Nerf Assassins promise, buff Glyph of Renewal

Plus, i suggested accompanying the nerfs with other buffs (not exactly the OP's buff but other, in my opinion more useful, buffs). For elementalists, this would mean accompanying a nerf to AP with a buff to some skill allowing elemental damage to be used effectively.

How does a nerf to AP help with improving eles in ANY way?

No it isn't. The point of dual classing was to give you extra options that your main class doesn't have but in a less powerful way. This was the idea at the very beginning. It wasn't meant to turn into a way to become better at it than the primary, but in various cases it has turned out that way. And that is part of the problem of skill balancing we have.

I meant being able to mix different profession's abilities but ok...

havent you read my previous posts?

I will repeat what I have said already in multiple posts. Nerfing OP skills and providing buffs to alternatives increases build the variety of viable builds. Nerf AP and give eles the chance to use elemental damage and suddenly, you've got a whole bunch of different, viable offensive elementalist builds, while at the present, there is only one elementalist offensive build that dominates all others.

I still don't see why you can't just buff the other skills? It seems you haven't read my posts either.

Do you know what power creep is? I suggest you look it up. The game can't just be buffed and buffed and buffed and buffed and buffed and buffed and buffed and buffed...

All there is to it is a small portion of people in Guru always asking to nerf this skill and that skill because they don't like the way it works. I'm not gonna argue anymore about some stupid skill I don't even use.

But is what Anet is doing when does update w/o fix issues immediatly or think to what were they doing.
And in all this powercreep madness, eles (cause if talking of AP they're the target...) becamed obsolete compared to all the damage/stuff given to Mes/Rits/blablabla. Just like Wars in PvP due to new Dervs.

So, options are:
-Leave things as they're now, where eles to be useful use almost only AP or ER Bonding/Protting.
-Trow eles in oblivion, nerf AP and ER to make them unusable "cause they're OP" and claim they're "fine as caster nuker class".
-Buff eles as they should deserve, in HM are a joke, really.
-Nerf every other armor-ignoring caster damage to level them to eles.

Now, what option is closer to what will happen in your opinion?

And to clarify....

/notsigned AP nerf, at least till ele buff. -which leads to-

/signed ele buff, then can easily get rid of AP. (and ranger/para too if we want QQ a bit).

AP hasn't power creeped at all (has it ever even been changed from its original Factions form? I don't think so). PvE skills have power creeped. Fix that problem and make it so that more than 3 or 4 classes can build effective builds without relying on PvE skills like a crutch and we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Nothing is wrong with AP as it is now, the only problem is that it exploits a handful of PvE skills to the point that AP + PvE skills > 95% of caster builds.

I don't recall any official statement from anet saying secondary class is supposed to be minor, just a bunch of people saying that's how it's supposed to be, as if their interpretation of it is fact.

QFT. A class needs to be able to stand on its own with its own elites. If you can make a plausible argument that the best elite for class X is from class Y, then class X needs work or the elite from class Y needs a nerf. I'm of the opinion that both might be the case here.



Torm, those are interesting suggestions. GoR seems a little complicated though; at least from a coding standpoint.

Andrew, if you nerf AP first, then what happens is the buff el argument becomes a little more squeaky and apparent. If you try to buff els first, a natural counter argument is that all these non-elites we need to fix can't be done because people will abuse them with AP. Then what happens is the devs change with with an unnerfed AP in mind and either under do it or don't do it at all. Then if they later decide that you know, maybe AP should have been nerfed all along, what happens is that nerf renerfs every el build that used it and the skills that needed to be fixed but where still have to be fixed. That would be more work for Anet and less time for them to do any other skill fixes they want.

That's why AP needs to be done first. You have to look at this from a business perspective as well.

To specifically address the proposed change to Glyph of Renewal, I think that it's a good start, but it would have to be considered alongside a larger set of changes to push the elementalist more into a state of balance. At the moment, I can't think of any skills I would necessarily want to power with Glyph of Renewal, current or proposed, because I feel like it would probably be too taxing on my energy, and I wouldn't be able to combine GoR with GoLE. Additionally, on the subject of having GoR affect multiple spells, this sounds ripe for abuse somewhere, and I would rather have it only affect elementalist spells if was going to be able to affect multiple spells.

When you think about it, it's the same thing. Buffs to a specific skill don't just buff that skill, but also indirectly buff skills that synergize with and counter that skill, as well as nerfing counterproductive skills. For example, if you buff a skill like Crippling Shot for rangers, then you end up buffing skills like Restore Condition or "It's Just a Flesh Wound!", whereas Pin Down may not see as much play. A buff to Barrage that would remove the clause to take away preparations would also buff all preparations and nerf Volley.

This situation is no exception. AP has now become powerful because the skills which it can recharge have become powerful. Nerfing either source would be a valid option for solving this problem, each method having their own reasons behind them.

Sounds like a problem to me.

...I didn't understood all particulars, but get your idea.

Btw, there's a problem. How will you explain to community:
"Hey, we'll obliterate AP, stay there for some months(derv change took..8+months?) till we have some ideas(good ideas..)/time/will(stumme said no more large updates so...)/cash(GW2 absorb almost every resource) to do serious(cuz here we have serious problems..)update to Eles!" ??

