Doubled skills evaluation

First of all I'd like everyone who will just be flaming about whether or not they like the doubled skills to do that somewhere else and leave this thread open for serious discussions, thanks in advance for that!

First a list of copied skills (please post others you ran into, I'll add them to this list):

Warrior:
Penetrating Blow = Penetrating Chop, 5 adrenaline
Griffon's Sweep = Leviathan's Sweep, 5 energy, 5 recharge
Galrath Slash = Silverwing Slash, 8 adrenaline
Desperation Blow = Drunken Blow, 5 energy, 7 recharge

Ranger:
Tiger's Fury = Bestial Fury 10 energy, 10 recharge
Dodge = Zojun's Haste 5 energy, 30 recharge
Point Blank Shot = Zojun's Shot, 10 energy, 3 recharge
Penetrating Shot = Sundering Attack, 10 energy, 3 recharge

Monk:
Divine Healing = Heaven's Delight, 10 energy, 2 cast, 30 recharge
Heal Other = Jamei's Gaze, 10 energy, 0.75 cast, 3 recharge
Heal Area = Karei's Healing Circle, 10 energy, 1 cast, 5 recharge
Symbol of Wrath = Kirin's Wrath, 5 energy, 2cast, 30 recharge
Holy Strike = Stonesoul Strike, 5 energy, 0.75 cast, 8recharge

Necromancer:
Shadow Strike = Lifebane Strike, 10 energy, 2 cast, 8 recharge
Vampiric Touch = Vampiric Bite, 15 energy, 0.75 activate, 2 recharge
Touch of Agony = Wallow's Bite, 5 energy, 0.75 activate, 3 recharge
Desecrate Enchantments = Defile Enchantments, 10 energy, 2 cast, 15 recharge
Spinal Shivers = Shivers of Dread, 10 energy, 2 cast, 15 recharge

Mesmer:
Arcane Thievery = Arcane Larcency, 10 energy, 1 cast, 10 recharge
Symphatetic Vissages = Ancestor's Vissages, 10 energy, 1 cast, 3 recharge
Ethereal Burden = Kitah's Burden, 15 energy, 3 cast, 45 recharge
Inspired Enchantment = Revealed Enchantment, 10 energy, 1 cast, 0 recharge
Inspired Hex = Revealed Hex, 5 energy, 1 cast, 0 recharge

Elementalist:
Whirlwind = Teinai's Wind, 10 energy, 0.75 cast, 8 recharge
Earthquake = Dragon's Stomp, 25 energy, 3 cast, 15 recharge
Crystal Wave = Teinai's Crystals, 15 energy, 0.75 cast, 20 recharge
Ice Prison = Teinai's Prison 10 energy, 2 cast, 30 recharge

Now onto possible unbalanced results from being able to use both these skills whithout echoing or renewing (so no mesmer + heavy e-duty or elite; or ele + elite needed).

Warrior Skills:
Penetrating blow and chop are 5 adrenaline skills, in this low adrenaline cost rangeit's wise to stick to 2-3 adrenal skills max, as the netto overall adrenaline gain starts dropping when spamming adrenal skills around as each other skill loses one strike as well so this doesnt provide any significant problems.
Griffon's Sweep is a skill that is not sued often due to energy requirement, strength investments and the effect only occuring when the skill would be evaded. I don't really see any problems with allowing this twice on the same bar.
Galrath slash two times followed by a final thrust might be interesting in adrenal spikes, providing ~220 damage in three seconds. For PvP purposes the space in a warriors bar is allways highly limited so if people really want to use these three skills I think the skill slot lost is a fair price to pay for it.
Desperation blow, don't even feel like saying anything about it, if people want to use two of these be my guest .

Ranger Skills:
Tiger's Fury hads a duration of ~10 seconds in most builds using it (e.g. bunny thumpers, iway wars) and it doesnt add anything to double this skill.
The damage skills arent really interesting, the only serious damage ranger builds rely on a hammer or dual shot + quick/punishing for spikes. For DPS you really need a warrior and leave the uttility skills in the ranger's bar.
Dodge migt be usefull on a runner, for flag runners this isnt to significant as there are a lot of other interesting skills that you'd like to fit on your bar so you'll end up with one normally anyway. For PvE runners this doesnt matter to much to me either as any decent runner can make the run anyway.

Monk Skills:
Imho all the monk skills are either spamable allready or not worth it anyway. So no balance issues here either.

Necro Skills:
Next to the touch skills I dont see too much problems occuring here.
On the touch skills, some problems might occur here, a ranger/necro with two vampiric touches, a touch of agony (second one shouldnt be necesary due to recharge times and a bit of walking between activating) and offering of blood can go for a continuous chain of these skills and provide an insane armorignoring damage output while getting a huge selfheal.

