Live Team PAX News

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.