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.