Preliminary Skill Update Notes: Feb 19

before you'd cast them - or had them recharged - most mobs would have died. i've tried the conundrum + technobabble + interrupts. it's still 1 success out of 7-10 tries (including wasting time to cast a hex on a mob that dies before i can try to interrupt it, etc).
casting them on bosses, that are able to sustain more damage - and 1/2 hex time on bosses, 1/2 cast time of their spells - is fruitless as well.
don't forget that the more interrupt-helping skills you get into your build, the less interrupts and e-management you can use. and with those recharges (30s on leech signet, for example) it may be tricky.

you don't even attempt to play an interrupter in pve, while i have tried to run various possibilities to get at least one viable. i don't blame you for not trying it yourself, but please don't think that actual mesmers are idiots and haven't tried the obvious.

Wow a great new skill for the Mesmer..

"Brainfart"

So you bring 2-3 skills to help your disrupting. 1 hard rez, because mes + fc = lolrotfl fast rez. That leaves you what, 2-3 interrupts and MAYBE one utility skill?

Wouldn't bringing more damage be a lot more efficient for your team?

can we talk about how awesome Rt's are now for a bit?

i'll try to gather all buff/changes ideas i can find on the weekend and post them here or in the other thread, in one massive post as i've done with the mesmer issues. the goal is to finally show that there were loads of ideas given by the playerbase itself, that some (well, most) of them are not overpowered and don't require redesigning the whole game. i'll try to get more ideas myself by that time.
for someone who actually reads mesmery threads here and thinks about the propositions made in them, the above is really clear already.

Yeah but even useful interupt like Cry of Frustration has 15s recharge so taking it without AP is meh...

Cry is AoE, which stops a mob from casting at that time. It's fine the way it is.

it would be awesome if you actually could use it decently in hm.
if it's that hard to time it right - sometimes it's just pure luck to hit right milisecond - the recharge time is too long.

Yeah, once in 15 seconds ( without AP),big deal, better bring maelstorm. CryoF is good in this way that for example when in Duncan HM mobs are spaming skills left and right and you manage to catch them with CryoF you feel like you actually made a contribution - but once in 15 seconds...

On a non-mesmer related note...

You know what would be nice? If Necromancers were still not better at being rits than rits, and if monks healed better than eles.

It would be interesting, for example, if soul reaping's "gain energy 3 times in 15 seconds" were changed so that every time you use a non-necromancer spell, it counts as one of those 3 pips. It would mean normal necromancers were unaffected, and you could still employ a few non-necro skills without trouble, but you couldn't spam the spells of another profession with an infinite energy pool, thus doing their job better. Likewise, I would rather enjoy seeing Ether Renewal only work on elementalist skills to prevent them from being healing gods, and in turn, give the eles more ways to get around armor.

Which causes exhaustion (25 points), has a small AoE, and scatters mobs.

Cry is a great skill, though it's very limited for players that don't have bot-like reflexes in HM.

Tbh, that's why everyone will just run hammer wars with Dwarven Battle Stance, Whirlwind Attack, Crude Swing, etc. and interrupt everyone around them!

Necros are already paying for some of their skills with life sacrifice, so make more necro skills require life saccing (and in return lowering their cost) and then charge SR to gain life instead of energy.
There is really no reason whatsoever for the necro to be be a caster class where the player does not ever have to learn how to manage his energy.

admittedly I play more 4 vs 4 and not 8 vs 8, but at least you bring some arguments.
It's one of these things where skills take on a very different form depending on whether it's PvE or different types of PvP. This has always been an issue in GW with respect to balancing.
Even if I just hear terms like hexway it already gives me an idea that something's not right. It's part of the dual class problem as well. The fact that VoR can be used well by non mesmer primaries adds to this issue.

I suppose this isn't really going to be resolved in GW. What's fine in PvE obviously doesn't have to be fine in PvP but also within PvP it depends on what type of PvP. Whether it's RA, Codex, GvG etc skills are all going to have a different place and effect. Not an easy balancing act and perhaps the toughest to do when it comes to the Mesmer.

