Skill Update Speculation

This goes for the rest of this thread: don't post if you don't know what's going on.

Shadow Form nerf definitely.....owait

maybe they will just rebuff it and give up

doubt we will get any skill updates >_<

yes, hexes should stay untouched...



as lemming linked, almost every single elims was hexes vs something hexy.

Rofl , so yes as i said all updates are centered around GvG.
People use hexes and sins in HA : who cares?
People use Hexes and sins in GvG : aarrgggl nerf nerf wtf!!

So seriously , i am just gonna make a bbway guild just to see some nerf to be honest

After looking at that screenshot (and not knowing what the builds are) I assume that vR would of had a chance if they had split effectively and had better monks.

On another note, I'm expecting to see some sort of change to assault enchantments. Being able to spam it on someone is just way too powerful.

GvG = barbed signet vs heal party

with some gimmick sins and OP hexes thrown in

How did you get that display? I can't find a single slash commend that shows damage data.

Thanks.

It isn't a command, talk to the Master of Damage.

Yeah, HA seems to be totally abandoned... If BBway won't get nerfed in next update... Argh, I don't even want to think like that! TK, I'm sure you read this - just make falling-skills from BBway build required 5 Critical Strikes to work and that's all...

I don't care about that though. The power level of the profession is fine, it's just that the Scythe is broken and Mysticism sucks.
You certainly don't buff something just because broken shit beats it.

Well, hexes are definatly overpowered, but posting a picture of one gimmick beating another gimmick doesn't really hold any value, aside from the fact that this one gimmick counters the other one.

A good hexway is about the best build one could run in GvG, and even with counters (which can be countered by the hexway's mesmer rupts) it still poses a good thread (as shown in the mAT). However, triple melee comes in a closes second when on the overpowered scale. Trip melee requires ALOT more skill to be run sucessfully because you can't have retarded warriors (bad warriors make for an OK trip melee, terrible warriors for a shit one) and you need to have a Ranger capable of doing only a bit less than a ranger would have to do in balanced. (Since the Necro carries more responsibility regarding movement control)

If nerfing hexway is the start of a big campaign (Humme makes it sound like this), I don't see why Hammer warriors, MoI, Bsurge, Barbed Sig, Aura of Stability, Healer's Boon, Storm Djinns/Armor of Mist, ... all shouldn't get touched aswell. I mean, I would love for nothing more than all these power creeped skills to get nerfed, so that every other skill becomes viable. (Nerfing one skill means every other skill in the game becomes more viable)

I mean, with hexway AND heal party gone, what's going to stop people from running nothing but trip melee (similar to now, except there won't be a counter whatsoever, aside from wards which can be rupted)?

As for PvE:

Are there still people arguing all of the current meta builds aren't shit easy? I vanquished about 3 years ago when I still had my old acount, and I remembered it being RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing hard. Not insanely hard because sabway and discord was, in fact, around, but atleast harder than it is now.

You can't argue the fact that HM is redicilously easy for being called that way, and that speedclears show the fact that it can still get abused really easy. Tough, Shadow Form, and every form of invinci-tanking, are still the root of the problem here (Ball foes up who are too busy trying to attack a target they can't kill), they should've done something a long time ago about this.

Why skeletons of dhuum didn't get enchant strips was beyond me, as their intire purpose was to counter speedclears (of which every form relies on enchantments), whereas balanced teams, or atleast less gimmicky teams have other resources. (Spirits, blocking, a WARRIOR absorbing damage which his natural armor, etc)

I'm just extremely dissapointed a to how easy PvE has become. Normal Mode is litterely having one of those red birds that go up and down play for you. Hard Mode is the same thing, you just got to make sure you have a decent hero setup.

This might be a really stupid question, but where did the rumor that there's an update coming this Thursday come from? Does the rumor have a basis?

Delete shadow form from the game.
Sure there are lots of other OP skills but I have never been a fan of this stupid skill.

Even if you kill SF entirely, there will be a replacement. While I was toying around the other day, it turns out you can negate pretty much all damage with a dedicated bonder using 3 skills. In HM DoA. Yes, I had 10 damage reduction from SF and Shroud but that was pre-bonds, so it doesn't make a lot of difference. Heck, even a Vow of Silence Derv with proper bonds could replace an SF sin for many purposes.

Speed clears are part of the game now. Unless there is a change to the objectives of areas, not the skills used in them or the foes' skills or AI, speed clears will just evolve around updates. There's no point hurting any more skills unless you're just out to get them.

