While the live team seems motivated to work on skills . . .

Would any one else like to see all the PVP/PVE split skills re-merged? In the early days of GW I played a lot. I got UAS pretty early in by playing through PVE, and I was playing a lot of PVP as well. I used to brainstorm for PVP builds and then practice running them in PVE, even if they weren't the best builds for the task at hand.

Ever since so many skills have been split off I find myself playing far less PVP, and I haven't played much PVE for the past year or so either.

Am I alone in wishing the PVE split skills would just go away and the PVP skills go back to being the default for both gametypes?

If you played PvP, you wouldn't want that.

The power creep in PvE has kept this from being possible anymore. I think it would be nice, but it's just impossible now.

If he played PvP, it wouldn't affect him at all.

The split would have been fine had it not been taking as a cue for "we can buff shit like crazy now". A merge now would probably be bad - a whole lot of stuff suddenly disappears.

PvE still hasn't recovered from the years of PvP balancing before the split.

What!?

Care to rationalise that?

Well, once could claim that PvE-only skills and consumables resulted from inability to buff normal skills to "PvEr wet dream" power level.

Game still did not recover from that...

Blood Magic would probably be a good example.

I realize there would be a ton of QQing from PVE'ers, but it seems they're shaking the game up quite a bit anyway.

The Dervish update screwed up a ton of my old hero builds, but I'll get over it (once I get a chance to play again, anyway).

You were using dervish heroes before the update? Why?

Unless it was a D/N, it seems kind of pointless. Melee AI is retarded.

The direct damage spells (notably lifesteal) were never really a major factor in PvE. Yeah things like Vampiric Gaze got hit, but it simply made bad skills worse.
When Blood got a small revamp things improved and it's persisted without a split so far (Barbed Signet was once split, but it didn't need it and the PvP version was much more fun). Arguably it could do with one, but even if it weren't split the change to PvE would be nonexistent.

i honestly don't understand why i keep reading this

before the 7 hero update, i used melee henchies quite a bit and had no issues except the occassional stuck for 5 seconds mode that tended to happen when i over aggro'ed

now with the 7 hero update, my melee heroes are what i use and they dont seem to be as buggy as everyone claims.

and yes i was one of those that ran (and still run) hero dervs, and really don't understand why people are saying that melee AI sucks so bad

i guess since i usually run a pet bar, i have learned to adjust my play around what you guys are calling s****y AI

There is nothing extremely wrong with the AI. The problem is that most players give heros a build that works well in theory, but the AI control is very literal about skill usage and has no imagination. Heros do not have the ability to prepare for situations because the AI doesn't have the capacity to remember past situations. It is up to the player to realize this and do what they can to reduce the need for recoverable intelligence.
The reason people blame the hero AI is because its human nature to place blame on something else.
But alas, this is a different topic.

No, I was using a lot of #/D builds with conviction. Now it kind've sucks in comparison except for specific builds.

certain skills/proffessions are worse than before, some are better. i guess the poor ones are ranger/paragon.
rits are now better but spirit spamming relies on a pve skill to teleport spirits. when rits first came in you could have multiple spirits of the same type in the same area

Removing skill splits would have a devastating effect on certain PvE professions. Instead of removing them, they should be rebalanced. I'm not interested in going back to fighting people for getting into groups and random insults in all chat whatever outposts or having the heroes do all the work.

I would quit this game if it went back to the old ways, I begged for the skill split, I hated that almost every few months I would have to re-do my build because some A-hole guild found a way to abuse a few skills, the game is perfectly fine the way it is, and I hope in GW2 skills are split from the very beginning...

i would only support it if it ment they put out new content faster rofl. otherwise its fine the way it is.

Agreed. Also, almost the entire Paragon skill set. Not that most people would notice, as there are not many reasons to play paragon today.

I would agree if PvE was still about learning how to enter PvP against AI. It's not. It's a completely different game.

People want to 123-afk-123 through Campaign content and get their shiny armours, while PvPers want to have to apply skill to get kills, to ensure only they can do it.

Blood Magic, Assassins before SF, Motivation, Leadership, effective multiclassing...and dozens more I'm forgetting.

The time before the split left a lot of "classic" skills in the dust. So much so that it has forced Anet to "reinvent" skills with totally different functionality and new uses.

think about multi classing. How many PvE builds really use skills of two professions? Sure, imbagons use SY which is a warrior PvE only skill.

But how many human players actually use skills from their secondary profession much?
Not counting casters who bring Assassin's promise for discord calling either.

I mean core play as well. Not eles bringing DwG to go DoA.

I can think of just 3 that aren't sucksauce. Rt-N exploding growth MM; N/Rt healer, and E-Mo ER protter.

Now ask the same question in PvP.
And before you say "Shock on Wars" or "Stances on Monk", why have you arbitrarily excluded Assassin's Promise?

Also N/Me Fevered Dreams.

God no! Do you remember how much pissing and moaning went on back when a PvP change would nerf a skill for PvE and vice versa. Honestly this system works better than the old one. It lets everyone have their cake and eat it too.

Keystone Mesmer with a necro secondary for Signet of Sorrow since it's one of the better damage signets for picking off those last few remaining enemies. Panic Mesmer uses Ele secondary for Glyph of Lesser Energy.

