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As someone who doesn't often pug, or spend a lot of time as an ele... what do you usually encounter? I'd imagine most carry fire builds or Invoke, but really I don't know.

And it's a sad state of affairs when the best use for a profession is to spam another's skills (coughimbagonagaincough). How many people actually start out slinging Flares, hoping that one day they'll get to become a protter? My guess is not a lot.

Searing Flames, I believe, is the most popular.

Hopefully the paragon update will include a nerf to SY.

Sorry, im pretty sure that SY is a warrior skill...

It is, and that is part of the problem. It's so powerful and, being a shout, synergizes with paragons so well that nearly every player is compelled to be P/W. This has really hampered the diversity of the profession. But because SY is a warrior skill, any alterations it receives would have consequences reaching beyond only paragons.

I don't think there's anything wrong with HM. Nerf the most abused skills and reevaluate rewards; tone down any enemies/areas that right now would be too difficult to do without power creep. This is not complicated.

Glad to hear eles are getting treatment, but still think fixing PvE Smite is a waste of time. At least Monks have several attributes that actually, you know, work.

I believe the point is to take it in the direction of GW2 - ie, less reliance on a monk needing to heal to actually be effective, ele's having more control of the battlefield, etc.

That'd be my first guess. Good goal, too.

Considering the example of Gust that they gave us, yes, that does seem to be the goal.

Except healing/mitigation is centralized here, unlike GW2, so that's the main role of a monk. Effective is also a subjective word here. I'd say a monk is more "effective" at smiting than a ranger at most of what it does. I've nothing against making eles better at what they do, but control in GW PvE is pretty meaningless with this meta.

The example of Gust seems more like a PvP-centered anti-kiting skill, although it can nearby KD two distinct groups of monsters in PvE at the same time. Reminds me of Physic Instability with more emphasis on terrain control and less on interrupting. Seems fairly cool.

I'm really curious about their plans for the exhaustion mechanic. There was a fan explosion of negative feedback when they added exhaustion to a few ritualist skills (update link). I'd like to know what is meant by "across professions."

I would like exhaustion to be more interactive or simply more interesting. It's there to take advantage of energy storage, so only eles can cast their most powerful spells, but not even eles care nor want to have skills with exhaustion, bare some few, single exceptions.

There's only one way to make exhaustion interesting - put it on a skill with short recharge.

See: Gale.

Putting Exaustin on a very short recharge spell is generally the best way to make it disappear from player's bars imo.
Or forcing to use it very few times, which more than a balance looks like a shame.

You think I don't know that? Doesn't change the fact that it is grossly overpowered and abuseable, and is the second worst thing that happened to the paragon profession (first being the overnerfing of the various support skills and echos in PvE).

Uhm....ranger changes? ranger is my beloved main(and the only class I got many chars of), so I think I won't like whatever comes, pretty damn scared....ele changes? still scared enough....smite changes? smite can't be any worse than the current state so yay! and same applies for paragon, if they ever do it I'll maybe use my poor wingie again.
HM changes?*shivers*

All this talk of Save Yourselves is ignoring the real problem: the existence of PvE-only skills that are not linked to an attribute for their scaling.

That's been my dream since the first day PvE skills were introduced: that they'd make them real skills that scale with normal attributes; that they are EFFECTS that couldn't exist in PvP, but are otherwise normal skills. (And yes, that there'd be no non-profession skills, like all the stupid Nightfall and GWEN ones.)

If any update could get me to jump with joy for GW, it'd be either that or the removal of all titles & faction -- but we know that's not going to happen.

That.

Sticking exhaustion on a skill just gives it an effective recharge of 30 seconds. Repeatedly casting it just sticks a person in a ditch, unless there's actually a skill that's worth the exhaustion, which is truly rare.

All of these class changes are pretty much prompted by PvE. (Eles are not exactly having trouble in PvP land.) When they talk about changing exhaustion it's because they want to make it a PvE mechanic, which it isn't right now. How they can do that and not screw up gale/shock is a scary question.

Never going to happen if you ask me, and although Ele's do need some love I'd rather they work on ranger first.. I find myself much more viable on my ele than ranger.


And I hope they keep the pvp functions how they are now.

Its not been ignored. I have long supported linking profession-specific PvE skills to attributes (accompanied by nerfs where necessary) and completely deleting the stupid eotn PvE skills. People have always shot down my suggestions however.

It will come. As someone who knows quite a bit about what goes on inside ANET, let me assure you that ANET cares about the updates and making sure they do not get scrapped. Lots of effort goes into them despite the small team, and I am sure there is lots of testing going on in regards to the Melee AI update.

