Preliminary Skill Update Notes - 23 April 2010

This, also. I'm somewhat bothered by the notion that any of these changed would be considered for PvP, actually. The key word is ALL, in that ALL of the changes should be PvE only.

Energy management? I wouldn't count on Arcane Conundrum since the amount of energy gain they're thinking of has not been specified.
So you're looking at Inspiration Magic, unless you try for GoLE as a sort of act of desperation.

Shared Burden and Sum of All Fears sound fair, as one is worthless and the other needs an elite slot...

Wastrel's Worry I've only ever use against certain bosses, since it doesn't so much in hard mode as you recast it hoping it'll go off this time as you drain the rest of your energy you used from better skills.

Mandragor in a Can will find the lower cost of Phantom Pain easier, so perhaps someone noticed that build.

Shatter Delusions is very welcome for lowered health foes.

Arcane Conundrum I still won't use, but it's going on my AP bar. It doesn't make it more powerful, but slower casting is more useful than a single target snare...that costs 15.

I'm assuming the blind is the only AoE part of Ineptitude.

Wandering Eye and Frustration are the two skills I hope to get changed for the better.

Stolen Speed. :o

Dont buff migraine like that in pvp! Nerf PD instead of buffing it in pvp! Rest cool bros, very cool! Go hurry a bit with the updating less sandwiches more coding

I've been playing my mesmer more since I heard of this update to get all the elites I don't have (tbh I rarely play anything but monk now a days lol..) Been using this and tbh its not that bad, Wandering eye and clumsiness can do a good little bit of damage. Problem is they have a 10 sec recharge however With the reduced recharge I think you'll be seeing them both on a lot of mesmer bars, assuming they both do get the reduced recharge

Correct. The PvP metagame is already being destroyed by hexes and bots. Any of these changes in PvP makes the game even worse than its current state. Not one of those changes is good for the game.

Make everything PvE only. PvP needs nerfing, not buffing.

My general impressions could be summed up in 6 major points:
1. The change the HM casting speed is a bigger deal than most folks seem to realize.
2. I'm not sure both problems with interruption in PvE are being solved.
3. It's very apparent that the effect of these buffs on the monsters was not considered very thoroughly, if at all.
4. A lot of these changes look like braindead powercreep.
5. Some of these changes look really inspired, if maybe overpowered.
6. The notes for the change to Fast Casting are too vague to say much about.

1. The change the HM casting speed is a bigger deal than most folks seem to realize.

This change is a lot bigger than mesmers in three ways.

First, it also makes ranger interrupts a little more viable. (That should have been obvious.)

Second, it makes HM a good deal easier on monks by reducing the the short-term DPS on chain casting by caster monsters. Consider a monster with 6 1sec direct damage skills. That should be pretty typical I guess. His AI tells him to spam out his bar, then wand until something recharges. Right now, he unloads his whole payload of spell damage in 6*(.5+.75) = 7.5sec and then kicks over to wand-and-wait mode. After the change, it will take him 6*(1+.75) = 10.5sec to unload his spells. That means his short term DPS drops by ~30%. Long-term DPS is going to stay about the same, but the worst of the heavy short-term pressure is going to ease up.

Third, it makes certain hard HM healer monsters a lot easier by reducing their short-term heal/sec on chain casting. Since these healers are the core of some of the hardest mobs in GW (think that first Summit mob in Duncan's dungeon), this is a difficulty change for high-end PvE.

2. I'm not sure both problems with interruption in PvE are being solved.

Interruption is currently pretty useless in PvE both because it's nearly impossible against the HM cast bonus and because it's more efficient to allocate your resources to just killing things a little bit faster. The HM cast speed change (plus the slow casting skills) only solve half the problem. Yes, it sounds like reliable interruption might become possible in HM. But it doesn't fix the problem that interruption isn't worthwhile compared to simply killing things a little bit faster. I don't really see a lot in the notes that addresses the second problem.

