Balance on the Horizon.

Well, GWWC is, in effect, over. We know that ANet has said they won't be doing any kinds of skill balancing until GWWC is over, and that they probably will have skills to balance. When asked "When will you nerf __________," the response is always, "We will balance any skills that need it after GWWC."

So. GWWC is over.

Which skills do you realistically expect to be balanced, and how? I am loathe to turn this into an IWAY-only debate, but the only one I can think of is IWAY, and I am reasonably sure they are going to have the skill not affected by pets. Which, really, won't hurt a couple of modded-IWAYs. But I digress.

The whole point was that when I thought about balancing, I couldn't think of anything else that needed 'balance,' either nerfed or buffed. So, any predictions? And will the metagame finally tip as a result?

I, for one, will wait and see. No predictions. I'll deal with any changes when I see what has been changed.

I think they might nerf distortion, as it seems to be creeping into everyone's skillbar. I hope they don't.

If they change things to make warriors and rangers not the only constant reliable offence in pvp then there may be no need for this.

I don't want to say much on what is and what is not balanced, but my thought personally is Spitefull Sprit.

Though I would not bet on it, it could be anything.

I am interested to see what they do change though.

I think all players know for a fact that Crippling Shot will be nerfed.

A skill that can be used no matter what amount of marksmanship you have, giving the full 8 seconds of cripple, can't be blocked or evaded, and has a 1 second recharge time, not to mention the 10 energy cost is way to small of a class that specifically reduces the energy cost of skills such as this.

i think various AOE skills will get a buff in a reduced energy cost/faster cool down or both

example is firestorm where you pay full price and get half the value.

refer to Ensigns post on the huge imbalance in damage.

if he cant make it work there is a problem.

Agreed.
Other candidates:
"I Will Avenge You!"
and they should nerf Orison of Healing too... waaaay overpowered [/sarcasm]

I can think of a couple skills that need a mite bit of tuning, but nothing big other than IWAY.

The only skill that I can think of that might get nerfed is SS. The reason I say that is because I dont see any other skill that a player can use echoed that can literally shut down two players completely if they dont want to harm everyone in the grp. This skill it could be nerfed if cast on a person it harms only that person not everyone around them. That would balance out a few necroes dont ya think

Some of the inspiration skills like energy tap are pretty bad now after they got nerfed mybe a small boost, Boon prot monks are also very widely used so a nerf/rebalance of boon or oob(most common energy skill for boon prot) maybe coming.

Gale.
SV.
SS.
Distortion.
Crippling Shot.

i think maybe orders might be nerfed...damage iway and effectively ruin ranger spike in one go..although i dont think they are overpowered

Resurrection Signet.. come on bring someone back to life just like that?? :|

I can see them possibly changing some monk skills, to totally annoy the 55'ers


EDIT: Like Protective Spirit, like either shorter length of usage or longer recharge. Maybe both to infuriate them :P

Quoted for truth, those are the ones I predict will be revisited.

I'm also thinking certain pieces of equipment (henge helm) will be reworked.

1)Gale
2)Spiteful Spirit
3)Ether Prodigy
4)Crippling Shot
5)Distortion
6)IWAY
7)Orders (possibly)

Spiteful is hardly overpowered, it only seems that way when you get
moronic people standing close to each other. When you see SS pop
on your bar you should be moving away from other people.

wtf. Balancing doesnt mean nerf every skill that is useful.

just cuz every player in the gwwc uses those non necro skills doesnt mean they are overpowered it means they are at the perfect level of usefulness to cost.

hehehe...

to be fair --- nerf every skill.

except mending -- that one's not too bad.

Not gonna happen.

I honestly dont think they will nerf the 55 any more, they nerfed AOE (ZF) which made it the uber-thing that it was, not that you dont have that anymore its much sloer and there are other build which kill faster (axe war)...

IWAY will be nerfed.

i can GUARANTEE the following

1 screams of anguish

2 sighs of relief

3 shouts of joy

your mix may vary and is subject to what you do and how it was affected

EDIT FOR MOST IMPORTANT

4. HOWLS OF OUTRAGE

- Dual Shot slight nerf
- negative Exhaustion fix
- IWAY not effect on pets
- lot of buffs to various skills

That is what wouldn't suprise me. But I'm going to prepare myself to be suprised

Somewhere on this forum there is a conversation with Gaile in LA Intl 1 where she pretty much gurantees that IWAY will be nerfed.

