More skills before expansion?

I was just wondering if anyone has heard anything about whether they will add more skills to the existing classes in free updates. There's been many large changes since the game was released, but additional skills have been notably absent. I wonder if they'll reserve stuff like that for the expansion, since it sounds like they imply it when they go "expansion will offer more strategic options..."

prolly in expansions but I have no real idea

I wouldn't be surprised if in the expansion we see skills added to existing class attributes, new attributes for existing classes (each full of new skills), a reshuffling of current skills among existing/new attributes (to balance out stuff if there are any imbalances), new classes altogether, or some combination of anything listed here.

Frankly as so many skills really suck right now there's no reason to add more till the expansions; they'd be better to buff up certain skills (i.e rend) and nerf some others (i.e natures renewal).

Pretty sure new skills is for expansion. Anet has said that enhanements will be free to all but new content (in general) will be expansion. They may throw a bone and give some free skills to all and have the bulk for expansion users only.

But this game is like (will be like) Magic The Gathering that psudo-sucky skill combined with that new class / skill as a subjob rocks situation.

They are having enough trouble balancing skills right now (well they haven't really balanced anything despite alpha and user input) they really shouldn't add any more in the game. If you want examples of inbalances:
- Fertile affecting itself and other spirits
- Nature's Renewal destroying half the skills in the game
- Signet of Humility being without an attribute
- Quickening Zephyr (used by a good team breaks the game)
- Half the elites of the game are worth a little less than crap
- What's the deal with Mind Freeze ?
- Dumb skills like Weaken Armor that could be good if reviewed
- What the hell ? Flare ? Searing Heat ? Rodgort's Invocation ? Stone Daggers ? Rust ? Ice Spear ? Swirling Aura ? Eruption ? Argh the list goes on and on.

Seriously this game is headed downwards by the way they are managing it. Balance the skills! No one gives a dink about new explorable areas. Put the ressources where it counts: PvP. The purpose of GW was to have a highly balanced game. Right now they are failing miserably by their inactions.

Eruption, rodgorts, ,rust, swirling aura, all quite good. And the others you listed all have their place as well.

Nature's renewal is necessary to make builds that aren't enchant heavy viable. If nature's renewal were nerfed, enchants should recieve a nerf across the board too. It's far to easy to be practically invincible with certain enchants, and I hate it that people whine about things like natures renewal when you know it'd be impossible to beat your build without it. Single enchant strips don't work, and lingering curse is nice, but not enough to handle a whole enchant heavy team.

Personally, and I think I speak for alot of people, I would rather see more content in the game rather than:
The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

The Idiot Savants have won the Hall of Heroes and keep the favor of the gods for America

You could have summarized your list better by stating the majority of non-air element skills, review the ranger ability to manipulate the skill bar, review all global denial effects, but it could go on for a bit more than that as well.

The game does need adjustments in more areas than just the skills, in addition to new content to keep people interested in the game.

I hope you're not implying that the iQ people on this forum suggest balance adjustments just so they can win more often. Your statement smells of cluelessness about the entire state and working of PvP.

A more balanced game benefits everyone, it will allow for a greater diversity of builds to be worthwhile in PvP, which makes the entire game more intelligent, enjoyable and lasting.

That's rather a weird way to implement it then. It destroys enchantment- or hex-heavy builds altogether and removes the usefulness of a large number of hexes and enchantments (which means they no longer have a justifiable place in a match). If that isn't dumbing down the game, I don't know what is.

For one thing, "Balancing" only really effects PvP players. The things claimed to need "Balancing" can already be countered pretty well. "Balancing" only stands to benefit hard-core HoH and GvG players.

More areas could mean more items and better drops for PvP lovers. It will mean a new aspect of the game for those who are tired of running through FoW for the 500th time. More quests for people who like doing quests. More areas to explore. More going out of the old ruetine.

"Balancing" wouln't make the game more fun; it will just make it easier for some players to play and win. Sure, I would like to see more diverse and seemingly outrageous builds work better, but I don't want them to stop a much larger part of the game just so a 1/10th fan base can have a Hammer/Sword/Spirit build or some such.

