SF, so to me it sounds like SF is gonna be around mostly unchanged for a long while after this update, shame on you Anet, you should have killed this skill a long time ago, even when you pushed the "nerf" back time and time again with excuses , the players have showed you that they do NOT want a skill like this in Guild Wars.


You have gotten half a year to give us a decent update and this is what you come up with....you have even blamed the TK for your lack of effort, that is very evil, we have found out that the TK has ZERO powers and are basically unused and useless to you.It was a great effort to give the community a pseudo voice, but it turn out you didn't really care or even bothered.

This way of handling things gives a very good view of how you are going to handle GW2 especially when you decide to make GW3.

I have for the most part have quit Guild Wars.
I will probably come back for 2 days after the update and play with hammer a bit, after that I doubt Anet will be able to pull me back to their game, as the update after that will most likely take the exact same route as this one did.

I didn't even get my hats at the redux (didn't get them the first time around) shows you how much I don't care for Guild Wars anymore.
Its a very sad state that this once great game has come to.

Don't kid yourself.I will be standing in line to get GW2 like all the other suckers when it is released, that is if i haven't started playing TERA by then.

Anet change your ways or otherwise the shininess and niche of guild wars will eventually wear off and the players will find new shiny stuff with other companies which will think of their players as current customers also and not only as future ones.

To borrow from John McEnroe: you cannot be serious.

Absolutely true. It took players a long time to identify the worst flaws and exploit them to the hilt.

Still, there were two unforgivable sins that were not original. The devs succumbed to the poison of power creep in order to sell copies of Factions, Nightfall and EotN, and the devs made some egregious errors in their efforts to fix the critical mechanics that players eventually learned were decisive.

Fro the record, AR/ SF change was most definitly a buff. no two ways around it. As a paragon, you by all means should be playing with paragon heroes most of the time, because the synergy between paragons is obvious. With that, the ammount of shouts flying around was enough to create a literal nightmare for H/H. Not even touching on the energy issues that other people have, the fact that you're getting cracked armor reapplied so often completely throws AI's prioritizing out of wack. I mean, try going up against enemies with Bsurge and having your amazing foul feast necro repeatedly remove your cracked armor when your frontliners are swinging wildly into the air hitting nothing.

I don't know where people are getting CA + -20 health. The fact that your a backline character with a shield and 80 armor naturally is enough to trump the measily -20 AL penalty on it.

I mean, that's how it was before

At any rate, the other changes are pretty ridiculous. Hammer looks interesting now, but that's the -only- change that seems to succeed even remotely at what it was doing.

Rit changes are random, and probably not needed. all the same, most of the changes seem better for N/Rts. Feels bad to see Ritual Lord on the line to get changed. It still worked very well with defensive spirits. As good as SoS was/is, though, it needed the nerf, and frankly should be moved to Spawning, and since Ritual Lord will be changed, maybe switch with it.

Tactics still seems to suck, but perhaps opens up more solo/farming opportunities with Shield Stance and the like. Soldier's Stance looks absolutely ridiculous as well. Auspicious still sucks, but might be a bit more viable if the duration was shorter. "Fear Me!" looks pretty ridiculous, considering Scythe Warriors are powerful enough...

Blood still sucks with the exception of a few skills changes there. Ravenous Gaze still sucks. I assume they were trying to push it to a more "self heal for sac heavy builds" state, but in PvE that's not really needed, as you should be healed anyway, and 60 damage in nearby AoE isn't too impressive. I actually lol'd reading the 'dramatic' change for barbed signet. oh no, irremovable bleeding in PvE, whatever shall we do. Blood Bond looks ridiculous, and it + Vigorous Spirit makes for some hefty pressure healing for melee. Demonic Flesh looks good for melee farmers. Mark of Fury would look good if not for the very, very short duration.

I'm actually a bit agitated they went back and reverted Steelfang, or plan to. Have they forgot why they they nerfed it to begin with?

Mesmer build for hero? It depends on what I am trying to accomplish, mesmers in PvE can counter anything. You just have to know what you are up against.

Now if you are expecting a Mesmer to heal or blow sh!t up by spamming skills, you are picking the wrong class.

Notice that I didn't say they have actually acted upon what they have learned.

