Flux - September 2011

Surely minimum armour rating is still 60?

Everyone's running around with cracked armour aloul.

Also the suggestion of prot spirit is funny - +200 health means +20 damage going through, so if you're running around with 800 hp, 80dmg is still being able to go through.

Spirit Bond imo. Double. Spirit. Bond.

This flux probably means that monks will run SB instead of Aegis (if they haven't already run both SB and Aegis) or even dual SB. It might also remove mesmer from dual ele spike build and lead to triple ele spike build, though ability to distrupt backline before/during spike can hardly be disregarded.

Anyway, this month, I will hardly swap to 40/40 or 40/40/20 and instead will just camp shield set. Anet doesn't really force people to change playstyles, rather to play even worse without much thinking (buffs to voke and other 'popular' builds).

This benefits Ele, Warrior, + Dervish. Less for mesmers, assassins.

Avatars' armor-reduced damage became higher. Reversal of Fortune, Life Sheath, Spirit Bond became even better.

It's basically as if playing with 700-900HP.

Things worth considering?:
Divine Boon monk
Fire ele with meteor
EDA Dervishes , Grenth Dervishes
AoTL minion spam
Channeled Strike + Caretaker's Charge/ Destructive was Glaive (Channeling + restoration hybrids)

On another note: from what I've heard the TK lobbied heavily against this flux and were basically ignored by the live team. What's the point of taking advice from the top players if you won't actually listen to it?

It is consistent with their "ignore everyone" policy.

The problem with GW PvP post-Nightfall was the crescendo of 'massive damage'. With this Flux on top of the current scenario we're in a laughable situation.

I don't think the folks on the Live Team know what the hell's going on in the game. Dervish go mash, mash, mash!

That seems sensible, although it may lead to a different conclusion when regarding the condition pressure common with Derv heavy builds, especially ones featuring a Nec or Ranger. Whilst the scythe auto damage accounts for a fair bit, the armour ignoring damage from the degen sources and skills account for more proportionally when compared to other, more spike oriented builds.
In short, your reduction would lead one to conclude that heavy pressure builds would be great; Monks have to jettison a lot more energy to keep bars up whilst spike isn't affected too much (since the tools for dealing with spikes are relatively unaffected) but I am not convinced that this is the case.
And then there's the extreme; Quad Nec, but let's ignore that.

I went blowing up some NPCs with a fire ele in JQ and the eles/mesmers were taking exactly the same damage listed on skills. In other words, still 60 armor. If anything they'd probably last a little longer with this flux considering their base HP is so low.

Actually, it does not, the -armor and +health only applies to players, not NPCs. Well of Suffering still kills off shrine NPCs in 30ish seconds, nukers still do the same amount of damage. It sounds to me like somebody was doing well at spiking against your targets.

On the other hand, I have found that the extra +200 health allows me to don several superior runes and drop survivor's insignia in favor of +armor ones. I can squeeze out a tiny bit more damage with a bomber necro, for example, with the +2 extra to Blood Magic. Too much health becomes a burden on them, anyways.

Does this mean that the amount of pressure dealt by conditions/hex will be less?

Does this mean Aura of Faith is an interesting monk elite now?

this means people will run spiritbond now!

Pressure heavy builds are great. You just need to realize that regen/degen also suffers from a 30% decrease in effectiveness. Ran dongway in HA last night and it was going far smoother than normal. The pressure from the builds just has to be armor based damage rather than the traditional condi-pressure or hex-pressure. Could probably even see some e-denial.

The tools for dealing with spikes are still predominantly aegis, spirit bond, and infuse. Aegis will of course stay the same. Spirit bond will trigger on a lot more things now, but since it actually doesn't prot and instead heals it will suffer in the spike case where the healing would be triggered often (oddly enough, it currently does wonders against warrior pressure). Infuse is just a heal and while it will be enough to save a spike, it is pushing up the bars that take more to push.

Are people making use of the +200 health by using sup runes or are they content with running the same runes as before? Because, it kinda sounds like that would make running prot spirit worth it. On the other hand, strips strips strips strips strips.

sup axe+conjure, gogo!

Conjures are bad in this meta since they act like armor-ignoring bonus damage instead of normal elemental damage.

There are people running majors, not sure about superiors, right now it isn't really clear which is going to be better. However in no case is it a good idea to lower your health total just to get more damage mitigated via prot spirit (same idea as staying in caster set to get more spirit bond triggers).

Also meant to get more out of healing and make it easier to abuse WoH. Using infuse puts more of a strain on getting yourself back up then before, what with needing to heal 100 more health. Higher health is not always good. Though I guess I shouldn't condone healing over prots.

This flux sounds like what people have suggested to make elementalists better able to deal damage in hard mode: more health, less armor for the monsters.

So I used my Mesmer yesterday... and lots of Elementalists in FA & JQ makes my Mesmer's Symbols of Inspiration build actually worthwhile. Granted that it's far from superior, but a win is a win and I had plenty of them.

From the Monks I saw, some used Boon Signet and some even used Empathic Removal.

Higher health as opposed to lower health is always better, no exception.