I don't get the big outcry to nerf crap if you can't figure out how to beat it. I mean, you have a spirit there, it is causing the effect. Did anyone realise you CAN actually kill it? If you're too mixed up in battle, pull the battle towards the spirit so the AoE's can take them out or a warrior can do so on the side.

The problem with saying spirits can just be killed, as that Nature's Renewal has already had its effect, as soon as it's been used. All the enchantments, and hexes, are gone. The double cast time isn't nice, but its bearable. The mass stripping of everything, immediately, is just wrong. The fact it can be spammed so easily, is wrong. The fact it screws up around 80% or more of the decent builds around, is wrong.

The problem is that Nature's Renewal, unlike the other spirits, causes an insanely powerful effect as it is used, so killing it won't resolve the problem. By itself that makes maintenance enchantments very poor (with few exceptions like divine boon since its cheap and fast).

The fact that it doubles cast times is also too powerful, especially since that by itself makes water unviable due to all their nukes being hexes, a bunch of mesmer stuff and necro stuff become bad, etc. The list is far too long. The point is that its too powerful and broad a counter.

Similarly, the problem with Fertile Season is that it buffs itself so its resilient, especially when new ones are coming down every 20 seconds with oath shot.

Another skill I think is a bit too powerful is Ward against Melee. There is really no effective counter to it, and its effect is too strong. Compare it to Ward against Elements: It costs less, reduces more damage, and will also hurt your chances of getting attack skills off, such as knockdowns, interrupts, etc. I think that even reducing the cooldown on warrior's cunning, while helpful, would be rather silly due to the fact that you'd have to bring it to be an effective warrior.

Zealot's Fire needs a nerf too. Been saying this for about 4 months now, I hope some of you are starting to agree with me. Does way too much for too little, period. The fact that its such an obvious combo with Ether Renewal, another skill that was already too strong even before the buff it got a few months back, makes me think that Arenanet isn't against cookie cutters after all.

I hope you're being sarcastic. If not I won't even bother with you.

Thing with NR is that at least half the skills in this game are either enchantments or hexes. Then what do you have sitting around ? You got NR that will remove all enchantments in a HUGE area and double the cast time. What's even worse is that it does the same effect at 0 or at 16 spec. So you have a global enchant and hex removal that you can repeatedly spam with Oath Shot. Sure you can kill the thing but who cares ? After you've put all your enchants up they all go down cause the kid has just created a new one.

What NR does is force teams to bring it along. You either use it or lose to it. It also destroys the strategy element of this game. NR destroys Mesmers, Necros, lots of monk skills and makes water elementalists totally useless. Use any of those and you're often there waiting with your hands up for 4 or 6 seconds doing nothing. No one can justify a skill like NR in it's current state. As I said before, it's a 0 spec strategy destroyer and if you really want to be able to live through it then you're looking at a 20-30 skill listing instead of a 100 skill listing

I totally agree but I only have that much time. Naming everything that's wrong balance-wise would take hours especially if I had to explain it all.

This game is designed with a PvP aspect to it. All the skills monsters use against you are PvP oriented skills. Anet put them on mobs so you can get a feel of PvE through the grind before actually doing HoH or GvG. Balancing is necessary. Hardcore of softcore PvP it's mandatory.

What the hell ? Balancing is supposed to take away abuses. I dont mean to be harsh but that's the most ridiculous comment ever. If everything is balanced, the game will be like starcraft where truly your strategy and skill will win. Not you abusing a dumb skill cause it's broken.

