March 2 skill balance update!

So you are encouraging the "Kill an innocent man rather than let the guilty live" type of approach in things?
I had this strange notion that Anet was actually monitoring the game and using advanced technology or whatnot to sort out bots and remove them. Well, I suppose I was dead wrong on that one.

Oob is screwed. Back to 3 monk backlines. Monks took a big hit this time around. Slower hex removal recharge, slower condition removal, and less options for energy management.

Warriors got a HUGE BUFF. Gash is doing an insane amount of dmg 60-90+. It is very comparable to eviscerate. Charge FTW. Put bulls strike in place of gale and you're good to go.

Warrior's endurance got a nice buff. 23 second duration. Be ready for some spamming hammer wars.

Dual orders is still usable. OoV first then OoP. Just made it more cordinated. Increased the life but did not decrease the dmg or range. I think I can live with it.

Why does shadow of fear have a faster recharge than faintheartedness? Can some one explain this to me.

Say hello to chocking gas + flurry rangers. You thought interrupts where a pain before just wait. Only good option is mantra of resolve but that doesn't look so hot anymore.

Peace and Harmony still sucks.

I'd love to see advanced technology that was 100% accurate on whether or not a particular character is a bot.

Wow Practiced Stance got a huge boost... I may actually use it more than once a month or so now.

damn....
nice update

Well than I did Yesterday evening my last Chest run
Drops where already bad, but still easy crafting material collection.

All farmers will move to other place's as there are plenty.

Hope to see less IWAY team's now, but like already mentioned before it's still not useless!

Kepkhet Marrowfeast, Queen of the Scarabs, has brought her brood to the desert, drawn by the plentiful corpses of griffon, minotaur, and even other scarabs. The insect brood now infests the "Prophets Path," so travelers be warned!

So I go out with a group of some guys to check out what this scarab boss is up to. We kill the many trappers surrounding her and take care of her pretty easily. Oh, what's this? A new green weapon! It's like a Yakslapper, only better.

Kepkhet's Refuge
Energy +10
Fire Dmg: 11-22 (req. 9 Divine Favor)
Halves casting time of Protection Prayers spells (Chance: 20%)
Halves skill recharge of Protection Prayers spells (Chance: 20%)
Enchantments last 20% longer
Energy +5
Two-handed

Hilarity Insues.

does she drop anything else?

I like this update, so what if they nerfed Griffon farming outside Augury. There are a few other places you can find Desert Griffons and a few places you can find a whole new kind of Griffons altogether. They didnt touch dual-teams in the UW either.

You forgot your sarcasm tags

Yes, this place was so bot infested that people other than sweatshop slaves probably never tried to farm there. A-net has let the other well known farming spots alone, probably because they really don't mind legit farming.

As for the update in general: I admit that I was a bit skeptical since I expected a wide swing with the nerf bat, but this is really a nice update. Most skills that got nerfed really deserved it.

Well done, A-net!!!

Let's find what monster drops these, ASAP.

Those doing IDS runs relying on this helm might have problems now. How will it affect IDS pricing?

No reason to go up there now.

I doubt it. Probably more for PvP. I strike of adrenaline doesn't do much if you have a strong build against ettins, and Balthazar's Spirit handles it all anyway. Maybe it will affect the timing.

Ha - that reminds of of walking outside 'Dunes of Despair', where you have those Enchanted enemies so close to the portal. If you get killed, you rez near the portal, and they come at you again.

I wonder if they have any other new greens out. Greens are always better with new skins, instead of skins of other weapons. From what it sounds like, we gotta start farming these Scarabs now.

I do not deny that there is no foolproof way to sort out bots. But what I tried to say is that Anet really fixed it the cheap way IMO. Fortunately now that the bot menace is thwarted I can look forward to better drops as promised, right?

Human farmers can deal with it and adapt. IN fact with a new green there, it might attract more TEAM farmers.

Bot Farmers need to be programmed and tested. Yes there will be other places to farm. But since the VERY beginning, Augury has always been the primary bot farming spot. This effectively shuts it down.

Im sure the bot farmers will find other places, but none as easy.

O NOES! I can no longer farm griffo's and mino's. (That still remains to be seen, but it won't be as easy as before and if these scarabs strip enchantments it will be near imposible with my current build).

But since I just started this two days ago, I wont really miss it.

The drain boost on Distortion is actually the only thing that bugs me. Maybe I have enough spare points in my build to keep this drain at 3, or else I'll probably wont be able to spam it anymore.

Some skills I go YAY! Some I go SAY WHAT?! Mainly the sever overbuffing of the ranger skills, I mean boost some, yeah, but geez....

I never used the HoD helm for soloing the imps. honestly prefered the hex on me as it triggered the dmg -3 on my sheild. but it made runs through iceflow to grotto very doable and runs around copperhammer doable. stuff like that gonna be lot tougher for a warrior now.

if the path up to aug rock is swarming in scarabs, might mean a lot of pug parties making their way from oasis to aug rock better come prepared for a lot of degen , how are you shameful runners gonna cope :P

Get over it mate...it's not that hard & they finally nerfed Griffon farming. This is a really GOOD update.

/CLAP

very nice , anet is geting better and better at this
way to go !!!!
GG

The OoV nerf is interesting, you cant really use it with tainted flesh anymore.

Pretty good update, good work Anet

As soon as it came out I went to Hero's Ascent to see what people were saying. Half were laughing and half were still saying "R3+ IWAY LFG". So IWAY isn't totally nerfed.

