1 Month After Factions Release: What Skills Need To Be Changed?

It's been 1 months after the release of Factions. Since everyone has taken 1-3 characters through the campaign by now, what Factions skills need to be changed?

I can't think of much off the top of my head. ArenaNet did a great job with skill balancing.

The only thing, IMO, would be to buff the Factions Blood Magic skills for the Necromancer. Who the heck would use Jaundiced Gaze over Vampiric Gaze, anyways?

Ritualist

Ritual Lord - Should be an enchantment.

Shadow Song - Shouldn't be able to be "missed" by a blinded target and should take damage when ever it blinds.

Warrior
Primal Rage - Doesn't disable Adrenaline Based attack skills.

Coward! - Lowered Adrenaline to 4 or make enegy based (better).

Standing Slash - More damage or something to make it better than Galrath/Silverwing, aside from the miniscule -1 adrenaline cost.

Signet of Stregnth - Only gives 65 damage (over time) at 12 Stregnth with a 45 recharge. Should give another bonus in addition to the +5 damage.

Assassin

Deadly Arts line - The hexes are "hidden" from the victim. You can still see that you have a Deadly Arts hex on you, just not which. Give Deadly Arts a self heal.

Assassins in General - Give them more than 2-3 viable comboes.

Ranger

Archer's Signet - lower recharge.

Monk

Air of Enchantment - All non-protection skills cast on target are disable for an additional "x" seconds.

Elementalist

Blinding Flash - Give it a longer recharge, already.

I can think of a nice, long list of skills that need to be buffed, and even a few so bad they get a big "WTF were they thinking?" (Shatterstone and Arcane Languor, for instance)

Whats the use of that fetid ground one?

Poison is actually a fairly difficult condition to inflict due to the limited available venues. Poison Arrow {E}, Apply Poison, Virulence {E}, Chillbains were pretty much it, I believe, before Factions. Even with factions, the Assassin, and Poisonous Bite are the only new ones, barring this one.

If you can actually strike a foe with it when they're knocked down, and you don't already have poison being spread in your build, it's insanely energy efficient. 68 direct cold damage is so-so, but another 168 tied into Poison, if it runs its course, works out quite nicely.

Of course, then one could bring up the fallibility of conditions.

To be honest though, I don't run it at all. Poison is a condition that has to be spread to really work, and you can't do that with Fetid Ground. I might grab it if I had the open skill slot, but there are plenty of filler skills, such as Gaze of Contempt, as it is.


As for Shatterstone, I've been saying that since the first factions preview. Water doesn't spike, so why the heck is that there? x_x

Uhm, Flesh Golem / Verata's Gaze. Right now there is a minion factory build that can pump out 20+ flesh golems under a single owner. Make minons controlled by gaze count towards your limit, and if you surpass the limit, either one of your older ones dies, or you take control of the new one and loose control of another.

Gaze From Beyond (Ritualist) should either follow its description or have the description updated.

verata's aura. make it 10-5 second recharge.

animate flesh golem. make it 15-10 second recharge.

We'll be posting up the list tomorrow, so you can have a field day commenting on the upcoming changes.

I look forward to reading your thoughts!

The mesmer skill 'Arcane Languor'

10 Energy/2sec Cast Time/15sec Recharge
Elite Spell - For 2..4 seconds, all spells cast by taget foe suffer from Exhaustion

Most useless elite I have ever seen.
Needs a serious buff.

Ritual lord isnt an enchantment btw and arcane langour with Equinox can kill monks

Agreed. Its not even spammable. I mean -10 energy against a spellcaster with about 50 energy is not exactly going to create a real problem for said spellcaster.

No one said it was, and no, no it can't. The thing about Arcane Languor is that it lasts five seconds. That's less of a duration than Diversion.

Please desist from posting the wildly off-topic trolling posts. Anet isn't perfect, but none of the posters in this thread up to this point have said they had to be.

If you agree with them, then you may say as much. If you don't, then you may provide counter-points to refute them. But if you don't like this topic in particular, it's not your part to say. It is, for the most part, a constructive topic, at this time, despite Gaile having said they already have a list of changes slated.

