Balthazar's Aura And Ether Renewal Need a nerf.

Seriously guys. Guild wars may as well be called smite wars now.

Balhazar's Aura is a nuke with power comparable to meteor show and yet it takes only one seccond to cast. Even with natures this leaves us with a two seccond gap to stop it. Sure you can stip it but...

Ether renwal. Gives our loveley smiter BOTH unlimted health and Energy. The energy I can undersatnd but why does it come with such a huge Hp bonus?

I belive Balhazars's Aura need's a longer cast time. 2 or 3 secconds.
And i belive that Ether Renwal needs to drop the HP bonus, or at the least give it a percentage ratio like Aura of resoration.

These two nerfs would leave smites as still a viable tactic but at least they'd be counterable. To any who say just make a build to counter this go run in the tombs.

The health part of ether renewal is not the problem. It's the fact that the skill is the most retarded energy engine in the game.

Oh come on, if we abuse it enough we'll get it balanced anyway.

Why does everyone seek to get every skill nerfed just because it gives them a challenge when they face it in combat?
Carry on folks and all we will have is a set of boring skills which are all the same. One sword attack, one axe attack, one smiting spell, one healing spell... do you really want that?
If you don't like Balthazars aura, hamstring them and run away.

I'm not concerend about the Energy regen on Ether renewal. The teams we fight have 2 if not 3 smiters latley. We get a distracter on one, rend on the other and wars on the thrid. The problem is that even with backfire, 3 tanks, archer no mater what we throw at them they're going from almost dead to full hp in 2 spells. If we could kill them the energy regen wouldn't be a problem
We use natures renewal (To slow down the cast time and give our inturupts a better chance) and chiblians to counter smites and a few enchantment stips as backup. But the smites have a faster recast then our stips and rends and our wariors are rarely able do deal out the damage quick enough to drop them.
We've been expermenting with builds since the Xtream weekend and while we can beat single smite teams, it's the hall were we suffer.
It's the same story every time. One MASSIVE smite in the last 1:30. The chib holds em back for a bit but we can't keep on top of 4-6 smiters and the chiber get's his head cut off by the warriors carrying in the balths.

On a plus side we've gone into GvG now and because we don't have to fear ganking, the areas are more spread out etc. we've been having alot more fun.

I do agree that it will be balanced soon. Surely anet saw what happened on the weekend, and continues to happen now. I do quite like the masive ranger build I've seen countering it though.

It doesn't seem fair that Balthazar's Aura is as hard to interrupt as an Orison of Healing, and the fact that it can target any ally means that you cannot always just "Hamstring and run".

I believe nerfing should be to promote new builds. You cannot say that the skills are balanced, when almost every build uses them.

Its always the same at GW someone makes a good build, it last for a week or something and then poof nerfed some skills i think its just better to keep the skills the way they are

ANET will eventually fix it. Until then learn to bring rend enchantments. (referred to as de-smiting the smiter)

Hey, I know! We should nerf everything!

Let's just get rid of all weapons and skills, and stand around hitting each other with witty remarks!

Wait - we might have to nerf them too - because they could hurt someone's feelings.

Umm - let's just go catch butterflies....

Christ, people - can't a day go by without a campaign to nerf *something*?? Just play the damn game.

After we end "Smite Wars" we can start calling for the end of "Eviscerate Wars" or "Healing Ball Wars". THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A BUILD THAT IS THE MOST POPULAR AT ANY GIVEN TIME, LEARN TO DEAL WITH THAT FACT.

Where does it end? At what point do you stop calling for nerfs and start figuring out ways to counter current strategies or create new ones of your own?

Good point about rend enchantment. Seriously, if you have one monk that is total protection, one monk that is part protection part healing, and one full time healer, you shouldn't have any trouble with smite builds in the tombs. Why do you think iQ is so good, because they play good defense and good offense. They are balanced.

Funny how monks that brought smite skills used to be laughed at. The GW community is very fickle.

This guy has no idea what hes talking about. Balthazar's Aura has low damage and low durration compared to the complete power of spamming Draw Conditions or Reversal of Fortune (It's still possible) with Zealot's Fire on.

Also, the health part of Ether Renewal is virtually worthless. Not concerned about energy? That's the only good thing about it o.o

This build is not over powered, there are several tactics to take it down.

This guy doesn't even say once that it's hard to take down, just that the skills in question seem good. -.-;

"I'm paper. Rock is OK. NERF SCISSORS!"

Healing Seed anyone?

Shock and run away. Scourge healing? Backfire?

Just call this game NERF WARS

Aura doesnt need a nerf. It has been always the way it is and works well. It costs 25 mana takes a while to recharge etc. Normally trust me you cant spam it...

