HoD sword and you...

Does anyone else remember the HoD sword?

Back in the day everyone was whinging about how imbalanced this sword was because it could *gasp* give its holder 2 more energy than an equivalent focus and wand (!!!!) and everyone of the have-nots were crying out for the sword to be deleted, much to the dismay of those who spent upwards of 400K to secure their own novelty item.

So now we have a crafter in Divine Path that crafts a +5 energy Katana as well as a green sword that offers +5 energy and with 20% enchanting. So the question is.. why did Anet remove that sword in the first place?

I guess ANet wasnt planning on bringing back +5 energy weps.

It was removed way before Factions came out.

Now what, they bring back +5 energy weapons! Usually good companies dont delete something then restore it

The HoD bow must also be reinstated!! And don't even get me started on the axe...

Many minds can change within a year.

What is the +5/20 green sword called anyway?

kick-ass

The idea behind the protesting was that either something is overpowered, and needs complete removal or revision, or something isn't, and it should not only be left in the game, but remain available to the player base.

What Anet chose made no sense from a balance perspective.

But yes, as Arkantos said, opinions can change over time. Both the playerbase, who learn and grow, and the developers at ArenaNet, who do the same.

I WOULD like to hear the story behind Anet's decision, though. I think it would be insightful.

Edit: Revised post content.

I thought A.Net's decision was pretty straightforward. Right before release they went through all the crafters and standardized them with common equipment - before that update there were lots of weird items available from collectors. When they did this they missed the Henge of Denravi, and lots of weird equipment was left behind because of it - the sword, axe, and bow, and the hex helm, amongst other things. A couple months later they re-vamped the crafters with better equipment, and Henge got updated in the process - with good, appropriate items for the level of the town. This removed the unique items that were previously available there, though, and since some of them had a cult following you end up with the current situation.

I'm pretty sure the sword wasn't removed because it was 'too good'. My guess is that no one thought the weapons from that crafter mattered. Of course anything with unique stats gets used somewhere. Some people decided they liked the sword and started using it, driving the price up through the roof and spawning a bunch of funny forum threads about how imbalanced it was.

They re-introduced +5 energy weapons in response to that demand. The net result is that you rarely see them used, at least in competitive play. It really is a niche item that only has a few narrow uses - the popularity, it turns out, was based more on scarcity than how much of an impact the weapon actually had.

Peace,
-CxE

I'd still like to see the old FFS and HoD Axe/Bow reintroduced, but that's just me. :\

they never deleted it, and it wasnt for the +2 energy why people wanted it,

they just stopped it being dropped, it was originally a beta weapon/early prophecies release, i believe it was taken out in the 4th patch after release or something like that...

Old HoD axe adds 25 health permenently, with no drawback.

Old HoD bow adds 10 armor permenently, with no drawback.

I could see why they wouldn't want to bring back the old HoD bow though. +10 unconditional armor, +5 more = me likey

FFS 15% > hod

nuff said

Rajazan's Fervor

I would have been interested in the HoD axe, that has strong possiblities when fighting spike teams, where every point of health helps. I'm less convinced on the HoD sword, with focus swapping total energy is directly controlled by your max energy set which is usually dual -regen items, so the sword doesn't enter in there. The best use I've heard for it is to have it on your first -regen swap, allowing you to stay on a 20% enchant item for longer than you otherwise would have been able to.

Well, I still use my old HoD sword. I guess I'm a bit old-school.

It was removed initially because it was being used in conjunction with skill exploits to create invincible monks. The extra energy and 20% enchanting mod made it possible for any idiot to run round the Underworld picking up sackfulls of ecto with no difficulty.

Anet has fixed the exploitable skill - prot bond - so that it no longer matters if +5 energy weapons exist or not.

Thats it - end of story.

You can't put a +20% enchanted mod or a +30 fortitude mod on a wand, nor can you change the type of damage it does. And no wand that I've ever seen has +5 energy unconditionally. The sword had several advantages over wands, and its only disadvantage was no % chance of fast cast or fast recharge, which may or may not have been very important anyway, depending on your build.