Guild Wars Update - Nov 10 and Nov 11

I actually LIKE the general idea of the update. That said...:

In PvP, my Mesmer is not getting hit by level 29 Ataxes for like 300 points of damage per hit. Also, a Mesmer does not really have a defense that's able to deal with that kind of damage output. Do you really think a PUG is likely to take my Mesmer along knowing that she WILL be attacked by madly running Ataxes and be killed by two hits of one of them?

Cool idea. My mesmer obviously can't prot very well (ok, mine can, but you can't really expect it from EVERY Mesmer, can you?). Yes, she COULD snare if she'd take the appropriate skills. Cool, does that know mean that EVERY squishy should become a water mage in disguise now? If I'd focus 4 of my 8 skills on self defense - which seems to be necessary now that I can no longer assume not to be ganked by level 30 enemies anymore, what kind of _Mesmer_ would there be left? Not too much of one, I guess. I am a shutdown Mesmer largely. I like this role. I don't want to become a tank with a sexy Mesmer Fissure Armor. Tanking is what WARRIORS are here for. This update has the great danger of replacing Echo Nuker boredom with Snare Mage boredom.

Indeed. As I said, I like the general idea of making mobs a bit more intelligent. But this update does indeed leave some room for improvement - namely:

- DO NOT make critters lose aggro if evading from AoE spells.
- DO NOT make run them away PROACTIVELY from spells that are not even launched
- DO NOT make them madly dash away after getting hit by one shot AoE spells (humans wouldn't do this, too).
- Adjust the energy cost and recharge times of the AoE skills that are now bascially useless. A Firestorm is worth like 5 energy now and a Baltharzars Aura not more than 10.

The ai still suck ass. Except they are worse. They aren't braindead now. They are cowards. GREAT IMPROVEMENT ANET YEAH GO GO GO!!!!!

Perhaps "cheating" was not the correct choice of words. What do you call actions like computer controlled enemies being able to instantly recast, several times, skill that take 15 to 30 seconds for YOU to recast? Just one example. There are many more.

Yeah, the messed up thing is people are going to wow as I speak, all I wanted was dragos flat bow, but nooo thats 80k, so now I have to farm... not anymore, Ill just HOPE Ill get lucky doing some mission I got sick of the 6th time Ive played through it.(And btw I dont think running through Sorrows time and time over is fun at all)

And to everyone that says think of a new build with snares.. well guess what, i never liked ele's and most likely never will, Im not going to waste my time making one to just farm.

everyone acts like farmers are the only people complaining.

OPEN YOUR EARS AND LISTEN ~ (or eyes for that matter :P)

I like being able to SUPPORT my team in PvE ... now it takes twice as long and it is stressful as hell. I don't farm - hell I wouldn't know how nor do I care. I've salvaged since Pre and I've got all best armor for all of my characters (not fissure) - I'm fine.

I backup my friends when they need help (guildies & friends) ... to me that was what the game was about. Now it is just iritating and I don't even feel like playing it anymore. I used to be a "powerful" monk and be able to control the enemies ~ kill a lot ~ heal friends ... yada yada

now they just scatter and everyone else dies - yay

the game was fun, now it's laughable ~ there are other games out there, maybe I should start another ... not the first time a game has gone downhill

Obviously, if the change was an overall good change, you wouldn't have 90% of the people irritated and complaining, and only 10% defending it.

Please, defend the even dumber AI now, because since it runs from any and all AoE, the game is all of a sudden more tactical? And I suppose casting PBAoE on yourself for becoming invincible for set amount of times is the new tactic.

I personally object with the way ANet handle this update, so much so that it compells me to register and make this post.

Elementalists are mainly artillery types; they are weaker, less mobile, takes longer time to mount an attack, but pack powerful punch and target multiple enemy when they do fire. Someone correct me if I'm wrong in this, isn't this the main reason why ele class exists?

I'm a mud elementalist and secondary mesmer, I enjoy my build not so much because I can do uber damage (I leave that to the pyromancers) but I can become a great support for my teammates with my wards, Eruption (AoE blind), Maelstrom (AoE interrupt), ice spikes and deep freeze (AoE snares), Chaos storm (AoE mana drain). These spells cost a lot of mana, take a longer time to cast, and take longer time to reload.

