Nerf Nerfing

the mentality of increasing effectiveness by decreasing effectiveness is beyond me. i can understand for things that were obviously not intended to work in a specific manner (eg. signet of ghostly might, consume soul)

many argue that 'oh well blah blah is too powerful it needs nerf'
maybe instead of thinking about how to make the game less playable or less fun for people, think of ways to make it more fun/playable

maybe instead of reducing effectiveness you could buff other things that would prevent the easy exploitation of the portions of the game which you believe to be imba/op

dwg op? make the mobs not cluster
sos op? make the mobs attack the spirits more often
imbagon op? have npc use serious differences in armour rating as a determining factor of who to attack

where as my example suggestions would probably require more indepth thought to work out issues, they would be alternatives to simply making things less effective in other areas simply because you feel its too powerful

Those three examples you provided would certainly work. Unfortunately, they also happen to depend on monster AI being terrible.

AI is expensive, why would they spend money on it when they could just increase recharge or decrease + armor.

The problem isn't the AI, a 5 sec recharge dual drop ultrapot should never exist.

i agree, but complacency is no excuse, nor is an inability to improve/complete a product you wish to sell

To me, this seems like a valid discussion point that isn't really going to lead to any specific suggestion in particular. "Nerf less", if it is a suggestion, is a fairly vague one.

Moving this to Riverside for now.

You just picked 3 PvE-split skills. If the problem with these skills was simply a matter of AI, they wouldn't be split.

Make mobs not cluster, effectively nerfing all AoE's while only trying to fix one skill? Yeah, that sounds like something Anet might do.

SoS? If you're using your spirits as a wall, they do attack the spirits first... or you're doing it wrong. Armor of Unfeeling says hi.

Imbagon... Mobs do tend to target low armor targets, not that it matters when you have a melee front liner also packing Save Yourself.

Some times targeting the imbalanced skill for nerfing just makes more sense, sometimes tweaking the mobs in the area being abused makes sense... either way, players will adapt and overcome and there will be another FotM build on PvX to replace the nerfed skills in no time. Either way, whiners will whine no matter how Anet deals with skill balancing.

Nerf this thread please.

THIS was the best post on this thread so far

Although I agree with the "idea" behind what the OP started on this thread, it doesn't matter what Anet does, SOMEONE will always find a build that works better than Anet expected them to.

Good players find tweaks to beat the game, that simple.
all other players just follow (cut and paste) the builds that the good players have come up with.

the OP's point is that if you do it with their suggestion you don't diminish the fun of the skills as opposed to just nerfing a skill to the point you can't use it. Of course fun is relative, but my point to you in a language you will understand: Smiter's Boon says, "o hai".

yes, my point precisely

since i never play a monk, and dont use smiters boon anyway..... why would they want to nerf a skill so bad that peeps will stop using it?

"The developer update for this skill states that the PvP version was essentially made to remove it from use completely." ---

this i do not understand

Because they didn't know how to balance it and didn't want people using it in the upcoming tournament so they 'temporarily' removed it from PvP. Of course being Anet they never went back to fix it.

Time for my 50 cents worth .
Nerfing does several things to gw which ppl seems to forget about.
Each nerf/buff forces the community to change,adjust or even create new builds - which isnt a bad thing.
Bosses and foes also get affected and that changes how they are to be farmed/killed.
Nerfs also create new roles for diff professions - also a good thing.
Basically what im sayin is nerfs change a lot of things which does benefit the community otherwise im sure most players would complete gw then not play because there is no challenge to gameplay as nothing changes.
Balancing skills is anets problem which always outshines anything good they do.
But remember you cant please everyone all of the time.
Mesmers used to be used by quite a few players but in regards to getting in a team .. no1 really wanted them as they didnt have anything too great for the team.Now mesmers got a buff and now are usually welcome in most teams - and thats a result of nerf/buff and not a bad thing.
Anets some stage nerf/buffing dervs and half will cry and moan when details released and others will be happy and create new builds , dervs will get bk into teams easier.

In the 5-6 years of these updates, I know it's late but I'm already tired of seeing nothing but skills getting butchered every time they try to re-balance things. Some of us want to put those old skills/builds back to use with at least some functionality towards what they were originally useful for. If the idea is to continue limiting options, then it will just cause the game to get stagnated, which isn't going to do anything towards bringing people in our community back.

Something really has to give at this point or it's never going to get any better. Also screw hype for GW2, this game remains your priority, don't forget what got us here.

you can alter game play without taking things away, which was my point

Or you can silmply dont change nothing from begin..in other games the skills never be changed...or in GW case,change and balance just pvp skills...

i like this idea, specially since i really dont PvP thus would never notice the difference

You forgot that nerfs and skill change made an army of players quit.

Also improving one class skill(s) when that class was already overpowered (rits) it's completly stupid, and surprise it happened.
Improving a skill in such a way that it becomes better to use even for secondary then any of the primary skills it's totaly unbalanced (see doa dwg situation now).

Look at the ele situation now in HM. What supposed and ele play now? ER bonder? Lol, you don't need the ER bonder in hm in most cases. Earth wards? Lol, an paragon is a way better options and anyway wards are really bad when you are facing monsters with area efect skills. Water? Water is doing extremely low damage. Air? Well you can see how people reacted on a air build proposed for HM in gwpvx (just read the comments).
When they changed invoke and chain light they should had split those 2 skill for pve/pvp, decrease cooldown in pve for both of them to 5s and to prevent players concern about the devastating damage that can be caused by air mob use on the air mob eles the pvp version of those skills (pvp version of those 2 skills should had been close to waht is now,still a bit worst then it's now)...

The funny part is that are working for months to dervish skill update. It's funny cause the dervish is not the worst class atm, actually the paragon is the worst.

Anyway my bet is that after they will finish the dervish skill update there will be not other major skills changes, maybe some minor skill changes caused by gvg not by something else (like it already happened).

We can go also on the market side. What's the easiest way to promote indirect GW2? Nerf skills in GW1.

But then again noone will listen to this, cause they didn't listen when they changed both paragon skills that increase attack speed in pve... (Funny to see and Rt/P with spear doing more damage then a P with spear...). And don't tell me that P are support, cause I will tell you to look at roj.

They were talking about quality skills in GW2 and not an army of skills? Aren't they the ones that designed the army of skills in GW? Aren't they the one that design the useless skills in GW?

Several skill updates caused more inbalacements then it was before.

Personally I dont mind nerfs too much, its the price we pay for such a complex skill system. People will always find ways to create certain circumstances for a skill to become particularly powerfull, and in PvP that could become game breaking.
In PvE skill balancing would just be a waste of time.
If ANET would nerf DWG(which I do not hope) something else takes its place.
DWG is only powerfull if the DWG's properly aggro and hold it, otherwise its just a mediocre skill set at best.

If there would be an un-nerf that I would like to see, it would be that physical damage professions once again become viable options for HM areas as damage dealers. Physical damage is a laugh in HM. isnt it wierd that DWG dervish is consired better for doing damage in DoA then a scythe dervish? or any other non caster profession for that matter?
It's not because DWG is too powerfull, its because melee or even elemental damage gets totally descimated by the very high armor of HM mobs.
I would like to see armor ignoring prefixes (doing dark damage for instance) All mellee characters could become descent damage dealers once again. making mellee characters not being forced into a TANK and spank role by definition in HM.
I also would love slayer mods to become something people would like to use and to become available for Derv, sinn, para.