Introducing a new set of rank based PVE Skills

I think you made a mistake.

These ideas require so much work, for extra animation, extra mechanics... When not even the four "new" non-core professions are balanced. Tearing off more than you can chew. Also, the idea that fun/enjoyable=easy is a fallacy.

^This

If you don't want to play.....don't play

Sadly it takes very little effort or thought to type rubbish, broken idea please close or similar than it does to come up with new ideas however ill received they may be.

If you really hate the idea say why in reasonable detail even if its just one part of the idea or say nothing.
Its very boring to see comment after comment that adds little to the game other than to express derision.

Don't like GW as it is Don't like the ideas of others then post your own ideas to improve the game.
Be part of the solution not part of the problem.

As most have said, some of those skills are overpowered.
The real problem is people trying to post "solutions" to non-existing problems.
How is this suggestion a solution to anything?
And who said that those in disagreement with OP don't like GW the way it is (which is what you are assuming)?

Exactly this.

Agree to a certain extent but surely whether the game has problems or not is to individual taste, game experience and skill.
Some will say what we need is more changes like the op suggested some will not.
Some want the game to revert to 2005 while others love the changes made.

My main objection to the comments is that someone came up with an idea and posted it, now yes it seems many think the skills overpowered, but that is a point for discussion not a simple you suck type of comment all that does is discourage new ideas.

In any case a whole pile of new skills that perform instant kills in pve and allow players to solo every hard area in the game in 5 minutes while afk don't bother me.

What others do in pve doesn't spoil my game one jot, what they should do and many have said so is create yet another hard mode.
One possibly with no consumables pve skills or heroes.

That way those masochistic sry skilled players can have fun and reap great rewards.
Ordinary hard mode for those who just like reasonable difficulty.
And normal mode with loads of new skills like these allowing less skilled players to rampage across the continents to their hearts content.

Horses for courses as it were or each to their own, as long as the rewards are varied according to difficulty level.

My notes for update 1 to changes to original post

Increased rank 1 yield from 90% to 93% to combat possibility for rank discrimination

For the pve skills toned down a few and increased requirements so you have to spend some attribute points to make use of these

Paragon Increased requirement for Leadership to 9 added requirement for command 7 (waiting for more feedback but for now left rest alone)

Warrior decreased range to in the area from earshot for secondary effects such as knowdown. Increased Hammer requirement to 10. (knockdown was a little overpowered at earshot range)

Monk added loose half your current health and This skill is disabled on all other allies when cast for 60 seconds. Increased smiting requirement to 9. (concern about multiple copies)

Necro Added requirement 8 soul reaping.

Elementalist is a weak class in hard mode and needs this skill as is so left alone

Ranger increased requirement on expertise and bow to 6. I have had some complaints this is too weak while others think 3 arrows is too many. (is the -1 energy regeneration and -2 energy per attack to much or?, I'll wait for more feedback)

Dervish increased scythe mastery to 8 requirement and mysticism to 6. Made it a melee range spell. Increased cast time to 1 second. Left rest alone for now. It deals 3 conditions and 64 damage it also provides rez control. Its powerful but it has a long recharge and low damage and is not aoe like other scythe attacks. (I'll keep an eye on it)

Sin increased shadow arts requirement to 7. Added when you cast this lose all sin elite enchantments and all your sin elite enchantments are disabled for 7 seconds. (Want sins to have an option besides shadow form) Also, its powerful but not as powerful as shadowform and as such until shadowform gets nerfed more I don't want to nerf this further.

Mesmer Increased domination to 6, left rest alone for now. Someone thought this was a really weak skill. This is an experimental skill as a new approach to shutdown. (Whether this needs a nerf or a buff, I'll wait for more feedback)

Ritualist Increased Channeling requirement to 7. (No comments yet on this, I'll wait and see but for now left alone)

It really feels like a much weaker and more costly version of Great Dwarf Weapon that you can maintain on yourself. I think it would just eat energy like nobody's business and not really help too much. Splinter Weapon still looks better plus a hero can slot it, otherwise you can't run weapon spells on rit heroes or other humans without knocking it off. As I main a ranger I don't think I would be using it without it being cost-effective and not taking away my options (which are pretty bad as it is).

