OOK, time to re-learn how to play this game

Just to be clear: when I read what happened to Asuran, I nearly fell out of my chair. Practically all of my physical damage builds are now no longer functional. All those beautifuly 100+ damage numbers are gone.

And yet, 5 minutes later - I'm not crying or raging. I'm excited. I can't wait for work to end so I can go home... AND LEARN TO PLAY THE GAME ALL ANEW! I'm actually excited! I'll have to work out a whole set of new builds!

After 5000+ (is it 6000+ already? better check) hours played... I'm back at the start

Not me. The build I got as a Warrior hasn't been affected since I don't use Asuran Scan. Although I will be trying out Derv builds for PvP and suiting up my Derv heroes. Their AoE Scythe skills can put ele nukers to shame.

I'm worried that the W/N raptor farm, which uses BUH for it's damage boost, which doesn't exist anymore, may have seen its last day.

Hmmm stuff to test...

-Is Asuran scan now the way to deal with enemies that blind/block/blur vision? Could still be glued to my skill bar then, to deal with Arms of insanity, Ice elemental types, etc.

-Seems scythes got some serious PBAoE functionality now. Vow of Strength (Wow, Dervishes now get Hundred blades ), +cover enchant, +Eremite's attack, +whirlwind attack, +cover enchant, +twin moon sweep?

-What to do with ranger? Hmm...

Honestly? Campaign for them to be the next profession to get an overhaul.

Elementalist need a way to deal with Hard Mode armor ratings, but Rangers need, well, everything. There is nothing that they can do that another profession can't do better.

Agree with all of the above.

The dervish update looks extremely interesting and I feel good for the game in general.
I never got around to raptor farming or for that matter used asuran scan much so I don't think many of my builds will be affected, except for my dervish builds they will need completely redoing.

My hope all along for each update was they they would achieve 2 things.
Make each class special in their own way and make them all wanted in parties.
This has happened thanks to the updates so far and even mesmers now have a place.

Now where can I get a furious scythe

QFT, but i believe that eles are even worse(expecially after this update). At least rangers are phisycal damage dealers, and so can benefit of countless buffs(GDW/spliter, OoP, SoH,....) and trigger things like MoP.
Eles now can:
1)Do pathetic damage
2)Use ApP to spam Pve only skills (EVAS..)
3)Go ER prot/heal.

End.

Hmm Didnt even think about that one. Maybe a D/ build is forming

You forgot something about eles. Eles are extremely slow, let me explain why I said this cause most will say wtf is he saying, let's see a couple of things:
- ele lose 2s to cast his attunement (i'm asuming here that the halves casting time is not taking place, my tests kinda show me that it don't really halves my attunement with the 40/40 sets i have, only in rare ocasions, i actually doubt that it's 40% chanse to halves casting time)
- ele lose 1/4 second to cast elemental lord/aura of restore
- ele lose 1s to cast his glyph (gole/goc/goep/gos)
So the ele lose 3 1/4s only to cast his support skills. There is no other class that needs that much time only to cast his skills to support it's damage. And he has to recast it kinda often (better said ~1 time each every 1 min). Those things makes the ele kinda slow in battle, he will remain behind others cause of the time needed to cast his support skills, he will lose time casting those things in the battle.

If he uses an ward that adds 1 more second so it finaly ends with 4 1/4 s lost... By then mobs will be almost dead or already dead. To be honest it was funny to read the flash enchantment part about dervish and the reasons those were added, funny cause the ele had almost the same problems during the fight and still has them now...

You don't want to know how many times my spells didn't casted cause the mobs were already killed by the rest of the party (i was the only ele there).

@Shriketalon you can do a simple test, ask a friend that can tank for you in hm (6+ mobs). Load a barager build on your ranger and start attack the mobs on the tanker,start a time once you start to attack them.
Same mobs same tanker only this time you will use and ele to kill them.
After you did this test tell me who killed the mobs the ranger or the ele.

My bet is on the ranger. Why? Cause most area efect ele skills break aggro badly.

totaly agree with you thedukesd.not to mention that with mesmers and necros around the elems often get stripped of enchants and easily interrupted.

@thedukesd: well, we agree on it. Just forgot to mention.

Meanwhile, the Critbarrage Assassin is already on the next mob.