I still don't really understand why AP is on the chopping block though . Discord is easy, but it's not broken and it's not the most efficient way of playing. At this point I run Discord still as a base for team setups (MM bomber and N/Rt Resto are very sound), if Discord itself were nerfed I'd just throw AotL or Jagged on the MM and Xinrae's/WoR/Icy Veins on the Resto. Given the kinds of hell the rest of my team can unleash, it hardly makes a difference. And I never role AP anymore, it's way more fun (and usually more effective) to run a physical bar, for damage, control, and party support.

I'd rather see a nerf to the incredible PvE only skills from GW:EN than an AP nerf. I've said it before: in what context is a 10e, 10s, instant cast KD, cripple, and armor ignoring damage not broken?

I can't comment on PvP changes other than what might fall over into PvE with Anet not deeming worthy enough for skill split you better believe if it's heal party or something, they won't bother.

Why ER eles Havnt been touched is beyond me. Maybe because the only other thing Elsa have to run is Bsurge or something (if that's still viable?). ER itself is detrimental to how viable monks are, and how teams are ran in PvE.

AP needs the nerf IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if Anet wants to nerf discord builds before the release of 7 hero parties.. It's way outdated anyway.
Other sin nerf/buffs make me nervous. I don't want then touching jagged/fox/DB combo, and if they do, certainly not in a way that kills it. A buff to dagger elites would be interesting, most def.

But what really would bother me is if after all these months they can back and shrugged with nothing for dervs. They should by all means have SOMETHING by now, and if they don't give us that, at least bring in something from the other classes mentioned (smite/para)

Minimal skill balancing would aggravate me. They did a good enough job buffing Rits and Mesmers, save The few OP skills that seem to overshadow in peoples' minds. If they aren't going to deliver, they should stop making promises.

Every build you can think off relies on enchantments. Usually, all the tanks have to do is make sure they can't be the target of spells, and bam invinci tank 99 of GW's areas.

It would be too hard/much work to add non-spell enchant removal to all areas, but for grenth's sake give the skeletons of dhuum a monster SKILL enchant strip of maximum 3/4s cast so that atleast UW doesn't become easy mode.

It is....but who cares... no one obligates U to use it. Some of us do like it
so where noob dumb and lazy, but enjoy it... Dont nerf PvE skills, they are a
choosable not required. So leave them alone

I think considering the PvE part that some classes could use a buf or change
as the Derv and beastmaster/spirits of a ranger.
And yes some others are strong. But than again it's PvE... so thats to
everybody's choise how to use it.

PvP is a total differnt story. And I'm no PvP player so would not know
what skills would need a nerf or others a buf. But PvP really needs ballance.
So that is where the main job shoud be about by changing skills.

PvE is all about fun, so pls don't nerf any skills any more. Just buf or change some functionalities

With the stand necro nerf, I don't know how good trip front will still be. I do agree though that some (passive) midline defense needs to be made a tiny bit stronger (the paragon chants, wards) without falling back in the rawr defense ball meta.

Everything in PvE is tied together because the market value of drops relies on the input of the intire community.

If you have 5 people who farm ectos at a rate of 10/hour because they use broken builds (pve skills or not) and 50 people who farm at 1 ecto/hour because they use balanced builds, the 5 people are going to have the same marketweight as the 50 people and eventually push prices down if they need to get rid of their ectos fast.

This is a gross overexaggeration, but this is essentially how it works. For you, Shadowform or all these imbalanced builds might seem like a fun way to play, but for alot of other people these builds serve the means to farm 6 hours a day, and massively sell their loot at an everlasting declining price because of the massive input people like these create.

This (and to a far less extend people needing less ectos) is the cause why ectos have gone down from 10+K to 3.5K, and now recently back up to 7K as the result of the nerfs to the solo farm builds.

It's about damn time hexway got some sort of nerf. Hexes have been incredibly stupid for way too long now.

Listen to this man and Lemming.

It looks like the dev team is targeting gimmicks in GvG. Sin chains are getting hurt. Other skills are being changed to correct their OPness.

I'm happy that they're finally addressing the hexway garbage and thank God my guild is training balanced. And heal party getting the axe is nice, considering that is just annoying to split against.

I am a little disappointed about the lack of a dervish update and I wonder what they spent the last few months doing if they weren't testing dervish skills.

Yes. I'll leave it at that.

I'd like to ask the TK to "show stones" and do what should have been done a long time ago and add a 15 second cool down to SF. At least with AP you are fighting everything on your way to your goal. With SF you do as little as possible to farm end chests.

I don't think any SF changes are rumored. At least, I haven't heard any.

And the AP nerf may have been just rumor. I looked into it more, and it looks like that's not happening (again, I could be wrong).