On the other hand you say: "If we buff ele before nerf Ap, we'll have ppl exploiting the new (and hope useful) ele skills with AP for madness!"

Then i ask you. How much would take to nerf AP? How much would last this window of "AP+Decent ele non-elite skills" that you fear so much?
Ap can be easily nerfed (limit to sin only-move to crit-change function) in a skill fix some weeks after large update, or even at same time (Derv update came with Ascan and Buh change, why couldn't happen again?).
Problem solved.

P.S:also, AP on eles isn't used to spam their skills....but to spam EVAS+FH+YMLAD(or Pve skills anyway) generally. The other 4 (Lorb+Lchain+gole+option for example) are there only to take down foe to 50%hp of finish it (and sometimes it isn't even needed).

The difference between the two is that AP is a mechanically interesting skill, whereas the PvE skills are simply stupid overpowered crap. One is clearly good for the game, the other is not.

This is silly. Whether the elite is on your primary or your secondary is meaningless. Whenever a class is constrained to a small handful of skills to be effective we should take a hard look at its balance.

Change both Elementalists and AP at once then. I don't want to think about Elementalists without AP.

PS: Score one for Del. So many people think they can read ANet's minds, lol.

Hey! I completed it <_< /brag. Sorry, it took me a freaking long time to actually complete (several weeks of tries with various builds/styles/etc) so I'm pretty proud of it. Also did it with Invoke, but I think that's because I'm missing some PvE skills (namely EVAS). I had a screenie in the DoA thread. :P

My two cents;

If possible, prevent AP from working with PvE skills (if you want to deal with power creep). Personally, I think those builds are staples at this point, are too well-accepted into the community, may as well leave it as is.

Alternatively, moving energy gain to crit strikes accomplishes much of the same (PvE skills are energy intensive) forcing you to make plans for energy gains alongside the damage if you play outside a sin.

Besides that.. the skill's fine. It's powerful, to be sure, but it's alright. The abuse comes from PvE skills, generally.

As far as ele's go, that's a pretty complex solution. A huge workup of the profession is out of the question. Therefore, you're looking at small touches aimed at making ele's more viable in HM, with more variety in builds. It also has to be something that doesn't overpower them - and doesn't affect NM, because if they got more powerful in NM, we'd have issues (if anyone thinks NM doesn't matter - there are still new players coming into the game - and they should still be considered). Scaling armor penetration could be an answer, attached with either attunements, ele lord, something of the sort. Not entirely sure though.

AP is not a damage skill.

It's a gimmick skill.
Damage immunities, radar-wide party heals, instant recharges of all skills with simple conditions like the target dying... these things should never exist.

Its PvE. The funny thing is, none of those stuff are actually that popular in GENERAL play. Damage immunity skills only have a purpose in SCing elite areas, outside of those areas they become overly redundant tanking skills. Radar party heals are only useful in countering AoE, otherwise they would end up a waste of 15 energy (Heal Party), recharge time (PwK), or elite slot (LoD)

As for AP...

Have people actually looked to see what is being used in ZQ? Ritualists and Mesmers have absolutely no use with AP when they have SoS, Panic, and a **** load of armor ignoring AoE spells. Remember in PvE...armor ignoring AoE spells are KING, 200 single target DPS would still suck compared to 80 DPS AoE hitting 4 monsters.

Necros already have way too many powerful options that doesn't require AP...their popular minions and hexes are all low recharge.

Monks generally don't take an offensive role to begin with...

The ONLY class even remotely close to "abusing" AP is the ele...I just don't get the fuss over a skill that a huge majority of players don't even use.

My excuse (and congrats) to you pluto, long time not looking again at doa thread.... :P

Btw, agree with above.

That's retarded. Skills like AP are what make the game interesting. If you take them out then you might as well just combine everything into two classes, which we can label HPS and DPS. Because pretty much everything else is "gimmicky". Have you seen prot spirit? Holy RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO is that a skill built around gimmicks.

I seriously don't think AP is seriously imbalancing the game or anything because just looking around towns, I'm not seeing as many /A's as I would expect from an IMBA build. That being said, it IS an OP skill, no doubt; I just think the average player doesn't realize it. People in my guild are always pinging necro and ele builds with the normal array of curses and fire magic garbage. My reply is usually, "have you tried an AP caller?" Almost invariably they reply either NO or "Yeah, but it seemed hard".

I think a reasonable nerf to the skill is to link it to Critical Strikes to negate the ENERGY return on activation.

"For 10...15...20 seconds, if target foe dies, you gain 5...17...20 Energy and all your skills are recharged."

That way even with a 0 spec, necros and ele's can still use it, they just will have to deal with shorter but manageable duration and have to deal with their own energy management.

ITS PVE!!! Its not like I'm doing PvP and over POWERING another player in a PvP match. You make it sound like its unfair to other players to run A/E or E/A with AP as an elite skill. Who is it being unfair to? Tell me please because i dont think anyone is being hurt by AP as it is.

Go read my Meta thread in gladiators forum. I think you might learn something.