However, I ran a necro blood spike group (5 necros, 2 trapping rangers and 1 monk). This was just to see if we could take down an IWAY team using stupid tactics. Luckily we ran into an IWAY group right off the bat.

Needless to say the match lasted about 2 minutes and we won. Don't know how skilled the IWAYERs were, but the next round we ran into a descent balanced group and got canned in about 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Yay for crappy IWAY. Yay for balancing out the game. Yay for bringing back some diversity into the PvP spectrum. Yay.

Dammit, Savio beat me to it...

Well...I'm gonna give it some thought about quitting this game...everything is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed up...

The toning down of Mend Ailment is a good thing people. It made all other condition removal skills look like crap and made conditions pretty much useless.

With this new change, people can't mindlessly spam it to remove conditions. 5 seconds is not going to kill you. It was an absolutely good change.

No Protective Spirit meddling and no listed change to book/keg/gear AI obsessions but 1/3 is some progress. I just hope the next place that gets out of hand with commercial farmers as bad as Augury did doesn't take so long to have a scarab population move in.

Not that it matters now anyway but the Ice floe chest did hold items, it would drop between 1 and 3 every time you opened it, you just had to buff yourself up a little so you lived long enough to pick up your drops once the Azures spawned. Made a few plat selling the Ritualist gear, dwarven & serpent axes it would often drop.

Pretty much.

Not everyone has a -3dmg shield while hexed.
Hopefully with the update people will start using them (if they ever get them). While hexed isn't a very popular condition. Just go to Granite Citadel and look at all the warriors with the helm on, and you'll see how many people use them.



As I look at the warriors skill updates, they seem to be ramping up swordsmanship skills. Gash, Riposte and Deadly Riposte all buffed. And they "nerfed" axe ELITE skill Eviscerate. I suppose I better give swords another try *sigh

I didn't notice they nerfed any farming other then Griffons... have I missed anything???

removed Chest in Dread..... there goes my only chance of getting a rare Crystaline or serpent and the prices of them will skyrocket, that and mend ailment only bothers me other things are ok, btw i want that gold -5 shield for my war.

The "while hexed" shield that is offered by the collector north of Camp Rankor is still +45 HP, -2 damage received. Why wasn't it upgraded to match the one that is available in the PvP creation screen?

aw skull crack is still junk .

Choking Gas + Practised Stance = Broken now imho.

It was pretty good before the buff, now it's power has gone about triple fold, allowing to invest more points into other attributes, the Choking Gas interrupter is very powerful now.

Fame farming is what people call (it's a derogatory term like calling chinese farmers 'bots') the act of a player using a build (IWAY, for example) that is over powered in terms of the skill that is required to effectively use it (it's like me fighting bruce lee with a machine gun), thus getting favourable results against teams with more experiance who are using balanced/original builds/refuse to jump on the build bangwagon.

I recently switched my warrior to having stances, so I'm very happy about this. I'm even torn between defensive and disciplined stance now

Reduced the Lieutenant's Helm Hex duration bonus to 20%, and added it to the PvP character creation screen.
Good


Distortion: increased Energy cost to 4..1 when you "evade" attacks.
Definitely needed - though I hoped they would have buffed mantra of recall so there was still a point in using mo/me booners - the added sacrifice on OoB still isn't too bad


Order of the Vampire: no longer triggers if you have other Necromancer Enchantments on you.
Ouch, bye bye 3 man ranger spike


Gale: increased Energy cost to 10.
And with exhaustion fixed too, that's got to hurt


Heal Party: increased recharge time to 2 seconds.
Good


Eviscerate: increased adrenaline cost to 8 swings.
Good


"I will avenge you!": reduced attack speed to 25%; fixed a bug that caused this skill to trigger off of dead ally minions.



"Shields up!": now blocks 50% of the time.
Screw up ranger spike some more please :\


Crippling Shot: increased Energy cost to 15; Crippled duration now scales 1..8.
That's fair


Holy Veil: increased recharge time to 12 seconds.
sad.gif
there aren't enough good hex removals how it is - way to go


Offering of Blood: increased sacrifice to 20%.
Fair enough


Fixed a bug that allowed attack speeds to stack past 33%.

About time... this was supposed to have happened about 97 updates ago

Meh, I'm not sure on some of the decisions - I would have really liked to have seen a buff on Mantra of Recall to make it a decent alterative to OoB - but with distortion nerfed a little I can't see this happening

IWAY build has been hit pretty bad I'd say - the attack speed fixed, heal party recharge time, eviscerate cost increase, lieut hex helm nerf - still hasn't been hit as hard as Gale Warriors or Ranger Spike however and IWAY is still going to ruin the tombs.

I'm glad martyr didn't get nerfed
Disappointed that spirits weren't berfed a little - I am hoping factions has some form of spirit control
I think gale should have just had the exhaustion mechianics fixed and leave it at that
The oov nerf is really nasty
mend ailment nerf hurts me, oob I can handle - nerfing booners like this though is evil (though shielding hands looks like quite an attractive option now)... at least nerf that bitch of a spirit natures that single handedly destroys me!

Sorry but that -5 (20%) shield is clearly overpowered.

The rest of the fixes are great.

imho Practiced Stance was underpowered (and useful with only one preparation), now it's right

it averages -1 damage per hit.


whoa...overpowered!

yay my pyro's fave nuke spell got a buff!!! rodgorts invocation ftw