Once again, there is no counter to NR. It comes up and ''whoops there goes our entire build''. Now you kill the spirit fight for 5 seconds ''whoops it went up again''. It can be 0 or 16 spec it'll always do the same damned thing and it'll always screw you up big time. Sure you can slug the spirit but I dont' think you know what that means in competitive or upper-tier PvP. Killing a spirit means you're taking ressources off your offense to take down a creature that has already caused it's effect and that will come back up very shortly. That 2 second you wasted taking it down is enough for the opponent's offense to hurt you badly. There is no counter to some of skills realistically speaking. Trust me Sekkira, we play tombs alot and we see how the metagame is being twarted by NR and Fertile. It's actually quite sad that a promising game like GW is tumbling because the devs, even though alpha players brought up the issue, aren'T balancing. It's way more important to balance the damn game than add new areas.

So my hunch was correct, you're clueless about PvP. Let's say Zealot's Fire was rebalanced as ZRave suggested (and I agree, it is overpowered in combination with divine boon and draw conditions especially). This will affect about 50% of the current PvE farming population who are using this skill for cheap killing. They won't like it, but that's because farming isn't about fun and challenge, only about profit.

The countering argument is addressed already.

How does balancing only affect hardcore GvG and HoH players? They're exactly the ones who are running these imbalanced skills, simply because not running them puts them at an unreasonable disadvantage. Who benefits most from rebalancing the skills are the pickup groups who try to think outside the box. Right now they hardly stand a chance in GvG/HoH simply because they face those imbalanced skills and can't do a thing about them short of using them themselves. You've got it entirely backwards.

Yes, it will give less hardcore players more chance to win, because people won't be forced to run certain skills to be competitive. I see that as a good thing. PvE already is a much larger part of the game. People played through it, got bored, started whining. New PvE content will be just the same - people play through it, get bored, start whining. Rebalancing of skills however improves things in the long run - PvE becomes more challenging since farmers etc. can't abuse cheap skills for amassing wealth, PvP becomes more enjoyable and longer-lasting because of more diversity.

On Natures Renewal, it's a flavor of the month thing right now. When the game came out, people thought Rangers sucked, now you see whole teams of them. Natures Renewal is a strong spell, but really no more so than meteor shower which can royally screw a team that's closely packed together, Frozen Ground which negates your monks ability to res, Iron Mist which makes you immune to EVERYTHING except lightning. EoE, which hose a team right quickly if used right. Rangers have no enchantments and need a way to deal with the heal balls, etc, NR is that way. It's not unbalanced, just kill the Ranger thats casting it or don't rely on an enchantment heavy build, be a little more flexible.

You're actually quite wrong with that post, in my opinion. People who aren't diverse will think everything sucks, until proven otherwise. Plenty never thought Rangers sucked. And, what are you talking about? Meteor Shower hits 4 times, deals negatable damage, knocks down, sure, but can be escaped with general ease. Frozen Soil doesn't stop a Monk ressing, it stops everyone ressing. Monks, in higher levels of PvP, don't generally carry res skills. (For the record, it's not a spell. It's a skill, which means less ways of interrupting.) Iron Mist is something you cast on the opposition, not yourself. Edge of Extinction isn't the same type of thing, either. That's like saying Symbiosis is a really strong skill if used right. Lots of skills are. The fact is, Nature's Renewal is just an instant demolition of Builds, Skills, and everything, which can be used excessively.

Rangers do not need a way to deal with Heal Balls, no class should be able to counter everything in the game. Do Warriors have a way to counter Heal Balls? You could say Elementalists and Mesmers do, hell, even Necros, but do Monks? If going through with the Elementalist and Mesmer way, Rangers have a few interrupts that can be used, AoE damage through Ignite Arrows, Energy Denial through Debilitating Shot, ways to deal with spike through Fertile Season, Symbiosis, etc. Each class is counterable, through a degree of different skills. NR is overpowered, as it screws over 50% of the skills in this game, and with that, over 80% of the decent builds.

And killing them isn't as easy, either. If your offence also uses Enchantments, and note, they don't have to be excessive enchantment builds, but any enchantment whatsoever, then you're pretty screwed. Aside from that, he'll have, probably 3 Monks helping him. Good luck with that.

