DONT Change Skills

I hear many people complaining how overpowered and exploited skills are, but this isnt exactly bad. I remember in the past, there were posts here about how much rangers suck in PvP. now builds like mantra of frost with winter, and natures renewal exploits hae been invented, and all of a sudden rangers need a nerf. if you look at diablo 2 and a certain paladin build (if you played youll know), it was very very very effective at PvP, but was nerfed and im sure everyone with a high level paladin of the sort quit playing the game in disgust. i tihnk nerfing of skills will cause things like this to happen so STOP posted threads about overpowered skills.

No one's complaining about NR being overpowered in respect to it being difficult to beat, they're complaining that the mere threat of its use forces them to avoid mesmers, necs, and protection/smiting monks.

Blizzards constant rebalancing of games like diablo is what keeps even the oldies going strong. Competitive online games REQUIRE rebalancing, because there's no way they got every skill right the first time. This should be even more the case in guild wars, where no skill change can hurt a player, as you can simply swap out that skill, change your attributes, or remake your pvp char.

The difference between having to retake a character all the way through 40+ levels and just swapping some skills/attrs around is massive. If your build gets nerfed just put on your thinking cap and in ten minutes you can have a new one with the same char.

i have no clue how people can exploit spell combos.. call me crazy, but there is a thin line between a good strategy and an exploit

as for D2, character class mean nothing now, new slogan for D2 is " You must have enigma and breath of the dying to actualy have a chance in pvp".. i miss the days where my Aldur's druid could rip and trear though anything that came his way (monsters and people) but sadly now everyone above lvl 20 is to be feared (my brother saw a lvl 30 take out 4 lvl 80's with one hit and he was left untouched) personaly im sick of hearing "lol Aldur's sucks, runewords are the only way to go " comming from people with a amazingly small amount of experience

anyways this is a gw board so i think its time i pay more attention to that.. im not sure if there are actual exploits or if people are just sick of others flocking like sheep to the easyest strategy to write down before they could..

if a build is overpowered for a small period then countered, it is ok.
but if a build is overpowered for months but there is still no effective counter, something need to be done.

If one skill can lock down multiple class choices and it isnt even on a mesmer, and that skill lasts for 120 seconds or more... it needs a nerf. (cough cough NR cough)

This whole debate is very typical of the entire online gaming community. Specifically:

"There is something in this game which alters the way that I personally believe the game should be played. Therefore, rather than adapting to it myself, the game should be changed to adapt to the way I feel that it should be."

For as long as there will be PvP games, whatever the genre, this will always be the case...

Damon hit the nail on the head. However, it is our duty as the player to go along with the balancing the devs make, not the other way around. I know that the internet may make you feel powerful, but keep in mind they made the game, not you.

You know I dont really understand all the complaints about NR and the other spirits that the ranger teams have been useing. I mean it would be one thing if only the effects were directed at one team or the other like if NR only affected the other team and Fertile Season only affected the casting team then there might be something to complain about. So you can't spike people to death any more because they have to much health, and your chain lightning keeps chianing onto the spirits instead of the other players, big deal. So you cant run your favorite enchantment smiter or your favorite heal spells are no good cuz of NR, big deal. These build do not make the other team invinceable, now you just have to come up with some organised builds and acutally have to try to win.

The only viable complaint about sprits is that you cant walk through them, they are spirits for christs sake you should be able to walk through them, even if it gave you some kind of condition like "weakness" cuz they sapped all your strength when you walked through them.

And no, I dont have a lvl 20 ranger I run a lvl 20 healer monk and yes i have been beaten many, many, times by sprit builds, and i cant use my favorite PvE skills, big deal. But then again i dont really expect to do extremely well with PUGs so eh...

amen, any time you all think you could do a better job you just remind yourselves that none of us here see your names plastered all over a top selling game.

It sounds to me like your build is about to get nerfed and you don't like it. Rebalancing has to be done. If they don't get it right the first time (and they won't, trust me), then they'll just do it in a subsequent update.

Symmetric effects do not a balance make, necessarily.

Let's say there was a card in Magic the Gathering that said, "Remove all black cards from play. Black cards cost 2x as much mana to play."

