I miss mark of pain.

Yeah, great idea! Let's nerf a skill so that it's abuseable in PvE.

yeah attacking through empathy/spiteful is definetely the way to go. i usually try to combo it with spamming frenzy and using healing sig. if anyone tries to attack you at that time just hit endure and youre invincible!

anyway, on a serious note... as charlie was saying, other npcs need to attain the same changes. its ridiculous how if you heal a single bodyguard, he can solo every single archer from another team at the flagstand at VoD by casting incindiary bonds, fire storm, and maelstrom because they just stand there and let it kill them all at the same time.

I've always loved MoP, but the AoE nerf did slow it down. I still say that the skill is usuable. With 8 points in curses its 24 or 26 damage and you can get plenty of damage with it before the foe runs. And if you haven't noticed monsters can't attack you while they run away. It is still usable and it last 30 seconds regardless.

Agreed. PvE in this game doesn't get interesting until aggro breaks. I hope factions makes it nigh-impossible to hold aggro, then perhaps we'll see the return of some of these AoEs becuase you won't have an entire team screaming "OMG WTF NOOB" becuase you broke aggro.

He's right, there's times when it's worth it to attack through SS/Empathy. Don't belittle him for saying so.

Actually it's been seen that some enemies do stop casting spells while Backfire is on them. I've seen them stop skills (not interrupted but stop the skill themselves) mid skill.

Well, thanks to those who disagreed with me and supplied a reason as to why.

As for the rest of you who either attacked me or just were plain assholes, die and go to hell.

My fear in -still- using it is that I'm afraid the scatter of the monsters from mark of pain--regardless of the damage--will allow them to switch targets to any number of squishies. In GW's current incarnation, that sucks.

Either way though, people seem to be fine enough with it.

Maybe I'll just do some more testing on it to see how it goes.

yeah thats right people feel the same way about mark of pain as you feel about traps

Hmm...funny you mention this. I was in a PUG group -- with 3-4 guildies from [SoR] or something -- for FoW and someone in the group was saying this EXACT same thing. That they miss the effectiveness of Mark and that they wished it was an elite. Anyway, just thought i'd share that.

And if it was you down in fow yesterday, I was the 3rd monk picked up (one too many) in that PUG.


Hmmm, on second thought, I think you were the one down in FoW with me. Mo/Me -- you had to leave or something (your name was karmic something or other...) lol anyway, carry on.

Haha.

That was me, actually.

Karmic, yes.

I was so inspired by our FoW run that I made a post here. ;P

Here's a fix that I'd like for Mark of Pain. Change it to read:

For 30 seconds, whenever target foe takes physical damage, adjacent enemies suffer from Health Degeneration of 6 for 1 - 3 seconds. If an enemy already suffering from Health Degeneration caused by Mark of Pain would suffer Health Degeneration from Mark of Pain again, the durations are added, not restarted.

And at Curses Attribute level 14 it would go up to 4 seconds of degen.

For those who didn't understand the wording of the hex, here's an example. Basically, If you have a level 12 Curses and you put Mark of Pain on an enemy, then hit the enemy twice with a sword, the Mark would activate twice. The first time it activates, all enemies adjacent to your target would suffer 3 seconds of degen. When the second blow from your sword hits the hexed target again, the enemies adjacent to it would still have 1 and 2/3 seconds of degen left. So, the second blow would increase the duration of the degen to 4 and 2/3 seconds instead of restarting it at 3 seconds. This way, no damage is lost.

That would effectively put out about the same level of damage as the original Mark of Pain, and enemies wouldn't run from it anymore. Unfortunately, the enemies wouldn't be suffering the damage in spikes anymore, so you'd have to wait out the degen to get the full effect. To truly make a degen based version of Mark of Pain, you'd have to scale the degen higher instead of the duration and the 10 pip degen cap would have to be lifted. Oh well, Se La Vi.

You'd be surprised... on the ramps up to the forgemaster, where the shadow rangers + beasts are... casters all stand together to nuke rangers, which happily barrage into multi-MoP'ed targets. And they all scream for heals while spamming into SS.

Please don't try to play the 'realism' card, because if we start on that road... well lets say AoEs will be somewhat less comfortable with friendly fire active.

