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.