Honestly I like that skills are changing, but a lot of the changes are outright stupid.

Signet of corruption. Really. Oh goody, I can waste my elite slot on bleed, whopping -3 degen.

^ This is because you are bad. 9 times out of 10 if you aren't utilizing your secondary, you're doing something wrong.

Same here. If for no other reason, to avoid future threads on GW2guru similar to this one.

The reason more and more builds don't use many secondary skills are the pve skills.
That is a direct result of changes to gw as the team experiments with changes they are thinking of adding to gw2.

Secondary classes are very much important in pvp and still important in a number of pve builds but luxon/norn/asura/ebon etc skills are becoming more important in some cases.

The pve skills effectiveness depends on rank in some areas of the game not in splitting your points into secondary classes.

They will never entirely disappear until you start playing gw2.

I don't like that. That's why my favorite enemies are the WiK white mantle.
I find them extremely easy in HM, since they don't have the same insane armor increase and other native buffs most monsters have in HM to compensate for having just 0..6 skills, so all I have to do is find the weak link in each party and then kil lthem all
But many people find them hard, because they are not defeating just by: "Kill healer->Go for the rest".

Instead, they have actual working builds. And there are many different combinations in their parties. The ones with resurrections are not always the same, the ones with AoE nuking are not always the same.
You have to pay attention to what they do, and change tactics accordingly.

I wish all enemies were a bit more like the WiK enemies.

slavours is the dungeon i enjoy most (others ive tried are nearly all so boring :/ ) because you do haveto think and use certain skills and tatics.

asurastan is my list favourite area with the insane damage skills some of the dino's had.

^ this x9000.

I didn't play 3/4 years ago but I dated someone who did (and who used to use Guru at the time) and I remember TOTALLY the amount of QQing over skill balances... Seriously, it was stupid and I see the PvP/PvE splits as a bloody good thing even if at the bare minimum it lessens the 40-odd page threads that used to happen with every skill balance. Sure, there's still QQing, but on a MUCH smaller scale (and not just because the player-base has changed in size/activity). Also as has been said, it gives more scope for PvP skills to be altered without affecting PvE. I actually wish all skills were split functionality in that sense :/ Echoing the sentiment that in GW2 they do that from the very outset.

Ah, but so's the mobs. And my team always has that special secret weapon they don't, so it more than evens out.

They usually mean things like the fact they can get body-blocked or stuck (I once lost Vekk half a zone away, he was stuck on a cliff at the roadside) or the fact their priorities are not exactly what a human brain would pick, or the fact they sometimes ignore or delay obeying flags or behavior setting.

If you run beast master often you already have a higher tolerance for such things, since the pets are comparatively worse (lower reaction time, no flagging etc.)

And then there's what RedDog91 said. I get the same feeling, that some people don't realise just how literal the AI takes things. They react to stuff, but they have no experience, no imagination, no insight, they don't get bored, scared, panic etc.

Depends on your definition of "sucksauce". If you want a build that can own by itself aka farming then yeah, those are limited. If you want builds that support a larger team, there's plenty of those. Including in the professions that people consider sucky.

Example off the top of my head: R/Me condition spammer. It's not something I would run myself, it's not outstanding by any means, but it's perfect when slapped on a hero for support. The hero just needs to stand there and blindly mash the bar buttons: create conditions and hit "Epidemic" and perhaps "Fragility" once in a while.

Paragon with Expel Hexes or Empathic Removal.
Warriors and Assassins with Conjure X.
Warriors with Death Pact Signet.
Order of Pain/Dark Fury on Dervishes and Elementalists.

I don't see how Explosive Growth can be considered good when people complain about Elementalist's damage being bad. Factoring in Hard Mode armor levels Splinter Weapon will hit harder and can be pre-cast on multiple characters so it'll hit faster.

Here's the thing. I can bring a ranged hero who will shoot the mob I'm targeting behind the enemies running at me, or I can bring the melee hero who stands blocking their melee, taking hits from said melee, and not attack back. If you bring melee heroes your best strategy to optimize their performance is to literally mash your target closest enemy key and hit the spacebar.

I remember complaining that my solo farming builds became ineffective. Looking back it was a childish thing to do; complaining that group play in a cooperative online game was interfering with my anti-social greedy tendencies. Could you still play PvE and succeed? Very much so, but people are against the concept of change. A common comparison made to Guild Wars is the card game Magic, but if there is one crucial difference that made Magic continually interesting was the constant cycling of new sets in and out. Yes it sucked having to shell out money to stay competitive (a lot of money for that matter) but it kept the game fresh instead of going stagnant. Skill updates were essentially the new cycles, and while powerful skills got kicked to the curb new stuff came right along to replace it. Now with 7 heroes there really isn't even a reason to complain if your "main" gets their build destroyed when you have access to the entire group's composition.

Contrary to popular belief you do not have to run the meta builds to succeed in PvE. You never had to.

Absolutely not. The PvE/PvP split was one of the best things to ever happen to the game. It's simply not possible to balance a game like GW for both modes without the split. Keeping them chained together cannot result in anything other than one mode having bad skill changes made to it for the other's sake, and all the animosity among the player base that creates. (Do you remember those days when PvEers really, really passionately hated the PvP crowd for the senseless nerfs that Izzy visited upon them?)