This update practically renders all these skills useless. I'll use Maelstrom as an example- great AoE interrupt, decent damage, very high mana cost, very long casting time, very long reload time, causes exhaustion. Great for disabling and weakening a group of enemy casters- keeping them at bay while the rest of my teammates take them down one by one, starting from the healers.

To cast Maelstrom you spend 25 mana, make yourself vulnerable to attacks, and mesmer interrupts during the 4-second casting time, suffer exhaustion, and have then have to endure the 30 second cool down, the pay off? A few enemy suffers 25-50 damage and have 1 or 2 spells interrupted before they scatter away, and that's if I'm real lucky.

One would argue: Be smart, snare them first! Sounds good on paper, but why don't you try it first?
You'd have to spend more time SNARING THEM ONE BY ONE OR SPEND 15-25 mana and more time to snare them simultaneously with ice spikes/deepfreeze. Snares will slow them down for at most 10 seconds. Casting maelstrom takes 4 seconds. It takes about 1 second before it actually starts interrupting.

If it's going to be this way then you might as well take them away from them all together. They no longer justify the expensive mana, casting time, and reload time. They've always been useless in PvP and they are now useless in PvE. So they're useless period.

I would not be opposed to the update if only they think it through and do better job testing it. What they're doing right now is breaking about 45% of ele class. If the goal is to create BALANCE (and BALANCE is the keyword here), why do so by rendering many skills completely useless? And by useless I mean miniscule payoff for the mana and time cost. To those people who say they're great for breaking up mobs- ARE YOU KIDDING ME? It's great for breaking up mobs if the spells cost 5 mana, 1 second cast, and 10 second reload. Not great when you spend a huge chunk of mana and make yourself vulnerable to attacks during the long casting.

Why such carelessness ANet? And why the minimal alert? This is not exactly a "small" update. I'm very disappointed.

Hey! Not all of us are full time farmers. I was doing the quest from Augury where you have to kill ten minos and it took me so much longer because they kept running all over the place I found myself(warrior) constantly chasing after a target.

When I went to do some more exploration of Grenths, I actually had to go back in the War Camp and switch out Cynn for Durham since her AOE's were causing total chaos and even got my team of henchies and myself all killed multiple times since the henchies chased the fleeing monsters into another's agro range. The result was way to many monsters and we were overrun.

So us solo guys who use henchies for our party (or those who do it to any measure) are SOL since the henchies chase down fleeing monsters and the elementalist's do not use water or air.

My guildies are great...but get real....is there anybody here that would spend almost 100K on someone.....not to mention that you can get Droks armor for 1.5K a piece, that has the same stats.

I once bought a complete set of Platemail from Droks for a guildmate....but I/Anyone would never spend 100K for someone elses armor, no matter how good of friends we are.

I spend many hours getting the things I want/deserve...by spending the time and creating builds....im not in favor of this update...but just like the "War on Drugs", if a human can think of a way to stop it, then another human can find away around it!

who said anything about eternal bows?

i was comparing storm bows and collector ascalon long bows...a storm bow is a long bow and is therefore equal to a collector ascalon long bow (and any long bow for that matter) in firing rate, flight time and projectile arc...

eternals are composites...i know my bows

Running away from a Maelstrom or Firestorm (or any other AoE DoT) is one thing. But warriors running away each time zealot's fire is triggered is *very* stupid. The same stands for running away from a one-shot AoE spell like Fireball, or running away from an AoE spell with negligible damage (the AI will run away from any spell even if it deals only 1 damage per second).

Sure smart players will adapt, but that's missing the main point: the reasoning behind this update is flawed.

It was implemented for various reasons:
- to upgrade the AI? It simply doesn't work as you can force mobs & henchmen to run like headless chickens (even with negligible damage, and even when they are able to kill their target easily), and monsters still do not focus fire, and they still cluster stupidly
- to slow down farming? My solo-farming builds are still fine, thank you. I trust a new wave of builds will crop up in the coming days. Simply put, it is *still* easy to farm solo because the core of all farming builds is untouched. Add stance breakers, disenchanters, hexes & conditions in all places and you can say goodbye to solo farming.
- to enhance team play? In short, if most PuGs were unable to use the stupid tank/nuke/heal/support (interrupt, shut down, battery, minions...) template, I wonder how most players (and especially newcomers) will cope with monsters who scatter and attack random targets as soon as a noob uses an AoE spell.
- to have more realistic behaviour? Running away from a 1 dmg/sec firestorm (or away from a near-dead target) for the win!
- to increase originality in builds & parties? Not only will we see new optimized trends in the coming days, but such a balance update could have been done by tweaking balthazar's aura and meteor shower, and other popular skills, or by buffing up unpopular elements

I've bought 8 sets of 15K armor for guildmates...wth else am I going to do with gold in this game? it's completely useless....

ugh i cannot stress how much anet screwed up with this one.....i just signed on and was reading some of the chatter. and people were all complianing. i thought i was just in this forum. maybe a couple others. but it looks like anet really really screwed up. and theys till have said anything about it eh? damn wen good companies go bad.