A degen-based mop.. interesting.

I'd take that, even. ;D

It's fine the way it is. If they changed MoP, they should change any other scattering AoE (firestorm, balth's aura, etc.). They should really have made SS affected as well (only dumb paladins attack next to each other with SS on them).

This is on topic, though it may sound like it isn't:
I love SS and a chang to it would literally kill the spell for me. It's currently my favorite - adding the "broken" aoe AI to it, would break it. As for MoP, same thing happens. To me, it's the aoe AI that is broken simly because the nearly instant fleeing the AI does. I've seen mobs run before they even take damage from the spell(s).
An AI fix towards the now broken "aoe AI fix" is what is needed.
Mobs need to hold the aggro and return to the person they were attacking before they fled. - This would also make it slightly more difficult as casters couldn't just fire off, say Lava Font, and have foes flee away (a good tactic currently for casters, but needs to be changed). Mobs also need to either react slower or have a chance to flee rather than instantly run away. Should be a damage based chance to flee. As it is, using Lava Font again as an example, having no skill in fire magic (meaning dmg 0 - 3 vs some foes) causes all foes to flee. Why would they flee when they are taking that small amout of damage?
Also makes little since to me in that SS and MoP would cause an instant flee effect, especially on high level mobs. They have so many hit points they should be able to take it for longer while still dishing out damage. This would go a long way to making PvE more difficult and unpredictable, since you are not sure you'll get the result you are looking for.

As always, I refer to PvE only.

WOW, look at all the typos, too early to type it would seem

Physical attack Monsters keep on plugging away against Shield of Judgement, I see lots of yellows even after the knockdown. They get up and hit again.

I sure do miss the old days where you could go to fow and the warrior could just take out entire mobs, just because of mark of pain, perhaps it would still work if you used some...water ele stuff.

i'd say, make it an elite and/or lower the damage, that way it's not overpowered, yet useful.

I was wondering the other day why it was changed to AoE.
I mean if you think about it SS does the same thing plus the hexed foe gets damaged also.
I hope they do not change SS to AoE also.
If they do then bye bye SS/SV necros.

I find MoP works well enough when you corner or trap a mob so they can't run. I was having a bit of fun with that in the Furnace last night. Can't do that with henchies, though...

The whole AoE 'nerf' just increases the amount of strategy you have to develop, IMHO. If the tables were turned and MoP (or any AoE spell) was cast on your party, would you all stay huddled together? I'd be trying to get away from the epicenter as quickly as I could, unless I thought I could endure it. I think the change just makes the mobs act more intelligently.

What strategy? What I see is AoE nearly NEVER touched by any group I have seen (except SS and Meteor shower). I can find no way to make firestorm work effectively, even with slow and everything I managed to get 4 hits in before they limped out...now is that worth the 15 nrg cost and the long casting time? Supposedly Mark of Pain still works decently, you get some good damage...then every one is running around dodging once the aggro goes out of control, doing no damage at all, at the end Mop might as well not be used.

I don't know why us AoE users are seen as some sort of lazy bum who doesn't want to think. There is a reason why we HAVE to use aggro control with AoE. Look at the end game mussat bosses, bladed aataxes in UW, the grasping insanity in tombs. lvl 28 monsters with like double our hp, infinite nrg, and ridiculous damage. AoE is like the only thing that kills them at a decent speed (next to minions and SS, which is now the new echo nuker). Not everyone has hours on end to kill all those one by one.

So, what's the new incredible strategy? LF MM and SS necro! everywhere. Now let's nerf these and keep nerfing all the high damage skills until everyone are tearing their hair out trying to kill one aataxe.

I hope Anet fix their half done "AI improvement", lower the monster levels! Fix Orion so the henches can be used again! Decrease the cost for AOE! INcrease AOE damage, Range! Add extra effect on them! Anything!

I agree 100%

it's so annoying when I got to the desert with my N/W I started having trouble with the build that had previously worked pretty well thru the game...well I started experimenting wiht new builds and finally I managed to find a good build centered around mark of pain...I could take out huge groups of melee mobs in less than 10 secs without any worries...then bam next day AoE-nerf and that build is now useless so on to experimenting again...sigh.