Anet probably do their best but I don't think they can really fix this. For PvE the mesmer can be very useful but doesn't quite have that punch it would need and when you give it that extra punch it automatically becomes too much for certain PvP types. Interesting problem, but again I don't really know if it's fixable.

i like you more as this thread evolves.

it's the same problem as with dervishes - the class is not the most broken and useless in game. their main problem is that sins and wars are much better with their own weapon than they are.


i rather have expensive and exhaustion-causing interrupt that has aoe over-time interruption effect than any direct interruption.
something from raw experience: since hexes and enchants don't work at mallyx, the group had to rely on indirect ways of protection. since i had no para char back then, just a mesmer+rit+6 heroes, i've set up some para protection on heroes, spirits on a hero, a healing monk hero, etc etc.
i was left with my mesmer. since i couldn't deal damage, as i'm not a damaging class and all that crap, i've decided to go prot. i took lb's gaze and signet of course, took evsoc, and tried to play with domination/inspiration interrupts. even though i was able to use ~60-70% of them (i've been playing that mesmer for over a year and we've tried mallyx in normal mode), the recharge times and only one aoe-interrupt made my build useless.
so i went /e, took maelstrom, meteor, some glyphs and ele wards, and i was able to keep the party at high protection AND keep monsters - at least casters - useless for a longer while. turned out that going secondary on another class is a better option than playing my primairy with what it was designed for.


hint: rits have 32 pve/pvp skill splits.

The only people that run VoR do it on a mesmer, not quite sure where you got this idea from.

Better late than never. I've had a looong week, so I'm just now able to weigh in.

