Incoming skills nerfs?

This thread is about a foreseeable fallout from the embark beach update: now that we have access to 7 heroes, that gives us more room to play around with skill combos/builds and knowing this community, it won't be long before someone exploits this new advantage to make some even easier insta-win builds. Your first three heroes are the ones you have to micro manage, your other 4 you give autopilot builds.

So any thoughts on when this will happen and which skills will be nerfed?

I don't foresee any overpowered combinations that wouldn't have manifested to some extent in 3 hero team and to a large extent in full human teams.

AI and PvE skills are still a limiting factor. I wouldn't expect any big nerfs.

I could see Discord getting a Nerf if things carry on the way they are now (since most arguments about mercs seem to be stapled on this very skill build). Would love to see the reactions of people who bought the merc pack purely to roll around with that
Pretty sure it would force players to come up with more interesting builds tbh... (or just cause nonstop QQ)


But in all honesty, I'd doubt much would change unless someone really does work out some kinda crazy exploit.

I would like to think Shadow Form, Protective Bond, Life Barrier, and any other similar skills would be nerfed first.

To bring the difficulty back too many things would need to be nerfed. Discord is one thing - but even discord builds are only a mere shadow of the balanced build you can run now. Discord in fact was only really popular because it was a spike you could use with 3 heroes (and there were better ways to execute that anyway). You would have to take the nerf bat to 30 or 40 skills and take us half way back to Prophecies level of power to make anything easier than HM elite missions more then a snoozefest.

That said, Shadowform needs to be killed. Really killed this time. Save Yourselves could also take a hit, but I don't think that will happen until a paragon update that gives them something else worthwhile to run. Most of the rest of the popular skills are 'balanced' in the sense that they are about equally gamebreaking.

Discord really is one of the weaker builds to run on heroes, esp in higher end areas. I really don't know why this keeps getting dropped in threads like these.

I play all the time 2 players + 6 heroes. Discord or 6 heroes discord is far from being the best build available. In some areas it is still quite good, but balanced parties are possible and very strong.

Guess that is a side effect of people being gimped for so long that they can't think outside the box.

I don't see any foreseeable nerfs. A balanced 7 hero build pwns face all by itself.

While the 7H builds are inherently stronger to the average player, I doubt there will be any that can match the all human Speed Clear set ups. 7H builds are still at the mercy of AI.

Nerf what's already broken for a while now. Kill Shadow Form finally, please. Balance Infuse Health to kick it out of eles' builds.

It sucks unless you're a caster with decent caller build. If you're a mesmer, discord is (was?) probably the best H/H build for general PvE, including HM, you can run.

Hahahahaha. Sorry but a 7 hero team will wreck shit day and night regardless of the state skills are in. Hell, I rocked many a mission with preset stupid HENCHMEN alone before heroes came out, then I rocked a little more with 3 heroes. Then I played with a friend with his 3 heroes and we rocked a little more. 7 Heroes is the overkill part is the part that is [close] to what needs to be nerfed and it isn't going to happen plain and simple.

Said the mesmer. :P

Surely a 7 hero party cannot really do any better than an all player party.

If 8 really good players haven't caused a particular team build to be nerfed yet how will 7 heroes.

They'll never nerf any of the skills you listed. Especially not Life Barrier, that skill hasn't changed since they made it, and it's not that exploited. It fills a very specific niche, and as such it won't get nerfed.

105+ armor ignoring damage every 2 seconds x 3 is not one of the weaker builds in the game lol.

I never believed Discord was that good either until I used it myself, but what it does is add insanely huge spike damage on top of a hexway.

Hexway + Discord is one of the few unbeatable synergies in this game. Discord also lets your N/Rt healer pack some huge single target damage as well.

My main is an elly. Other than ER or Ether Prism, theres very little that they can do with their primary skills compared to the damage output that necros, mesmers and rits have. So I choose to play ER because its better than any damage build my elly can run, and I stock up on necros and mesmers for a hexway + discord spam.

Discord doesnt work in UW though, and maybe not too well in elite areas. But I think its very well understood that this is a speed vanq build, and really is one of the best you can get for vanquishing in as short a time as possible.

Yea, go ahead and nerf protective bond and turn elementalists into the most useless class for HM. Funny that necros, mesmers and rits are the most powerful classes in PVE right now, but you want to nerf classes that suck enough already first.

Why the Life Barrier Hate, Cuilan? Other than Urgoz, I've never seen it been used. It's not like you can cast it on yourself. Shadow Form, on the other hand.

