Guild Wars Update - Nov 10 and Nov 11

Pretty useless in PvE? They do more damage (AP ftw) and are now single targets. Instead of having 3 nukers throwing off AoE, now, you'll have 3 spikers, each one killing his own target. What's wrong with that?

Hm... I've got a water ele who I got to thunderhead keep before being very bored with her.. I've had no problems finding groups and have always advertised what I was playing.

I also have a mesmer who has had no problem finding groups (unless it's skill capping or the time of day where only 6 people are online).

People are taking other professions into their groups these days, nerving that many skills isn't going to do anything, other than make people upset.

First of all let me start off by saying that I am a fairly casual player and like some of you have expressed I don't play it 24/7 and don't have the time to experiment with different builds all the time. Having said that.

I agree with the above quote - that GW was meant to be all teamwork/team play style game and yes ppl found ways around it with different style builds and have been soloing it. Also agree with him on the fact that I'd like to get on and go treasure hunting - and since I started very late in the game to do solo stuff (after skill nerf which changed BA and ZF) so I am NOT rich and don't have killer stuff. I have hooked up with a few ppl and traded items for them for a comission/tip cause I love doing trades.

So this update affects me directly as from a casual players prospective it definitely makes it more difficult to just go out there and "do" it all by yourself. But then again - GW was not meant to be played that way.

I want to say that not all is negative - as I truly love this game. I came for the Diablo 2 world and I have REALLY enjoyed playing GW but after this update things are going to be little more difficult.

Key thing to do is ADAPT to the change - I am sure they will not "UNDO" the change so we can rant and rave and finally go back and put our thinking caps on come up with a few different builds and maybe a bit more co-operative play. On the note of playing in groups - I am not a part of any guild as it seems that the last 3 or 4 guilds I have joined have been basically run by 13 year olds (please let me finish before you guys FLAME ME!) who get all high and mighty and nobody really wants to help out. NOW I AM SURE that was my string of bad luck of getting into guilds with leaders/members with ego problems and it is NOT meant against everybody. So I am hoping with this change maybe a few more friendly ppl getting together and playing in teams and helping each other out. (let's see how badly I get flamed for this!)

Last but not the least - how will this effect the economy. I think there are 3 lvls of players out there (IMHO) - the super duper uber rich folks who are fanatics who play the HECK out of the game! The mid rangers who are like ppl like me who have a few good items and maybe 100K or so and play/trade regularly but not excessively and spend money practically (Droks armor as opposed to 15K and stuff). And last but not the least ppl who are starting off and don't have a lot of funds and trying to make it. NOW with this change it will probably spike the cost of the uber items through the roof which will make the mid guys and the low end guys just hate life as things will cost an arm, a leg, and your left nut!

As far me, I'll keep at it for the next few weeks and see how things work out.

I aslo wonder how this will effect the sales of Chapter 2 - considering this update has caused so much uproar.

Anyways - those are some of my random thoughts and my 2 cents!!

Ok guys - I guess FLAME ON!

If Anet want to stop UW farming.

Why not make it so you need at least 5 people to enter UW.

all the skills that have been made usless by this and other "updates", and to be honest.

Why have FOW armour when the only realistic way for most poeple to buy it is to UW farm.

makes no sense whatsever

This thread is getting crazy, so a few last points:

-While I like the update in general, running from Fireball is a little overkill. Especially since if you cast it while they're casting, they'll often end up running AFTER they get hit.

-I still haven't heard any arguments to my point that if nuking now sucks the solution isn't to make the AI stupid again, it's to make those skills not suck.

-How hard is it to switch out a single nuke spell for a snare so they can't escape? How does that ruin your build? Some of them, like Deep Freeze, don't even require attributes for the snare part.

Compare one group taking in a off-character to all of those running the Monk/Warrior/Nuker (and perhaps battery) build? The ratio is somewhere along the lines of 10:1.

Obviously you couldn't comprehend whom I was talking to when I saying "Why would my feelings be hurt?" (obviously talking to Former Ruling, since I quoted him). It had nothing to do with the comment "It's sad," which is regarding the state of the AoE skills in the game right now in PvE.

Why don't you read what I type?