If you want to profess that all the skills are balanced perfectly, than be my guest. But posting things like 'shut up whiners', whether veiled or not, is not constructive in any way, and those posts have been removed.

Edit: As a note, more than one post was removed. Only part of the above may be applicable to a specific post.

If Bflash doesn't get nerfed I'm going to rage.

All I want a serious nerf is for Air of Enchantment,for Ritual Lord,I simply want it changed to a enchantment, so its at least removable.

Buffs:Every Mesmer Elite.Seriously.There's nothing there (except for perhaps 1 or 2 or 3 elites)That are exactly useful.

Especially Arcane Lanquor.It's sad when a non-elite beats out an elite in all possible ways.

I concur on something needing to be done about Air of Enchantment, I don't really know what... but something...

on mesmer elites not being good... off the top of my head

Expel Hexes <- awesome
Migraine <- awesome
Energy Surge <- awesome
Mantra of Recovery <- awesome
Power Block <- awesome
Mantra of Recall <- awesome
Energy Drain <- awesome
Ineptitude <- pretty decent
Pyschic Distraction <- awesome

that's a good 1/3rd of them

Caltrops should be a Skill, not a Spell. Throwing out a bunch of pointy metal thingies is not magical at all.

Vampiric Gaze/Touch SHOULD be spells. Or at least make a change so that there are better ways to defend opposed to cripple, crazy degen, or being lucky and having an e-denial mesmer.

Change Arcane Larceny so that it steals a skill, that way if you use Arcane Theivery and Larceny together you can take a skill and a spell, which is far more effective then stealing 2 spells, or the same spell twice.

Also, change both of the above skills to cause the "Arcane Thief" to have an attribute level in the skill they stole equal to that of the person they stole it from, -2.

i.e. You steal meteor from an Ele with 9 in Fire Magic.

Now you can use a Meteor with an attribute level of 7 in Fire Magic.

This way the things you take away from your enemy can do more then just deny them those skills for a while. However, the Attribute Effect would only work with what you took. Nothing Else.

Increase the Duration of Arcane Langour. Skill with awesome potential, but it needs to be longer to be potent.

Out of those, how many are factions skills? 2?

Boost mesmer factions elites to at least a sub-par status...Some of them make me want to not bring an elite at all.

Air of Enchantment is fine as is except it doesn't bound energy cost below at 1 and causes a bug with Divine Spirit. It should have a 1 energy minimum requirement, just like Divine Spirit.

Making Ritual Lord an enchantment would nerf it out of existence. Again, there are great counters for it already: just e-deny the Ritualist or Divert all the spirits.

Ritual Lord is fine for the following:
Most rituals have a 60 second refresh
Most spirits are less than level 10, and take 3 seconds to kill.
The good spirits die on their own, very quickly.
Rituals are either 3, or 5 second casting times, a fast casting mesmer could improve this, but couldnt use ritual lord. If you cant hit somebody casting a binding ritual with complicate, savage, distracting, ect... delete your character and try again.
If you could remove ritual lord, they could be shut down extremely fast for a good 60 seconds.
BTW, if you have tried ritual lord, you should know that it only effects recharge on skills that complete.
Boon of creation is an enchantment, so remove that if you want to slow down the spirit spamming.

every elementalist spell

Arcane Langour is a awesome skill wut u do is use equinox they arcane echo it and keep it on a monk for as long as possible after two or 3 casts hes totally exhausted easy so i dont know wut ur thinking

once again this skill gets up to 5 seconds with arcane echo u can keep it on up to 10 seconds then with equinox it does double so if u put it on a monk and just have a warrior force him to heal he will exhaust himself in 2-3 casts also u can use another me/r for the equinox and have him bring arcane mimicry and arcane echo and he can also have arcane lanquor on another monk for 10 seconds so for all of u who say this elite is bad ur crazy

Hmm, most of my requests are buffs to the Ritualist line.

Spirit Light Weapon badly badly badly needs a buff, there is simply know way that is a good skill. Only thing it is good for at the moment is a laugh when somebody uses it/trys to defend its abilities.

