Preliminary Skill Update Notes: March 17

Pretty much what was my idea when i looked at the update.... Almost all isn't going to be enough... It might do stuff on GvG when fight last long , but about other formats, it won't do anything ( people will still run same builds sin those formats without caring of duration , etc....)

I think it's time to get serious content update instead of some random " take OP bar- nerf all 8 skills " update..

Also , i don't get the point of attenuments change , can someone explain me why it was needed ??

It was just a suspect, but now is sure. Anet must have something against eles.

The cast/recharge time of Attunements was ridicoulous, and they've changed it a bit after years of player discussion about it. It's a nonsense that Attunements was in that way till yesterday(5+year of game).

And then, to be "balanced", they added the Invoke damage reduction. Wtf, eles have 3 skill split pvp/pve, and invoke was almost the only solid damage choice in pve right now(using air obviously). Great job Anet. Nerf AP and ER now, come on!

Dervish Pvp balance aren't a surprise. At least this should stop the numbers 3 derv+1 backline RA team. That sometimes wipe better balanced teams, lol.

For anyone will pointing it: this is a PVP update, which is good, but Anet can't balance one aspect of the game w/o think about conseguence on the other. There's a thing called " PvP/PvE skill split". Use it Anet.

Do you mean that about all of the changes that are being made or just about the blood magic changes.

You seriously dont mean to say that no one in PVE cares about ellys I hope.

The new Signet of Suffering is too weak, I doubt people will use it when there are better elites. Compare to the updated Barbed Signet:

Barbed Signet is non-elite and provide bleeding on multiple targets.
Signet of Suffering is elite and provide bleeding on a single target.
The small sacrifice on Barbed Signet, and shorter recharge on Signet of Suffering won't have much impact.

Suggestion:
Promote bar compression, making Signet of Suffering an elite version of Barbed Signet with a conditional life steal component.

Signet of Suffering: changed attribute to Blood Magic; decreased recharge to 10 seconds; decreased casting time to 1 second; changed functionality to: "The next 1..2 Necromancer skill(s) that targets a foe causes Bleeding for 1...13...10 seconds to all nearby foes. You steal 10..50 health from foes already suffering from a condition."

This update has a minor effect on PvE. Don't moan too much - it's clearly a PvP update and there's nothing wrong with that; poor skill balances hurt PvP much more and much faster than they do PvE.
Barbed Signet had very little, if any use and Signet of Suffering had even less. I can think of a potential use for the proposed Barbed.
Invoke is a small nerf, but ultimately won't change much - Eles trying to push for damage with that elite already suck, all this does is weaken a potential hero. You're looking at 10 less damage but a shorter recharge.
Consume Soul hurts people trying to do Mallyx.

I was under the impression that people finally realized how bad eles were for damage in PvE. I suppose that your point is valid, though.

You're kidding, right?

Hmmm...
Get those minions out of my forest

Exactly. I'm currently working my way through the Kurzick title and the change to consume soul is going to heavily effect minion / summon heavy builds (which is mostly what people run these days in PvE) in Morostav.

Consume Soul: changed functionality to: "Elite Spell. You steal 5...49...60 Health from target foe. All hostile summoned creatures in the area of that foe take 25...105...125 damage."

2 of the wardens and all your summons / minions are gone.

In PvE if you must run air you still have orb (and hammer) if you want single target damage, it was faster and punched harder then invoke anyway.

Invoke sucked already in PvE because it only hits 3 guys(and most other air skills weren't that great, being single or limited target hits), I can do better spamming the vanguard wards with earth or fire knockdown AoE and snowstorm and/or rodgorts+intense with utility in the rest of my bar and a big spike damage on another guy(with earthbind somewhere in the party for giatns and such). They need to make it hit all nearby and crack armor(in pve) if they're going to kill the damage that much.

In fact, most air stuff needs to be AoE for it to be worth using over earth or fire, or even water in pve. Surge needs to be an aoe hex, as does glimmer, Gust needs to hit all adjacent and lose the requirement of an earth or water hex for a bonus if they are hexed. Arc lightning needs to hit all nearby foes hexed with water, chilling winds needs to do like glimmer, be a constant DPS for it's duration in addition to extending water hexes. There's lots of unused skills in other atts they can rework to buff damage in pve without messing with e-storage. Swirling Aura, Magnetic Aura, Elemental Flame, Iron Mist could all be changed into a damage boosting, BuH like functionality in PvE, Second wind, Glyph of essence, elemental lord, Glyph of Energy, and maybe ether prodigy could be functionally changed to boost damage or be otherwise useful.