Just hopped in and tested out the new update, and while I'm not particularly happy with it I don't plan on leaving the game. I have been playing mmo's for quite some time now and I have come to expect nerfs....even extremely harsh ones to characters I have invested hundreds of hours into. This certainly doesn't warrant an unnecessary and senseless nerf by any stretch of the imagination. However, if I enjoy a game enough to invest in it such a large amount of time and money, it will take more than a single nerf - even several nerfs - to ruin it for me.
All this is to say that I sincerely hope that all of the players such as myself stick around and continue creating an entertaining community which I have enjoyed from the beginning. For those who decide not to I hope to see you in my future mmo adventures. Though hopefully anyone who has enjoyed a game enough to spend a thousand plus hours in it will give a release (no matter how outrageous) more than 24hours chance

No, not just one group.. multiple groups. this far into the game, people have played more than just those professions and can see where the benefits of other professions can come in.

And the update isn't going to magically change people's opinions of what to take, more than likely, they'll take more warriors Don't I feel sorry for the monk having to heal that many warriors.

Why? Because like people, now they get OUT of AoE? Why not just make all of the enemy NPCs do 0 damage and take 300000% damage from all sources while you're at it. They're increasing the difficulty of the game. If it gets too rough for you, maybe you should stop playing GW and go back to trying to pass kindergarden.

This update sucks.

Thunderhead keep is now even harder with the enemies running in and out the keep while another group is storming in from the other gate.

Now the nuker ele will have the same faith as the mesmer in temple of ages.

If it bothers farmers bother Anet so much then stop making everything so expensive. How are players suppose to buy a 15k armor and other expensive stuff? By selling cookies to the dwarves?

Maybe they should focus on making more fun instead of making the game even worse. You know like inventing new monster, new weapons new quests.

Here's an interesting take on economic effects. Superior elemental runes of air, water and earth are no longer available at traders. Scalpers have bought them all and are now selling them at 10-20k, (what they more than likely purchased for 700g). Nice...

There are COOKIES I can sell to dwarves - Where can I farm for cookies - ahem, I mean - find cookies, or rather bake them!!

You my friend have hit the nail on the head!

I want the game to be FUN and not WORK!

Very well put, and it is only now that I admit it to myself that I will find happiness, people please understand, this update did not kill solo play, it is merely a very loud message that solo play is not welcome in GW, it is just a shame that they have to mess with skills in order to try and achieve their goals

Nice indeed. I have a Flame's Eye with a Superior Fire rune, Stone's Eyes with a superior Earth and so on. And all collectors staff with +30 health and +5 armor ^_^

Now, I understand diversity in PUGs and I try to create that when I go out with groups. However this update put a serious nerf on any AoE spells. Ofcourse the main fire line are all AoE spells. So that whole line in PVE is junk like it is in PVP. Now I feel that was a bit uncalled for as I understand from time to time various skills get nerfed for balance this nerfed an ENTIRE line of skills. There are some people out there such as myself that had a nuker that wasn't designed from cookie cutter builds but by experience.

As far as my damage yes it was great but there are other builds that cause just as much damage from other classes. It is just disappointing when you spend time to made a build of your own that gets totally nerfed. Now I have to spend hours finding a different skill combination and getting used to how to use it effectively.

My only point here is that how long must this go on ANET nerfing builds? Anytime a great build gets made they nerf it seems. How would they like it if we were able to nerf some of their Developer team builds. So the question is should I even waste my time with this game and figuring out a new build if they are simply going to keep nerf it to?

Thank god. What's more importantly, it reduces the number of the so-called "tank" W/Mo.

Instead of tanking, maybe it's a good idea to utilize Ranger/Necro/Mesmer's ability? Interruption, Condition, Hex.

Say goodbye to those "tank, nuker, healer" day!! (I hope)

Since starting college I haven't had the time to play GW as much as I did through the summer, which was practically all the time I wasn't eating or sleeping. I've now become a 'casual' gamer and play it for maybe two or three hours a night after I've done my homework and walked the dog etc.

I can't really do that anymore... well I can but its so damn tedious. I have a trapper ranger for UW who is now pretty much worthless - I've noticed in ToA there aren't that many people making parties consisting of trapper rangers. And going sniper / barrage bot / interrupter in UW is pointless.

My other character, a Wammo has been screwed because people don't want W/Mo anymore.. I'm a tank and am not that bad at it but people don't want warriors anymore...