Arcane Lanq for the mes need s bit of a boost. Its an elite, and is only going to last 4 seconds on a target. On a boon prot better make that 1 second.

Ranger elite spirits need a buff. Famine is really very terrible, i cant think of anybody who would include that in any kind of build, not even a surge mesmer build. Equinox, while having one of the coolest names in the game is also pretty useless. There is no way to spam it, as its elite which throws oath shot out, so is all but useless in pvp, and i really cant see the point in exhuasting pve elementalists.

Primal rage needs a buff of some sort, perhaps allow adrenal skills after a certain time period (say 5 seconds) or cancel adrenaline when it start/ends.

Pet AI needs to improved, not really skills i know, but its related. Pet attacks themselves have been improved time after time, to the point where they do massive damage, but due to pets stupidity they are not viable unless on a bunny thumper or in iway.

Lightning hammer could do with a buff...

Wail of Doom, now, there is a skill which needs downsizing. Its a lot of energy, its got a health sacrifice and its hardly spammable, i know, but a necro is capable of shutting down assassins, warriors or rangers with but one elite. If i had a skill which stopped spell casters from using any spells for 20 secs, on a 20 sec recharge would it not be deemed over-powered? Instead the disabling of attack skills should only work if they are interupted while attacking, like Power Block, instead of cancelling skills simply when they are attacking. To offset the need to interupt an attack skill (which is fairly hard unless they have faint on) the energy cost or health sacrifice should be reduced.

Glass arrows, dont know why you would use them over Melandrus arrows, other than the fact they are tied to expertise, and not wilderness. I spose the ability to do damage to things wothout enchantments is a plus, but what team doesnt have enchantments these days?

Other than those, i cant think of any more at the moment. There are more, quite a lot more, mostly in Assassin and Ritualist, and i suppose that is to be expected. I think it may take several more skill updates to get them properly balanced. If one skill needs a boost more than any other, it has to be Spirit Light Weapon.

While i agree with everything else you said, Fastcasting cannot and will not improve speed of casting Rituals. Rituals are in fact skills, unaffected by things such as Backfire and Power Drain. Becuase they are not spells, they are unaffected by fastcasting. I know i know, i am being pedantic. Sorry bout double post.

As for ritual lord, well diversion isnt particularly effective vs a spirit spammer becuase it only adds another 20 seconds. Annoying, but not devastating. One thing totally pwns ritualists though, like Mistress said, interupts. If the skill aint completed it doesnt come back round for another 60 seconds. In that way ritual lord is fine. Man spirits make a big difference, but there are ways around them. Cant just cry nerf becuase a new skill changes the metagame so much PvP is going to be crazy for a good long while.

I stopped reading after you recommended all buffs for warriors and assasins and all nerfs to monks and other casters

If putting Gale/Shock on Warriors were still common, it'd see more use. You could potentially still screw with the Elementalists since they're always using Ether Prodigy, but that's not really worth an elite slot

Air of Enchantment smiting isn't nearly as overpowering once you realize that you need only one copy of Gaze of Contempt or Rend Enchantments per smiter to neuter them. Its use in actual protection isn't particularly amazing because it only helps you with one target at a time.

The one skill I'd definitely call overpowered is Gaze From Beyond. 126 armor ignoring damage for 5/1/15? It's pretty much Obsidian Flame without the drawbacks.

The difference is that weapon attack classes are still dangerous when they have no skills (especially Warriors). Casters are not.

For the love of god, nerf order of apostasy.

Or mabey it's what Obsidian Flame should be? Seriously... 126 armor ignoring damage over 16 seconds isn't impressive at all when you consider what a warrior or even a ranger can do in that time span. Elementalist damage dealing skills need a buff, period.

No it can't. You're also taking two pox elites to mildly annoy a monk. In PVP as a monk the chances of you hitting your max energy are low and with focus swapping it should never create a problem.

Oh yeah, elite spirit = no oath shot = up for five out of sixty seconds.

GG

You're bringing up a dedicated team build on one side, and making out the other team as not under the same conditions.

