Update - Thursday, July 21, 2011

Skill Changes

Mysticism
Changed functionality to: "Each rank in Mysticism reduces the cost of your Dervish enchantments by 4%. In PvE, you have +1 armor per rank of Mysticism while you are enchanted."

Assassin
Shadow Walk: decreased duration to 15 seconds.

Dervish
Pious Fury (PvP): increased recharge to 15 seconds.

Mesmer
Fevered Dreams (PvP): removed application of Dazed.
Mind Wrack (PvP): split for PvP; changed functionality to: "For 5...40 seconds, whenever this foe is the target of one of your non-hex Mesmer skills, that foe loses 1 Energy. If the target foe's Energy drops to 0, Mind Wrack ends and that foe takes 15...100 damage."

Feature Changes

• Adjusted the locations for Luxon Longbows in "The Jade Quarry."
• Adjusted the timing and AI for jade carriers in "The Jade Quarry."
• Adjusted the timing and AI for Siege Turtles in "Fort Aspenwood."
• When used by Siege Turtles in "Fort Aspenwood," Siege Turtle Attack now ignores collision.
• NPCs and creatures in "Fort Aspenwood" now use the PvP versions of their respective skills.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Feedb...dates/20110721




Yeah, remember that, otherwise lemming will just delete your post, however long, valid and tackling the problem of balance might it be. Way to go!

Fixes for JQ and FA

I hope they work.....

Wow. What a horrible and lazy way to fix that.

Wow. What a horrible and lazy way to fix that.

Rather a lazy fix than no fix at all, eh?

GG imo.

I thought the same about a year ago. But in the meanwhile i've realised that, in this game, it's impossible. The primary/secondary system is too intertwined, too much rooted in the game, and there are way too many skills to achieve anything even close to balance.

Probably the only way to keep the game 'balanced' is to change, let's say, 10 skills every month or every fortnight. Nerf five that cause the most overpowered builds, buff five that have potential but are neglected - and hope that no one will find out yet another broken, overpowered build in the first two days, to exploit its power for the next four weeks.
Seriously, GW1 can have little 'ultimate balance potential', a state when the game needs no skill updates and everything's working. SC1 is an example of such a game in strategies, GW2 has the potential to be one for MMOs, but GW1 ain't even remotely there. With ten professions, 1319 skills total (1235 of which are available in PvP, over a THOUSAND skills to balance!), and the primary/secondary system being probably the biggest 'problemogen' around, the only possibility to maintain such game is to keep changing it, constantly, over and over; either by slight, but constant and precise cuts, or by shuffling the whole meta every month, changing its flavor completely. Mind it, even ANet themselves admit they wanted to greatly reduce the amount of skills in GW2, one of the reasons being the impossible to achieve balance.
Both options require loads of manpower and understanding of all the builds that circulate in the current meta; and why do they work, why they are abused, what are their strong/annoying points. The Live Team can't afford that much time and work for it, and they can't be aware of every overpowered skill/build (and their potential), even (especially?) with Test Krewe.
And yes, i was talking above PvP side. For PvE, the devs should have set a limit of balancing before they have attempted it. One thing that is the least likely to change or update is the mobs' AI. The game's monsters should have been designed first, then the skills balanced among them, then further balanced for players to be able to overcome the PvE side - that way the 'difficulty level' of specific PvE parts is much easier to tackle, as well as there are no god mode skills or, most likely, speed clears in the first place. In short, the monsters should have been the base to cut PvE balance to, not the players (thus getting mobs with higher levels, more armor, and using pvx builds...).

I'd love to see the Live Team to focus on the game's mechanics first and foremost, rather than skills. Fixing carriers and turtles, or Longbows (however they were changed), is a good step. A technical fix every fortnight/month, along with several most pressing skill updates, would be cool. Too bad it's a bit too late in the game's life to undertake such process.

Attention ANet:

*clears throat*

Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING is wrong with Fevered Dreams! It is 1000000% the Dervish's fault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


God.....

Sorry to QQ
but the turtles are still stuck so its not fixed at all

played 4 times luxon in FA and 4 wins

Why ? oO

/12char

split sins



and fevered is the type of skill that will be either be used in a gimmick, or not used at all, so i am happy to see it gone.