• Shadow Form and Invulnerability
  • Shadow Form. Yes, nerf it.
  • "We can't nerf SF unless we nerf all invinci-builds." SF is far worse than the others. As soon as it became apparent that this update was going to go over deadline, you should have nerfed SF in a 1-shot balance. The migration wouldn't have been that bad before you got around to the main balance. Anywho, it's far too late to matter now.
  • Obsidian Flesh Not needed. The movement speed penalty is more than enough to prevent it from being used in a "speed clear." Nerfing this skill goes beyond nerfing just speed clears and hits hardest on farming, tank-n-spank playstyle, and UW balanced clears.
    [edit: Forgot that movement penalty can be canceled with consumables. Suggestion: Add "and you gain no benefit from faster movement speed effects."]
  • 600/smite. I've said this before, but it bears repeating in big red letters: DO NOT NERF PROT SPIRIT OR SPIRIT BOND. These skills are too important to every aspect of legitimate play to mess with. It would be OK to nerf the smite half of 600/smite into the ground. It would also be OK to nerf SoA or to fix its order of application so that you can't trigger BalthSpirit/EBond or Spirit Bond off a hit that's reduced to zero, or both. Just keep your hands off PS and SB.
  • Four Horsemen. My impression is that you have not been paying attention to the fact that this update might be making what is already one of the hardest quests in the game even harder. You are nerfing the 3 best options for dealing with this quest --SoS, SF, and OF -- all at the same time. I really hope a good SoS rit will still be able to hold one side. If not, you're forcing people into (a) wasting 2 whole builds so that you can split 5-2-1 and maintain Spellbreaker on a tank, (b) splitting 4-4 and subjecting both healers to facing dual Diversion bosses solo, (c) fighting at the reaper with 4 of those damned skellies, or (d) coming up with a heretofore unknown way to hold one side. If you're going to remove most or all of the viable options for beating this quest, please at least make sure to change the quest in the same update.
• Hammer Mastery in PvE
  • Generally. Hammer didn't need a PvE buff, and these changes appear to do nothing to shake up the best builds within hammer or the appeal of hammer as compared to other weapon choices. At most, there's some incremental improvements.
  • Auspicious Blow. If hammer warriors need energy, it is only as the result of this update converting so many of their skills to energy-based.
  • Backbreaker. Still not worth using over Earthshaker in PvE. Opens up danagerous combo possibilities in PvP.
  • Crude Swing. Good change to a skill that's actually used.
  • Forceful Blow. Looks like it's not buffed enough to see play. Basically a stronger version of Cleave at a higher cost, plus some questionable utility features.
  • Staggering Blow. Fixed-activation-time attack skills are always at least promising. The weakness isn't terribly impressive, since hammer's weakness-based combos aren't that impressive, and weakness is so easy to get from other sources on the team.
  • Belly Smash. Still worthless. The cumbersomeness of needing a guy next to the guy(s) you want to blind, knocking him down, then hitting him with a second skill is extreme compared to a caster blind. In order to ever see use, this skill would need a bigger radius and maintainability.
  • Overbearing Smash. A 20 sec recharge on a daze with a tricky precondition doesn't strike me as very good. Moreover, if you're already KD'ing a foe, chances are they're not going to live long enough for the daze to matter.
  • Renewing Smash. This looks like a skill that will see use. Good update.
  • Fierce Blow. First, I'm assuming there's a typo and it still triggers off weakness and not off KD. Basically it's an easy-conditional DW for 6adr. Compared to Body Blow, Pulverizing Smash, or a whole bunch of axe, dagger, spear, and scythe skills, I'm not sure it's worth of being elite.
  • Yeti Smash. Close, but not quite. So close that it's painful. Lose-all-adrenaline is simply a no-go in PvE because of the anti-synergy with SY!. End of story. Even if you make Yeti Smash into a fricking non-elite Earthshaker, it still wouldn't be worth using. The though of a non-elite Earthshaker that isn't worth using makes me sad.
  • Dwarven Battle Stance. Assuming the uptime isn't getting changed, we're still looking at an IAS stance with ~50% uptime. I'm doubtful that any amount of interruption or extra armor is going to make that worth using.
• Ritualist Buffs
  • Generally. I'm not at all clear on why ritualists needed another buff. The previous buff put a couple of builds into the top tier. I guess I'll be happy since this seems to create more options by providing buffs outside the current strong builds.
  • Ancestors' Rage. 100+ unconditional armor-ignoring AoE damage on an 8sec recharge? Quite overpowered.
  • Spirit Burn. Underbuffed. Still a weak skill.
  • Destruction. Still an awful skill. The problem is the downright awkwardness of getting the damage in the right place at the right time. Basically you need 2 extra skills -- a spirit draw and a spirit pop -- to make effective use of this skill. To be worthwhile at the cost of 3 skillslots, this thing needs to have a much, much better payoff than 150 damage every 15 sec.
  • Hex Rits.
    • Anguished Was Lingwah. Hard to judge this one without seeing the exact specs on the new hexes and the recharge on this skill. My overall impression is that hex rits won't have enough depth to be useful.
    • Lamentation. 0...3 degen? Looks like this skill is still going to suck horribly. Even if AwL has such a quick recharge that you can spam the up-front damage, it's still a vastly weaker Necrosis/Discord.
    • Renewing Surge. Potentially good e-managment if AwL has a quick recharge. Otherewise junk.
    • Binding Chains. Looks like junk for general-purpose play, but potentially very abusable for gimmick solo builds that exploit the AI, again, if AwL has a quick recharge. On a plus note, it will make some of Faction's most annoying monsters less annoying.
    • Dulled Weapon. Cream of the crop for the hex rit buffs. A relatively strong AoE debuff. Packed on top of SY! or weakness, this should take damage all the way to zero. Not a first line of defense, but decent enough for layering.
  • Cruel Was Daoshen. Underbuffed. Still bad.
  • Destructive Was Glaive. Hmmm... If it's even possible for armor-sensitive damage to not suck in PvE, this would be it. Spammable 100+ AoE with armor pen. I'll have to wait and see.
  • Gaze from Beyond. Cheap unconditional caster blind. A decent skill. Too bad the uptime isn't 100% I sense Me/Rt or Rt/Me taking over from Me/E on mandragor builds.
  • Spirit Boon Strike. I don't see this as any more useful than Flare offensively. And I suspect the spirit heal won't be too useful. Shelter/Union/Displacement burn out so fast the heal would be a drop in the bucket. Nothing else really needs healed.
