Update - Thursday, December 8, 2011

I'm just afraid that my average 70-80 minute daily vanquishing will turn into 110-120+ minute vanquishes. I actually enjoyed the sense of difficulty in this game right now. This change just makes me think ANet is only worried about the "6+ hour a day players".

You won't know until you've changed your builds. I trust you will drop a rit and/or mesmer after this.

My concern is more to do with how heroes use new skills. Will their AI be updated?

I don't imagine it having a largely noticeable affect on group teams. Simply because when they had higher armor and less health, you were dealing less damage but had a smaller goal to kill your opponent. But with less armor and more health, you now do more damage and have a larger goal to reach.

So for a solo farmer this might mean everything having more health, but it shouldn't be largely noticeable with a group setting.

Ex. Vaettir farming may take a slight tad longer now if using shadow form because your damage is limited with shadow form anyways, so even though their armor is reduced YOU don't deal more damage but have to go through more of their health. But if you had a full team of 8 players the vaettirs shouldnt really pose any additional threat.

It all depends how much health they added and how much armor they reduced... Armor is more useful than health... armor reduces the damage u take per hit... health is just how much damage ur can take... just removing 10 armor has drastic effect on how much more health ur going to lose...as little armor as it would take to make 5-10% more damage per hit is going to need alot of health to reclaim armor loss... their maximum health better be ridiculous.. i hope they were smart about it and didn't so something silly like 10% reduction in armor and 10% increase in health, and found that balance.

gulp... please don't raise the health of hard-mode monsters

Great update! I'm not sure why the nerf to some of the Rit armor-ignoring damage was warranted given the upcoming health increases in HM (it's like getting nerfed twice), but I suppose it depends on how much health goes up and how much armor goes down.

My initial impressions:

The conservative buffs and nerfs are welcome. One of the issues with elementalists, in my view, is how some skills are already fun but "just not powerful enough" or overshadowed by others.

The slight nerf to Invoke/ Chain Lightning is going to make it less mindless, while still powerfull nonetheless. For PvP, that is. The slight buffs to others might just be enough to make them about equal. I do have some issues with a few. Blinding Surge was already overpowered at RA, and it only got buffed. It needs a PvP Split. Or have the AoE Blind more conditional, just like the extra damage is now. Sandstorm seems perhaps stronger than it should, but I might be wrong. Overall, there seems to be a lot of free blind spam here and there, and only dervishes have good anti-blind skills out of the three melee classes.

My real question is on the drastic changes. I really can't say much about them without testing.

Anyone else see that?

(And no, making it unconditionally exhaust barely qualifies.)

Maybe it's only for low-level PvP, but most of the strategy for Invoke I saw (and used) was mostly to spam it on recharge. Sure, you need to give priority to balled or called targets, and the occasional mesmer/ ranger on you, but other than that, spamming it is extremely rewarding for the minimal effort it takes.

A typical (RA) air build takes Invoke+Chain. Using both now means a 10e exhaustion. So spamming on recharge is going to make you useless fast.

I also want to add that I enjoy the GW2 mentality behind the new balances. And by that I don't mean only the fact that water magic will bring party support. The comments on exhaustion's nature and how it makes balancing simpler reflect those of Izzy's regarding GW2's recharge mechanic.

EDIT: Can't wait for the future cross-elemental update neither.

Are you talking stirctly PvP because there is always Asuran Scan in PvE to deal with areas that might now have increased blinding.

I personally like the changes and welcome the less armor more health mentality in HM. Except for solo farmers I don't see this even changing much in group play, seeing as how we use armor ignoring damage anyways and we'll be doing more damage with enemies having less armor. But I'm not a math wizz..we'll see how it plays out.

No it would be a nerf to armor ignoring damages. These armor ignoring damage would NOT be dealing more on lower armor targets. They would be dealing the SAME damage no matter what their target's armor is, except now, you have to contend with higher hp monsters.

Therefore it is a resulting nerf to all armor ignoring damage but for it may or may not be a buff for armor respecting damages (depending on how much armor is lowered and how much hp is raised).

PvP, yes. I welcome the free blind for PvE elementalist players.

After this update, and after the 3rd part of WoC next year which might feature the melee AI update, we're going to get a huge meta shift in hero parties.

Will Signet of Spirits still be overpowered after this?

here's how to test: go into NM with 3 invoke eles and see how much faster you pwn (or searing flames) than using 3 esurgers, etc.

In order to test whether the update is a nerf or a buff to armor ignoring damages, you have to compare the effect BEFORE and AFTER the update.

In this case, your armor ignoring damage would not be impacted with the armor changes. They are armor ignoring in the first place! But the higher hp would definitely make monsters harder to kill so the result is a nerf to armor ignoring damages.

As for armor RESPECTING damages, it would depend on how much armor is lowered vs hp raised, to check if it is a buff or a nerf to them.

Talking strictly about PvE, the new dervishes are actually well-balanced and the new elementalists don't seem to be any stronger than the old (and to be back) Savannah Heat kind. Just more diverse. Does the new update even features any elite stronger than Savannah and Searing? I mostly see less-damage/more-support AoE alternatives.

PvP, however... Depends fully on the more radical changes. EDIT: And I do expect them to be unbalanced for PvP, like dervishes were/ are.

Seems like all current hero team builds will continue to work unless they raise monster hp a bunch. Discord should still be fine, but killing will be faster with other builds. Maybe a lot faster. Battle of attrition instead of just blowing them up? My hero elems get to play...

Could wreak havoc on some farms.

I did wonder how this would affect UWSC/FowSC; if it would render them unplayable or just slow them down by one or two cooldowns of Shadow Form/OF.

Also... Since Mark of Pain isn't being messed with, and physical damage would also be higher- this 7H build will be even stronger in comparison to other choices: http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_7_Hero_Markway

Almost every elite change is game-breaking for PvP >.>

*looks at over 700 gem sets obtained by non DwG methods in anticipation of the upcoming nerfbat causing gemsets/armbraces' prices to skyrocket*

Oh yeah, I can definitely handle this update.

In any case, looks interesting.