I have optimistic hopes about what is to come

Pretend for a moment that SY! didn't exist. What secondary would you run on a paragon? There's nothing outside the warrior secondary with the slightest bit of synergy except maybe a few bow attacks. Why care about secondary lock-in if there's no place to go once you get out?

If they made SY only +40 armour, it would bring it in line with most professions +armour skills and other PVE +armour skills, only if they ever manage to make Ebon Standard of Courage and Great Dwarf Armour work like the description suggests they should, i.e. 24 + 24 = 48, not 25, surely there is some way to get round the armour cap with those skills. The advantage of SY should be that it is generally applicable but not the best for every situation, easy to keep up by one player and save a skill slot on other players bars.

For the HM changes I suspect they might lower armour across the board and give mobs an innate % incoming damage reduction that affects all damage equally, that's the way it sounded so HM affects all professions the same way.

What I'd love would be if they gave all player damage a type, but that sounds like a lot of work for very little benefit i.e. be less confusing to new players and to be able to tell just looking at the skill description in game without having to go to the wiki how the damage is affected by armour. There might be a hint in the dervish update, they specified that Avatar of Lyssa did chaos damage and Avatar of Grenth did dark damage, just like wands/staves. But confusingly necromancers do shadow not dark damage with several of their skills. They should specify that mesmers do chaos damage, necromancers do dark or cold damage, and ritualists do lightning and dark, no player skill should have typeless damage. The rules for dark/chaos/holy should be it respect base armour but there is no additional armour mods against these types, the advantage for these damage types is that it is consistent across mob type and not gets proportionally better for HM. But that is a lot of work just to 'tidy' things up and make sure things work how they are expected and remove the anomalies.

It's clear that all the changes will be buffs for PvE, so there's no need to be worried about.

Elementalists, Rangers, Paragons and Smiting Monks are the least viable pve options, with eles only being the worst of them all because of HM (although regardless of it, it's still an old class full of useless skills and a clunky, annoying main mechanic, and needs some updating). So it's no wonder for them they are only changing elites first, normal skills second, and dealing with HM; while for the others, they are considering "revamps".

For that reason, it also makes sense to start with eles. They are possibly the "easier" to fix, and they need it the most at the moment.

I want the new gust over the old one for pvp, at all costs. :P I mean, eles are good in pvp, but they're a bit mindless at the moment. Spam blinding flash/ surge? Spam Invoke/ chain lightning? The new gust seems a more interesting option that every single air elite they have at the moment (not saying it sounds the stronger, though).

EDIT: And regarding the PvE-only skills, they actually have been slowly nerfing them out. Some of the most dominant ones were transformed into niche skills with the dervish update, and the abusive melee powercreep greatly toned down. Other than SY!, it's funny, most of the overpowered stuff today comes mostly from main profession skills (ritualists, mesmers, necromancers).

I don't like the way you popped smiting monks in there because if you say that, then what about the lesser used of other profession's attributes? Deadly Arts is a rather lacklustre option for Hard Mode, so you may as well have listed Deadly Arts Sins as well.

Saying that, I do agree that eles should be the first to be made more viable for hard mode, however, they are not 'possibly the "easier" to fix'. In fact I think they are the hardest if the live team is trying to change skills, which they are. Being one of the original professions, they have so many skills to look at that it will be difficult trying to get a balance on what skills to change while giving the ele plenty of options, rather than changing only a few and locking eles into using just those. They also have to be careful to not make similar ele skills like those that snare where one is clearly better than the others. Furthermore, unlike the other classes/attribute line, anet has stated it is looking at the ele's exhaustion mechanic, which I'm sure will require a lot of thought as it affects a lot of ele skills.

The easiest will probably be the smiting monks due to the live team only having to look at one attribute line, or the paragon as they have less skills than the ranger or ele.

@instanceskiller;

The point seems to bring it more towards GW2 mechanics. The assassin has usage in deadly arts, though not so much. More to the point, the assassin has modes of self-heals, while bringing a good set of damage to the front, while also being able to play as a tank. It has variable roles.

A monk is stuck as a healer, or a healer. A smiting monk can be good at times, but they don't want people stuck in the roles of a healer, in the triumvirate of healer/tank/damage. The goals appear to be to get rid of that, and these are the classes most in need of that being fixed. Of course, GW is a different game, so it's not a feasible goal, but to work towards it is good enough as it is. They can't remake the game and every line, so they're focusing on a few aspects of it to make it enjoyable for players.