The necro and derv stuff, who didn't see it coming really. I don't RA as much as I used to, but like every other round there was a blood necro with barb sig and it seems pretty strong, and their elites were random fillers, I can see them taking suffering with oppresive. What it does is give you the conditions all at once, that's why it hurts and synced well with oppressive and virulence, with the new barbed you get a chance to erase it that's why it's not elite.

Im surprised they're not nerfing lyssa's haste... it's an instant interrupt you can cst on the move, twice...I don't know if folks understand how badass it is yet... or avatar of lyssa for that matter... remember fear me?

True that.. hm, looking at Wardens of Seasons attribute points it would be quite a big difference between NM and HM:

Normal Mode:
"You steal 5 Health from target foe. All hostile summoned creatures in the area of that foe take 25 damage."

Hard Mode:
"You steal 64 Health from target foe. All hostile summoned creatures in the area of that foe take 132 damage."

I guess there's few counters to this...
1. Start each pull with Signet of Humility, targeting Wardens of Seasons, todisable their elite. If 2 wardens, at least you reduced the damage by half.
2. Death Nova all your minions and send them in, hoping Consume Soul will kill them and trigger massive damage. Then Aura of the Lich for a new fresh minions.
3. Atrophy, reducing their Soul Reaping to 0 so they only cause 25 area damage to summons.

Invoke change is going to affect PvE alright, although I agree the effects aren't going to be that major, it's a nerf regardless (unlike a nerf to, say, Watchful Healing).

The point is that having 10 less damage with a shorter recharge is a nerf however you look at it. Invoke Lightning's DPS isn't [insert damage]/8, just like Discord's DPS isn't 105/3. More damage with longer recharge opens up more time to cast other spells like Lightning Orb and Chain Lightning, something less damage with shorter recharge doesn't do.

The nerf to the potential hero is also a definite one. See, if you need a ranged hero that does damage but can spare both the secondary profession and attribute points to bring some other skills, you'd be looking at a rather short list:

The standard minion bomber can usually do this, although it can't take Restoration heals. You can only run one minion bomber at a time.
The standard SoS Rit can do this. You can only run one SoS Rit at a time.
A Mesmer can do it, but you only have 2 Mesmers.
You could rely on a Necro, but non-MM Necro damage output is quite weak.

Which leaves Elementalist heroes, and clearly the best damage option with Elementalist heroes is Invoke Lightning. It may be a hero option, but a nerf it is. It affects an entire niche, not a single hero build. Considering how weak Elementalists already are anyway, I don't like the Invoke Lightning change in PvE.

How is it "clearly" better than searing flames? Burning and spammability on more foes do a lot more for you than 25% AP.

Did you not read the second paragraph of Jeydra's post?
To get mileage out of Searing Flames you need to spam it. Whatever you cast has either got to be Searing Flames or something that allows you to continue spamming it (i.e. energy management).
A single cast does little and what's worse is that subsequent casts can do less.

Why fevered dreams? It's not like its overused/overpowered

Yes, they clearly hate you so much, they decided to do something you've been asking for for years.



So. Much. Hate. Over. 10. Damage. OMG. You guys really want them to be splitting skills for a measly 10 damage? That's not going to be the difference in how fast you kill something in PvE, and what's this, now you'll be able to use it on the same group twice before your frontline has killed everything? Madness!

People had been asking for attunements to be made into a skill, increase damage, drastically reduced cooldown (enough so it can compete with Soul Reaping / Expertise / Mysticism)...and uninterruptibility. 1 second is still easily interrupted by PvE mobs and being locked out for 30 seconds isn't anything better than being locked out for 45 seconds.

What annoys people is not the 10 damage, its the fact that they didn't even bother to split the skill when the class as whole is grasping for any sort of decent damage to begin with. If Fevered Dreams got a split, then invoke definitely should get one also.