Now, let's say that card became known, and commonly used.

Congratulations, you've now destroyed 1/5th the game for competitive play.

Replace the 'colour' with Enchantments and Hexes, and you've got Nature's Renewal. [Mana costs aren't the same as energy, really. They set the tempo/speed of the game, for the most part]

Don't you think people would be calling for rebalancing/nerfing in order to re-enable people to play black again?

Well, that's why people want Nature's Renewal change. Enchantments and hexes are a huge part of the game, not some specialized build that's getting nerfed.

Now, that's not to say that we all want Healing Balls back in action. Far from it. Many of the people who want Nature's Renewal nerfed also understand the need for greater balance for enchantment removal.

But Nature's Renewal is definite overkill.

Elementalist
21 enchantments (26.6%)
6 glyphs (7.5%)
15 hexes (19%)
2 skills (2.5%)
35 spells (44.3%)
Total: 79 skills (99.9%)

45.6% of all Elementalist skills are either hexes or enchantments.

Mesmer
8 enchantments (11.1%)
24 hexes (33.3%)
5 signets (7%)
1 skill (1.4%)
20 spells (27.8%)
14 stances (19.4%)
Total: 72 skills (100%)

44.4% of all Mesmer skills are either hexes or enchantments

Monk
1 attack (1.3%)
40 enchantments (52.6%)
4 hexes (5.2%)
5 signets (6.6%)
2 skills (2.6%)
24 spells (31.6%)
Total skills: 76 skills (99.9%)

57.8% of all Monk skills are either hexes or enchantments.

Necromancer
15 enchantments (19.5%)
23 hexes (29.9%)
3 signets (3.9%)
4 skills (5.2%)
32 spells (41.6%)
Total skills: 77 (100.1%)

49.4% of all Necromancer skills are either hexes or enchantments.

Ranger
19 bow attacks (25%)
14 nature rituals (18.4%)
9 pet attacks (11.8%)
8 preparations (10.5%)
3 shouts (3.9%)
1 signet (1.3%)
6 skills (7.9%)
11 stances (14.5%)
5 traps (6.6%)
Total skills: 76 (99.9%)

Warrior
9 melee attacks (11.8%)
10 axe attacks (13.2%)
12 hammer attacks (15.8%)
9 shouts (11.8%)
2 signets (2.6%)
8 skills (10.5%)
17 stances (22.4%)
9 sword attacks (11.8%)
Total skills: 76 (99.9%)

All Professions
2 signets (100%)
Total skills: 2 (100%)

Total skills in all: 458

Of all skills, enchantments and hexes make up 150 of them (32.8%).

By eliminating them from the environment, nearly 1/3rd of all skills in the game are made nigh useless. Mind you, with the skills that are still mostly useable, it's probably somewhere along the lines of 3/10ths.

Final Statisitic
Strictly speaking about casters, there're only 304 skills available to them. That means of all caster skills, 49.3% of them are either enchantments or hexes.

Edit-
One last thing... How would you feel if there was a nature spirit that caused all attacks to miss 100% of the time, nullifying 40% of warrior skills while it's up, and 36.9% of all ranger skills? Should everyone else be telling you to, "use other skills. Instead of whining and complaining, why don't you adapt your strategy"?

My cousin and I took on 2 level 87 zealers with eth botds, enigma, exile, the works with my Conc barb with i think only about a uped shaft and stormshield, maybe arreats, and his bonemaner with only the old marrow glitch and we won. It was pitiful since with my level 30 conc I had around 43k defense and the zealers were getting pissed while they got raped by my cousin, they teled around while i just sat there unable to be hurt. I won a 232% grandfather out of it. That was back in 1.10. I quit when I found GW. Just wanted people to know. d2 was good, but i tried playing the new patch and just got bored too quick since its runs runs runs baal runs baal runs baal runs, mf mf mf mf mf, pvp, mf, baal runs, and so forth.

Nerfs aside, I'd be happiest if they also did some work to make the fairly useless skills more useful too.

What is useless to one person isnt always so to another.

The only skill I can think of off the top of my head that is under powered is Fear Me!

Fear me is one of the best energy denial skills around.

Quoted for the truth.