Alright, seems like a buff is in order....

energy aspect options are
no energy regen loss and -3 energy per attack
-1 energy regen and -1 energy per attack

do not want this combined with splinter weapon or other weapon spells, want to give rangers an alternative to /rit but can see a problem of it being knocked off so that would be a hero ai improvement issue

other buff considering
if blocked arrows cause knockdown 30....40%
or some other condition if blocked


as you are a ranger I'd love to hear what you think about these possibilities

Well, the problem with energy is that the ranger, unlike other professions, doesn't rely on energy returns (generally), it gets a wholesale discount and regenerates between battles. I think with either option it will kill energy, especially if using other PvE skills.

The "if blocked" perk isn't really that versatile as there aren't a lot of foes that block attacks.

Sigh, why are people so attached to their ideas and won't let go of them even if they are terrible?

OP is either a troll, or has one of the worst views of game balance I've ever seen on this forum, and that's saying a lot. I think the former is more likely, considering how obstinate he's being. Given that, the flak is entirely appropriate, and it's apologetic "everyone is a beautiful snowflake entitled to their opinion!" posts like yours that help him get away with this. Anyone who's been around the forums for any length of time should know why slapping a 45-60 second recharge on an otherwise HORRIBLY OVERPOWERED skill does not balance it. Period, end of story, this thread should have not made it past one page of discussion.

This is awful. I'm not going to bother trying to balance or argue the numbers on the skills that you've provided here. Rather, I want to show you why this is just so conceptually flawed.

To start, I don't think we need this. Your proposal here is to add ten new skills to the game that are accessible only to PvE, tied to a title track (GWAMM at that), and are arguably overpowered by their nature. We don't need to throw more junk into the mix with what we already have in terms of PvE-only skills, and I would throw in every single PvE-split skill into that mix in a heartbeat as well. We don't need to tie these skills to GWAMM, because progression in that track is undoubtedly the slowest of any PvE track. We don't need overpowered skills, and the restrictions that you have recently added onto them do n ext to nothing nothing to curve how strong they are, but only how often and where they are used. As an example here, anyone using the warrior, ranger, or elementalist skills suggested would have those attributes that the skill requires for full success anyways. Long recharges are never a problem either.

You've done something that's sorta new with how the skills are going to progress, but in the end, it's really not that great. You think that maybe you've ended up solving rank discrimination, but in some ways, you've made it worse, and overall, you've just destroyed any point in progressing the GWAMM track in the first place. You say that rank 0 yields base value and rank 1 yields 93% of the skill's full effectiveness from the base. However, that is so damn close to 100%, and most of the progressive things that really are the powerful components of the skill go over such a small range that you essentially have created skills that have two power levels: rank 0 and rank 1. Sure, there's no much rank discrimination here, but if there's only two levels, why even tie it to rank in the first place? You may as well just say, "Hey, player, since you've got five maxed titles, I'm going to give you this skill to use that doesn't progress based on any attributes or titles or anything. It's just always going to be powerful for you! Enjoy!" This now yields the issue that with a skill tied to nothing, it will always be powerful enough or not to warrant a place on a player's bar.

If these skills are to be something fun or entertaining like I believe you've mentioned, you should be willing to err on the side of weakness for these skills. Rather than create stupidly strong skills like what we have now, you should focus on driving these skills to fulfill some kind of niche for each profession. They could do something that the profession doesn't have easy access to, and won't be useful every time, but is at least useful in a way that gets it picked up for some things some of the time. It's a task easier said than done, since in finding this niche, you may end up stumbling over a lot of skills that are just found on another profession and aren't picked up because that niche really isn't that useful. Still, it would be a better than creating a skill that could totally rule a battle once every sixty seconds* or so.

The last thing we need in this game is more PvE skills. In fact, the best thing that could happen to the game (in my opinion) would be to removal all of those overpowered EoTN PvE skills, and nerf to hell the OP luxon/sunspear skills. Couple this with a removal of cons, and PvE suddenly becomes drastically improved .

But seriously, PvE only skills are a bad idea to begin with, and adding more will not turn it into a good idea. The fact that you are suggesting tying them to the GWAMM title track makes it even worse (even if the title track only has a little influence on the skills).

With the state of balance in the game as it is, if you want new skill effects, simply suggest a change to one of the current skills. If its too OP a change to be considered for PvP (though numbers can obviously be adjusted due to PvE/PvP skill splits), then it doesn't deserve to be in the game.