I farm a bit... usually Griffons at Augury and when I did it was because I was bored or I wanted to make a lil bit more dinero. I'm now screwed with that as well.

I'm gonna stop playing GW for a little while and see what happens. If nothing changes [i.e the whole AoE thing] then I might just quit GW altogether because as I see it, with this new update PvE finishes as soon as you complete the story mode. UW, FoW and to some degree, faming are cool things to do after you've completed the story aspect and are looking for stuff to do. All of these have been nerfed into oblivion because all the builds what were damned successful when entering UW, FoW or farming have been castrated with a pair of dirty, great pliers - basically other builds like sword damage dealers or sniper rangers etc are only good if you're going through the story missions and quests or PvP which I haven't really played much of before.

Prices with some things are gonna skyrocket now likle ecto's because getting them from UW has gone from damned hard to exceptionally, insanely almost impossible. People (especially W/Mo farmers) who have a bulging purse will have an economic advantage over everyone else. Its like the Green Revolution in India and other countries in the 1960's. The rich got richer, and the poor stayed damn poorer.

-Adam

What's with the insults? Are you getting defensive because more people are against this trash update than on your side? I highly doubt post-patch anything will be difficult, so I don't see your point in that statement. Spam AoE FTW. Try to lay off the lame personal insults, because you only make yourself look like a little incompetent kid. Little incompetent kids resort to popping off insults instead of explaining their reasoning with a bit of intelligence.

The AoE is garbage right now because of a couple reasons. And I'm talking mainly DoT AoE.

1. It's meant for damage, mainly. Not dealing much damage when the enemy runs away. Might as well call Fire Storm "Gust of Wind Storm", because all it does it push the enemies away from where it's cast. Should call Ignite Arrows "Ass Arrows" because when you hit the enemy with it all you see is their ass as they're fleeing in fear.
2. People exploiting damage dealing AoE to "instill fear" into mobs already.
3. Forcing people to take certain skills (or whole other person) i.e. snares, slow spells, etc., to make AoE even a feasible option.

I could go on but it's not even worth it right now...I'm done explaining the inherent faults of this update, it's pretty obvious on it's own after only a little bit of playing.

Gaile,

Hi! What can we do about the henchie elementalists(Cynn, and Orion) who use AOE skills like firestorm? Can we add some more diversity to their skill list since they will scatter mobs whenever they cast the AOE spells?

Maybe instead of nuking with fire spells all the time, it may be a good idea to bring a water elementalist to slow everything down so they don't run around?

I think it's a good fix for the better. Players now can't just rely on a tank/nuker combo. They need something more to dominate monsters. Water elementalists will be more popular to combine with Fire spells. Lightning/Earth will have chance too.

Monsters were soooooooooo stupid standing in Firestorm/Meteor Shower for the whole duration. That's how nukers kill things so fast. But who says you can't use traps to cripple the monsters first and then nuke them?

There will be more "strategies" involved in PvE. The bad news is not everybody plays with strategy in PvE. It's all random people joining teams.

After testing a bit I discovered the same...physical interrupts and mobs ganging up on weaker targets are now easily avoidable.

Dare I say I like this better than before?

(yes I'm primarily aoe smite monk...as for the ele's I can't say from firsthand experience)

Now that's a good idea too. If they increase monster AI, then I would hope they increase henchies' AI. Our henchies nned more diversity.

After testing a bit I discovered the same...physical interrupts and mobs ganging up on weaker targets are now easily avoidable.

Dare I say I like this better than before? Sure it takes longer, but at least i dont have to hear that gawd aweful interrupt **CLICK** half as much!

(yes I'm primarily aoe smite monk...as for the ele's I can't say from firsthand experience)

Nice change. And less need for typing messages "LF Healer/Monk". lol

Now teams can form different strategies to stop asking so many monks to join the team.

What a great truth.

Another nerf to the ele yay. Now there is absolutely no need for one ever. I mean their skills are already pretty weak in general. TY anet for nerfing a whole skill line. greatest update ever!

Before I rant, I'll say a little something about my two main characters; my E/x Nuker and Mo/E healer.

Previously, my nuker has gone between E/R for wilderness and pets, E/Mo for healing self and res, and E/Me for the atypical echo nuking path for farming SF. My healer ran heals, and when the tanks had agro, ran in with wards and retreated.