The only reason why Discord is not as strong as people say it is, is because it doesn't have AOE so it limits it to about 41DPS (115/2.75), whereas autoattack damage with buffs will do over 50/second (i.e. 1 cast of Discord) and Spiteful Spirit with Awaken the blood will do that with adjacent AOE. Since you need a hex and condition it's also wasting 10+ energy on top of that. Also, it's in a line that only has minions,Putrid Bile, Rising Bile, Putrid explosion, and withering aura basically (Malign Intervention; Dark Aura is really a gimmick skill and the cold damage ones are bad like elemental damage) so if you pump it to 16 then you can only run one other attribute at high spec (12+) without resorting to more than 1 superior's HP loss.

Also when things have hex and condition removal it gets dicey. The only difference between Discord and other builds is that the Damage is a huge spike (300) which doesn't get mitigated unless the hex/condition is removed. Without AP callers' 160+100from deep wound (260) that 300 damage isn't that impressive, simply because it won't instakill.

If Discord doesn't instakill something (i.e. there's only 2 of them), you're better off with the 180+ damage per volley (25x4+20x4) from SoS+Bloodsong+Painful bond, seeing how it doesn't need a non-flexible attribute and you get a high spec splinter weapon and restoration magic. Granted SoS isn't as mobile and spirits don't follow targets.

I'm sorry, what?
Before 7 heroes, Discordway was incapable of completing Slaver's Exile HM, yet all those dungeons could be H/Hed. What does that tell you?



YMLAD, Finish Him and EVAS is a potent spike. Combine that with a fair contribution from Lightning Orb and perhaps Chain Lightning and you have a far greater contribution than a single Discord hero. AP recharges for you.
The single target spike is greater than anything the Nec can do on their own.

Stumme is pretty much about making the game easier so far. Even the BuH/AS nerfs, were actually motivated by making the game "easier", because it's too much to expect players to do skill quests and work on their title rank. Future potential nerfs to PvE skills aren't going to mean much to heroes.

If you read all of my post rather than selectively quoting and misinterpreting, you would find that I said that Discordway is a vanquish build.

Thats what I'm still doing atm, Vanquishing. Discordway is very powerful for that.

When I go into UW, I dont take discordway, I have a balanced build for that. I've cleared all of UW except for 4H twice with just 6 heroes, ofc it didnt involve either discord or an MM, but it did use Spiteful Spirit + Panic.

I've not gotten into EOTN dungeons yet because I dont like the few I already played. I find that they take far too long to complete for something that you cant save and resume halfway through. I rarely like sitting down and playing for several hours for a dungeon or elite area, I just do UW for ectos because I want obsi armor eventually for my HoM.

Also, I hate the PVE skills and any build that requires them. I personally wouldnt bother with arguing against other peoples builds if all I did was run a build that relied on PVE only skills. I'd much prefer for them to be entirely removed from the game.

Ellys do not compare in the slightest bit to mesmers, rits and necros in hard mode, thats been a well accepted fact for a long time now.

All that tells me is that henchmen dont synergise well with discord. Discord needs both hexes and conditions to work, there are some parts of the game where you cant apply both hexes and conditions to enemy mobs (like in a lot of UW with hex breaker, and none fleshy targets means an MM wont work, so 1/3 of a normal discord build is completely useless), and in those cases Discordway wont work.

Its just like Searing Flames. Searing Flames is powerful on Normal mode, and usable in HM (but other builds are a lot better). But once you play in EOTN, Searing Flames becomes useless.

But if you are playing any part of the game where hexes and conditions work, which is a vast majority of the game, Discord + hexes is one of the best synergies you can run.

If skills like those were nerfed, it would affect stupid skills like Keystone Signet.

REALLY?!? SF, again....... I wish I had $1 for everyone who has a axe to grind with SF. A rich man I would be.

Nah, no need to nerf. The game is being set up for incoming new players who will buy it after GW 2 comes out. Roll out the red carpet for them. Selling two games better than selling just one.

was still attempting HM Dzagonur bastion and similar stuff (expecting way too much).
then I remembered the same problem is still there. no-matter what your positioning one AoE spell from any monster in HM will murder the majority of your AI party.
making that better would almost negate the need for 7 heroes for me at least.
i#m wondering how easy it is to go through UW as heroes %D

Discord is good if you can maintain a condition and a hex in the enemy.

As a necromancer, you can quickly apply barbs, weaken armor and a quick recharge&low cost hex, and once an enemy has both condition and hex, discords take care of the rest.

With melee professions you can use some their many condition skills and asuran scan (or hexes wit the assassin)

with most discordway builds its a single target spike, but theres some aoe damage aswell. taking down that target seems tobe better than a more general wearing down of the mob.