Lol, how many updates they going to make like this before they admit "sorry we were on acid when we made changes dervishes, they are severely over powered".... u don't make other classes skills less effective because another over powered class is abusing it... u fix the over powered classes skill(s)... so wheres warrior. ele, and rangers revamped primary attribute with a over powered pve specific bonus. When you have to split the primary attribute for pvp effectively making pvp a different game for that class, you screwed up your math hard and u had to change it because it was blatantly obvious mistake... Take the armor buff off and give back some of the warrior's leverage as an heavy armored class in the whole game...

The longbows at the yellow quarry wouldnt attack the juggernaut if they were left uncapped, so the kurzicks took advantage of that glitch (at least, i think that was how it happened, i never really jq much)

hot damn they heard me RED ENGINE about FA turtles not hitting players on the hills!!!

Mind Wrack (PvP): split for PvP; changed functionality to: "For 5...40 seconds, whenever this foe is the target of one of your non-hex Mesmer skills, that foe loses 1 Energy. If the target foe's Energy drops to 0, Mind Wrack ends and that foe takes 15...100 damage."

NICE, THANK YOU !

perhaps they took out that old keyboard with the 'pick x skill and change y on it'....
not sure they really needed to fix those skills---when there is obvious stuff that needs fixing (see thread about minister cho and hm)....
/facepalm

Did you know that there is a completely different side to GW called PvP, with more pressing issues? Shocking, isn't it?

apparently more than four

Nerfing Fevered is just a bandaid solution to 3 derv fevered, albeit one that'll work. We'll see about the dervish nerf, though.

I'm glad Anet finally gave some attention to competitive missions and continued nerfing the OP dervs even if this still isn't enough.

It is lazy but it's nothing new to me. SOE changed encounters in eq2 a long time ago because the foe was getting stuck on just about anything. So after the change the foe just appears to you and commences the attack. Lazy lazy developers today.

oh right removed the damageoff mind wrack cool!

What is wrong with Minister Cho's HM?

Where is my ele fix????

So now Turtle shots not only knockdown and remove enchants, but they can go through solid rock.

When the luxons cry enough that they start having turtles fly, I'm out.

err i dont pvp and even tho its not split etc - what the hell is shadow walk actually used for and why the change ?
I cant really recall any builds in pve that uses it - tho i suspect its pvp related and probably soon we`ll have the old pve/pvp slip versions.

You know, even though this was a small update, and it didn't fix my lovely elementalist, it isn't a bad update at all.

FA/JQ bug fixes at last! Isn't that what everyone has been asking for? It's interesting that, ever since the official GW forum for bugs opened, they have been fixing stuff that had been left ignored for years.

Mind Wrack was begging for a nerf too. Now, especially for RA, E.Surge builds won't be as dominant over other mesmer alternatives, while still remaining an useful option.

More slight dervish nerfs. Now less damage and less armor! Getting a bit better...

For Shadow Walk I don't understand, though. Which builds use it?

Now, for the next pvp update, bring B.Flash energy's cost back to 15, nerf B.Surge, and further and carefully nerf one or two extra dervishes skills. And after that (being wishful) nerf the pvp meta! Or bring new options for more diversity, because it needs to drastically, IMO.

For PvE, I still want an elementalist update... They have two useless PvE-only skills: it's the perfect oportunity to fix their problems in Hard Mode. Rangers and Paragons would need more work, and well, elementalists too, but that would be such an easy fix for the biggest ele's problem. Two elementalist skills, anet, just two!

Doubt the armour nerf will do much; they all use AoB anyway. The recharge on Pious Fury should achieve something though.
At least FD has been eliminated but that was never the root of the problem.

Shadow Walk is sometimes used by Assassins in GvG (and in JQ by bombing builds) although Wastrel's Collapse is more common now; they use these shadowsteps to move around the map effectively and hence are common in split builds.
I'm not too sure why it was changed; although a shorter recharge does affect how much a person can achieve before they're moved back to their initial position and since the recharge is the same as before (30 seconds) they can't immediately step again.

The skill wasn't split because nobody uses Shadow Walk in PvE.