"I Will Avenge You!" will only affect party members (right now it affects undead minions and Ranger spirits as well as pets). More importantly, I find it quite likely that Orders will get their range shortened, which will not completely destroy IWAY or Ranger Spike, but it will force those who play them to GASP! actually use some skill when playing an Orders Necro instead of simply sitting in back and spamming.

I find it rather hard to believe that Gale will actually be nerfed. Prior to the "IWAY Revolution" Warriors were viewed as extremely crappy. When someone figured out a way for them to close their range limitations effectively, there was a sudden bout of chaotic "ZOMG I GOT PWNT BY TEH WARRIOR NOOB" chants. However, Warriors are still easy to just ignore with a bit of Warrior-hate ability. Effectively, Gale is going to keep Warriors useful after the IWAY nerf, so there really is very little reason to nerf. Besides, Chapter 2 brings with it a new Warrior skill called "Coward!" that will likely replace Gale very quickly.

To further extrapolate on Warrior stuff, I sincerely wish that Anet would fix Bull's Charge and Strike. Those two alone would make for some interesting builds if they actually did anything. Basically just change "fleeing" to "not attacking" and suddenly all those annoying Gales would be replaced by (literally) Bull.

Crippling shot... hopefully nerfed.

1. Agreed, though I don't know how to fix it. Longer recharge won't stop two or three warriors from casting it back to back. More energy cost won't stop it. Longer cast time would make it useless to everyone for every purpose.

2. No. It's an AOE Empathy. No one is crying Empathy is overpowered. This is an elite, so it should be better than the regular spell, which is empathy, so as far as I'm concerned the spell is fine in pvp. In PVE you could make the case that it makes farming easier, but who cares about pve.

3. No. After Ether Prodigy everyone will cry for Offering of Blood and so on until every energy management skill in the game is nerfed out of the range of usability. Ether Prodigy is the best energy management skill in the game, true, but it ought to be. Elementalists are supposed to be the 'energy' class, so they deserve the best energy management skill. And to be fair, Ether Prodigy is the ONLY reason anyone uses Elementalists in pvp at all. If you nerf this without radically boosting other elementalist spells Ele's will be less prevelent than they already are.

4. Yes, give Crippling shot a longer recharge.

5. I would normally agree to nerfing Distortion. But I can't because it would create terrible imbalance issues. If you nerf distortion it will make warriors and rangers far better than they already are. The only reason you see two or more mesmers on a GVG team now is because they are relatively resistent to warrior damage, but take that away and they will be gone. Unless something else happens to weaken warriors, Distortion has to stay to maintain balance.

6. Yes, IWAY shouldn't go on pets. This won't stop IWAY teams from dominating Tombs though. The only way to do that is to nerf res signets. Make Res signets not bring you back to life with 100% health and IWAY will lose a lot of it's teeth.

7. Orders should definitely be nerfed. Radar range is too far and makes them far too good. Changing the range to 'In the Area' would make them more balanced. No longer would IWAY necros be able to hide in the back, nor can a guy in GVG be sitting in your base and use Orders to sway battles at the flag stand. Ranger spike though probably would still be functional since there is no reason why the order spammer cant be near the rangers.

SS is not AoE Empathy. lolol.

Empathy does not deal damage when you use a skill, only when you attack. I believe you can see the difference right?
The problem with SS is that it completly shuts down a character, two if it's echoed.... AND deals AoE ignoring damage if the character tries to do anything.


I am not saying SS should be nerf, I am only saying that comparing SS with an AoE empathy is plain wrong.

Phew! At least no one here mentioned nerfing my smiting skills.
I think the Monk Smiter is on it's way to stardom.

SS is an elite, if they were to nerf it in any way they would have to make it a non-elite skill because no one would use it anymore. It also only shuts down 2 people if your monk forgot to bring hex removal. It is not overpowered in any way.

If they nerfed SS then there would only be 2 kinds of necros in pve, MM, and batteries. I am sure that if it was nerfed it would be because of the 55 monk/ss necro duo in the UW. (If they nerf SS it would still be possible to duo with a 55 monk/empathy,backfire mesmer but would take a lot longer).

