Update - Thursday, December 8, 2011

Mesmers...Mesmers also have...Energy surge, panic, mistrust, cry of frustration, wastrel's worry, shatter enchantment, shatter hex, shatter delusions, ineptitude, clumsiness, wandering eye, signet of clumsiness...etc.

Yep...mesmers will be totally shafted after this update. No doubt about it.

None of those are PvE only skills that have degeneration. You also assumed that I was expecting damage from skills.

So half of the professions of GW, and especially one, must rely on ONE condition to be useful or at least as good as rits and mesmers? Why?

They are "buffing" most professions damage, so that mesmers and ritualists and necromancers don't become as dominant.

The thing to keep in mind is that rangers/paragons have EBSoH. From a "Balance" (laugh with me) point of view EBSoH + SoH + OoP/Conjure would be overpowered. That would let you hit well over 100 damage per target on barrage and 250ish damage on something with triple shot. People would just take IAS + Barrage/Volley and turn the game into Turret Wars.

Not that the previous updates have been any better about balance, though.

What has buffing all HM monster hp got to do with mesmers and rits? It is a nerf to everyone. Is your ele going to kill faster if they add 10,000hp to each HM monster?

If you are playing an armor respecting damage class but you are not bringing cracked armor then you are just NOT optimizing your team build.

Sure they say they would compensate by bringing armor down, but I can already do that with cracked armor, without buffing monster hp. Therefore, depending on how much they fix the armor/hp ratio, cracked armor potentially buffs up armor respecting damages more than this update would.

EBSoH is different. it's not as powerful, takes up a slot on -your- bar (PvE skill, no less.), has a significant cast time that cuts down on DPS. I steer away from it on my paragon for just that reason.

Keep in mind the changes I propose to SoH would definitely imply a net nerf to melee damage. 25% increased physical damage comes to mind off hand. not sure how powerful that would or would not be.

I don't really see your argument. You're complaining about two PvE skills that no one ever uses anyway?

OT: change is good. I can't wait until my ele becomes less useless in HM.

SoH only works for melee.

EBSoH and a lot of PvE only skills need to be nerfed. The whole point of the skills are to give your profession more options that may not be in your classes description(ex. pain inverter, which is like a Mesmer skill, on a ranger)without investing attribute points, yet they give you god mode powers to. Some such as Pain Inverter and EBSoH are blatantly imbalanced.

One thing Anet lacked during skill creation was the foresight to see such skill combinations. Pain Inverter would be better at 120% damage at 50 max damage. For EBSoH cut the energy cost in half and have +8 damage, +7 damage agaisnt charr.

There is only a handful of spells which can modify incoming life stealing.

* Life Sheath and Reversal of Fortune convert life stealing to healing
* Shielding Hands reduces received life stealing
* Union reduces received life stealing for the whole party
* Vengeful Weapon and Weapon of Remedy trigger on life steal

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Life_stealing

Elemental damage can be altered many other ways, but I don't know how smart or versatile PvE healers or other PvE enemies with damage reduction skills are. Maybe the problem is the setup of PvE enemies which is weakest against pure damage over anything else.

Yes, and that's a good thing. HM is, right now, laughable and nowhere near being 'hard'. You don't even have to rely on top gimmicks from pvx to steam through HM PvE right now, and worst of all, you don't even have to change your team build according to the location/mission (sometimes you might want to switch one hero, or grab an LB skill in NF, but that's all). And i'm not talking about elite areas only, just HM in general.
Adding HP to mobs means that they are harder to kill (not only longer - the longer they are up, the more possible it is they will kill you - they might get healed one more time, throw ESurge one more time to wipe your team - whatever). It means that permabuilds, as well as sliver builds, will take longer to do their job - and, maybe, somewhere they won't be able to do it anymore. It means that discord-spam, however i loved and used it for a long time, will not be as effective as it used to be. As most current top gimmicks rely heavily on armor-ignoring damage, i hope this update will nerf them, or even maybe crush severely.
It's not just about making mesmers and rits less deadly in HM (although, please do note, not less useful). It's also, indirectly, nerfing the current gimmicks. And if armor/hp will be balanced properly, the armour-ignoring damage might still have an edge over armour-respecting types, whilst the latter will become viable to use, even in PuGs. More so, it would nerf many popular gimmicks for HM (keep in mind NM probably won't be altered, at all) - sure, new gimmicks will come, but it will at least give people the incentive to invent the new builds, which will most likely be less destructive than the current/old ones. And that's good - putting 'Hard' back into 'Hard Mode'.

That said, degen seems to become totally worthless in PvE (from player perspective), though it's laughable even now. But that's an issue to be addressed after the original update kicks in. Removing the '-10 cap' from degen effects in HM might do the trick - both allowing players to apply much more pressure, as well as making mobs with degen, especially AoE degen, much more deadly, requiring more cautious approach.

First thing I want to see when this update hits is how the enemy monks handle the higher health of their party. Right now they seem to have an infinite amount of energy and can spam skill after skill but you can spike down any mob. I wonder if this is the case for foes with 1k health.