Mesmer Skills:
Here two skills might prove unbalancing for PvP and one for PvE.
In PvE it's now easiely possible to keep up SV permanently, providing huge advantages for a lot of possible farm enviroments where melee attacks are combined with otherwise lethal skills (55 monk queen farming while stopping vampiric touches).
In PvP Inspired hex might prove to give some inbalances, with moks running two of these for energy management, what all of a sudden becomes a viable alternative in 8 vs 8 matches.
With echoed + arcane echoed arcane thievery/larcency it will be possible to disable an average of 3.5 spells on a character. Assuming a regular boon prot and 4 spells disabled this leaves the boon prot with the signet of devotion (which could be disabled as well) + 3 spells. With a bit of bad luck this completely eradicates the monks healing cpacities (e.g. being left with boon, CoP and veil). This depends a bit on lcuk but in extended battles (like GvG) luck is also the chance you can wait for.

Elementalist:
I don't see too much issues arising here, but I'm not used to playing ele so I might miss a possible glitches here.

Finaly I'd like to end with what I started with, please leave this a thread for discussion on possible imbalancing issues rather than "A-net ***** for copying skills". Thanks once more for doing so.

My thoughts:
I like the addition of Drunken Blow.

Now I can deliver 4 high damage attacks that gives a condition in under 10 seconds.

R/n spamming touch and bite without interruption is kind of silly imo.

I hope this is only during beta...

yeah, i think it's kind of silly, maybe they're replacing the old ones with the new ones at release..

also:

warrior
pure strike = jaizhenju strike
edit: didn't see galrath in the original post, <blind.

ranger
beastial pounce = savage pounce

ele
searing heat = teinais heat

Yeh i think its kinda dumb too lol.. though they have cool icons / name...

anyone hear any complaints about symbol of wrath x 2? lol

http://guildwiki.org/wiki/User:Skuld/Duplicate_skills wikified for clickability

I think adding these can change the game significantly, but I'd still prefer 'similiar' skills as opposed to exactly the same.

I agree that the arcane thievery replicate was one of the most glaring duplicates.

I wonder if factions wasn't considered a stand alone game, if these replicates would exist. It worries me that more replicates might be on the way, and after a few of these 'stand alone' games, you could have half of your bar with the same skill. Or two of a few. It is new, because it opens up different options, but I don't like the trend with more stand alone/expansions due out every 6 months.

I'm hoping these skills just aren't finished and will be tweaked in the future. Usually, cooldowns are there for a reason for balance reasons. While you have to give up a second skill slot for a duplicate, it can break an otherwise balanced skill.

I'm using Arcane Thievery! I'm using Arcane Larceny! I'm using Arcane Robbery! I'm using Arcane Perjury! I'm using Arcane Piracy! I'm using Arcane Swindle! I'm using Arcane Hoodwink!

I think it depends more on luck than you think. It's already possible for an echoed Thievery to take the same spell twice, providing no real benefit over the first Thievery. I imagine that no matter how many Thievery clones a mesmer has on her bar, she won't gain that much disruption power over just one Thievery.

To be honest the affects of Arcane Thievery/Larceny are far to random to be considered, also the fact that you can accomplish the same with Power Block is even further argument against it being much of a problem. Think about it, your own combination idea took three/four skills, sure Power Block is an elite but its only one skill, from there you can pack in other interesting skills.

As for SV, as you said, no real consequence in PvP, if you are to dumb not to notice you're losing Energy and Adren... then to bad. Though I could see problem in throwing it around on, virtually, your entire team, but this would only hinder warriors and lower their already high DPS... so this is both good and bad. As for PvE, beyond underworld farming I see no complication. You can have this on all you want while queen farming but you need to be hit (assuming 40 energy) 15 times by one target to make it at all effective in stopping Vampiric Touch... and unfortunatly for you those bugs spam it at even the slightest HP drop. So really either they are simply saying "We are about to hit UW farming" or they have realised it will do nothing.

Beyond that, not much... Conjure Nightmare sucks but that is another discussion entirely 25 energy for 8 degen? Boy, I am glad I still have conjure phantasm.

hrm has any of the devs shed light on these?

I think these skill's true nature hasn't been released so they decided just to cover them with old skills. I don't see a point to giving 2 of the same skill..

There is a purpose, but it kinda feels like they are running outta ideas (c'mon, we're on the second chapter XD )

Conjure nightmare+mantra of persistence can kill a person in 1 hit given that they are not healed from any source.

But yea it sucks (too conditional)

Gaile Gray has already said they are meant to be dupes, and they will remain even after Factions release, they wanted to give people the option to double use some selected skills :\

I liked the copy skill idea.

I can finally do one job with pure w/r/n/mo/e/me better than echo mes.

Why don't they give us USEFULL skills then ?

quadruple meteorshowering

I assume they wanted "quality vs quantity".

You can do quadruple MS-ing with Glyph of Renewal + Arcane Echo.

rofl

Yes, that's my fear... thesaurus builds.

When simply doing the math:
8 spells: 3.5 spells average
7 spells: 3.45 spells average
6 spells: 3.40 spells average
5 spells: 3.35 spells average
4 spells: 2.75 spells average
3 spells: 2.3 spells average
2 spells: ~2 spells average
1 spell: 1 spell average

So it's not as luck dependant as you stated.