Talking like Anet now are we? Coming up with generalized, vague comments without anything to back yourself up. If you're so high and mighty above the rest of us retards, then please enlighten us on how exactly you would make a good mesmer build that "isn't complete shit".

If you haven't noticed, there's a whole freaking profession out there, not just a few attribute lines, that's been sucking in PvE for 5 years. If all you could think of was buff other lines/professions that don't need the desperate/urgent attention that the mesmer needs, then I don't know what to say about your priorities. It's perfectly understandable that you can't tackle everything in one update (even if that update did take almost half a year), but it's not acceptable to leave glaringly obvious issues like the mesmer even further behind everyone else without even any sort of explanation or reassurance that they will be looked at anytime soon.

Again, if you're so awesome at running uber builds in high end PvE, then please enlighten the rest of us how you would steamroll through elite areas with a mesmer playing a crucial role, and then we (or at least I) will stop whining about it once and for all. Keep in mind that it has to be able to do mesmer stuff in the class' current condition (in other words, do what the class was supposed to do and use your own attributes/skills) and not through abusing broken PvE skills.

No problem, no problem. One can't expect people to know things they have never been told about. And english...Well, you can never truly learn it; only memorize it. It's way too RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up to ever be "learned".

The movement penalty of Flail is the one rationalization I use to keep myself sticking with my dervish. But in a real battle, if the party is doing it's job correctly, the monsters should not be running from you, which would make the movement penalty of Flail meaningless.

Actually, I don't use the MoD for this stuff, because of the variables of randomness (damage ranges on weapons and crits) and player skill (not to mention that he is lvl 20 and has 60 AL; which makes him useless for testing how something will affect a lvl 30 monster). For these reasons, manual calculations using the averages of damage ranges and crit rates is more meaningful, because it tells you what the damage is that one can expect on average. This is possible because we know how the game calculates damage (it's on the wiki under "damage calculation").

Also, just to clarify: you don't get automatic crits on moving foes; you get them on moving foes who have their back to you.

You want to steamroll through elite areas with a Mesmer playing a crucial role?

i no, rite? Apparently that must be the Live Team/Test Krewe's (i don't know) reasoning as to why there are no mesmer changes, because "mesmers are fine in PvE". And "it's not that the class sucks, it's the players that suck in using the class".

EDIT@ below: I meant how would you have a mesmer contribute as significantly as, say a necro or rit in helping your team steamroll through elite areas while still playing like a mesmer and not through abusing broken PvE skills/secondaries.

Actually, I think you've just proven the mesmer is balanced, mesmers can't steamroll elite areas, really, nothing should be able to steamroll elite areas.

we're not talking about heroes.

not even steamroll. just play at least one seemingly, noticeably useful role in the group. even paras have the imbagon that greatly reduces all incoming damage, even eles can abuse er to heal or could abuse of to tank or can use wards and aoe damaging snares for general support. now, something for mesmers, please.


edit, pasting Shriketalon's from another thread as probably it won't be seen:

There's no secret to it, you play it as you'd play any other profession. If you're trying to do damage, you take big damage skills. If you need to shut down an annoying enemy, you take a skill to do that. Cast and forget hexes like VoR, empathy and backfire can do good damage to off targets, killing annoying enemies and forcing enemy healers to heal more.

And as far as I remember, we mainly used esurge and VoR (pre nerf) in balanced builds without any 'main tanks'. I'm sure we've even screwed around with other elites too with no problems. Sure, it may not be as powerful as x, but that doesn't mean it's terrible.

Energy surge, cry of pain, empathy, backfire, rest are optional depending on what you're doing, really. Is it the best? No. Is it complete shit? Absolutely not.

You want another decent build that's pretty fun? this one.

PvE is such a joke that you can take random skills and put them on your bar and be decent at whatever you're doing.

Again, mesmers don't absolutely suck in PvE. They're not the best for PvE, but that doesn't mean they're complete shit. The priories for PvE are being dealt with in this update (aka SF), they revamped a profession, and they revamped 3 attribute lines to be at least decent and different. For mesmers to be considered viable and good to the community, they need a huge revamp. If they got that revamp, I highly doubt they would have reworked ritualists and the other few attribute lines, or they would have and taken longer. Instead of tackling a huge task, they tackled minor ones in more quantity. In the stale state of PvE, I'd rather see some attribute lines from multiple professions reworked rather than just one profession. I can understand why you're angry, but understand that fixing multiple smaller problems > fixing one big problem for this update.