As for the frontline thing...my frontline and everyone else kills a group (or at least 90% of it) in less than 7 seconds. So, yeah, madness indeed.

I'm still holding out hope for an elementalist rebalance in a future update. Elementalists have been one of the worst classes for damage dealing since the game released, when they should be one of the best. Exhaustion, for example, just needs to be done with completely. Its a useless game mechanic as its implemented now.

1. Freak out more over a mistype. If you had read every single post in this thread like you expect everybody else to, you would have seen that I used the correct skill name in my first response to this thread.

2. The update still seems a bit pointless to me, though I guess I'll wait to see what they change on the necro bar to compensate. Instead of nerfing the bleeding source, they should have toned down the skills that are so powerful because of it.

3. Freak out some more.

Ah, but that's exactly it, they didn't bother to split the skill because 10 damage isn't worth splitting. I had no idea that a nerf this small could really stir up so many people into frothing rage about deleting their ele!

Give me a screenshot where some mob gets healed back from less than 10 health, and then simultaneously molests your child and your wife while giving you the finger and throwing up devil horns, and these reactions might be warranted.

@inscribed: You picked possibly the worst example for your point possible. Exhaustion is excellent at what it does: gently restrict powerful ele spells to the ele primary profession, since energy storage lets them ignore exhaustion for the most part. That's why it's there, for the same reason that so many ranger skills cost ridiculous amounts of energy (but Expertise makes it all ok).

And Fevered Dream is worth splitting? No mesmers I know use that skill...at all. If I want to spread conditioned I would've already abused FD's effecting in the first 5 seconds.

The key is that they should've splitted the skill and then increase the damage it does in PvE because the unnerfed version wasn't that great to begin with.

Fevered Dreams is one of the more powerful Mesmer elites in PvE. In the hands of a human it competes with Panic.
Several guild mates, myself and other people on the forum use Fevered Dreams on their Mesmers.
FD bars would be weakened significantly if the proposed 20 second recharge was applied to PvE.

Blood necros were too strong even before people discovered nonelite energy engines like masoch and angorodons. Like the initial PR nerfs people might stop playing them for a few weeks or even a month, but they will come back eventually and Anet will have to deal with them again. Maybe we'll see less quad-necro gayness though.

I'm sort of happy and also worried about the shatter enchant buff. I love the skill, but almost 100 armor ignoring damage+removal is alot for a nonelite. It was 15e for a reason. I guess they need something to compete with strip enchant, but still...

Good to see the dervish nerfs.

Shatter hex looks okay now.

Quicker casting attunements will make my ele play a bit faster now.

Consume soul looks... weird.

Consume Soul looks like the old Ray of Judgement.

Barbed Signet was what made the bar work.

For people saying this is a PvP only update you are right on one front. It's intended for PvP. The other part you are missing is that a lot of these skills getting hit aren't being split. That is why there are people in here that primarily play PvE that don't like some of it. Their opinions are valid too. In fact, from a financial standpoint, I would say their opinions are more valid because straight PvP'ers aren't buying merc packs for $45. Maybe you PvP players that are telling the PvE'ers to stop getting their panties in a bunch may want to start suggesting Store Packs for PvP.

Can I get a split for IL please GW Devs? Intensity was buffed and is now going to actually feel nerfed because of this. Also, people who use merc packs like using 7 eles with this skill. This change is damaging to the merc packs people bought just recently and it wasn't inexpensive.

If the Consume Soul change is for pvp and pve, I can see why Anet changed it for pve. How it works as now it will instantly kill a summons either minions,summoning stones and asura summons. At least with this change those summons won't instantly die. Sure the damage is AoE now but with the new minion UI panel and with summons showing in the party UI Panel it will be much easier to keep them alive.

Splitting skills, if I'm not wrong, makes the engine less eficient and causes more lag (?). That's why they have been preventing to do so unless it is really necessary. And 10 damage out of 100 is not really necessary. If eles suck at dealing damage, it is not because Invoke Lightning deals 10 less damage. It's because of HM armor levels or overall skills suckage. This "nerf" to IL (I still fail to see why it's a nerf, I mean, all I did with it was spamming it over and over, and now it will be stronger to do so) basically makes no difference for normal play, while toning down the IL spike crazyness.