If you can't see the reasons why it's overpowered, you really need to think about the PvP in general in this game. You need to think about how many skills it effects, how many, whole attribute lines it demolishes, and how it does so. It's not something that can be killed, and then the problem is solved, such as Fertile Season, Symbiosis, hell, even Muddy Terrain, it's an instant, mass enchantment and hex removal, with a nasty after effect, too. And, worst of all, there is no maintainable and efficient counter.

Anyone who thinks non air skills are bad simply hasn't tried them. Earth eles outclass them in every way, and water eles have their place. Fire also has its place in the "king of the hill" hoh map, and incidental dmg is great for overloading healers.

To Odd Sock: You'd have to be pretty narrow minded to not see the use in some of those skills. Rust makes signet rings pracitcally unusable, especially rez signet (ever heard of a signet healer?). Eruption is an awesome pve ability, and pretty useful to drive a group of warriors away from your monk in pve, as long as he knows not to run. And rodgorts, yeah, it's costly, but it its the only spell in its class that doesn't cause exhaustion, and if you have a means of restoring energy, or use glyphs, it's great.

Swirling does suck, I was thinking of mist form when I said that.

Take into consideration that not everyone can just sit down and play the same 7-14 maps over and over again for 2 months. The current PvE conent takes around a month to finish the first time. PvP, while adictive, doesn't captivate the mainstream person in such a manner that they would stick to that everyday for years

I'm sure people who overplayed the Battlefield 1942 (A game that only had around 9 maps) wouldn't really understand that not everyone likes to "Grind" "Fun". Not everyone one wants to do the same thing over and over again for the rest of their lives.

The average person wants new and better content.

The average fan boy wants a more adictive and easier to win expireince.

Why balances instead of updates? Why repackage the same content? It's a long winding process, balanaces.

I'm sorry, but many people -do- play the same 7-14 maps over and over again for two months. In fact, in the case of a game like Starcraft, they've been at it for many years now, and Temple is still being fiercely played.
Ah, so now your side is the good, average player, and those on the other end are easily dismissable fanboys. You can speak for yourself, not for some imaginary majority. And really, are you arguing that ArenaNet should cater to people who are just entertained with their product for a month or two, then whine for more content, or try to cater to people who are willing to try to be entertained for years?

'more addictive' and 'easier to win experience' directly contradict themselves. Something that's easy to win is cheesy and will grow boring faster, hence be less addictive. You make terribly little sense in your arguments.

Because fixing balance improves both the current game and any content they may add lateron, at a whole lot less effort.

I wouldn't exactly call him narrow-minded, although sometimes he can be a scrub . What he was trying to say is that many skills, such as the ones he mentioned, really serve no use in competitive pvp, and many of the ones that do, and that many builds are based around, get utterly ruined by nature's renewal.

I agree with him though, as I would never even consider running rust, or any of the other skills he mentioned. And no, I've never heard of a "signet healer". If you're refering to Signet of Devotion then I don't really see your point. Also, eruption might be useful in pve, but we're not talking about pve. People aren't going to stand in an eruption so that they can be blinded.

Personally I have the suspicion that the 6 bosses in Sorrow's Furnace and Grenth's Footprint will each feature a new skill for each class. Certainly they'll have an elite to capture, and since you can already capture all existing elites off of existing bosses.... and since they are holding contests to name new bosses... Just makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

No more elites or just maybe 2 of them.You would get them all in quests .

A signet healer is a healer with divine favor, inspiration, and protection. He uses life bond on everyone else, balthazaars spirit on himself, signet of devotion, blessed signet, and those two mesmer signet stances. It's extremely powerful and hard to shutdown.

Also, rust's effect on rez signets alone is good enough to justify it being in the game unchanged.

And my point about eruption was specifically that people would walk out of it, it can save your monk. And expecting all skills to be useful in pvp and pve both is asking too much, they're too different, so there's really no point in critizing pve skills.

How about getting hit by, let's say, Nature's Renewal, which will instantly wipe your entire setup and make reapplying it a pain open to spell interrupts on all sides.

I have been playing tombs since the WPE probably on average a couple hours a day. I have NEVER seen this build EVER and if I did I'd get up and do my victory jig cause it'd be gg for whoever had this guy as their monk.