If Arcane Languor were a real issue to a monk, they would simply cast Contemplation of Purity, a SKILL, and drop it, or have one of the other characters with hex removal take it off. And that's all she wrote.

For shutdown, Arcane Languor doesn't last long enough to matter, nor is its effect bad enough for people to really have to pay in a pinch. (On a character that doesn't accrue exhaustion on their own, it'll clear up quickly) Perhaps more importantly, Exhaustion skims off the top, and on a profession such as a Monk, you're not often going to have max energy during the fight as it is. Even 1 cast during a double exhausting situation isn't going to seriously cripple any caster.

Arcane Languor is a poor skill, plain and simple. There are far superior shutdowns available to a Mesmer that are not even elite, and don't take a high investment into an attribute line that offers few skill choices, and provides diminishing returns.

..Shove:

needs to be un-cheap ass skilled

ie: make the cost higher the recharge longer

Archers signet:
just a few seconds off recharge but not too much

Braod Head arrow:

Why is the arc on ths arrow like UBER arc? It should be what ever arc my current bow is, not a flatbow arc everytime. it misses too much. At 25 energy per it needs to use my current bow's accuracy.

It's not the damage that's overpowered, it's the cast time. Everywhere else, a 100+ damage spell that casts in one second is elite.

For the love of god Restoration needs more then just Soothing memories as a viable heal! Wielders Boons is so amasingly bad I want to cry!

Soul twisting should reduce the cost of the next spirit by 5 also. It's a bit energy demanding, more so then Lord.

Spirit transfer is amasingly useless in it's present form, make it's recast 5 seconds.

Spirit Light is so utterly amasingly BAD that I'm not sure if it's worse then Boon. Buff it's heal. Alot.

Make Ray of Judgement recast 10 seconds not 30.

No one in their right mind would EVER run withdraw hexes, make it cost 5 energy not 15. It's Elite for god sakes, you shouldn't have to make your team ball up to make it usefull. "Ok guys ball up nice and TIGHT!"

AoD 15 energy from 10. Atleast.

Boon signet. Double it recast and it's energy gain.

Release enchantments. Make it heal for more then nothing mmmk? Maybe make it comparable to Heal Party?

Life Sheath. For the love of god give it 1/4s cast, 5 recast.

Shield Guardian. 5 energy.

Spirit Channeling(I know, back to Rt). FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THIS SKILL SUCKS!

Signet of spirits. Bigger Area.

Clamor of Souls. Your kidding right? Do I need to say it sucks?

Armor of Unfeeling. Remove 'while casting spirits'. Make it a skill.

Weapon of quickening. For the love of god it sucks. 50% and we'll think about it.

Psychic Instability. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?

Overload. WTF?!?!?!?!

Lysa's Aura. More duration. Should be 30 seconds at 10 insp.

Power Leech. Make the duration 20 seconds.

Make illusion of pain not heal the person if it's removed before it ends.

Shared Burden. Better. Faster. Stronger. Not sucky.

Energy boon. For the love of GOD!

Gust. You think people will use that?

Skull Crack. For starters, if you crack someone that's dazed it should reapply. It should be ALOT less adren.

Protectors defense. ALOT bigger area. Shouldn't effect you. Should be maintainable.

Primal Rage. Add some IAS.

There's more, but I think you get the idea. Basicly make the useless skills that are designed for PvP not useless. There's alot of chapter 1 skills in the same book, skull crack for one.

You can have strategy without options. So give us some and more more then just 30 skills per class useful.

I just wished psychic distraction would actually add x to the rechargetime in stead of disable for x seconds.

Swirling Aura imo.

OK, let me get this straight... You need to use 2 other skills in order to bring this skill to a power level that still makes it below playable at a competitive level. You are investing a 40+ energy to sorta shut down a character for 10 seconds: sounds like a great deal.

For significantly less energy, you can use Blackout. Or Manta of Recovery and Diversion + Shame. Or, you know, other good skills.

This elite is bad, I must be crazy.