Ive ran ss in normal mode, with a rit and her discord hero's, fire island with 2 missions + quest, and tbh it was hardly worth bothering with ss and the stuff died too fast, so it wasnt actully doing much damage

Defile + Desecrate Enchantments, Ineptitude Mes, Mistrust on your Panic mes (overload too if you want), and a pair of spirit spammers including Splinter Weapon = all the extra AoE, damage and hexes required to make discordway wonderful

Discord x 3 is 3 massive single target spikes. You have plenty of room to add hexes and conditions and AoEs across your mesmers and other skill slots. Deathly Swarm and Spirit Rift can also be added if you feel like all the above isnt enough AoE.

Like seriously, improvise, add whatever discord needs to work across your 7 heroes, and it blows everything up effortlessly as long as your hexes and conditions can be applied.

Discordway was pretty meh before this update because you couldnt add enough hexes or AoE with only 3 heroes + hench before. But now you can.

Start with Shadow Form. Really nerf it so that it is no longer permanently maintainable.

Then, take several weeks, at minimum, to watch what happens to the game. So much of "high end" play revolves around abusing perma SF, that the ripples would take awhile to play out and observe. For example, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that cries of "nerf MoP" and "nerf Keystone" would end pretty quickly after people realized that those skills, while good, aren't so ridiculously awesome when you don't have a ball of 50-kajillion monsters to unload them into. Conversely, damage-dealing eles would be even weaker still without super tank-n-spank tanks.

Also, while I'm no expert on PvP, there seems to be an emerging consensus that Grenth's Aura is a problem.

Sure you could...
"You are all weaklings", "Painful Bond", Air of Superiority.. etc..
and that's just on the player's bar...

Also, reason why I mentioned Discord in the first place was due to the fact that a lot of hate towards Mercs was justified with something regarding said build.

Not much AoE though. Now you can spec your remaining party slots to add more damage on top of the triple discord. Before you had to rely on henchmen.

Anything 7 heroes can do, 2 players and 6 heroes can do better. Most of the hero synergies have already been explored extensively. Unless a totally unexpected team synergy is found, we wont see anything we dont already know. I would watch for PvE skills and random imba stuff to get nerfed. See PvX Meta

I see something happening to "Save Yourselves!" soon. Followed by or preceding a Paragon update. After BuH and Ascan got hit, its arguably the best PvE skill out there.

Ether Renewal. Same boat as "SY!". If you take that away, Eles (like Paras) have almost no place in high end PvE.

Discord. If WiK proved anything, its that discord can easily be countered. And is subpar to your basic balanced build. I cant wait to see what Anet dreams up for Cantha:WoC. Discord plus Spiritway will be the path of least resistance for most GW players. Most already have Sab/Discordway set up for easy duo teams. And, most know the power of Spirit Spammers. Given that most players will use Discord(regardless of how effective it is), I dont think Anet will nerf it. SF is the most broken skill in the game, but most players use it, so it doesnt get nerfed.

The three hero limit created a need for skill bar compression. Now that we have 7 heros, we can decompress more powerful single purpose builds. Eg. ER prot didnt have much room on my Discord/Spirtway team before, but now it can easily find a place. Keep an eye out for those builds to get nerfed.

Although some builds are a bit OP , i think it wouldn't be fair if , for example discord , was nerfed because some people did team builds with 7 necros ( thanks to mercenary slots)...

However , personnaly i didn't find any very OP build with heroes. UW , and FoW are huge jokes even in HM. DoA is almost undoable even in NM( i managed to finish it with 3 paragons finally , but roj , discord , sf and stuff are mostly useless.... ; no cons items ofc).. Didn't try urgoz and the deep yet...

Instead of nerf try to finally balance this game.... WTB large Eles and rangers update.

ER Prot is broken? AP should be nerfed? I could even agree, but then what i should do when playing ele? Yesterday i was doing Boogrot HM, and the MAX damage i got was 35. By Rogdort Invocation at 14 Fire(listed aroud 100 damage). 50 if standing in a EbsoH. Seriosly, give us something to do before kill us with ER and AP nerf. Rolled ER to be at least a little useful for my team...

The question here is ...


Guys post will want see nerf this or that its op ect

Lets be honest for once what guys really want is to nerf something that affects there playstyle

So for once guys let new guys /returning guys have fun , bet you a $ that most of the guys who start these kind whats next to nerf proberly dont play the game now.

Since the implementation of 7 heros /mercs ect it still continues to see negative posts throughout.

For a game that you payed once to obtain and everything they give us for free there are still guys who complain.

This is like the classsic film Oliver Twist...were the guy asks for more and is never satisfied.

Sure I have mulitple accounts ect panes/ costumes ect

The nerfbat will always be a question why ? becasuse guys just want to say this or that is op. Just play the game guys and enjoy what you have without the added gloom is this going to be hit or not.