There is no need to remove it. A -15 degen cap would suffice.

You say can't wait for something to be less useless in hard mode and yet you don't see what I was saying.

-15 might be viable for the current HM. With the heightened HP of mobs, -15 might not be sufficient.
Maybe totally removing the cap isn't necessary - though it would, actually, make the game harder when faced against several mobs with various degen - but it certainly would need a redesign. For new HM only.

Its a nerf to armor ignoring damage. It leaves armor-affecting damage untouched with regards to armor ignoring damage. That is exactly the type of update we need. Simply buffing results in power creep, which is obviously a big problem in this game atm. This is a smart update because rather than buffing the underpowered stuff to the level of the overpowered stuff, it nerfs the overpowered stuff to the level of the underpowered stuff.

Wrong, increasing monster hp is a nerf to everyone because that makes monsters harder to kill even for armor respecting damage classes like rangers.

However, reducing armor buffs armor respecting damage classes but I can already do that through cracked armor. Cracked armor reduces armor by 20 up to 60 armor, without the side effecting of buffing monster hp.

It's a nerf to everyone, yes, and that's what HM currently needs.

Cracked Armor can't reduce armor bellow 60, which is the base number for armor-sensitive damage, so it'll never be broken. Cracked Armor is there to make that kind of damage viable against rangers/ warriors, not to make entire professions viable against anything from HM.

If you want a general nerf to everyone just delete all cons and/or delete or nerf all pve skills. These are the stuff that makes general HM easy. As long as we have cons and pve skills, general HM will always be too easy. If we can survive without cons and pve skills in the past, we can do it again.

The problem with people is that they stuff themselves with cons, use pve skills, then come back and brag HM is too easy. ANet is also part of the problem, cons are way too common. If we dont use them, our inventories would overflow with cons.

And if people stop using crappy builds and start bringing a source of cracked armor in their teams, then there wont be so many complaints about high HM monster armor to start with.

I usually use one PvE skill, fill my party with heroes, and without cons, I have been vanquishing everything without any difficulty.

It's the contrary: why use crappy builds that rely on one condition, when we can bring much superior armor-ignoring builds?

Hard Mode, as it is now, nerfs armor-sensitive damage, and has no effect on armor-ignoring damage. This is a fact, not an opinion. The very nature of HM is the reason why most dominant builds today rely on ritualists, necromancers, mesmers and RoJ monks.

Again. You're complaining about two PvE skills which no one uses, even in the current state of HM. This update isn't going to change it one way or another.

Also, you seem to have overlooked the fact that cry of pain still deals up to 50 damage in addition to the degeneration.

I think you need to be more clear in your arguments...otherwise people might think you're trolling.

Go get hexed with something like Migraine + Conjure Nightmare or Crippling Anguish and then get back to me on removing the degen cap. It hurts, especially when your monk gets hexed/dazed too.

I'm amazed that a "non-update" is being talked about this much. Then again, not really.

So do I. And have you cleared HM DoA and UW with all heroes, and without cons?

They need to delete and nerf all PvE skills and take away ALL cons if HM is too easy.

Most dominant builds rely on them because of a number of reasons. One of the main reasons is the limited heroes AI which favor casters. If assassin heroes AI is better, I would have prefered to use them. The other reason, is people are too reliant on pvx and dont bother to come with their own effective build.

I have been testing invoke ele heroes in my team and they seem to work pretty well even in HM too, so I dont see why eles are too weak in HM, especially if you bring a source of cracked armor and have pve skills to boot.

I'm not the one who overlooked the 50 damage when I was the one who first mentioned it.

I would like them to fix para's and necro's a bit first after this ele buff, but yes I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I never liked to ideas of cons in any game. It just cheapens everything.

In what way do Necros need 'fixing'?

Nothing compares to Barrage + Splinter for a big AoE spike in damage on a large mob. You hit all of your triggers with one attack, so you get all the damage out at once, that's its advantage.

I would say rangers way before necromancers.

Not sure if this has been answered as i gave up after page 5 on forum as it went on about ele update etc.

But im pretty sure although its a guess, it just mean that the rare material trader is gonna stock up for Linen which I believe is one of the upcoming zones seen as its repeating. I know it says Nic himself is stocked up but im still sure thats all it means. could be wrong

Against healers perhaps, and only if there's sufficient follow-up. Barrage may hit targets that are less then ideally placed to fully exploit Splinter Weapon (with fewer adjacent targets) - especially in not-so-large groups - while multiple single target attacks have a better chance of using all 'splinters'. But Barrage does look better with all those yellow numbers.

Would be nice, if just for the change.

HB/VoS and MoP does, and it doesn't require you to go ranger primary or secondary.

Oh, yes, please!
That might actually make at least SOME areas of hard mode PvE hard - cons/PvE skills or not.

Barrage will have a larger AoE spread for Splinter compared to HB/VoS, I believe. Though, that has it's disadvantages as well...