With Energy Storahe and Ether Renewal its a diffrent matter. You are asking to nerf an ability based on a combo without analyzing that it is indeed the combo that needs tweaking. Aura nerfed will kill it for all smiters other then e/mo. And thats plain stupid.

......LOL......thats all I can say at this point. Due to the complete sick feeling I get everytime I force myself to read a nerf thread. I seriously think no one will be satisfied until monks can only be healers and nothing else. And if it comes to that, ---- all of you lame nerfers, whats the point of this game anymore? Everyone is all about killing everything about it, so instead of being completely gay and trying to join in on that, why not make yourselves useful and bring ideas to help promote a better trade system....or a new kind of arena to fight in....or new monsters.....etc..they are countless other things you people could be doing other than laming the forums with nerf this and nerf that. LEAVE THE FRIGGIN GAME ALONE! geez.

It's not Bal's Aura - it's the energy engine that is the problem - it is out of balance with every other elite for generating energy.

God stop complaining about everything! Ether renewal i already agree with but don't nerf it 2 badly pls pls pls... Not like Nature's renewal which is a totally different skill now and overall a total waste. Bal's aura is not even that hard to get rid of. Instead of chiblains use well of profane its a hell of alot better if you can get it off.

I feel like Victory is mine with QZ was a much more broken energy engine, because it was very hard to stop if you use signet of humility on their martyr character. It was instant cast and could even be used while you were casting another spell. For two weeks straight we were using monks with +15 wand/focus just to take full advantage of it. Going from 5 to 80 energy instantly along with a 600+ point heal was insanely good. With the nerf of NR and QZ it is a good bit harder to run.

When comparing that situation to the one now, I feel like Ether is much more balanced. It is the most powerful energy engine in the game, but it is also one of the easiest to stop. A well placed seed, a rend, diversion, slows, and multiple other skills counter smiting admirably. The only way to reliably run a smiter against good teams is Spell Breaker on one of your monks.

I would really rather the game be fleshed out a bit more before nerfs happen. If anything is nerfed, have it be defense. Not offense. Having a new team win Halls every 20 minutes is a great feeling.

One combo that I believe is seeing very little recognition or nerfing, is Edge Bombs. If the holding team sets one of these up they can wipe every char on the map with under 2 minutes left and win automatically. Don't tell me that having one person stand back with Light of Dwayna is a good counter. Having a skill that forces your team to fight 7 on 8 is simply overpowered. This happens a good 1/4 of the times I've been to halls, and is moving into being a necessity for any good hall holding build.

HAHAHAHA, I'm laughing at you all man. So so so so SOOOOOO hilarious to watch you reap what you have sewn :P

Natures Renewal ftw!

So many nerf smiting threads now, reminds me of a certain spirit thread a while back lol!

That arguement doesn;t matter because, you see, most (not all I am sure) of the people complaining in this thread have never even made it to the HoH after NR got nerfed (if before) so say that one build isn't dominating the Hall will mean nothing to them.

I mean c'mon, we are talking about people too stupid to cast Diversion 2 or 3 times and win with ease.

Zelots fire takes armour into account. We can defend against that. We do bring rend enchantments but unfortunatly it has a cooldown of 30 secconds. in 15 secconds the E/Mo has his enchants back up and has already got a balth off again. Also you need 1 necro with rend per smiter because of that recast time. Or a dedicated arcane echo + echo build. Also the e/mo's have the warrior/s they sent in ready to carve up your necro.
True if ether renewal wasn't such a mana engine we'd probably see less of this.

If this were true we'd see sonmethign other then smites in the tombs. Saying it's easy to shut down means you haven't even tried yourself.
The reason this doesn't hold true is that this combination (Minus the healing seed which I'll give a try tonight, not sure if balth triggers it) is great for shutting down ONE smiter. You'll need one rend per smite.

EVERY HoH i've gotten too since XPVP is the same thing. Waiting until the last 2 mintues and then one massive smite. That's the reason the HoH keeps changing so much. Teams lear the leave the original team in charge of the alter and smite thier ghost with a big gank. Then the remaining two teams try and out smite each other.

Our team currently runs Diversion, rend, distracting shot, leach signet, punsihing shot, concussion shot, natures renewal, power drain, energy drain, Chiblians, Barbed trap, Drain Enchantment, hamstring, Savage slash AND Signet of humility.
Now that should sound like overkill to stop spellcaster what they're doign but with the smite builds it's still not a sure thing. We'll win 80% of the time on the 1vs1 but as soon as you add in a relic run or a match with more then one opponet our success rate will drop to about 30%.

One of these skills need a modification to prevent this. I'm not asking for a nerf to make the skills useless, just something to stop them from being so over powered.