Ok guys I've heard your calls, you don't like it tied to GWAMM and the monk skill can be instacharged with ap. Well, I've finished the 2nd round of upates.

The most exciting is a new wedge system which gives new incentive to complete tombs! Finally, pugs will start forming to take that on!! Also, while requiring rank 1 of gwamm to unlock the skills, the skill ranks are now tied to wedges...

"Rank 0 yields the base value so a 5..10 would be 5.
Rank 2-6 will have a proportionate increase along the way to max from the base
Rank 7 will be will be the max value. so a 5...10 would be 10.

To unlock the skills you will need to achieve rank 1 of gwamm. More on this later. To achieve rank you will have to collect wedges. These wedges will be customized to your account but can be traded among your characters. On the hero panel will be a new circles with 7 wedges next to your name above skill points called favor of the gods. When you complete the following 7 areas you will be able to talk to an entity (described later) to collect the corresponding wedge...Wedge of the Underworld, Wedge of Foe, Wedge of the Primeval Kings (Finally a reason to complete tombs!!!), Wedge of Anguish, Wedge of Urgoz, Wedge of Sorrow, and Wedge of Kanaxi. You than drag the wedges and insert them into the circle on your hero panel and this powers up your pve skills."

Additionally, buffed the ranger skill so it doesn't require as much energy when not firing the bow with basic attack.

For the Monk skill I increased its cast time to 5 seconds, added exhaustion and made it so even monk enchanted creatures take half of the damage. Thanks!

2.1 Made monk skill exhaustion conditional on having non-pve and non-monk skills.

What you basically did was introduce and then smiters boon a skill that doesn't even exist. I applaud you for taking far less time than Anet would have.

Exhaustion + monk = ouch. I wouldn't put that skill on my bar if you paid me. They don't have the mana pool that elementalists do. Also, it's PvE! Most stuff is usually dead within 5 seconds.

/notsigned for more PvE skills regardless. I don't have a half hour right now to read through all of them, but I'm sure they're about as imba as all of the existing PvE-only skills right now.

Stuff like Pain Inverter, Seed of Life, and Save Yourselves has already turned all of PvE into H/H c+space easy mode. They should focus on nerfing PvE-only skills and nerfing PvE versions of skills. However, I doubt it'll happen since so much of the community thrives on PvE being so freaking easy with SC's and farms and whatnot.

Edit:

Upon reading all of these skills, I can certainly say all of them are either totally useless or just begging to be exploited for serious farms.

A) The assassin's skill with it's minimum 10s duration and 7s recharge basically means you can keep your "shadow ally" up eternally. Also, I like how in your description, you basically say "I know every assassin in the game uses Shadow Form, and I hate you for it."

B) This was probably one of the funniest things I've ever read on guru. I seriously laughed out loud. I don't think this game mechanic can be implemented without crazy reworking of the entire game. What do you do if a quest-related monster "temporarily dies" and then gets resurrected? Do you get the quest reward automatically without actually having to "kill him"? And what about a PvE monster's death penalty? Or are you suggesting creating a totally alternate form of death? Should there be "death death" for normal players, and then a separate "temporary death" mechanic for this specific skill?

C) The Monk skill is just begging to be abused. Huge damage and burning in exchange for manageable damage to yourself and party?

Besides, no skill currently exists that negatively affects your party member's bars or health. You don't see any necromancer enchantments that cause your allies to sacrifice health, do you? And you dont see any mesmer shutdown skills that disable your allies skill bars, right? I don't think Anet would ever allow this, because then you could just be a dick and unexpectedly bring this skill to hurt your own team, then no one has fun.

D) Your "warrior spell" (which that phrase is ridiculous to begin with) is dumb and unusable, to be frank. 60-80 damage is negligible in PvE. You might as well bring Cynn and use Earth Shaker, because that combo would be 100x better than running a hammer bar for this skill. You basically make up for how bad the premise is by unloading mass conditions on all nearby foes, which is ridiculous. Also, a 45 second recharge already makes me never want to bring it.

The reason hammer warriors are not used in PvE is that they attack more slowly than swords or axes, and they're skills revolve around knocking down enemies. Since, in PvE, once you engage a mob, it dies within 10 seconds (providing you used the C-key and the Space Bar correctly), there's really no point to bringing tons of knockdowns or slow-building adrenal skills. That's why they're so powerful in PvP.