  • Spirit Rift. Might use this for an easy source of cracked armor. Also a good synergy with Glaive. 2 Important questions: Does the monster AI flee the AoE? If so, this would be worthless. Does the H+H AI flee the AoE?
  • Soul Twisting & Signet of Creation. Good.
  • Ritual Lord. Wait. Stop. No. Ritual Lord affects recharge not cast time. It was not made irrelevant by the previous buff. In fact, it was seeing use for the first time in ages because spirits became worth casting.
  • Spirit Channeling. Good.
  • Signet of Spirits. Yeah, that was OP. Nerf deserved. My only concern is the affect on 4 Horsemen. With SF and OF out, if SoS can no longer hold 1 side either, that quest gets a lot harder.
• Tactics Buff
  • Generally. This section is the worst fail of the previewed update. It's mostly underbuffs that take skills from very bad to bad, mixed with a few OP buffs. A large part of the problem is that any stance that isn't an IAS is going to need to be insanely strong to justify foregoing IAS, and that just doesn't happen here. Another thought is that a fixed-activation-time attack skill to compete with Protector's Strike (To the Limit, perhaps) would maybe at least see use in scythe builds, and we don't see that here.
  • Auspicious Parry. Worthless for general-purpose play because it means no IAS. Maybe useful for SY! uptime builds, if the duration was shortened so that the adrenaline gain was reliable.
    [edit: It's unclear if you would gain the adrenaline by canceling AParry into another stance. If that's the case, then it would be quite overpowered.]
  • Defensive Stance/Deflect Arrows/Shield Stance/Soldier's Defense. All worthless because they mean no IAS. Maybe the adrenaline pumpers might replace Enraging Charge in builds that use a Frenzy/Enraging combo, but I doubt it.
  • Thrill of Victory. I might consider using this in some builds depending on where the breakpoint for 2 adr is.
  • Soldier's Speed Fail. Suggestion: Change it from IMS to IAS and make it maintainable at 8 or 9 tactics with a recharge around 8 or 10.
  • Soldier's Stance. Good, but probably not good enough for an elite.
  • "Fear Me!" Remarkably overpowered.
  • "To the Limit!" Adrenaline gain is still not enough on a 15sec recharge. Can't imagine picking this over Fear Me for procing under-shout status.
  • "Charge!" Brilliant buff, but IMS remains a dubious use of an elite slot for general-purpose play.
  • "None Shall Pass!" The requirement that foes be moving pretty much does this skill in.
  • "Retreat!" This has been pointed out to me as a very strong running skill. The end conditions make it obviously useless for general-purpose play.
  • Grapple. Still bad. So many other knockdown options without silly conditions. The 12 sec recharge makes the combo with Steady Stance or whatever too infrequent to be productive.
  • Shove. To be worthwhile as an elite, it would at least have to be better than brawling headbutt, which it isn't.
• Blood Magic Buff
  • Generally. This section contains the most unexpected and overpowered buffs of the update. I say "unexpected" because, while Blood Magic is undoubtedly one of the worst skill lines in the game, necromancers have 2 other good lines and a decent (if nerf-mutilated) primary.
  • Blood of the Aggressor. The weakness makes this a great filler skill -- which is something blood builds have often needed in the past with so few good skills to choose from.
  • Blood Renewal. Self-heals are fundamentally dubious. This can never be a good skill on that basis alone. As far as self-heals go, the buff makes it a pretty good one.
  • Life Siphon. Meh. No amount of twiddling with cast and recharge will make weak degen or regen worthwhile.
  • Ravenous Gaze First: It's unclear whether the damage and life steal or both AoE, or just the life steal.
    Second:In either event, it's a terribly weak elite. It tops out at 60 AoE damage on a 10 sec recharge. For an elite? Compare to the new Ancestor's Rage.
  • Barbed Signet + Oppressive Gaze. These look weak. Bleeding, in and of itself, is worthless. So Barbed Signet is junk unless it provides amazing combo value. There's potential that OGaze will deliver that. But only if (1) Barbed Signet causes bleed on every affected foe and not just the target (ie it can't work like GoI does), (2) Barbed Sig causes bleed before OGaze checks for a condition, and (3) OGaze has a at least "nearby" range. IF these skills work that way, then I'd consider them worthwhile. Otherwise, they are junk and I'll just bring Enfeebling Blood at a low curse spec.
  • Jaundiced Gaze. Is it keeping the 8-sec recharge?
  • Blood Bond. Game-changingly overpowered. This skill runs circles around any other party-healing in the game. The big question in my mind is whether it's so strong that a team can cut a backliner and get by with just 1 ER ele plus this on a midline orders necro.
  • Demonic Flesh. Just when I thought that Blood Bond was surely the most ridiculous skill of the update, here comes Demonic Flesh. First: It hardly matters what the amount is; AoE lifesteal on an attack spammer is going to be pretty insane. Second: There's a couple of bugs to worry about. Exhausting Assault and Blinding Powder are reported to count as "used" even when they "fail," opening up infinite spam potential. Third: It's unclear whether this is a self-only skill or can be cast on other allies. Fourth: Is the duration staying the same? A bad uptime ratio could break this skill. Sadly, uptime ratios fall diametrically into "~100%" and "crap," so this can't be balanced by tweaking the recharge.
  • Mark of Fury. Very good buff resulting in a very strong skill. I'd probably call it overpowered if I wasn't still in shock from the last 2 skills.
• Other
  • Aggressive Refrain/Soldier's Fury. No. Permanent -20 is worse than cracked armor, even with the H+H AI problems. People who say otherwise just don't know how to make decent heroes. The correct solution to this problem would be to fix the H+H AI to heavily deprioritize cracked armor on a paragon who's not under attack. The easy solution would be to just remove the malus from these skills for PvE. Making the -20 armor permanent isn't acceptable.
  • Crippling Shot. That makes sense.
  • Heal as One. The life steal buff makes this skill worth investigating. Though I'm dubious that it can be made worthwhile given pets' poor AI, slow attack speed, and lack of true AoE attacks. (Hint: Fix Mel's Assault so that it actually attacks adjacent foes!)
  • Glimmering Mark. Fine.
  • Pious Concentration. Fine.
  • PvP Stuff
    • Fine. Fine. Fine.
    • Primal Rage is dead now. Sad to see it go back to being total junk again.
    • Steelfang Slash. First: Is this change applying to PvE too? Second: Questions have been raised about infinite quarter-lock builds with this and the cheaper Backbreaker (plus some other things).