Frustration may be a step in the right direction. However, the damage would have to be HUGE to make up for the high probability it might not ever get triggered on a given target. At that point I start to worry about: Is this too strong a spike in the players' hands? In the heroes' hands? In the monsters' hands?

Specific buffs to certain interrupts might make those individual skills worthwhile. That's not as good as a global fix for the mechanic, but I suppose you only need ~3 decent interrupts to choose from and then you can make a bar.

3. It's very apparent that the effect of these buffs on the monsters was not considered very thoroughly, if at all.

The worst mobs are going to be large mesmer mono-mobs. Mindblades and Storm Riders come to mind.

The worst skills are going to be Migraine and Cry of Frustration.

Migraine because, (1) with a greater slow, it will completely shut down your monks, (2) against a HM mono-mob with multiple copies and the HM recharge bonus, it will be on your monks, and (3) mesmer monsters tend to stack hexes deep enough that conventional hex removal won't be adequate to get it off your monks. My impression right now is that nothing short of someone bringing elite hex removal, plus a few non-elite removals on the side, is going to be enough to counter a mono-mob with Migraine.

Cry of Frustration because the damage gets multiplied nastily by (1) the large number of copies in a mono-mob, (2) the HM recharge bonus, and (3) the tendency of the H+H to clump up and get hit with it over and over.

I really, strongly have to suggest either scrapping the changes to those two skills or tweaking the skillbars/attributes of Mindblades, Storm Riders, and a few other mesmer monsters.

4. A lot of these changes look like braindead powercreep.

• Wastrel's Worry – damage is now area-of-effect
• Cry of Frustration – increased the damage to 15…61…75
• Accumulated Pain – lower energy cost; recharge is short; now deals decent damage
• Phantom Pain – lower energy cost; shorter recharge; higher degen
• Mistrust – much shorter recharge; much higher damage
• Wandering Eye – lower energy cost; shorter recharge; much higher damage
• Ineptitude – area of effect; slightly shorter recharge
• Migraine – massive health degeneration; slows all skills, not just spells; makes spells easily interruptible

5. Some of these changes look really inspired, if maybe overpowered.

• Psychic Instability. I can't tell if this is brilliant or daft. Too long a recharge and it's a worthless conditional Earthquake clone. Too short a recharge it it's probably OP/abusable.
• Psychic Distraction. I've missed this mechanic since the Xinrae skills got changed.
• Arcane Conundrum. E-management in the Illusion line? Great! (Well, assuming it's good enough we can really drop Inspiration as advertised...)
• Empathy. Not my top choice for which skill to give the function to, but I like having straight mitigation. (See my post in the mesmer speculation thread for why.)
• Shatter Delusions. That's an odd way to add damage to the mesmer. Which is perfectly fitting, because mesmers are supposed to have odd mechanics. I'd have to play with it a bit to see if it's practical though.
• Panic. This is another surprisingly throwback to D2-like hex (following on the heels of Blood Bond becoming Life Tap). I fear it may prove overpowered given the monster AI's stupidity, but I can't deny that it's very clever.
• Stolen Speed. This is probably abusable, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

6. The notes for the change to Fast Casting are too vague to say much about. There's no description of the changes under consideration, so there can't be any feedback.

If any of those "adjustments" are even considered for PvP, then damn, after 5 years they're still clueless ...

I highly doubt that any of these mesmer buffs will be applied to the PvP section as mesmers are already pretty strong there, and adding any of those buffs to PvP would just &!^#$%!^$%/! screw everything up! There're enough rupt bots out there in 8v8 and 4v4, so applying any of these new buffs to PvP would break the game and cause the botting activity to soar like never before. I don't think the GWLT would be willing to cause this type of anguish to the PvP community.

I can't say I share your faith in these changes not being applied to pvp. Seeing where this is going I'd like to stay ahead for once: Can anyone point me to where I can download this ruptbot cause I'm getting one!

Lucky for us, AI is incapable of chaining, as the doppleganger in Elona Reach has proven time and again.


My thought's exactly. Glad I got my UW and Tyrian Vanquisher titles already.