Buff:
Arcane Languour
Ritualists in general
Skull Crack (damnit dazed is aleady hard enough to apply and is easily removed by draw conditons)
Pet AI
EVERYTHING for Elementalists, just looking at Shatterstone makes you laugh and realize how highly Anet thinks of Eles.
Shield of Deflection (who the hell uses it?? elite is supposed to be good not equivalent to a normal skill, just in a different proportion)
Non-elite e-management, currently the only really good one is power drain.
Glass Arrows (make it have +15% AP or something)
Archer's Signet (only real use is for spamming concussion shot and its not too useful anyway if you're already running high expertise)
Withdraw Hexes (reminds me of shield of deflection, elite is supposed to be good not just a bigger version of some normal skill)

All I could think of right now 3am in the morning x_x

1. Something needs to be done about Ritual Lord/Boon of Creation spirit spamming. Just a mite too strong.

2. I'd say buff eles, but looking at the skill mechanics ... I think it's too late. I'll wait for chapter 3.

3. Reduce Shadow Refuge from 1 to 1/2 sec cast time. I find the casting time (or maybe just the animation) jarring for an otherwise fine fast class.

4. I guess you should buff Arcane Languor. :P Not really concerned myself, but people do seem upset by it.

5. Warrior skills seem absolutely great! And the problem with that is that many other classes (elementalists and mesmers come to mind) didn't get as good a deal. When designing skill sets for classes you should try to make sure that the quality is at least equal as amongst classes. I don't think you should nerf warriors. But you should probably move other classes into their league.

That's all for now.

mist form vs shadow form...

wow, they really do hate ele?

Ritual Lord - Seriously needs nerf. Now its must-have in spirit based Rt build - there is no other option. Just compare it to Soul Twisting - u can have one spirit recharged at cost of sacrificing another one or all spirits recharging 79% faster - duh. The thing is that without this skill rituals have too long recharge to be viable - it not supports Ritualist - its needed to be one. I think that rituals recharge times could be shortened a bit and Rit lord could give sth like 50-60% at 16 spawning. Just look at the displacement or union spirit - without Rt lord they r totally useless; shelter can be used without it but its much weaker that way. Whole attribute line (communing in that case) shouldn't rely on single skill (elite or not) to work. That way there would be more options for using spirits. Im playing Rt myself and I know that its just overpowered skill.

Arcane Lanquor - Agreed on everything said here - it needs buff. Now it sth like elite, worse version of backfire (ans backfire is not great allready). Duration could be doubled i guess.

Spirit Light Weapon - Err really needs buff. It sucks really...

Preservation - The idea behind this skill is great, but with its current AI its worse than non-elite recuperation and life. Its AI should be better, even if this would mean that amount of health points healed would be nerfed. Now its just to random to use for real.

Wielders Boon - No idea how this skill can be any good. Soothing memories are healing for same amount and get ur energy back. And wielders is conditional also. The healing amount should be buffed.

Spirit Light - Much worse than spirit transfer. Could give some low amount of health when in area of spirits - now its useless.

Almost-all-offensive-spirits - They were too good when u could have more than 1 of each kind - now they are pretty useless. Too much effort and time to achieve any usable dps. And dissonance and disenchant are too expensive and have too short duration. Dmg could be buffed a bit. Now they only can do dmg with painful bond which is funny gimmick skill but not really reliable on.

Clamour of souls - Change "nearby" to in area perhaps? Now its just elite flameburst.

Cruel was Daoshen - Again - too much effort to achieve so-so effect. Fireball is just plain better. Dmg could be higher or lower but armor ignoring.

In general Ritualist should have more options than Rt lord spirit spamming - as it is its most boring char to play (well restoration Rt is also good but gets no love from players as monk can do basically the same and he was first). I tested Rt class as heavily as I could and theese changes (or sth similiar) are really needed to see sth else than spirit spammer in high-end pvp (not to mention that in low-end pvp Rit just sucks and in pve is only subpar substitute to monk or ele if there aren't any of these avaiable). Im not commenting other class skills (other than mesmers lanquor) as I didn't test them enough in factions, but I see some issues there also. Basically no one uses new skills and all assasins use same skillset - the AoD/GPS - its sure not good.