Nerf Nerfing

there are snares for a reason. in an ideal mmo world for me would be intelligent ai that actually moves out of aoe so you are forced to have a water ele or something to slow everything down. team work is amazing..

but na, lawl npcs get stuck on walls in gw.

I agree on buffing lots of skills though.

Out of all the elite skills only a few stand out for pretty much each class.

Nerfs for the sake of balance is an oxymoron. After 5-6 years of GW we're no closer to balance today then day 1. You people need to stop using the "B" word in your arguments towards more nerfs. It just doesn't work. It never has.

nerf is not simply 'change', it is change in a manner that it degrades performance, the usual purpose is to increase performance, rarely is this the case though if compared to buffing

i believe youre either trolling (likely)
or you completely missed the point of the post (also likely)
to clarify, the post was more so in response to all the 'Nerf Blah' posts i saw in sardelac sanitarium, which is why the post originally appeared there.

i have to completely agree
i am asked now, daily, will i play gw2, my answer is 'most likely, no'
anet has proven through a pattern of behaviour over the years that they do not fully understand numerous topics concerning the development and maintenance of an mmorpg. one might surmise this is why they had 'differences' with blizzard crew, as wow has been around longer and does much better financially and player base wise, showing through empirical data that they more than likely are doing the proper thing.

anet handling of gw1 and their suspected handling of gw2 leads me to recall this english definition:
insanity - attempting a specific unchanged sequence and expecting varied results

*some* nerfs are required, the blanket nerfing mentality i believe is incorrect though. if you have a single skill doing say 3000dps while every other skill in the game at best performance only puts out 500dps, well then obviously you would not buff the whole game to match that single skill, a balance is generally when you decrease one side and increase another to allow a match in comparison methods. thus in such an example you may drop the 3k to a 1k and buff all the 500 to 1k... *that* would be balancing.

you did bring up a good point though, i had completely forgotten about izzy, how he got a job in the position he had im unsure, maybe it was supply/demand issue. in general the addition of skill separation between pve/pvp was a great addition (although suggested LONG before implemented and should have been an initial inclusion rather than addition later). i have noticed better skill updates overall since he was removed from his position, there is still some work to go though.

I seem to be invisible. Anyway, just because there's a suggestion to nerf something doesn't mean it's the only suggestion toward skill balancing, it's just a judgment of one skill. Come over to the ranger board and help us figure out how to restore them for PvE, it's a lot harder than you think and therefore doesn't get the same popular attention.

I try to give every skill a fair judgment, but any time a nerf is suggested, almost everyone loses their minds.

There won't be an excuse to have balance issues in GW2, but there are plenty in GW1 (not that I pardon, but it's an uphill battle to be sure).

Balance is relative, not absolute.

May I remind you that this game is almost 6 years old?

Anet's focuses are elsewhere.

how do you explain the first 3 years then?

Who wants to bet that after the dervish update, one or more of the "updated skills" will be nerfed within 1 week?

Nope, they'd probably decide to change it but spend 3 months doing it.

I just wish they would nerf all skills that make it too easy to solo. Shadowform and the ability to make 55 monks and anything else along those lines that are exploitive solo skills.

Actually, I'd call that powercreep, that move would just make half the game easier. And when the next buff comes around, you made half of the remaining half easier. And so on. I am not saying powercreep can be stopped (even in static games, strategies do the job) nor am I saying the game needs to be hard on the whole way. I think it should have hard parts and easy parts in every chapter, if you can't do the hard parts : get better and read strategies. Easy all the way is, I think, not the way to go.

Heed the words of CThonian wisdom.

EDIT :
Dove might have a point on that part, the game is old...

IMO I have no issues with farming, "exploits", and oversaturation of the market. But I have no issues because I'm not a powertrader or heavy farmer. In fact, nerfing the "easy" exploits have driven casual players to "farm" for items they want because now it's difficult and time-consuming to do these things conventionally. If there was a farm for Raven's Point, I'd be doing it. Maybe there is and I haven't found it yet. Why? Because I want an eaglecrest axe, and I can either farm that dungeon and get one, or I can farm UW for the ectos needed to buy it.

Just my personal perspective. Saturation of the market allows casual players the potential ability to have "nice things" without altering their preferred style of play.

Skills can be useless for two reasons:

A) They are too underpowered
B) Something else is too overpowered

The logical solution to A) is buffing. The logical solution to B) is nerfing.

A) almost never occurs in GW. When we refer to something as underpowered, we are almost always referring to B).

What happens when you nerf an overpowered thing to underpoweredness? People have to move on to the next most powerful thing. So, the game moves (ever so slightly) towards balance.

What happens when you buff an underpowered skill to overpoweredness? Now you have two overpowered things. More people use overpowered stuff. The game does not move towards balance. Making elemental damage better in HM does not make conditions better. Buffing underpowered things until they are overpowered does not produce balance; in fact, it makes balance even harder to attain.

This is why nerfing is better than buffing.

Now, in practice, it is not always practical to do things this way (in particular, PvE has become so widely overpowered that it has become impractical to fix everything). However, this just changes where the practical balance point is. It does not change the solution.

Question:
Why did this thread start now, after there hasnt been a legit skill update in months?

That's because you don't understand the nature of the game. Players Vs. AI.

Its like Tug O War, but in multiple dimensions.