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yeah ... you know you want to see my victory jig.

To whoever said Ward against Melee was hard to counter, I found Rigor Mortis to be successful.

I agree that natures renewal is to powerfull, mostly due to the fact that roughly 30% of the skills are either enchants or hexes. In contrast you have something like primal echoes or rust which affect 1% of skills.

4 second cast, easy to remove, 30 sec recharge.

PvP does not need much new content to keep interest; it just needs good, balanced gameplay. I've played hundreds of games of Starcraft solely on Lost temple or one of it's billion remakes for six years now, even though there are a vast majority of decent other promaps out there. Even the scrubs are content to play bgh, fastest map ever, or zero clutter for years on end. It's like this because Starcrafts rts gameplay is unmatched by anything else out there that people are content with little variety; gameplay is what matters and GW's pvp, which is going to be the reason the core community stays, like it or not, is severely lacking at the moment.

On a side note, would it be useful for we (the community) to put together a list of skills that need balancing one way or another. Although it would probably be cluttered by idiots and scrubs who don't have a clue, it would be better than nothing. Or is anet aware of all these issues and just ignoring them?

For 4v4 at least, not a lot of people bring hex removal, unless you are talking about nature's renewal.

Who the hell uses ward against melee in a 4v4? I'd be more worried about kiting than that in team arenas. Rigor Mortis blows; wars cunning is hardly better, which is why ward against melee, aegis, and guardian, are so good.

So..the future looks bleak?

All I seem to hear is NR is beyond powerful and crushes every build.

Just wondering, but is NR impossible to interrupt? It only removes everything when it is first cast, and it takes 5 seconds to cast. Is that not enough time for someone to interrupt it? Is it really that difficult. Can you not click on the enemy rangers and realize "Oh he is casting NR, get out of it's range" or "Quickly, run up and interrupt!". Surely by now everyone realizes that it may be used, so why not get your ranger to run distracting shot and SQ to get up there and stop him. There are plenty of ways for a mesmer to stop it are there not? 5 Seconds, you're telling me your party can't figure out how to counter it in 5 seconds? How about this, don't cast your enchantments right away? Kill the spirit, and watch the rangers for when it will be cast again.

Players counter my 1 second casting Healing Breeze, and you're telling me you can't stop a 5 second casting NR?

ive seen it used many times in 4v4 random and team, and I've found rigor to be a suitable counter.

It has a pretty big range. You'd be hard pressed to get out of its range in 5 seconds.

yeah i admit it doesn't completely counter it and yeah the recharge really sucks, but its way better than warrior's cunning and ive found it to be successful killing one target fast. Yeah it can easily be removed, but its the best "counter" ive seen so far.

That build loses miserably to a NR. GG. The two mesmer signet stances ? You mean Mantra of Inscriptions and Mantra of Signets ? Stances don't stack. that build si destroyed by anythign out there: warriors, mesmers and rangers all have interrupts that destroy the concept. You're devoting one of your 8 slots, all that energy and effort to a simple Spirit that doesn't even need to be specced to be any good.

How do you know who is going to have the res sigs ? Are you suggesting to put Rust on all 8 or 7 players ? Rust has a 45 second cooldown. Anyways why would you bother putting down Rust when you can make yourself useful and interupt the res ? Show me one single situation where Rust is ANY good (not that cheezy build you posted since it's, well...) and I might slightly be convinced.

Hmm either use a Ward that has a 1 second cast, potentially infinite duration and a 10 energy cost plus the fact that it's effect is immediate or use an Eruption that has a 3 second cast, 29 second cooldown (aftercasts and cast times) and a 25 energy cost as well as shit damage and an eventual effect. Which is the better option ? You just showed Eruption is an utter waste without even knowing it. Oh and by the way, GW was meant to be a PvP game. The only reason why there is PvE is for the sales part (don't want to lose those shareholders) So explain to me why skills should be balanced towards PvE ?