P/A, mostly because it happens already.

Deadly is in many ways worse off than Smite. It's a single target softening line in a format where killing large numbers of foes as fast as possible is the goal. Good thematic idea for something intended to assassinate but bad in practice.

I believe that the live team should move towards guildwars2 but I agree it is not a feasible goal. Still, back to the subject, I think the party wide heals of the monk, when compared to the self heals of the assassin, surely balances out with it's lower offensive capabilites. However, I didn't say that the smiting monk shouldn't be changed/buffed for pve, I would really love for them to be more viable for hard mode as my monk is also a bit tired of being the healer. I just said I didn't like the way Diogo listed it with the other professions.

By saying professions and then smiting monks, it sounded as though every bit of the professions attribute lines were useless, (when they aren't) and just the smiting line of the monks were useless. By saying that, Diolgo expanded from what professions were least viable in pve/hm, to including attribute lines. Since Diolgo did that, I just meant they should have included other attribute lines like Deadly Arts.


I'm sorry, I don't quite understand why you posted this? I know that Deadly Arts is bad which I why I suggested Diolgo should have listed it among their 'least viable' lists.

EDIT: (At Reformed) Oh, ok thanks haha I was thinking you might have been agreeing with me, but was a bit scepticle as I also agree it is not common on guru.

I'm agreeing with you, it happens on forums from time to time.

No it just requires intelligent use of a skill instead of spamming it on recharge. Gale is the perfect example. It's a powerful spell with a short recharge which would normally allow it to be spammed. Exhaustion forces the player to be intelligent in his use of the skill: he cannot spam it so he must use it tactfully or he will get hit with a significant punishment. It's an outstanding pvp mechanic.

It would be interesting if Exhaustion were a damage reduction effect rather than energy, then it could be applied to any profession. For example, exhaustion could do a 20% damage reduction, of where 20% is recovered in 30 seconds. Using a spammable skill 5 times would then nearly put your damage output to zero. This would include all martial and spell damage. Damage dealing skills with exhausting would deal it's damage and effect and exhaustion would affect any following damage.

Changes to HM?
Well I'm one VQ from getting Tyria and about 2/3 through NF (Factions is done) I better get a move on in case it's a negative move. After how they made Cantha a thousand times harder after WoC, I'm not sure I want to slug it through that kind of pain.

more WoC, taking their time, but that's good. I'm stuck on Minister Cho's (I don't demand or even want easy content, but it's seriously WTF more permasin friendly content!)

Elementalist changes; way past due. I understand nerfing nuking, but they didn't buff anything to replace it and the most popular role for eles is healing. Come on!

Ranger changes; Shouldn't need a whole lot. Maybe make nature spirits act like like rit spirits, or just do something for e-managment (expertise is good, but e-mgmt is still a pain in a long fight).

Paragon changes; Everyone wants SY nerfed, but I'd want something comparable or at least comparably usable. If they just nerf it without implementing a lot of playability fixes, I would expect them to at least finally off SF or I think I would quit.

Given what I've been hearing about GW2, I'm not sure I would miss it much (player ran servers...WTH!)

Misunderstood then, my apologies.

It all comes down to the priorities, generally. It seems like the priorities are good. I'm extremely, extremely curious to see what types of HM changes would be proposed though. ^^

What if they increased 4 party areas to 6 party while in Hard Mode?
Setting Hard Mode would automatically increase party size to 6, trying to change it to normal mode would give an error message: "Unable to comply, your party is too large for normal mode."
Adding people not allowed to do Hard Mode would give the usual "The party is already full." if 4-6 players, or it would change to normal mode if 1-3 players.

Keep in mind that I just listed the way I did, because that's how Anet did.

There's no need to increase 4-man areas to 6-man.

Tell that to the poor suckers trying to do WoC Minister Cho's

if they're thinking of making HM more hard they should add a insane mode for those who faceroll through HM

Yes and no.
Surely what you say is true, putting exaustion on a fast-recharge spell punish the spam but leave you the option to use it more frequently than 30 sec, promoting clever gameplay.

On the other hand, with all the other powercreeped options out of there, adding exaustion to a fast recharge spell is only like adding 30 sec to his recharge...which as said, leads to makes it disappear.

I'm not against mechanics promoting better players, but exaustion isn't exactely one of those, at least in the way it works now.

Apart this, i REALLY do hope that any Ele changes will include EStorage. The way works now is just plain stupid, it isn't a form of e-management (is like saying "Hey, using stuff to increase max hp is healing!"), which leads to the old cluncky Attunements mechanic. Ask necros.