Well, invincible except when facing Mesmers, Rangers, Necros and other Eles that can do substantial damage from a distance and/or disrupt your PBAoE spells.

Holy crap, this update actually creates a reason to use Dunham? It WAS overpowered.

Seriously, a little tweaking to Cynn and Orion's skillset and tactics is in order.

I said it once, i'll say it again. you can farm and do anything you want.. but some updates will pissed you off more than other. This patch finally make the game more challenging and fun for people to enjoy. And it finally give us a reason to use a different build on our elementlist instead of the good old echo nuking build. I'm not bashing people for this but ..... nuker elementlist are pretty linear. They just used arcane echo than click on metor shower, fire storm, and other spells while the enemies stay there and take the beating. Sure it easy for them to kill things but now it actually make you think about what skills to bring and used. Instead of depending on the echo nuking ability.

blueyoda.. i feel your pain but i guess someone report to A-Net "Hey your AI is dumb, they don't ran away from any spells" and boom there your sign. A instant nerf of elementlist.

But seriously folks.. I dare you.. (any of you) to speak up against this AI upgrade. say a FPS shooter games while enemies don't run away from you. Is that even fun to play... all day the enemies would stay out in the open and take those head-shot like a good little brainless AI. How about RPG or Adverture games where AI don't react to you to let you win. Bottom line, dumb AI make the games useless, smart AI make it hard and some fun to enjoy.

A point I made previously...If fire and AoE is not meant to be the default, a little more effort should have been made on the part of the developers to not start elementals with mainly fire skills.

CAn I have some pwetty pws lol. Who's the farmer now

and the future price of the ragos flame staff lol

some skills should be renamed:

Lava Font - new 5 sec ward against melee

Fire Storm - 10 sec ward

You obviously don't get it. If you ever read these forums after a game update, you'd realize two things:

1) People who like the changes will keep playing the game.
2) People who hate the changes register for the forums and complain.

You get a terrible representation of gamers' opinions this way.

Dunham is cool, but I usually only use him when playing certain builds. I usually choose my henchies based on how I will be playing and with what character. When playing a warrior, I like to tank and allow the henchie elementalists to rain death on my position. However, that won't work now. So yea, they will need to change the henchie elem's skills around if they are to keep this update as permanent.

As a note concerning the update, I said earlier, and say again, I'm not against the AI running from AOE, but simply there should be a delay of a few seconds before they bolt.

90% of the posts in any forum are complaints, so that point needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

True but I mean 1000+ posts in a 1-2 hours means something went wrong doesn't it?

This is your quote....you mention nothing about Storm Bows.....Look very closely..you say........ E T E R N A L B O W..........

LEARN YOUR BOWS......LOL

This update is a pain in the @$$ for healers: Tanks set to attack a fleeing monster, healer dies if he follows. Or tank dies when healer does not follow. Dont tell me we should play 'differently' now, it was hard enough to be a healer and convince tanks not to run to deep into the mob before the patch.

Same for parties with henchmen. Tank simply follows the fleeing monster. And in situations whit 2 henchies left alive and the rest of the party dead, they flee when you hope they get killed soon so the party can respawn...

Could you guys just stop trying to tell other people how they should play the game? If you don't want to farm, don't do it. Nobody forces you. Especially not since in GW money basically has no meaning. Nuff said.

Guys, it's only day one of the update, and hundreds of us are coming to fast conclusions. There are other alternatives. Why not be patient for a bit and see what happens?

Just me speculating.

Buy me a Perfect Brute Sword

no no a max damage gold sickle for me!!!

People have seen the effects of the update now. What more is there left to explore? Anet really has to tweak (not undo!) the update, that's what will happen.