This skill update seems to be targeted at PvP. I think their only plans for PvE are the upcoming content additions.

that makes sense then. AP getting hit and not SF seemed really weird to me. We will see what happens, but the whole reason(what seems to me as an excuse)Stumme gave as to why they weren't doing a Derv update with the CB and all seems really fishy. I hope that Dervs are going to get some love, but we will see if your Fortune Cookies are correct KJ .

This will require a Bonder, which will take two party spots to replace the one that a Shadow Former can do on its own. I also think that if they nerf the skills needing nerfs, and buff NOTHING else, in terms of spell prevention, there will be no replacement. Otherwise, why have those skills not seen life already? If they make all spell prevention skills unmaintainable, except for Vow, the closest thing would be Mist Form, and I don't see anyone using that as a tank for elite areas.

Edit:

There is a simple solution to stop the farming of end chests, at least as quickly as they do it, without changing any skills or any monster AI. One simple change, if you are curious about it, PM me and I can give you my idea, but I will not post it here because it will cause an all out flame war vs. me.

I agree with that. I'm starting to think that Stumme didn't realize what he was getting into before saying that he'd update dervs (not counting all the other stuff he said they'd do). Either that, or their timetable is a lot broader than we thought.

You're right. We'll see

We should split this thread into PvE and PvP changes.

It's been established, PuGs are generally stupid.
That's why some UWSC PuGs require to show summon stones, their avoiding stupid people while being stupid themselves.

Esurge, I absolutely hate running on my low energy set 99% of the time. Not that it's hard to do, just adds annoyance to gameplay.

Also... screw codex arena and just bring Costume Brawl back with daily changing skills. It's an area of PvP that WON'T need constant balance.

Lastly, buff Shadow Stepping, lower recharge and lower after cast. Why not make shadow arts affect recharge of shadowsteps deadly arts affect after cast?

Hmmm, anyone remember 6vs6 HA testing? I really want that back.

Why is Assassin's Promise so important for Discord builds?

Any */N character with Parasitic Bond, Enfeeble and Necrosis can call and spike for a Discord team. Maybe not "just as well as" an */A character with Assassin's Promise and "Finish Him" -- perhaps the overall damage of the spike would be less. But the job would be done, the skills will recharge fast enough to use on the next target, and much merriment would ensue.

Discord builds will live on even if Assassin's Promise is removed/nerfed/killed/hospitalized.

Nerfing Assassin's Promise won't nerf Discord builds... it will just nerf Assassin's Promise.

Nerf discord.
Nerf sand shards.

One of the strengths in the standard Discord setup lies in the player bar. YMLAD and FD are very powerful spike skills and with EVAS, this bar easily accounts for at least a third of the spike damage.

Discord doesn't need a nerf. At 16 Death Magic it deals 115 damage. With a 2 second recharge and one second cast, that is 115 damage every 3 seconds. 115 damage divided by 3 comes out to 38.333..... Damage per second. With 3 Discords, that comes out to 115 damage per second, which is still not anything fantastic for 3 heroes to deal.

or another thought is, seeing the dervish has no place in GW2 why waste the time on them anymore and just use what little resources availible and continue the bridging of GW1 to GW2.

I think the point he was trying to make is that Dervs are still good at what they do even if scythe-sins outclass them. Dervs can still pump out a lot of damage. Still, it would be easy enough for anet to fix both of these with a simple change. Fix eles by adjusting the HM properties of creatures so that rather than having increased armor, they have even more health. Fix dervs (at least scythe dps dervs) by making strength and crit strikes only apply to warrior attack skills and daggers respectively.

Oh? So we can't post what changes we do and don't want in PvE? This thread has to only be about PvP changes, huh? If we dont play PvP, we shouldn't bother posting here? Please excuse me if I choose not to follow this advice.

Plus, the OP and the posts prior to my first post in this thread mentioned nowhere that the HP + VoR "nerfs" were for PvP only.

But an equally important strength lies in the sheer amount of defense and support the build offers. This is because damage is dealt with a handful of skills and the rest can be thrown into support lines like Prot and Resto.

Thing is, a Panic Mesmer, a PI Mesmer, an ER Ele, a UA Monk, a Removal Monk, an SoS Rit, and the list goes on, can all provide both sufficient offense and party support. For coordinated hero teams, you don't need a dedicated healer and dedicated damage. You need to run smart hybrids. It basically turns your team into 7 offense and 7 defense instead of 2 heals, a support or two, and damage.

There are too many good hybrid combinations to have any reason to take down one. Discord did it first, but it doesn't really do it best anymore.

I am aware that we're talking about rumors, predictions and leaks. But basing on that...