[edit: typo fixes]
[edit: incorporated some points from others' comments]

ok, read this slowly until it sinks in. I don't attempt to disrupt in hm because it's useless, i just hex things to death because it is much less stupid.


i rupt playing ranger, since prediction works better than reflexing for me in hm.
i hex in pve, because p blocking has little to no actual value in pve. and i think(some) mesmers are idiots for bringing a butterknife to a gunfight, then complaining.
wut

Please, if ANY devs or community reps are actually still reading this thread, pay very special attention to the quoted text. And then put Chthon on the test Krewe if he's not already. This kind of constructive feedback is one of the best comments on this thread so far.

Blood Bond is going to make Orders/Strength of Honor/adrenaline/cleaner necromancers into Orders/SoH/adrenaline/cleaner/healer necromancers.

Without faster options the Obsidian Flesh clear would still be faster than balanced. Tank-n-spank gameplay should be nerfed, there are prot skills for a reason and AI shouldn't target a tank anyway.
I would like to see spirit bond trigger after damage reduction and prot spirit have a set damage limit that scales with attribute, starting at 59 at 0 protection prayers and working down to 48 at 12.
You can cancel Auspicious Parry with an IAS stance and get your adrenaline on demand.

Just some things that stood out in your notes.

Yes, their skills. But those aren't the ones we're concerned about, are they?

I think you might also have missed the synergy between the new DBS and DS. With r10 delver, DBS is 100% maintainable, been running it that way myself for over a year.

To me, with an already good bar for when not attacking squishy casters, the new DBS is going to be Ursanway v2.