Never said the Ranger was better than the Ele. I'm saying that all the Ranger's tricks are accomplished better by other people. Meanwhile, the ele is in its own world of uselessness, separate and apart.

Both do have a similarity though. Their support abilities are generally inferior to other things profession can do, their only half-decent gameplay involves a lot of spam, and their primary attributes don't actually help them accomplish anything yet demand investment merely to be able to use their lackluster skills.

Yeah, because now they do 2-3 damage....

You basically put in a random skill for asuran and blow shit up (albeit slower). It wasn't a skill you had to build around, just carry on without it, you're still a physical, still ruin things when sufficiently buffed, and casters still wish they were half as cool. Heck sometimes you'll still run it to bypass all melee hate.

There will be some tweaks but that will be minor. Dragonslash, 100b, Hammers, barrage, turrets, DB spam... all those bars aren't going anywhere. Anything that isn't a scythe isn't going to build very different.

The one and only ranger build I have that does decent damage in HM is now ruined with the changes to asuran scan.
Who cares about the dervish, give the ranger som love

After what they've done to Dervishes? No thanks. Rangers suck enough as it is without making things worse... (I miss Rangers being able to do bow damage :/)

What?
If you have to learn again, you learned wrong.

It's always the same. Pick a profession, and having in mind where are you going to go, and the builds of your allies, pick an elite, pick skills around it, and then equip your gear to fit that build in the best possible way.

No update so far has changed that.


Now I think paragons (specially motivation ones), smiters and elementalists could use some love.

People are already talking about a D/N replacement that works better than W/N. I haven't got a Derv to test it though.

I tested that last night, and while you can't kill the broodmother without BUH, you can kill the rest of the mob. If you replace BUH with Pain Inverter and use finish him when she runs away after the spike, followed by PI, she'll kill herself when she comes back around to attack and you SHOULD be able to survive her attacks until then.

Barrage is terribly un-fun to play.

In regards to 40/40 sets it is actually a 36% chance,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability under mathematical treatment.

Back on Topic


I would give up 75% damage for immunity to blindness/similar mechanics and block. Hell they even inadvertently buffed the average pug assassin by giving him easier DP removal . Of course I would only see myself bringing it to areas that feature heavy melee hate.

By Ural's Hammer is hit or miss in terms of my opinion on the function change, personally I thought it would be more interesting if it kept to the theme of the user swearing revenge and then getting buffed in some way because of this, as a pose to being an aoe vengeance.

Personally these changes are refreshing and allow me to run physical bars featuring different OP PvE skills instead of the standard staples. Does anyone not agree?

Well they just introduced the mechanism to fix this. Attunements and Aura/Elemental Lord should be flash enchants.

That doesn't address the entirety of problems with eles, but it's something they can introduce in a relatively short amount of time that will make life easier for eles and those who use ele heroes.

Motivation is a lacking attribute, but paras will still only play imba unless the paragon gets a dervish style makeover. I won't hold my breath for that much of a change.
Smiters were given a reason to exist with RoJ. I think monks are not hurting for things to do.

I agree 100% with eles. Many ele skills were nerfed before the pve/pvp split and now HM has made them even weaker. Some flash enchants, and a buff to single target spells would be nice. Make eles about spell spiking and we'll see some interesting uses for them again. (PvE only)

Asuran Scan is still going to be stapled on my Sin build, since it pretty much allows you to bypass both blocking enemies, and being blind. ding.

That build does so much freakin' damage anyway, that IDK why people even use AS on it. AS on a sin is only useful for bosses and otherwise enemies that don't fall like a knife through butter.

AS was useful on other professions in the sad hope that they could compare to the amazing damage of sins. (and for rangers/paras to do ANY ranged damage)

Oh boo **cking hooo, you loose Asuran Scan and BuH and now you need to relearn everything? Jeez that's sad. Makes me have so much faith in Anet that they finally roflstomped both of them AND made the Dervish work very well.

And yeah, obviously they're both still effective in the right set of circumstances. Asuran Scan moreso.

The only time I was bringing out my warrior was for (aside from occasional FoW 100b use) Raptor Farming. Shame that she'll be less useful.

Raptor farming still works, so dont delete her/him yet