The point is, SS deals AOE damage when a when a warrior attacks. Empathy deals damage when a warrior attacks.

The fact that it also triggers when any skill is used besides an attack is negliable, since no one casts it on anyone else except warriors. Thus, in practice SS functions like a better version of Empathy. There is nothing broken about it in pvp.

Just some notables. There are probably more but I can't think of them right now. ><

Nerfs
IWAY. Not that it's strong, but that it's so common in HA. And you know what happens to builds that are so prevalent in HA... And since The Frog said that he was morally opposed to IWAY and the abuse of animals( ), I can assume IWAY will no longer affect pets, as others have said.

Spiteful Spirit. Although to my dismay, I think there will be a change to SS. Still unaffected by the AoE nerf, it's become the "new nuke," so to speak. It's why two-man UW teams are still efficient. I shudder to think of all the Assassins that SS has killed during the PvP weekend...

Blackout. Ouch. Nevermind Gale. This was THE #1 shutdown during the GWWC, imo.

CoP & OoB. Although my Boon/Prot loves these two skills, I have a feeling it'll get hit anyways. T_T

Crippling Shot. Spammable and unblockable. Often covered with poison. Increase recharge or make it tied with attribute.

Buffs
Quickshot. Yay I can shoot an arrow twice as fast! Needs at least a dmg increase.
Hundred Blades. Maybe a dmg increase too.
Diving Healing. Get rid of that hideous recharge.
Skull Crack. Does anyone use this? It needs a lower Adrenal cost. Or a 1/2 swing time.
Keystone Signet. There really isn't a terrible amount of other signets to use this with...
Incendiary Arrows. 8 seconds only? Increase please.
AoE spells. Probably needs lowered cost and/or lowered recharge to make up for AoE patch.

There are a lot of AOE spells that are unaffected by the AOE nerf. If you don't like that, change the way the game detects AOE.

I never said I didn't like it, did I? Hell I've done the two man smite runs, and this skill just tears up the place. Can't ask for any more than that. It's fine for PvP, sure. But when I mean AoE, I mean DoTAoE, not one shot wonders.

Crippling Shot in it's current form can be moved to the No Attribute section since it has nothing to do with any of the ranger attributes. Making the duration last according to the points in markmanship would be nice. Anyway i think there is a huge imbalance between Pin down and his elite bro, Cripp Shot. On this bases you can give an ele a Meteor Storm (somethin like an elite met shower) with 10 energy cost, 5 sec recharge, no exhaust


Echoed spiteful... Hm... some classes seem to have uber skills that remove hexes. If you play a balanced builds with an int mesmer (or ranger) you can put them to shut down the dood who echos ss thus making the ss necro spend 30 energy in vain. Do this twice to really annoy the guy.


Distorsion... Good way to annoy warriors and trigger a rigor mortis on you if ranger spikers plan to bang your ass.


Orders... Dead on. It's just unfair. Make order necros stick to the team. Althou this wont solve the iway problem. Ranger spike will be functional since many moded ranger spike teams have more usage of a necro than just the the 2 order skills, so necros in a good rspike usually stay close to the group and are chased around by warriors xD


Now, to the most debated skill that gave the infamous name to the build... IWAY. ANET definetly will make changes to several skills in order to reduce the power of the build, not just only the skill. I heard proposals to make it elite... :| What? So every pve warr will need to cap it?

QuickShot... Could see some use of it with chocking gas or something. Or if i would like to constantly annoy peeps with martyr by constatly keeping the other team poisoned (posion + quickshot = other team poisoned in 8 seconds xD)



Blackout... good skill. If you blackout a monk than right before he can cast you burn, surge, etc... you can be really annoying

Anyway, I think IWAY is top priority cuz of it's popularity and tendency to f**k many of the non anti iway builds in a matter of seconds. Leave it this way and you get tombs split in 2: iway and those who farm iway.

Yay, can't wait to see some fresh stuff in tombs

I'll go ahead and predict 4 skills that will most likely see some nerfs: Gale, distortion, and orders.