Just kidding. Couple of points:

They won't. The problem has never been that 605/Smite is an efficient tank. Plenty of builds can hold aggro with the support of another bar. The problem has always been as follows:
- the mechanic that permits you to deal damage by taking damage
- the ability of the build to take a lot of damage to deal back without dying
- the complete lack of risk for the damage dealer

605s tanking without a legit damage threat isn't a big deal.

If you nerf SF but not OF, everyone will just swallow a cupcake and a green rock to go with their red rock and proceed as before. The only thing that OF can't clear is the Chamber, and it isn't much slower with SF elsewhere due to the consumables. Blame this nerf on Nicholas.

Now that depends entirely on the definition of "when it ends". You can do some very ugly things with adrenaline cycling AP and Frenzy if cancelling the stance with another stance "ends" it. The update is either hacks or worthless. Hard to tell which without testing it.

Yeah, that's a bad buff right there. The really irritating thing is that this won't see use on Warriors. It will be absolute hacks on a Sin with high energy cost, low recharge skills. Spamming strings on an R/A with Shattering Assault just got a whole lot easier.

Oh, I don't know about that. It'd beat Wastrel's Collapse as a string-starter. Half the recharge? Yikes.

Well, we used to string BBs back in the day with it. That merited a nerf. Now it'll be even easier to string BBs. Sounds like a bad idea to me.

General conclusion: balance team doesn't play melee.

I've glossed over a lot of important points because these are the key issues with the update. PvE is easy enough that I'm not overly concerned about Necros suddenly outhealing Monks. If it happens, the problematic skills can just be reverted. They won't be (ANet never does that, they always nerf something else, because they never make stupid decisions), but that'd be the appropriate resolution if the Blood changes turn out to be hacks.

Yes on scaling the trigger point.

No on triggering after reduction. No one would use Spirit Bond in PvE if they did that because it would become a strict alternative, and a strictly inferior alternative, to PS/ProtBond.

I had not thought of that possibility. You're correct. If you can get the adrenaline by canceling to Frenzy, then cancel Frenzy into AParry, and repeat, it would be very overpowered.

Ouch, you're right. Stupid consumables.

That sounds like a PvP build. I was talking PvE.

I never use cons if I can avoid it, but I can't help notice who was watching The Matrix the most and when, tell me if you agree..

"If you eat the red pill..."

Lol.

woah woah easy now...dun wanna get too dramatic!!! lol

who ever wrote this copy is hilarious--and i hope that its sarcasm. you do realize that bleeding is one of the (if not the) least threatening condition in the game?

i fear the new hoards of barbed signet+life siphon necros that will arise with the upcoming update. they will surely overtake the the dying breed of apply poison rangers.

It's more of a PvP change. The ability to spam a condition while dealing damage is going to be threatening in condition heavy builds.

What they should be nerfing are those damn consumables.

oh its definitely a decent skill...i just think whoever wrote the copy is hillarious, and don't think it will be as "powerful" as they advertise it to be. i'm not sure why this skill was given extra treatment with regards to copy, as if they really want to push this skill into meta usage.


i'm not sure why your mentioning r/a's? 1st of all, shattering assault was mentioned as moving to critical strikes and 2nd, r/a's can't run a warrior skill??? still... i think i'd rather see fear me a/w's rather than shattering assault r/a's. not because it'd be less imba (it could possibly be more imba), but because it'd be less lame.

i was pretty sure we've already had a pvp balance and that upcoming one was meant to be pve.

You don't need the AP build to roll through hard mode....PM me in game, and I will show you how FD > AP in PvE HM.