E) The Necromancer skill is basically just bringing a consumables set for yourself. You can chain it into infinity, since PvE has 100s of corpses at any given second, plus you get massive benefits. Plus if you play PvE correctly, the casters should rarely come under any serious damage to make this worthwhile.

F) Once again, this would be the one and only instance where an elementalist would sacrifice health. You're introducing completely unheard of game mechanics all over the board. I don't think a 6 year old game needs this serious of a revamping. Also, just like the other spells, it can be chained into infinity, so you might as well just give all elementists an inherent effect.

G) Your Ritualist skill's wording is too crazy for me to follow. I don't understand what will actually happen if this skill is used.

Wow, pve skills based on gwamm title.

Their based on completing elite areas in pve not Gwamm.

I was thinking about my previous post and how giving PvE players an inherent effect would solve this "problem" that apparently the game has that you're trying to solve. They wouldn't have to create 10 awkwardly-worded skills or introduce as many new game mechanics. Here it is:

Aura of PvE: Inherent aura given to all PvE characters. While in PvE, your skills activate twice as fast, you do twice as much damage, and all creatures within your Parties' earshot are knocked down and receive every condition in the game. Every Party Member takes 100 damage once every minute, however.

Or this:

Elite Aura of PvE: Inherent aura given to all PvE characters. While in PvE, every time a foe enters your line of sight, it instantly dies and cannot be resurrected. Every time your party defeats 5 monsters in this way, your character performs a super-cool animation. Whenever an animation is performed in this way, the character takes 50 damage.

First of all, I like how you lettered your post so I can respond to it without quote wars.

a) Its 40s second recharge not 7s. Also, I do think shadowform needs a nerf but really I use it too and whether or not there is a nerf I want a strong alternative to sf that will be pug friendly. It can get boring to always be sf sin.

b) There are bugs in charr lands that already have this mechanic. You don't get quest reward. No death penalty to the monster.

C) This skill has been already adjusted to make it powerful but with huge drawbacks as well. As far as griefers, they would be better off agroing the map.

D) You think its not worth bring while others think its overpowered. /shrug shoulders

E) Souls are a separate mechanic from corpses. All foes have souls, skills affecting souls do not exploit corpses. It will probably be useful in some areas where energy is needed, not a lot of corpses, or rez control is needed.

F) Difference is this uses up a pve skill slot. Also, search for all the people qqing about elemental damage in hard mode.

G) Rit skill basically converts defeated foes into spirits. Additionally this spirit has a eye for an eye type effect when its attacked.

While your first reply seems like you went through and thought out some critiques. This second one is well trollish.

This is some dedicated trolling, if that is your intention. My hats off to you, its an amusing read.



Anet should let Melissa be in charge of guild wars balance for a week. 'twould be hilarious to see the outcome. I can already see some of the skills now:

Distracting Shot (PvP) 5e 1/2c 5r.
Bow Attack. If Distracting Shot hits, it interrupts target foe's action but deals only 1...13...16 damage. If the interrupted action was a skill, that skill is disabled for an additional 20 seconds. For 120 seconds, that skill will only be disabled half as long if hit again by Distracting Shot (stacking with multiple inflictions, of course). Enchanted enemies suffer from +10 seconds of disable, but only if not hexed as well. Distracting Shot cannot miss when fired at enemies casting skills that increase their block rate. If Distracting Shot does not interrupt a skill, a random skill on the opponent's skill bar is disabled for 10 seconds. This skill does not interrupt when fired from closer than half range. This skill removes cripple and any hexes that impair movement speed upon usage.

Distracting Shot (PvE) 25e 1/2c 5r.
Bow Attack. If Distracting Shot hits, it interrupts target foe's action but deals only 1...13...16 damage. If the interrupted action was a skill, all skills on all allies of the target are disabled for an additional 20 seconds. This skill causes exhaustion on all allies of the user.

You could of just said "some of the skills are overly complicated". I have already been made aware of that and when I get around to finishing update 3.0 it will address some of that.

Edit. and just for fun...if I was in charge for a week of skill balance... the first change I would make is...

Shadow Form
Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5...18...21 seconds, targeted enemy spells at you have a 75% chance of failure, and you gain 5 damage reduction for each Assassin enchantment on you. You cannot deal more than 5...21...25 damage with a single skill or attack.

75% chance of blocking a spell would be pretty cool. It would make it impractical though, entirely.