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...5&postcount=52

Dear Arenanet. I told you to increase health and reduce armor to solve this problem in March.

Maybe you should just have me do your balancing for you?

The main advantage Barrage has over other AoE physicals is that it is ranged, which makes it a lot faster get off in a battle. Problem is that it is 100% reliant on a rit spamming SW, without it rangers do nearly nothing.

Barrage doesn't require you to go derv or warrior, don't see why either matters (though R/W for SY is standard).

March? Others and I have been suggesting the idea since before EotN was released as far as I can remember. Anet has always moved about as fast as a frozen sloth.

Told them? You looked like you were talking to Xenomortis not Anet based on the link you provided, or did you expect Anet to read through every single post on that thread, or just randomly know to single your post out before looking at the thread? Secondly, you "told them" in March? Like Kunder said, the suggestion has been floating around for much longer, you are slow. The current guild wars 1 live team might seem slow by your standards, but you can't expect them to be at the speed they were at during the early guild wars days as their resources are now lacking compared to then.

All those poor fools who stocked up on Linen only to find out the update meant:

- Nicholas and Yakkington are filling up their suitcases as they intend to go around the world one more time. However, why go the same route they did last time when they can go about it another way!

Concise: Random locations per week.

Precisely! And these people are complaining that eles deserve a buff on one hand, but on the other hand they are saying HM monster hp needs buffing because HM is too easy.

I have been vanquishing with rangers and have 2 eles, let me tell you that eles are hardly the weakest professions in this game right now. And yet, I doubt lowering the monster's armor is going to have as much impact on my ranger's damage right now as buffing the monster's hp, meaning that it would probably be a net nerf since cracked armor wont bring the armor down below 60 even after the update.

Regarding degen:

People usually mean one (or more) of four things when they say "degen sucks":
1. Skills that cause degen suck because they provide less DPS for their energy/cast time/skillslot cost than direct damage options.
2. Skills that cause degen suck because their limited DPS-per-foe means they contribute little to forcing a particular kill.
3. Skills that cause degen suck because I have other ways of killing the monster faster by using a similar amount of damage applied over a shorter amount of time through direct damage options.
4. Skills that cause degen suck because my party is likely to kill the monster before the degen runs its course, thus wasting most of my potential damage.

Now:
#1 Is demonstrably false. For instance, Conjure Phantasm @16 is 170 damage for 10e and ~28DPS (presuming you've got 4 targets to spread it over), which is not out of line compared to most non-elite sources of caster damage.
#2 is true and is going to stay true.
#3 and #4 are both going to become less likely to be true in the face of a large monster hp buff. To the extent that the problem is degen not getting a chance to run its course (#4), or giving it a chance to run its course is a stupid voluntary decision (#3), this update will go a long ways towards fixing degen.

Much like dogs, cats, or especially rabbits, they are prone to overpopulation if left to their own devices. Once they become a significant demographic, we all have to endure stuff like this. This is Chthon with a public service announcement: Please, spay or neuter your necros.

#1 Your reasoning is false because taking 18s before you start dealing that DPS is insane. The first 6 seconds you are only dealing an average of 10 DPS, over 12s you only deal 15 DPS. Over the first 20s of a battle you can manage at best 20 DPS, and its not even focused on a single target so that you can force a kill. And 40E for that costs a large amount.

#2 Even if degen was uncapped it would still be weak compared to damage, especially damage after an armor nerf. If you ran a build that had Fevered Dreams and then put every damage-dealing condition in the game, you would hit 36 DPS. Spiteful Spirit does about 35-50 DPS depending on the enemy, takes up only 1 skill slot, can be echoed, and we still consider it a rather poor skill overall. Granted SS has a lower AoE range, but its the closest comparison in terms of AoE damage over time skills I can think of offhand.

#3 and #4 matter little when compared to the lack of beating the #1 requirement of PvE: damage. If #3 and #4 mattered at the moment, why don't you see people care about putting -10 degen on bosses during long fights? Because it is so ridiculously marginal for the extra skills required to do so.

Necros don't need to be fixed. I think they are boring but maybe that just means they are not the best choice for a main for me.

They have Curses with most Curse skills being a passive form of excellent damage through debuffs and damage support.

Death is just completely awesome and my favorite attribute line. Minion armies help take focus off party members and deal insane damage. Minion armies are so versatile that you can go full damage, full tank or a bit of both.

Blood is the PvP line. Its mostly meant to deal moderate damage with self supporting skill(i.e. life steal, life transfer). I have no idea why Spoil Victor is in Blood because it has more properties as a Curse skill than a Blood one. Blood is just that attribute with excellent balance but looks unattractive because of powercreeping other professions.

Then they have Soul Reaping which is the best energy management in game considering its been nerfed many times. It frees up skill slots on the skill bar and gives the necro access to more energy management, support and damage outside the other 3 attribute lines. This also allows them to be a damn good healers with increased longevity at the cost of not going higher than 12 restoration.