As made obvious by the GWWC builds gale lock was the key. Being able to shut some one down for 6-9 seconds with little or no backlash is too strong to stay around. Exhaustion can be manipulated so that's not a drawback. Only 2 skills on the game can stop knockdown and both in in warrior which no monk wants to go into. Fix exhaustion, increase the energy, increase the attribute req, or add a longer recharge.

Distortion is extremely strong with just the left over attribute points. Hmm...dodge that eviserate for 7 energy or get killed? That's a hard choice huh? I don't see how to fix this. It doesn't last long and in certian situations can drain your energy fast but, in the right hands its a 1 stop shop for shutting down wars and rangers.

Orders are the backbone for ranger spike. Adding 34 dmg per arrow. Add dual shot and that's an additional 68 dmg per ranger just from the orders. Not to mention gaining 34 life on dual and 17 on each shot.


These are the only skills I can see getting a nerf. Hopefully they boost more skills than nerf.

Bring mantra of persistance back plz. 30 seconds is outragous for 15 energy It doesn't even recharge within 30 seconds. If you are going to keep the energy cost that high lower the recharge.

Fire dmg needs a huge boost on duration spells due to the new AI and very little affect it has in pvp. Only way I can ever see a use for fire in pvp is "on fire" to add pressure.

Lower the recharge on Drain Energy and tap. I know they had to be destroyed to get people away from them completely but I think they time is right for them to come back. Its pretty sad when drain enchantment is SOOO much better and its not even an elite. Mes e denial is pretty much dead from the inspiration line. Doesn't matter if it did return a ranger is still far better at it using the domination line.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT CHANGE RES SIG OR HEAL PARTY!!!

Would like to add that IWAY does not need to be changed. The only thing even keeping that build alive is orders. Run it w/o orders and see what will happen.

The "right" fix is to fix the exploit with Warriors; that is, to either make Exhaustion go negative or change the regeneration rate to be based on the armor so they have lower exhaustion regeneration. The "easy" fix (read: what Arenanet will actually do) is increase the energy cost to both Gale and Shock to 10.

Right on - the answer to Ether Prodigy and Offering of Blood being overpowered isn't to nerf them - it's to make other energy management not suck.

You can nerf Distortion without nerfing Mesmers. The main reason everybody takes it is because it requires few attribute points to get to a rediculous 2 energy per evade. Just increase it to 4...1 energy.

I still don't think there's any reason to nerf IWAY. Although it may be the signature skill, it isn't why the build is powerful (if it was, they'd still be using the 7 warrior 1 necro format). The build is powerful because Resurrection Signet is insane, and because of Orders.

I'm torn - on one hand they are the reason IWAY's damage is so crazy, but on the other, I can't think of a nerf to Orders that doesn't just completely destroy them. Personally, I'd nerf Res Signet and come back to Orders later if the build is still dominant.

I think they really need to make Rez Sig require at least 7 in Soul Reaping. Somebody give this attribute a 'skill'!

Changing the energy cost to 10 is pretty meaningless as the skills exhaust out 10 on every cast. If they do cast it at a 5e situation, then they are energy locked for awhile and cant do other things like frenzy or sprint for instance. To fix gale, its fail mechanic really needs to be linked to energy storage. It takes it out of the hands of everyone but elementalist primaries. Otherwise you are making alot of halfmeasures that do not really affect the professions that are able to abuse it.

Personally i cant believe that anyone suggested nerfing ether prodigy. The elementalist class has alot of problems as is and that would only enhance it. What does need to get addressed is the bug with exhaustion following death, where if you use an exhaustion causer like ether prodigy, it will wipe out all existing exhaustion except the new exhaustion count it creates. Either that, or allow exhaustion to be removed over time and drain the adrenalin charge while dead. Of course skills are easier to change than underlying game mechanics, but time will tell.

Its because warrior damage is strong and having alot of sources is hard to stop. Combine that with a limitless time boost due to dead allies and you have a broken skill. It is a gimmic and it can be overcome, but most other "broken" skills could be beaten alot easier than iway. The old style ether renewal was one of them. The skill isnt so bad in very small formats, like 4v4, but when you talk about faction battles being between larger scale alliances, this skill will have to get nipped in the bud. Probably what will happen with this skill is that the time frame will become variable based on attribute level instead of number of dead allies.