IGN: Teresa The Claymore / Punishing Bad boys

we don't want nukers. we want useful crowd control instead one-target 'control'. as in pve, you fight a big crowd, not one - more or less - strong enemy with it's own brain as in pvp.
but there's a problem in the game's mechanism. example: if we want crowd control, we'd make empathy aoe. we could add the clause 'if this hex ends early, target is blinded for 10s'. and we could change the skill totally so it won't deal damage... but... what would it do then?
there's not much a hex like that can do instead of damaging. and lowering damage just because it's gone aoe is still thrashing the skill. as far as it comes to empathy, i think that people forget that it's indirect, conditional damage and it lasts short - and even though mobs tend to damage themselves with it, that's not always true and even multiple empathy rarely kills the target. the above was just an example, anyways.

no no no, please no 'pm me in game and i'll show you tricks'. post everything here for the sake of discussion and defending your view or keep it without anything to back it up, as most other people here.


e: i don't know how to explicit it enough, but we KNOW that mesmers are NOT about the damage.
the problem is that they are not about anything right now.
i'd even prefer skills that make mobs attack each other, that make mobs turn green for a few seconds (so they won't kill you but can't be attacked either; it might be ether nightmare reworked and tied to FC, so it's pve only, takes pve skill slot, cuts one of the non-mes-primairy abused skills and limits the vast pool of health degen we already had; not working on bosses and boss-like obviously), that interrupt their skills (please don't talk about direct interrupts again, as they're shitty in hm and rangers can do it better, with more rupts disabling the skill after rupted, with more damage, better recharge, and so on), that render them useless (as blindness on a warrior). bring them on. that's what mesmer should be about.
but with the attitude we've found in TK and ANet so far, i don't believe in total reworking of skills. so at least bring them to pve friendly level, anyhow.

I am confused in regards to what you were trying to say.
The necro skills are supposed to have a higher cost due to SR, just as mesmer skills are supposed to have a longer cast time due to FC, but if you look at them it is clear that the best necro options either have a cost that fits the skill or is quite underpriced.
Unless we are dealing with minions, there is just no reasonable explanation why the necros should have that much energy - but even in that case it would be just much easier to simply reduce the price of minions to some 5 (10 for Fiends) and convert their cost to a something like 25% health sacrifice and then trash SR.

But as long as A.Net feels that the way to "balance" things is to overpower everything - I am fine with SR since it allows my assassin to be under Orders at pretty much any given moment.

most of them sounds good

It was completelly unnecesary. Yeti Smash is staple skill for hammer heroes as it provides modest armor ignoring AOE.

ES-With-adrenaline loss is completelly redundant on those bars as they already use ES.

Irony is that this change would work well with armor-senstitive AR

As pointed out, you can cancel AP and DS for adrenal gains.

Also, with consumables, you do not need IAS comming from skills, you can stay in one of those denfensive srtances and still reap benefits (which are not exactly small.

Typical "tank" stacked health for pulls. This is going to be not just yet-another health stacking skill: It is not elite, not with only 1/2 uptime and not ending on attack. IT actually has positive effect.

Runner skills mostly.

Theeese are going to be decent if a bit dubious filler for discord builds.

They are also going to be quite decent filler for Mandragorway builds.

It is designed to self synergize to be efficient enchant removal (that is combated with enemy echant removal), so i guess, yes.

Minion masters are also going to love this.

40 health per attack is incredibly strong. It will be a bit clumsy for general PvE play as humans casters rarely attack (even if they are not casting), but when playing with AI you will feel its full impact.

Where it will shine is farming as it is incredible on-attack health engine, just make W/N and spam AOE attack skills.

It does not sound that good to me: failing-skills would not activate it (anet has had enough trouble with failing skills)

What will kill this is that rate of damage is going to have cap (you have to spam some skills and those skills are going to take time to activate and resources to use). And possibly range: it is going to be mostly only usefull on frontline.

Last thing that will keep it from paly is the fact that is activates on skill use, not target hit so it will not multiply with multi-target attacks.

I'd wait and see it in action, but my guess is it will come prenerfed and be only worth as filler when partying with melees.

This is however exactly what most players wanted. Frankly, Malus is pointless anyway: if you are being attacked enough that -20 armor is going to hurt you, then there are deeper problems than just having bad monk builds.

In PvE, you should not be meatbag for mosnters...

It could be more interesting, of course. While Attacking malus for example

So I haven't been in the farming build seen in a while but from looking over the notes blood magic seems to be a huge part of a new farming meta if you look at demonic flesh and blood bond. I would further suggest that this is more than likely true as in the past day I noticed the superior blood magic runes have doubled in price and probably will go up for a while.