You're not talking realistically. What happens in a fight is the following: while the timer expires, you put up your enchants. You meet your ennemy and in the far corner you see a ranger casting a spirit. By the time you notice him, the cue (that glowing stuff over his head that means it's an NR) is faded out and if you click on him you won't see what skill he uses. Next thing you know you see that green icon with a star in it and all those green arrows on your team go bye bye. You can't have someone permanently baby-sitting a ranger. You're taking resources off a monk to peg down a secondary or tertiary target. Of course a 5 second cast time is easy to interrupt but that's not the issue. btw there's ways to avoid interruption really easily and even if you do interrupt his NR he'll Oath Shot it right away and put up another one.

I think they stopped caring when they made their first lump of money. They'll feel the burn come the next expansion that's for sure.

You just described the problem right there. There's two skills to counter a ward: Warrior's Cunning and Rigor (well there's the attack skills but those won't do much since you'll miss 50% of all your other attacks). I agree Cunning is utter trash both in cost and in recharge. Total crap. What's left ? Rigor. Problem is it's cast time, recharge and it's a hex. Under NR it becomes a 4 second cast time and it's removed by a 5 energy remove or smite hex. Hurray you're offenses' DPS is hosed for another 19 seconds after which it's recast. Nothing can make a sane monk leave his ward, not even a Meteor Shower. That's why a balance is needed here. You even said ''counter'' by which I assume you mean it's not all that decent.

There's not just Rust, NR and Wards that need to be balanced. It also goes deeper in the fundamentals of the metagame. Why are elementalists so horrible and weak to everything ? Why are Necros so damned horrible ? Why is it a Ranger who wants to use a bow need Marksmanship and Expertise (compared to a warrior that only needs his weapon specced and strength as a dump point attribute)?

Biggest question I have is if all these issues were adressed two months ago (yea roll back you'll some of these topics were discussed) why aren't they fixed ? What's even scarier is that in order to get PvPers to buy the expansion they will most likely add new skills on top of the other bullshit that's there right now making the game even worse.

*Sigh, cmon ANet we're not just fans/customer's; we're also a knowledge pool. Use us to fix your gimped game (which in return will bring you in some dollar signs) We know your intentions but if you keep it up those little numbers in your Financial Statements are going to turn red.

Hard to shutdown? Oh wait, until someone drops a Nature's renewal... then he's totally useless.

Wow, I've opened quite a reservoir of discontent here.

For the person who said "People are quite content to do the same things over and over if the content is balanced." I'll just have to perk up and disagree partly. That's a matter of preference, I'm afraid. It's subtle, but it depends WHAT the content is. (I never liked Starcraft, btw. But I'll admit it has powerful attractions for certain types of people.) Blizzard games tend to be "balanced" via strongly structured and limited gameplay (at least that's my surface view of things.) Most of the games I've really enjoyed (Total Annihilation, King Of Fighters 97/98/02, C&C Generals+ZH) usually went for the "Balance via variety" philosophy. Put so many things in there, with so many counters, and make the game fun in many ways, so that people will have reason to choose things that might not be optimal, merely for the fun of it.

I understand that the hardcore pvper's motto is "Win at all costs", but my motto is "fun at all costs "... I only partly care if I win or lose - if I play with style, get to see cool combos and big explosions, get to do crazy things that make the other guy go "WTF?!", score personal victories even if my team is losing, etc, then I'm enjoying myself.

My solution to the current imbalances? Add more skills, as soon as possible (ie. dont wait for the expansions.) Skills that are considered powerful, add skills to several classes that counter it, but are otherwise not very useful. (A dispel skill for spirits?) Skills that are considered pointless, add skills that complement them especially and make them useful.

Balance through variety.


Edit: Then again, since several of the supposed "unbalanced skills" can be fixed simply by tweaking some numbers in the code, I dont see why ANet cant do a little bit to keep the complainers happy. If they just make very minor changes, little by little, over a long period of time, until most people are satisfied, then I dont disagree with making dynamic changes to balance. (Since it will probably be so subtle as to not affect me anyway.)