Skill Update Speculation

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.