Mesmers can't steamroll through elite areas, which is how it should be. Now, it's not as easy as just buffing mesmer skills and moving along. If you just give mesmers some overpowered skills then they're going to be superior to other professions, which is exactly what you don't want. You need to give it a lot of thought and testing to pull it off without screwing shit up. That's why they didn't rework mesmers this update, they didn't have the time.

does anyone know anything about mesmers here? mesmer "do" play a crucial role in PVE in all the teams that i play in with my mesmer friend. a mesmer can greatly exploit AI using Empathy and Backfire... if you haven;t heared, monster AI will wand themselves and cast themselves to death under backfire and empathy.

ever heard of diversion? signet of humility? how about tease?

i mean, mesmer heros are pro at interrupts, but even so, my friend can interrupt just as good as any dom mesmer in HA or GvG (well, maybe not as "good" just good enough for PVE).

i beleive the principles of a mesmer is in a different league to an ele or paragon. but in many varieties of cases, bringing the right skills for the right kind of shutdown is what a mesmer excels at. It helps the team steamroll, it just goes unnoticed a lot of the time. without tease or the crucial interrupt... there are many times we would be dead.

btw... paragons are pretty useless without their imbagon PVE skill abuse.

@Trinity: so bring your friend here, please. we're tired of people talking crap while NOT playing mesmers themselves.

i still suggest to rework wiki about the mesmer, warn newcomers beforehand that it's certainly not a pve class.

First the problem was heroes are going to spend all their energy removing cracked armor, now apparently heroes aren't going to do shit and leave you with -40? Make up your minds.

wiki is user edited, do it yourself.

Genius. pure. genius.

Few notes from me:

* Yeti smash chance is a nerf in my eyes, loose all adrenaline will kill its usefulness and it is actually being used nowadays ...
* DBS buff is way too strong.

* Soul Twisting is important gimmick skill ...

* With exception of Deflect arrows, Charge, None Shall Pass tactics buffs are stupid. They have one think in common: They are flat "lets add imba" buff that require little skill to take advantage off, buttonsmashing is enough to get most of them.

* Focus on making defensive stances more .... defensive is worrying.

* On the other hand, blood buffs are fairly decent, however Demonic Flesh change is worrying and many skills could have been left alone as buff to them is unnecesary (Blood Renewal or Life Siphon). At least you have to think about team compostition and other skills you use to take advange of more interesting buffs.

* New focus on ritualist hexing is interesting, but why combine it with direct damage buffs?

* AR/SF change is welcome.

It is not fun when you loose control of you character and can just watch ai take over. It is not fun to have friendly fire. It is fine when dealing with AI, but ai is not the only thing those skills would be used on ...

That prevents any interesting mesmer skills from happening.

Remember Madness Darts from Jokanur Diggings? They cause a minor amount of degen, but more importantly, send your screen into a psychotic fit. And they are technically a skill, an Environmental Skill with normal code. Likewise, AI-targeting skills (panic is an easy one, since only titan mesmer bosses use it, thus it doesn't hurt balance) could induce post-processing effects along with their debuff to make players act....shall we say "wonky", with no control locks needed.

So how and why are the other professions continuing to get power creep while others aren't?

Soldier fury, and aggressive refrain got hitted pretty hard aready with cons.
Why someone need to waste a skillslot when you can gobble down a candy?

the only important role that mesmer has in pve atm is to be the "VoR" Caller in DoA, but after the nerf of SF i'll be sure that some kind of...
tank --> aggro --> freeze/hex --> spike

will happens almost in all elite areas... so at least 1 spot for mesmer there will be everywhere, IMHO

btw also other classes got problems... look at eles, warriors and sins (well sins are gonna be fixed soon)

they are supposed to be:
ele = nuker,
warrior = tank,
sin = meat for MM

what we have?
sin = tank, runner, spiker, hexer, ecc ecc ecc
warrior = spiker? (100b)
ele = tank? (OF tank), support? (emo bonder)

and u still care about the mesmer? a char who should do... what? i'd say main classes needs a lil fix first...

This makes no sense at all dude. This is a "one big problem" fix update , SF , OF and 600/smite remember ? not multiple ones. I believe that is the cause why they didnt rework D , P , R and Mes PvE versions of some skills. Split is annoying but for god sake , at least Mes and D really need it , its hell obvious.