As far as the other skills, it is likely that small tweaks are going to happen to crippling shot and distortion. I don't think blackout is going to change much, except maybe become a spell instead of a skill, because assasins are getting a similar skill to blackout with ch2 and it is a hex spell. Eviserate could stand to be brought down to other warrior attack skills, or the deep wound mechanic gets changed. I would anticipate more buffs than nerfs though as there is a huge body of skills that could use a nudge, a small portion of skills that need no change, and a very small number of skills that need to get trimmed back. It will be interesting if res sig has an adjustment to it, becuase it is a rather privotal skill slot all things considered and has rendered all other forms of resurection obscelete essentially.

*Party effect skills could stand to have the "elementalist" handicap as well. If you are able to buff or heal your entire team, then there should be a chance for some consequence from it, instead of the map wide party heals among other things. Making them ward size at the top end would be interesting as they could heal or buff the entire party, but then a ele could actually make use of more of the AOE in the fire line for instance and have it actually pull its weight. Of course, shoudl those skills change in that manner, they could easily become unused entirely.

I smell an increase to the energy cost per hit evaded coming, or maybe a recharge time...

lol the skill IWAY itself is hardly overpowered, heck i think you might see even better "IWAY" groups if you force them to rethink their builds without such an overrated skill on all of the warriors

crippling shot should be nerfed with longer cool down and scale the marksmenship so ppl cant cheat it

dual shot definitely needs some sort of nerf also

i'm reluctant about nerfs.. everytime something got nerfed, something else became 'overpowered'. but to get on topic:

IWAY-i think this skill should only affect party members.

distorsion-it might drain more energy per hit and i'm not happy about it.

spiteful spirit-who even suggested that nerf? i find it pretty useless anyways.. it's a good skill vs iway but other than that, ANY build with hex removers gets rid of it fast. i see no valid point to nerf that. as a monk, the only hex that really disables me is migrane or good e-surgers.

gale: i think changing this skill in any way will render it pretty useless.

orders: i see no valid point to nerf the orders skills to closer range.

crippling shot: i don't find it overpowered but i donno it might be in gvg.

hopefully the skill balance will not turn out to be another bad move as it happened when iway got buffed. the only nerf i liked was the ranger spirits. now that was a good move, hoh was starting to be like a staring contest...

i'm not happy how things are in heros ascent at the moment. it's always the same builds, same tactics: iway/[insert profession here] spike/balanced/degen...

i took a look at all the different skills that ppl never use because they are not good. i think many skills need a buff instead of always nerfing the existent ones. anet said gw is all about the different skill combos, bullshit. there are only a distinc few usefull skills in each profession. more than half skills are rubbish, they MIGHT have a use in pve in only 1 or 2 areas... i'm hoping to see a buff in all the skills no1 uses, i wanna see a change coz i'm sick of always clicking the same damn skills.

i'm reluctant about nerfs.. everytime something got nerfed, something else became 'overpowered'. but to get on topic:

IWAY-i think this skill should only affect party members.

distorsion-it might drain more energy per hit and i'm not happy about it.

spiteful spirit-who even suggested that nerf? i find it pretty useless anyways.. it's a good skill vs iway but other than that, ANY build with hex removers gets rid of it fast. i see no valid point to nerf that. as a monk, the only hex that really disables me is migrane or good e-surgers.

gale: i think changing this skill in any way will render it pretty useless.

orders: i see no valid point to nerf the orders skills to closer range.

crippling shot: i don't find it overpowered but i donno it might be in gvg.

hopefully the skill balance will not turn out to be another bad move as it happened when iway got buffed. the only nerf i liked was the ranger spirits. now that was a good move, hoh was starting to be like a staring contest...

i'm not happy how things are in heros ascent at the moment. it's always the same builds, same tactics: iway/[insert profession here] spike/balanced/degen...

i took a look at all the different skills that ppl never use because they are not good. i think many skills need a buff instead of always nerfing the existent ones. anet said gw is all about the different skill combos, bullshit. there are only a distinc few usefull skills in each profession. more than half skills are rubbish, they MIGHT have a use in pve in only 1 or 2 areas... i'm hoping to see a buff in all the skills no1 uses, i wanna see a change coz i'm sick of always clicking the same damn skills.