Any one of these options would be fine by me.
1. Balths increaded cast time to 2 secconds.
2. Balths causes exhastion.
3. Remove the HP regen from ether renewal.
4. Set the energy and hp regen from ether renewal to a % of the spell cost rather than unconditional.
5. Increase the recast time of ether renewal.

True this does remind me of the NR rant. I was hoping Anet would make the skill elite and increase it's recast (You do have a full 5 secconds to inturpt it) or at least address the smiting when they did nerf it for the PvP weekend.

/BrillianceUnleashed

Mindless zombies won't learn. Human beings can. But, there is a distinctive difference between zombies and human beings.

Zombies = earth. Human beings = history.

Based on a true story.

I wonder why we don't see healing balls roam the tombs. I haven't tried so i might be wrong and yes... healing seed has been nerfed but it should still be employable shouldn't it? At least take arcane echo and echo to copy it and you should be able to keep it up again.
Not sure, might as well try it myself but i thinkg that would nullify the whole smiting thingie.

Very well put

You can leave builds i can beat BUT NERF THE BUILDS THAT KILL ME RAWR!!!~!~!~

You obviously haven't tried this. You need one mesemer for each smite. You also have to survive the inital assult and have ample healing and offecnce to kill the e/mos.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that IF you have actually tried this your offence consisted of your own smites.

Been to the hall 15 times thank you very much. We can handle even 3 smiters sometimes (If were lucky) on an enmy team but once you reach the tombs (Unless you get a fight at the start) it's the same story.
Nothing happens (Excpet maybe the odd ghost kill) untill the last 2 mins in which the smite teams smash each other.

The only way we won was by having our ghost elft behind with a player letting the smites pound down on each other and mopping up the reamins.

It was a rather hollow victory.

You people whine so bad. I lose to smiters, but that is just good skill use. Why do you people whine so much. Learn to play the game and use skill combos to blast em. A mesmer can reset a monks skills. Try using BA or whatever. Get creative and stop whining. You not only ruin the game for others, you ruin it for yourselves.

ANET STOP NERFING!

Quoted for truth. I have been in smiting groups, and we've lost to evey single group that brings Well of the Profane.

Get a grip. Remove enchantments or shut them down. You guys have to understand, spirits were broken, especially NR. There are many, many ways to take out a smiter. Just use one of them.

Haha Well of Profane is the best anti-smite build skill ever, you guys need to stop yelling NERF and start figuring out counter-builds.

They dont need to be nerfed.
Just cause your build sucks against smiters doesnt mean we have to nerf it. I beat 2 smite teams a couple days ago in Tombs. I bet they are angery too, but that doesnt mean that we have to nerf every build that kills another.

On to Ether Renewal, just remove it as soon as it's cast and it's not a problem. After all, you have a dedicated Render for each smiter. Ether Renewal's recharge is 30 seconds. Rend Enchantment's is 30 seconds as well. Easy to figure out when the next ER cast will be, isn't it?

backfire nubs...

Hmm, You moan about spirit groups, some counter, those who cannot be bothered keep moaning. Anet nerf.

You moan about smite, easy to counter, those who cannot be bothered, keep moaning, i wonder if Anet will lickkkk your ass, an interesting one..

I'm suprised you of all people are complaining about it thomasuwoo after your counters to spirits etc.

But i gotta agree up to a point that the tomb is full of smite and not a lot else, but its mainly the not a lot else which wins the hall...keep that in mind

It doesn't work. Ether renewal heals for more then backfire can damage.

If you can't see that there is something overpowered about the ether renewal + balths combination then you have no idea about balace.

Care to share? We've been working on anti smiting builds since it came out. My guess is you just out waited the other two smite teams.

I guess what I'm really upset about is the abhorent about of energy and health ether renwal can restore in such a short time. Rend has a cast time of 3 and ether has a cast time of one. In 2 secconds the caster can get off at least 2 spells, usually enough to complety replish his mana suplies, and health and start recasting.

Care to tell me what the hell rock is? I'd glady make the switch.

There are more Smiters in the tombs right now then there were spirt spammers in the tombs before the natures nerf. People talk time and time about a counter to smites but the only attemps at anti-smite I've seen are geomancer spikes and the Korean Quickshot build.

And judging by how often the hall changes hands I doubt their success.

My dear Timoz, I would argue that NR was actually unbalanced.

However, I've got to say that smites can be taken down. It takes some effort, yes, because it's something people weren't accustomed to playing against-- but it's only gonna take a few guilds running smite-hate to shut down the fad.


The next flavor of the month will, of course, be full-mesmer teams. >_>;;

You obviously have never played it well. One mesmer can shutdown two E/Mo's.

see now, those that think something is unstoppable are stupid. my 55 monk gets owned by a mesmer in about 0.00000001 seconds in pve. i dont even bother for pvp with this build

rofl, no it doesnt if ur backfire does 119