Disappointed by lack of dervish/para love. Fixing scythe and buffing Mysticism a little bit ain't THAT hard and time-consuming (tying more things to Mysticism would do enough good) and it would help the dervish community a lot. Just to repeat what i told a lot times earlier regarding skill updates: people don't expect updating 20 skills + changing an attribute + changing a weapon at once; it would be MUCH better to see 3-4 skills updated, but more frequent. That way the nerfs/buffs might be more flexible, with faster responses to the new gimmicks/crap due to overpowered/underpowered versions.

Disappointed by not hammering down Shadow Form to the ground. It got nerfed but obviously works good enough to be invincible tank in PvE, what is a tad too much. Sins still can run most dungeons, big chunk of them can be done completely solo in just a few minutes; UW can still be SCed.
SF should have never existed in GW in its form. The general idea behind the skill is cool, but it just breaks the game's mechanics.

The AP nerf might be targeted as well to kill N/A MoP spammers, not only Discordway. Even though i'm a Discordway-user for a long time now, i totally agree that AP should be nerfed. Not smitersbooned, not incinerated as SF should be, but definately made less powerful.

Talking about MoP spammers, the Manlyway - and MoP + 100b/Whirlwind in general - is stupidly overpowered meta in the current PvE. Providing the example of the current meta Raptor farm is enough in my opinion - ele, mes, sin, monk can't farm them effectively, whilst W/N and N/W with 100b + MoP can still get the top times.
It's of course only top of the iceberg. Manlyway, in general, is a problem, even without a dedicated N/A AP MoPer, with necro hero throwing in MoP instead. There's a thread in High-End PvE section where one guy cleared HM Deep with only three heroes - and kudos to him, congrats and the stuff, but it CLEARLY shows how a warrior on 100b, backed with MoP, is overpowered.

Speaking of meta OP builds, i hope DwG gets nerfed as well. It's cheap, has pretty much no recharge and deals insane AoE damage in team builds. Adding exhaustion to it should do the trick just fine.

ER ele infuser/bonder should have been nailed down a long time ago as well, back when SF got nerfed or even earlier. Despite it's sheer defensive/healing power, it's plainly ridiculous that an elementalist can easily outheal a dedicated monk and ritualist in their main party role.

While nerfing healing eles, they certainly need some sort of buff for high-end PvE. They can only run wards, snares and, to some extent, air magic now, which isn't really viable and is obviously subpar to most other classes in HM. It would be nice to see eles brought back to their main role from the very beginnings - nuking, aka dealing damage, rather than excel at healing and tanking.

When it comes to sins in PvP, Coward! should get tied to Strength a little bit and/or made half-range shout, for the very least. I don't play GvG, but i feel it's one of their biggest gimmick right now.

Speaking of PvP nerfs, i seriously hope that the TK takes not only GvG, but also other formats into consideration when updating skills. While i can agree, to some extent, that GvG should be the main focus, even RA and AB should be taken into account when nerfing/buffing certain classes and combos, so that the other arena isn't broken just because GvG needed to get rid of two popular gimmicks.

Focusing on mesmers in PvP, i don't really see why VoR itself should be nerfed. I agree that hexstacks are bad and overpowered, but it's not VoR's individual problem. Mind Wrack is much more of a concern here, as well as hex-spamming necro.

I certainly hope that most of GvG-focused changes will have PvE/PvP splits (besides, as mentioned above, taking other arenas into consideration). Remember that if something gets nerfed in PvE, the monsters are getting nerfed as well, so that nerfing PvE skills doesn't always mean increasing the game's general difficulty.
Some PvE-only skills might get a hit or two, though - longer recharge for YMLAD & higher cost and cast time for PI would be a good start.

I am incredibly disappointed if this is the case and the derv update is being shelved. All I can do is hope that this rumor is just a rumor and nothing more. However, I'm hearing things from others that make me think I will be disappointed.

Anything said in this thread is just desires for nerfs and buffs, nothing more.

he meant not to comment on things you don't know shit about. It looks really stupid, and it's probably best for you follow that advice.

my opinion?
most people i team up with use AP, but i dont, so couldnt care less whether it gets nerfed or not
i just hope discord can stay good, you know, as usable enough

also, for pvp i dont care actually, but if they do, let em split skills again, they've done it before, so they can do it

i just hope they wont overdo it

and i saw these are rumors, so i rather wait some

Yes and no...

The response to the armor buffs was to rely more heavily on skills that completely ignore armor to 'nuke' with and damage multipliers for melee DPS. Professions that can't make good use of either of those things got left in the dust. Dervishes are not one of those professions.

Warriors really aren't that much better with the scythe than Dervishes are and Sins are better at all weapons because of their primary. A Sin could beat a War in raw DPS with an axe too but nobody complains because of the Sin's squishiness vs. Warrior's general flexibility. Neutering secondary weapon mastery isn't going to fix anything but it will limit build diversity.