I do agree with this reasoning but the thing is.. why is A-Net listening to us in the first place. I mean its their game, they made it and they have the right not to give a damn about us and make update acording to them. I think someone.. (no to sure who) report or complain to A-Net about their feeling on farmers and monsters in general. Which in turn, made A-Net to create this patch to remove the all might elementlist build. I think A-Net is trying to create a team environment but now people have to scramble to get a good build going. And no more 55 build monk. (this patch offically killed it) But buffing up the elements might not work frog, nor do reducing the power of each skills. People would still complain and whine about the changes.

Bottom line, bad update for some.. great for other. You have to look at things in different perspective. This is a change that is now unpopular but look at this from developer point of view... if ALL games out there have brain-dead AI .. would people even care enough to buy the games? Imagine Halo 2 without the smart AI... or heck no AI at all.. would you even play this game?

There are still noobs that used AoE spells.. and it funny how enemies run away from everything. Point is.. we need to accept the fact this build is here to stay.. sure they can change it back. but you get tons of post whinning about the farming being back in full force. You stil can farm but now you need to change your build a bit to get it done.

Ok.. you can farm and do anything you want.. Thats the point of Guild Wars.

Yep, went into Grenth's this morning with a group of henchies and took on Yakslapper. Meteored him, he took off one way, some of the other bad guys in the mob took off in another direction with Thom in pursuit. I finally caught up with Yak in Droknars; he was suffering from severe exhaustion. Thom whispered me from Beacons, called me a noob, and bailed from the party. I don't like this patch at all. I'm gone if it isn't reworked within a week.

the point is to have fun thats it. Nothing else thats why they are called games. If people want to farm let them. If people want to pvp or pve let them. If Anet makes it so that they take out certain option available to me from the beggining of the game then RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO this game.

Fantus, my Mez has no problems with the new update I don't see why yours would be any different. True I don't use any AoE spells but then again as a Mez I have never had a real need to use them.

hopefully something is done (teaked .. w/e)

Yea same here....

I would've cared less about this update if they didn't move the release date of FF12 or KH2 'til next year. But I guess I'm stuck in playing this game atm since I don't play WoW...hmmm? maybe I should play RE4 now...have to think about that one. I kinda don't like games that scare the $hit out of me!

ANYWAYS, yea I agree with a lot of you people who said now this game feels like work. I was seriously comfortable at how it was before. They didn't have to make pve harder....sometimes it's already hard just by playing with the wrong people. Isn't that hard enough?? I guess I'm being biased about the whole update thing because I wanted this game to be just how I want it to be while other people demand more challenge and more thinking when it comes to what skills to use, but c'mon! If you guys want more challenge move to PvP! PVE WAS GOOD THE WAY IT ORIGINALLY WAS! If we want more challenge WE WILL GO TO PVP! Bah! I'll stop it here now.

In the sense of the law, yes. You could also say that it's our game, since we paid for all its costs.

Not listening to customers usually is what will put a company out of business very quickly. A-net DOES listen to their customers which is why I am confident that this patch will get tweaked, though.

ROTFL

ummm... no, it didn't. Only for those who are not bright enough to play them, perhaps.

If they were looking to increase the difficulty of AI, here is probably a much better solution. Random mobs. THAT is why PvE is so easy, the lack of uncertainty. THAT is why PvP is different and more challenging. No match is going to be the same, and you can NEVER predict 100% of the time what is going to happen. But with unrandomized mobs of enemies, who start all bunch up (gee, I wonder why we bring nukes in the first place...), we develop these trends that will work every single time.

As an example. You enter FoW. To your left will be a shadow beast, two shadow warriors and a shadow monk. There will be a patrol that walks into that group consisting of a shadow beast and another shadow warrior. Once the patrol arrives, tank run to the monk, the beast and warriors all run to our tank. Once all of them are on the tank, drop the nukes. Tried and true strategy that will never fail. You have provided hurdles that are the same for every person, and one way or another each one is going to realize that there is a really easy method to overcome this certainty.

Know what I liked about Diablo II? The ability to make me constantly guessing about what was around the corner. Everything in this game is exactly the same everytime around, and you wonder why everyone resorted to the same trends?

This update is truly Pandora's Box, remove the favor system and prehaps it might ease some of the pain.

Amen. brother!

In the beginning you can farm and do anything you want.. now its all gone. At least you see can used metor shower or fire storm. Imagine if A-Net remove those two skills and bring back AoE spells effect.. boy that would piss the hell out of everyone.

well said .. well said

this is where I stop posting and wait to see an outcome ~ hopefully something good happens.