Because the vanq titles will be .03% harder?

this is going to take a lot of sub quotes



I think with mesmer NPCs in HM being more powerful you'll see more teams bring shut down in those areas rather than trying to power through with brute force. Most importantly to me, player mesmers will be seeked for this reason a lone, hopefully anyway....

I don't think it will be too bad tbh, however it will be harder for teams that only stack DPS while easier for teams with counter shutdown

....


Only if you don't have hex removal and your team has no counter shut down, which this update is giving us as well


Again with skills like PD, panic and psychic instability, monks shouldn't have Migraine to start with


even if some hexes get though, monks have, Contemplation of Purity, Spell Breaker, Purge Signet, Convert Hexes, Peace and Harmony, Blessed Light, Empathic Removal, Withdraw Hexes, Divert Hexes (which is a amazing skill, theres just a lack of hexes generally), and Signet of Removal for heavy hex stacks.

With counter shut down, you shouldn't need to.

Shelter, pre-Prots, and not standing near someone, problem fixed

As a monk I think these changes are the best thing to happen for monk in a while tbh. I don't think UA monks will be able to keep up with the bars they are using now, maybe now we'll start seeing monks with good builds and tactics, rather than the everyday 7 healing spells UA monks that spam heal party and removing UA when someone dies

Yet for once it may actually help the game.


EC + SD = old skool spike.

Hardmode mechanics changes? workable mes updates? the very slight poss that they dont add more power creep?adding a little new life in the old game? yah i can /nod to that..

But expecting random monks to be dropping UA/hb for a solid bar?..you sir, are hoping for miracles :P optimism is alive and kicking i see, and i hope your faith will be rewarded!

Hey, at one point just about every monk used boon Prot, so who knows, we may get back on track. What scares me however is even decent monks are using UA now a days. Tbh I think UA and HB need a little nerf, but meh I don't think thats going to happen, better chance those monks realize they need better hex removal and Prots. Not to mention with these updates I'm hopeful the game itself may get back near where it should be pve, rather than the take 6 dps and 2 monks teams we see now. Maybe we'll see 2 shut down/support, 4 dps and 2 monks. Now all we need is more mesmer NPCs

Not "chain casting" as in "putting skills in the right order to make a combo"; "chain casting" as in "casting back-to-back-to-back until you run out of applicable recharged skills," which the AI certainly does do. It's very rare for the monsters to choose to wand when it has anything recharged that it could use instead.

Considering that they'll still have like 20 FC, HM mesmers monsters will remain immune to interruption.

The problem with that is that it would be a nerf to a bad-but-popular skill that doesn't actually need a nerf from an objective balance perspective.

It may make hard mode easier, but there may be increases in difficulty maybe later on to hard mode if that happens.
Keeping a specific profession of foes useless doesn't sound right either. Mindblades are the only issue I see with these. Wind Riders no, as they'll still be easy assuming you don't mega-aggro everything in sight, but that applies to everything (not just a particular profession).
Which makes it hard to really say if a lot of this is over powered, as you don't know the range or if they'll be other adjustments, etc.

Ok, so I just read these, and honest to God, if these Mezzie skills are what they're saying, or even close, I'm pinking up GWs full time again..

Because the maguuma jungle areas comprised 90% of windriders were a pain in the ass that were only matched by the VQ bugs in factions.

UA is total OP and the only reason its popular is its fast rezing ability that supports monks staying bad and using DP removal instead of actually healing people and playing monk as it should be played (not a rez bot). UA is OP to monks in the same since as if Ebon vanguard sniper support had 100% chance of success for DPS classes, its a iWin button for lesser players that just want to rush everything without actually playing. It shouldn't of even existed. HB is the same only not quite as bad, though it supports all around bad monking as well. imo they should look more like

Unyielding Aura, Enchantment, for 30 secs, your Prot and divine enchantments last for 25% longer, and Prot and divine skills heal for 25% more

Healer's boon, enchantment, for 30 secs, spell, your healing spells heal for 30% more, and cast 30% faster, you lose 1 energy for every 5 energy you spend per spell.