Both of my character concepts are now useless. My poor poor nuker, no matter which build she uses, is now useless as anything but a mob deterrent, unless I want to respec into air, as all other elements are nerfed to hell offensive wise. And this is playing in a group, not soloing or sheer farming. I'm glad she finished the last quest in her log before this update.

The edge to my healer, her wards, is now pointless as agro management is now impossible. Granted, I can now just remove them and run zealots fire to avoid ever being hit, and just pure heal, but with agro management now so changed, healing is going to become very hard indeed.

I agree with Gaile that folks should not be soloing the hardest areas of the game.. but what I wholeheartedly disagree with is nerfing honest players to the degree that their characters are indeed near enough useless. Even my everburn build (essentially lots of on fire spells) is near impossible to run with no aoes to keep mark of r burning.

So my elementalist gets to sit taking up space in my account, unused til something is done to make them worthwile again, and my healer becomes overworked to hell.

In other news...
I was close to having the money to buy my fissure chestpiece for my monk (I think all other monk armours look hideous), and now I am nowhere near it with the hideous price of ecto again.

My other character, a tank I made mainly for running, can now nearly do the droks run with the latest update.

some players are just too serious. I only bought this came because I saw a friend playing and he seemed so powerful for a lvl 20. Most games it takes like 60+ levels to show REAL POWER. It was exciting ~ I got my players to lvl 20 and it was awesome, I couldn't get enough of it ... Just because I don't feel like spending a week trying to figure out spells w/ lazy team mates to kill enemies quicker so I'm not online half my life, doesn't mean I'm one of those dumb farmers.

At first I thought the update was awesome, my monk henchman would actually move instead of taking a ton of dmg while healing me ... now THEY both move. I don't even feel like playing anymore. I've never played PvP .. and I don't intend to. I have a guild ~ we have fun ~ but now I feel like going back to another game.

do this ... do that ... so that your player isn't almost useless ~ whatever

my monk used to be cool ... I was "proud" to have new ascetic armor and lvl 20 kinda powers ~ high attributes ... heal and use smiting prayers ~ smite? what's that?

gg ~ later

I noticed last night that area effect spells like Lava Font and Inferno still work. Sure, you don't want your mage in the middle of things getting hacked, but by following tankers who draw attacks, this strat can work.

(Lava Font also recharges in 4 sec, and has half the casting time as Fire Storm...)

Bottom line, the latest update will force players to change strategies, but new strategies will emerge in their place. That's what keeps this game fun and worth playing... change is good.

This is a fantasy Game. Were talking about Dog People, made of bones, and dragons with bird feathers. Unless your putting them in the same class as a human. i would think that they would more than likely stand there and attack someone as they were getting hammered with something else. When an agro'd real dog is attacking someone and someone come up with a bad and starts hitting the dog.. that dog doesnt give a crap. he continues to maul whoever he has his teeth in. This arguement is looking @ the game from the perspective that they arent really pissed off @ us. and if you take that perspective. why not replace aoe's with Tea Parties.

Dont like the update? Petition... http://www.petitiononline.com/qd22556/petition.html

I don't suppose any of us can speak sensibly on what guildwars is supposed to be about, but personally I think one of the reasons that the game has done so well is its appeal to the casual gamer.

This is initially because of the lack of a monthly fee (something WoW surmounted of course). But the actual game play in PvE is very forgiving on the casual gamer, it is by and large no risk, there is no permanent penalty for dying, characters can be remoulded on a whim and most of the game is not very difficult.

Clearly though the hardcore gamer needs to be appealed to, they are more likely to stick with a game as it matures and buy the subsequent addons that will keep the money coming in - and PvP provides an ideal environment for the hardcore gamer.

Personally as a casual player of guild wars I can say that I am not enjoying the change. I don’t enjoy running around after monsters or being swamped by a second or third group because Littlethorn chases off into them after a stone summit that didn’t like the AOE that landed on them.

Its frustrating to chase things about, and while the challenge has been increased, I believe that at best only 50% of our market want that. Even if this is the most profitable half I don't think they would have left you over easy PvE.