Guild Wars does not exist in a vacuum, if you nerf a skill, it decreases the effectiveness for all who use it, which means Player and AI alike. Think fantasy arms race.

Essentially, nerfing isn't really nerfing in this context; if all the weapons at your disposal are nerf bats, but all the enemies are restricted to the same, then everyone is on a level playing field.

The difficult part is balance, and keeping everyone on the level playing field. HM is a great example, the unfair monster buffs are theoretically there to compensate for player intelligence, tactics and ingenuity, but unfortunately ANet overestimated all of that in regards to the average PUG.

But really, since everything in the game relies on the same selection of skills (with the occasional unique monster skill), there's no such thing as nerfing, just attempts at balancing the playing field.

Balance is subjective. "Rock is fine, nerf Scissors." -Paper

Just because I feel buffing skills is a more dynamic and enjoyable way to create balance. Others feel nerfing has the same effect. And to a degree, both arguements have a point.

Ultimately, nerfs and buffs are just tools used to operate on balance. When used together, properly, you have a better chance of achieving balance. And keep the meta game from getting stale.

If you have a sheer endless number of skills, and only a very tiny percentage of them are considerably more powerful than others, either through sheer awesomeness of particular single skills, or through amazing synergy with other skills, you deal with the problem skills.

Completely overhaul the monster AI because of a handful of skills? Madness.

Buffing all other skills? Insanity.

Pretty much sums up this whole thread.

You can't be serious.

DwG - even if mobs don't cluster, DwG pumps out more AoE damage in unit time than just about every other AoE spell from Searing Heat to Snow Storm. Making mobs not cluster would make DwG less effective, but it would also make every other AoE spell even less effective and even more underpowered.

SoS - so what? Spirits are free disposable damage-absorbing meat shields. If mobs attack them they aren't attacking anyone else. Besides, most mobs don't have the damage to kill spirits faster than they can be recast + before getting killed themselves. Many skills, such as Spiteful Spirit, won't even affect spirits.

Imbagon - they already do, targets with less armour are more likely to be hit than targets with more armour. Doesn't make imbagons any less overpowered, does it? Who cares if all the monsters home in on the imbagon anyway if he's under Prot Spirit + Spirit Bond + Shield of Absorption ...

If there's one skill in the game that does 3000 DPS while every other skill does 500 DPS, the skill that does 3000 DPS should be nerfed to 500 DPS. Simple. Nerfing that skill to 1000 DPS while buffing every other skill to 1000 DPS is silly because it would dramatically increase kill speed. Some things don't change, you know. A level 20 character has 480 base health, burning does 14 DPS, Elementalists have 60 armour. What do you think the result will be if you buffed everything else?

I'm strongly in favour of nerfs to imbagons, Shadow Form, DwG, Shadow Form, SoS, Shadow Form, Ether Renewal, Shadow Form, etc.

If the monster AI was as good as it is in Darkfall (which is sophisticated scripting, you learn to abuse it with time), no complaints would be made, probably. The skill, profession, monster and landscape design would be much more interesting if the intelligence of AI monsters actually mattered.

Up untill the Last nerfing of 2 PVE title track skills The Ranger as a dmg dealer was very effective. My son ( Vetran Sin user ) could not quite manage the same dmg output of my ranger with his sin. I in fact have a screen shot of my dmg on the master of damage. This was not aided by any other buffs except what was in my 8 skills. I done 1040 dmg in 2 seconds. That was a high energy cost bar and really was not usefull unless i was going in to strictly spike bosses. Like the Nundu Bay mission in HM final boss down with only 1 application of holy water .. 9 seconds flat.

I actually had about a dozzen bars on my ranger alone that i lost with the nerfing of the 2 PVE skills asuran scan and by urals hammer. Either or a combination of the 2 skills or 1 skill on it's own. I also lost all the time spent on titles to get the most out of the skills i was using. Rune's on the armor and specific weapons and mods to mach the runes armor and build into nearly perfect dmg.

After Anet as much as turned my warrior into a JOKE of a creampuff i fell in love with the ranger and it's diversity. I soon found the right combination of skills made the ranger a force that was not something to mess with. My warrior is now only a runner in some areas of the game due to Anets love of nerfing usefull skills. I have not used my warrior in PVE missions in a couple years.

It's not so much the loss of the bars on my ranger, more all the time and money invested to create a really good toon in the game. Title tracks are not done over night. all the time and money invested and it's gone in a few seconds of Anets wonderful update. Thanks Anet for throwing out all my hard work. PVE skills should not be nerfed.

I can see skill changes where PVP is the issue. All i really can say is i used to be looking forward to GW2. Now i can see that really all i will be looking forward to is nerf nerf nerf nerf. If anyone here thinks otherwise then they are a fool. Just give everyone Pillows and Feather Dusters For weapons and get it over with. We can all play Pillow Wars while the NPC's have things like battle scars and can wipe an entire party of Pillow Wielding Creampuffs in a single attack.

For me i seriously doubt i will be purchasing GW2. At least i know i won't be wasting money for alot of grief. I know Anet will not change the 2 PVE skills back no matter what people have lost. Thats the way dictatorship works. It would be too much trouble for a voting system to be put into place where each account gets 1 vote at an NPC for yay or nay skill nerfs. Proposed skill change posted on the NPC and you get 1 choice Yes or No. We will not see that happen though because then Anet would not be able to mess up any skill they please when they please.