I know speculation always happens however unless the skills are completely different from the preview notes I think they are going to become a standard on most team farm builds. I for one have grabbed a few superior blood magic runes just in case.

Your secret Fevered Dreams build is hardly a secret, I assure you.


Looking at these changes, I don't see too much being changed. Hammer warriors are always going to use Earthshaker, although a couple of skills might get swapped (perhaps Belly Smash, but only if the blind isn't too short).

Lamentation is still poor.
Destructive was Glaive still won't save lightning damage for PvE.
Spirit Boon Strike needs to compete with Summon Spirits in PvE for a spirit heal, but might work on heroes.

I would like the change to Charge, except I would never bring it and you took it away from all the Henchmen.

Blood of the Aggressor - a nice way for a blood nec to inflict Weakness without speccing into Curses, but meh.

Life Siphon is still shit.

Demonic Flesh - depends on numbers and uptime. Runs the risk of being overpowered or being shit.

Ravenous Gaze - you've confused me a bit here. You've changed a lot of blood skills to being more support based but you've changed this to a very obvious damage skill. The line is now more ill-equipped for that. It may work with Demonic Flesh depending on uptime, but the 10sec recharge means that for general play it's a no-no.

Oppressive Gaze - is this for PvP too? Conditions are seldom worthwhile in PvE and the damage has been trivialised. I get the direction you've gone with it though.

Barbed Signet - Obvious made with synergy with the above in mind. If this is for PvP too, you may have made this too strong. Recharge?

Blood Bond - I like this change. This is a very strong support option for an Orders Necro. Perhaps a little too powerful, but I doubt it will remove the necessity for a 2-man backline. It will make their job much easier though vs pressure on the frontline.


Not really. The SoS Rit seldom killed anything, all he had to do was stall spawns on one side. Unless they seriously weaken the spirits, then it won't be a problem.


I would comment on more of the skills, but I haven't the time right now.

I agree.

They seem to have just toned down damage a bit (25 @ 15 Channeling, against 32), together with an increased recharge (20s -> 30s).

Those changes aren't breaking the skill, IMO.

hahah, I hope you don't think mesmers are meant to do damage?!
you fail at this game if you think so, they were never meant to do kill stuff by clicking 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 skills!
They are to trick and play against your opponent!

Mesmers DO need some update for skills that kinda doesn't work well or are never used. But mesmers will NOT get any dmg skill or buff so they can go solo elite places hahaha.

btw, Mitch from KMD is in test crew, and if u know about Guild Wars and Mesmers then you wouldn't know that he is one of the best mesmers out there. And he clearly knows what I am talking about.

Paragons got more then one build...imbagon,motigon,dagger spammer are one of the best out there and 90% of players playing a Paragon use those builds.
And I even think it has great build for FoW.
But I am with you tho, a lot of skills are not used and need some update.
But yet again, what you want is easy win button and build that kills everything in 2 sec....well, you will not get those.

Dervishes are okay, but it seems that there are professions that are doing their job better then them, like assassins do.
Which you crew doesn't like and I can get it why. It needs some update yes, but they got interesting builds and you got a great number of them that you can play.

Elementalists...they are just getting buffs! All those PvE-only skills are goddamn buff for them.
There is none profession that got so many buffs in this game as they did.(well, maybe ritualists)
HM is maybe harder for you to nuke stuffs in 5 sec....so what?
Do you really think they are supposed to do that?
You don't get any problem in NM, they are OP if you ask me.
There is maybe just a little nerf they got...and it was about aoe effect, monsters started to move from aoe..WOOW, they actually wanted NOT to get dmg?

Really guys...you just want easy mode and when it gets little harder you cry like a babys, stop it and play game if u like it.
Game itself isn't balanced and never will be, but that doesn't means it is a bad game.

Only problem in this game are smart people that make OP builds if you ask me. xD

So yeah, if test crew thinks something needs update they will do it.
Some things are done too late tho, they should nerf all those 600/perma etc farm builds years ago!