Last skill update was in February...

No nature ritual for ranger?

The don't want to buff PvE rangers because of PvP ranger spike. That and they think the worst skill in the game (BHA) is good!

I don't mean bow attack. I mean nature ritual like equinox laceration -_-

agreed on nature rituals needing a buff - at least in cutting the cast time in pve. i mean, come on, rit's spirits are 3/4, while ranger's are still ~4-6s...

Hopefully they will finally fix ridiculous shit such as Seeping Wound and Bsurge. Then again, no. It's Anet, after all.

See?! I'm not the ONLY one that thinks B.Surge needs toning down. HAH! ...and yea, SW does need to be toned down. Reduce damage to 0...9...10, give it +1...3...4 degen, and revert the cast range to normal. Make the cast time 3/4s so that it's not insanely OPd, but not underpowered either. It'd make SW's cast time 1.5s even if monks have veil on them because 1/4s cast time is just too good. Also, make the damage dependent upon the old requirements of "bleeding or poisoned", and not any/all conditions. That'd balance SW out without completely killing it off. You know what's be an even better change? THIS: 33% snare, -3 degen, and causes deep wound and weakness if target is under 50% health. *no damage bonus for this variant!*

Thanks for the update Regina. This is one of those times I'm sincerely grateful you came on the forums and were able to post something pretty concrete regarding when we could take a look at the updates and about the anticipated PvE Mesmer update.

I don't mind waiting seeing as how you've apparently been reading some comments on what should be getting skill balance attention, but I'm guessing that by that you mean the Mesmer changes will be the centerpiece of this update. Still, can we look forward to any Mysticism/Scythe/Derv changes as well?

Thanks!

What are you on?

You're on guru, of course little people will agree with the obvious.

Not quite. The skill needs a complete rework. If this functionality REALLY needs to stay, replacing the DPS with -3ish degen also works fine, but the skill would still be utterly brainless. Then again, that's Assassins for you.

What? That's a terrible idea. Ranged Deep Wound shouldn't even exist, let alone a 1/4 cast one.

1.) No comment needed.
2.) 5e 3/4ct 10r, -3 degen, 33% snare, half the normal range, dw + weakness if foe's < 50% health (gives assassins a viable alternative to twisting). [Nothing's overpowered about that in my eyes, but if a problem were ever to arise, the recharge can be adjusted (to 12-15 for example), making it less overpowered].
3.) Urite if we're talking about full range, but not at half-range.

Firstly, all it takes is one op template unbalance the game (remember R/A's?). Secondly, the two problems I mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg. Undoing 3 years of powercreep would require a massive overhaul.The metagame after the january midline-spike nerfs (but before this recent skill update) was actually much better.

Agreed with the sentiment that there's certainly still tons of work to do which would make the game better. But if I read back right, one of your major problems is with blood magic? I can't see how the current barbed mes or nec templates are all that much out of balance, other than a few versions with hexes that are always problematic in overload builds (spoil, maybe faint).

The most popular me/n template is basically enough defense (weakness spam) to take the defensive midline slot, while assisting the offense with some extra degen pressure instead of the usual big spike assist. It's certainly more fun to play and to play against than most bitchrole templates. Especially the monk smite midliner that you have to rock/paper/scissors in to counter power creep hexes.

On the Bsurge discussion: the usual defense is that the complaints are just RA players qqing, but the skill is pretty brainless for how powerful it is. At the bare minimum you could give back the old aoe on enchanted targets conditional. Elite e-management-powered bflash was just a better designed function in general, with different options to attack its effectiveness.

The seeping wound issue in general is that it wasn't the right way to deal with problems. Sure now you can play control against power creep splitters more easily with a supersnare sin template, but those split chars should just have been nerfed back to reasonable levels instead.

One of the main complaints seems to be terrible skill balancing, which anet has attributed more or less to the game having way too many skills.

How about removing some of the useless or underpowered skills that never get used, I'm talking the skills that wouldn't even be used by mending wammos. And maybe to prevent some QQ a certain amount of gold or balthazar faction is credited to players who paid to have these skills unlocked. That might make for a decent update, and make further updates easier.

Ok, now I want to give you flowers and chocolate Finally a new hope for my beloved Mesmer

WTB full rework of every gw skill not shitty costumes

No kidding, I would have paid for a expansion, but no way in hell was I paying for some gay ass costume, that my pvp armor puts to shame.

What that says.

Nice, I'm looking forward to this. I think Mesmers need a PvE buff in general, that's for sure, but they also need to be able to fill a unique spot in a PvE team. With that said, here's what I'm hoping they do with Mesmers in PvE:

Inspiration: Make some of the skills that drain energy from an enemy transfer it to the team. This would give the mesmer a "battery" position, but it would be different from the Necromancer's. The Necromancer is able to target single allies and give them an energy regen. The Mesmer, alternatively, could be spiking the whole team with a solid amount of energy gain (rather than a regen bonus), but it would require targeting an enemy rather than an ally to do so.

Domination/Illusion: This doesn't need as drastic a change as Inspiration, but it would help to give some more of their skills an area-effect target in PvE (ie. make them affect "target and all adjacent enemies"). It would be nice if Mesmers could finally build a nice PvE area-effect build without having to rely so much on title skills.

Fast Casting: Although not really necessary, a nice touch to this attribute in PvE might be to have it lengthen the duration of hexes. Something like a 2% increase in hex duration per attribute point could be really useful without making it too overpowered

Hey Regina, this friday will be 2 weeks since your post, I wanna see the preview, SHOW ME THE MONE...ahem, THE PREVIEW!!!