So yeah, it's a pure pvp update (except consume soul? And the new pve version of barbed signet? Hmm). The half casting time of attunements will make it less annoying to cast over and over at pve, but that's more of a convenience thing than anything else.

I do hope, however, for a pve update soon.

In context to the merc packs its a big deal if i want to use 7 ele mercs with Invoke Lightning. I don't have to use 7 ele heroes, but I am not looking for that. I want to play with 7 ele heroes using this and because PvP is getting a nerf it is affecting my usage of the skill. If I cared about X amount of damage, I wouldn't be using eles but I dont care about that. I care about having the skills I want to use in PvE not being affected by PvP. Which brings up a great point about Motivation being returned to its original form in PvE.

Assuming 15 air magic, the armor sensitive damage is reduced by 10. TEN!

OMG THE SKY IS FALLING.

Also why would you use 7 eles? that is even more stupid (read: lack in better judgement) then Discordway when it comes to competent team builds, hell if you want to run it, the -2 second recharge actually helps you spike more often with the skill. Too each their own I guess, the change doesn't even nerf IL in PvE all that much anyway, you'll probably still roll through PvE with or without the -10 armor sensitive damage anyway.

TBH I don't know why they are even tampering with IL, it will still be an absurd spike skill for HA noobway teams, -10 damage (assuming air 15)

So I guess this is the heart of the b!tching, your angry that skills change due to PvE or PvP concerns or vice versa....too bad? There is no way to sugar coat this, your in the wrong game if this bothers you to the point that your typing in-depth on a forum of discussion about your perceived notion that this game is better off without tweaking and review (skill splits in GW hurt the game anyway since more instances of a skill = a less effective system overall).

Will the new Signet of Suffering retain the health sacrifice of the current Barbed Signet?

Barbed Signet (PvP) doesn't have a health sacrifice.

That's a load of crap. If skill splits hurt the game then Anet would never have done them, however they found that they needed to do skill splits to keep pve viable for the pve'ers and pvp viable for the pvp'ers.

The collateral from PvP based nerfs in PvE was more or less the only thing holding PvE in check.
A skill split would be fine, but ANet were too zealous in their buffing of the PvE versions of some skills.

The point with eles is that players now are tired of Anet position about them. It's since the add of Hard Mode that everyone that play regularly a ele in High-end PvE can see a real damage nonsense(single RoJ>all ele skills). And after years of asking, giving explanations, proofs and whatever, the latest noticeable skill rework for eles were the buff to Invoke, wich now get toned now as elite chain lightning(lol 1 sec cast is worth elite slot?), and the incoming attunements change(which was needed looong time ago).

And then, when the derv updates comes out devs wrote:
/faceplam
Devs, are you really playing GW?

This is why people are quite critical about any little ele change. It's needed, but seems that Anet decided to ignore this class problems.
Quite frustrating, isn't it?(Expecially after years of play/titles got/time invested on a ele)

The attunement changes look bigger than the Invoke change and perhaps it wasn't split because there are better skills that should be worked on. Most of the dervish changes aren't that big of a deal either or are skills that wouldn't really be used in PvE anyway.

Shatter Hex and Shatter Enchantment makes domination and removal of hexes/enchantments a little more appealing, at least for me.

You could try fighting oozes that have Spiritual Pain if you want to know what it'll be like to fight against Consume Soul. All the foes throughout Cantha that have it at least leave corpses.

The way I see it is that the decreased recharge for Invoke will compensate for the decrease in damage so it should work out.

@Consume Soul nerf in PvE versus Mallyx: Soul Twisting + Gaze of Fury.

I coulda sworn it had a 8% sacrifice, oh well.

In regards to the Consume Soul change; if the wiki is right (Mallyx's spirits have 6,120 health) then the spirits will be very hard to kill, even with Holy Spear and Spiritual Pain. I've always used CS to do it, so now the only other way to kill them instantly would be Gaze of Fury.

So your definition of an Elementalist is that it doesn't do BIG damage with 1 spell but its a profession that does casts 2-3 spells rather than 1 spell to get the BIG damage?

so IV gets a 10% decrease in dmg, next time you cast, you lost another 10%, while everyone else is doing their "armor ignoring" dmg, while you deal elemental dmg against high lvl armor AND not armor ignoring.