Once again , no one is asking for omgwtfpwn 3 button bar with ultraoverpowered skills for those classes but some recharges and effects NEED to be shortened/added to them . Even a half blind monkey would see it .... lets hope they do somethin in ..... 4 months ? lol .

I don't think it is a joke at all. I think it was well thought out to be able to do this for those that don't spend their lives playing this game. It makes it easy and simple to choose a build an individual enjoys without the no lifers screwing the game up for them by screaming balance balance balance all the time. I don't mind things being out of balance like this what I do mind is builds that can't be touched or so easy a cave man could play it namely SF, Obsi and 600 smite and even 55 monks. Get rid of the gimmick builds that have near 100% invulnerability at the least. Doesn't mean everything has to be balance though because they get rid of the easy elite farming builds.

AI will NOT cast themselves to death with backfire(if their health is low they stop casting). Also, Empathy will sometimes stop monsters from attacking.

have you ever tried diversion in pve? Um, yeaha... shutdown is not an option in pve whrer your mobbed by crap monsters.

--the best build for a PvE Mesmer is AP with PvE skills.

It's "not terrible"; but, where are the Mesmer skills in that bar?

It's not about about steamrolling pve for mesmers, it's just that in HM and high end pve mesmers skills are such subpar, beacuse they cost too much energy or have to long reacharge or most often both, that's why best mesmer elite for now is AP. So pve/pvp split for mesmers skills is necessery, lowering energy cost and reacharge wouln't make mesmers skill op or class to be really viable but at least make playing them more pleasing and meaningful.

I don't think any class/profession should be able to steamroll any area lol, I also don't think mesmer are useless, its the whole gw community's idea of the mesmer that need to be change, because mesmer are very useful. I think they have sort of a passive role that always go unnoticed, even when they are doing their parts you wouldn't notice it. off couse some rework would be nice but mesmer are not as useless as you put it.

i agree! crazy ness!!!

We could put it this way: Power of a mesmer build is proportional to the number of non-mesmer skills in it

Ok so you're basically saying that Mesmer is OK because it's inferior to everyone else, in everything it does.


I agree with you that mesmer isn't worthless, but this isn't a challenge thread but a skill balance thread. When something is inferior to everything else, then as far as skill balancing goes - 'crap' is the right word. Moreover, since most people play this game with heroes, those who use 2 mesmer heroes over 2 necro heroes will progress.. mmm 2x slower (I don't think im exaggerating here). Sorry but, word 'crap' gets more meaning here.

It's interesting how in collective consciousness of GW playerbase it's ok if any other class is superior at one point in time... but the mesmer. In several years of gw pve, why shouldnt there be a time when mesmer will be slightly superior to everyone else?

Arkantos, I think your mesmer should cast Shatter Delusions on you.

1. Several years is enough time
2. You're deluded when you think that ANet is interested in total balance. Do you think when they buffed SF that they thought this skill would be balanced? Hands up who instantly saw it that this skill would be blatantly overpowered.
3. Do you really think ANet accidently left SF untouched for such a long time.. while few mesmer skills were nerfed down (de-buffed) very fast?


Do I want balanced game? Yes. But that is not the goal of Anet. Since it's not, why should mesmer never get mesmer-only fast-casting bound super-overpowered skill? Would that improve the game? It would for me. If everyone else can have OP stuff, why should mesmers be sacrificed for holy balance? I'm nobody's bitc*.


LMAO

I really laughed on this one, ty. In one single sentence you captured what's wrong with the mentality of people regarding the mesmer class

Its incredible how being strong or even overpowered is acceptable in collective consciousness, but mesmers have to be on the level of "can do Northern Wall? Ok class is good".

Oh we are. We should. Do you know why? Everyone has heroes, not everyone has mesmer. Thanks to heroes you can see how hypocritical some of the people here are. Just check who uses which heroes, it shows the TRUE opinion best. In this forum, they will want mesmer to be their bitc*, but in the game, where it matters, they will use Rt's and necro, and paragons and what not. And guess what classes are getting buffed the most... Rt's and Necro oh yes.

What do you think Test Krewe members use in PvE? Warriors, Rts and Necros, or Mesmers? Right!