I understand that skills can be balanced more easily if the PvE environment is similar to the PvP one, that a game tends to get better reviews with "Clever AI" and that some people can find opponents that just come for you like zombies a turn off, but if you want to change the aggro system in the game then it should implemented as a full aggro system rather than what appears to me to be a bit of a hack (even granting that running from spells like fireball may be bug).

I guess less people would complain if mobs went after the character that damaged them, and other classes had aggro management skills to help protect (protectors strike puts user to top of aggro list perhaps).

Yes I can mitigate these problems (for me) by dropping my W/E’s fire AOE and by not taking AOE henchmen, and possibly by not spending my lunch hour wandering from Grenths into SF. But in 1h I may not be able to complete a mission with players and I wouldn’t want to quit on people so I’m not sure of my options (I do PvE sometimes but I tire of 13 year olds quickly)

I really appreciate the effort that has been made supporting the community for this game and in particular for reading this thread (Thanks!) but I don’t really want to chase monsters. I recognise you have your responsibility to the economy but there really should be a way to tackle heavy farmers more directly – perhaps characters(accounts) accrue farming points which affect drops, perhaps mobs strip enchants or break stances (even conditionally based on the number of characters in the instance)

This always RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing happens. The devs start getting patch happy. there are other ways to make missions harder. I do support that a lot but making them run out of aoe's like right now is bs. The missions are already too easy but cmon you just nerfed all the aoe spells. Ugh the devs simply don't understand the metagame in pvp. This just shows how they don't understand PvE either.

Change Strats?? uhh Strats have always been changing ... every player is different - every player likes certain spells. That is why we're HUMAN and not AI ...

might force PvP to change skills, but it will force Regular players to find another game - this update should be for PvP only if you ask me or just scratch it altogether.

Quoted for truth.

I'm not having fun playing the new Hokey Pokey game with all the mobs that run out from under my expensive skills.

There are 2 big advantages that the mobs have over a player/group:
1. they have drastically higher hps than I do.
2. there are generally MANY more of them.

I've always considered the AoE skills (and the fact the mobs would tend to stay around to bear the brunt of those skills) to be compensating for those two advantages (or vice-versa). So now it takes me much longer, I only get to do 1 or 2 things during the few hours I have to play a day (yes, "casual player" quite fits me) due to the amount of time I'll now have to spend chasing them around.

Not fun.

P.S. For those who say "Adapt!" ... I've invested a lot of time & energy into building several characters and learning to play them. I'm going to now evaluate whether I want to continue to play a game that forces me to throw away investments like that ... and determine if I want to go make my next investment somewhere else.

agreed ... spent a lot of time with this game ... its been fun ~ "been"

Dont Like the Patch... Petition.. Its as easy as signing a recipt in a restaurant ((Without the tip))

http://www.petitiononline.com/qd22556/petition.html

1) Echo Nukers have been nerfed. Good. It was skill-less brute force relying on two spells, exploiting a weakness in the mob AI. Good riddance.

2) USE SNARES! You want the mobs to stay in your AoE? Snare them! FFS, eles have something like a dozen different snares to chose from, learn to use them!

3) Don't give me the "my build is based on echo nuking and now it's useless" crap. Respeccing is FREE and UNLIMITED in Guildwars. This isn't RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing WoW! So stop crying and respec your build!

Look for something other than a damn fire ele?

Easy solution

Spikers. They do just as much damage, it's just not over an area, so you spike 1 target instead of multiple. It's the same effect, you do the same damage

Personally i think some of us have missed the mark.
Please re-read the official guild wars statement regarding the game.
http://www.guildwars.com/gameinfo/default.html

ill sum up a few points. Start off with the name of the game. Its Guild wars not farm wars or PvE wars. Guild wars.

from the mouth of anet's mission statement.

I think anet has had to make hard choices, and they chose to keep to their mission statement. do i agree with them? time will tell. sop far anet has done a slam bang job of busting their humps trying to give us a good challenging and fun game...and all for the low low price of no monthly fee.

In regards to the economy, farm nerfing ,ect.. i really don't think they planned on people taking the economy and farming as seriously as some of us do. Im a farmer buyer and seller. but i can see the dilemma anet is in. I think that they should re think the game. It can still be a game in which strategic play etc are the main goals , but also support farming without making it mandatory. that's the trick how to support farming, and giving us a working economy without introducing grind, and without making it mandatory for players to participate in these activities.