There's nothing to fix about Bsurge it's about the only and best counter to flippin kiddies playin interupt rangers. So wah wah QQ some more don't bring interupts and we won't bring Bsurge. ) For me there's nothing more fun than smokin up a ranger after using Bsurge on him/her. hahaha I like to bring glyph of burning for that 3 second burn on them too as I'm blasting them with Bsurge and other fun 25% penetration lightning spells. Baw haw haw haw how I love destroying flippin kiddie interupt rangers. )

So Impale is broken, eh? Accumulated Pain? I agree that 1/4s, 10r, no restrictions would be bad, but you are overstating the problem with the proposed mechanic.

SW is hax. The extra damage is OP when added to existing big damage Sin strings. The simplest solution would be to gut the skill by adding the Glimmering Mark mechanic. Then you have a useless skill, but at least it isn't impacting every PvP meta.

BSurge is fine. Take an interrupt, an anti-blind rune and an anti-blind shield if you're with Sword or Axe. Then suppress the skill and kill the scumbag. If you're a Ranger and you aren't putting a D-Shot on the BSurge when the opponent doesn't 40/40 it, be less bad.

Even if BSurge is ruining your day, the bar is not exactly big damage. Your team is not giving up all that much if the only thing the BSurge ever does is suppress you, especially if someone competent on your team suppresses Attunement. If the BSurge attempts to suppress your teammate and you, then you should have a window to interrupt the BSurge irrespective of which melee class you're running.

The biggest problem with RA is that there is so much quality physical hate. It's not the BSurge that kills you. It's the BSurge plus the VoR or Insidious-spamming Necro that kills you. No bar exists that will suppress two opponents with dedicated physical hate, so the only way you will go 25 is if you have melee, dedicated shutdown and heals on your team. It's difficult to assemble all of those components randomly (let alone have all of the players not suck), so we get syncing.

Long story short, balancing the game for 8v8 pretty much guarantees that randomly-paired 4v4 will be a mess.

It will most likely be in May. Considering they haven't posted an event for this weekend, the 5th anniversary must be this weekend (it kind of has to be, since it's the last weekend in April).

I'm guessing we'll get a skill update in 1-2 weeks. However, that seems weird to me considering the skills have all been tested and are pretty much ready to go :/

Err... what gave you this idea? .... because.... yeh, uh... k? wut?

Infer as you see fit...

So there's this thing called the Test Krewe...

Whether his statement is legitimate or not is not something that I can evaluate as an outsider. Nor would I call on the members to confirm/disconfirm given the NDA.

But I'm willing to bet that the TK is where he is getting his information from, and I'm also willing to bet that he's not a member since he's willing to spill the beans despite an NDA and the threat of being beaten by Izzy.

I doubt we will get the skill update this week, but it would be nice to see a preview this week. At least this way we know what direction they are taking. I dont think thats too much to ask for. There has been quite a bit of speculation lately, and it would put alot of peoples minds at ease.

Well the skill preview is what Regina said we should be getting this week. Lets just hope for this to happen

3/4s cast speed for ranger spirit

So, no skill preview today too???

^ yeah, it would seem that way unfortunately
When Regina said we would be getting it relatively early, I was thinking maybe the end of last week or the start of this week...
Well...there is always tomorrow...and next week...and the rest of the year...

Well lets hope for the preview today then

She said "this week". You don't know what week on her calendar she was pointing at when posting that comment, so, the preview is perfectly on schedule indeed.

1.
If she said this week and nothing materialises then she was either lying, wrong or being deceitful. Not good for CR it must be said.

2.
But she didn't say this week. She said (two weeks ago) that they planned to have the preview up soon and added the qualifier; "next week or two".

The difference between 1 and 2 is that with 2, Regina won't have proverbially castrated herself as a CM if nothing happens.


Regina promised nothing. Don't get upset when you get nothing.

Well, I was hardly "upset". I was just kidding for some comic relief, exactly because I don't think there's anything to be upset about...

GW is about to celebrate its 5th birthday.
No new skills were added since GW:EN.

Is balance still totally out of whack or do people expect major changes by now, this late in GW's development, with GW2 on the horizon?

Ranged Deep Wound is broken because Deep Wound requires positioning to inflict. Making it ranged takes that away, reducing the amount of skill needed to play whatever bar you're running. That's pretty much the definition of broken.

I'm fine with any change that kills SW. Assassins are hopeless.

The problem with Bsurge is that the things you need to do to shut it down (strip attunements, somehow Dshot/chop, knock him down) the skill even though everybody 40/40s it, are much harder than the thing the Bsurger has to do, spam the skill on recharge. Also, classic comment, having a counter rarely makes something balanced.

Bsurge reduces the game to 3v3.5, the Bsurger can still assist his party with well-placed enchantment removal and damage as opposed to whoever he is keeping Blinded. Even if the damage isn't spectacular, it's still more than the nothing you force your opponent to do.

VoR, Bsurge, Insidious Parasite and Empathy are all skills that require zero skill yet have a LOT of effectivity. They are broken. They are broken in both low and high-end PvP. They are stupid in high-end PvP, leading to crap such as Hexway and they are gamebreakingly overpowered in low-end PvP.

Not quite. Only few skills that are truly balanced in high-end PvP RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO over low-end.