It's still about 10 armor less, though, with or without AoB. That translates to what, 25% more damage?

Of course not, after the numerous nerfs to shadowsteps in general over the years because of PvP and in relation to PvP of course it's not going to be fit for PvE.
Hmph while they are at it they should've split all shadowsteps for PvE like rit spirits, that would've made this update more interesting.

16%. But remember that dervs are already going to be pretty durable with 85 armour (Blessed insignia + defense mod) and the +20 from AoB against physicals; they're by no means squishy.
Non AoB builds are going to suffer more I think.


To be useful in PvE beyond a single cast they need a recharge of 10 seconds or less. Even then the advantages they give are so minor that it's not really worth it.

suspect anet will boost some other class before they put dervs back in order, a pity that the pvp population will be substantially fewer than it is currently

I think they haven't been able to fix the turtle "stuck" glitch, but they were able to get the campers off the wall. Better than nothing

Holy...really? Fixes for FA/JQ? Hot damn. The turtle attack ignores walls thing is the quickest and dirtiest way to "fix" the whole "ranger sits on top of the castle and snipes orange turtle" thing. I'm fine with that; make Kurzicks need to actually kill the thing.

The sign of a good update? When the only bitching you see in Guru is "this isn't enough".

You can still halt the turtle by standing on the ledge (and kill it with a ranger).

But the turtle hits for full damage now, right?

I only played one JQ on Kurzick side post-update. Before, where it seemed the carriers only got stuck if you IMS'd them while handing in a slab, they just stick for any old reason now. I had 2 stick in that one game. I was hoping this update would fix that, not make it worse.

lol at shadow walk nerf... makes using pro trench tank bar a little bit tighter

Hence why they should be split from PvP like ritualist spirits.

Hmm, the turtle hitting my ritualist for about 40 damage through the wall wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't remove Boon of Creation .

You might think it's lazy but the only other option would be to make the turtles the same as they used to be - a much shorter aggro range so they only attack things they can actually hit (thereby ignoring any Kurzick on a ledge). This way there is still the chance for Kurzicks to stall the turtle if they heal themselves a little bit. It's still favouring the Kurzicks. I doubt the damage the turtle will be doing without collision will be enough to stop even a class with a weak self heal from stalling it, but we will see.

I almost cried when I read they fixed some stuff in FA, although I'm curious to see whether or not it all really works (I've already seen reports of the turtle stall bug being as bad as ever).

On the point of the Jade Quarry rangers - the ones on the shrine near the yellow mine wouldn't attack the Kurzick Juggernaut when it ran past. If they did attack it, the Juggernaut would die without healing thus making it a pretty big advantage. It was the only shrine that had a big bug like that. To put it into perspective, there are many matches where the Luxons take the yellow mine but don't take the Kurzick ranger shrine next to it, and the Turtle will be killed by the rangers.

Ignore him, he's wrong, no need to explain in detail why he's wrong.

After playing a few matches in FA on the Kurzick side using a ledge ranger it's still insanely easy to get wins, but the removal of turtle collision does effect a couple of things. The ledge ranger who snipes the orange mine can be killed more easily by Luxon players (they are able to hit him in most of those locations and the additional 100-200 damage the turtle does helps to turn the tide of that battle - this feels balanced now). The ranger on the center ledge (or rit or whatever other class you choose) can be hit by the turtle for 100-200 damage by seige attacks now, but because he is still unable to be hit by Luxon players, this is completely pointless. Troll Unguent alone is enough to fully heal any damage (and tbh more) that the turtle is able to inflict. For as long as the turtle is able to be aggroed by a Kurzick in a location the Luxon players are unable to hit it, this encounter will be seriously unbalanced. This is a simple balance fact of all parts of the game (being able to hit them when they can't hit you should never happen unless they are melee).

Basically the update moved in the right direction and active Luxon teams who take on Kurzicks trying to stall have some added pressure (in the form of turtle damage) but the arena still needs a lot of work, especially when the turtles are still aggroing on opponents the players can't hit.

Anyone figure out what this means:
I've not noticed any changes in turtle AI. They still aggro on stupid things and don't seem to move forward any differently from before. Do they attack more often?