Guild Wars Update - Nov 10 and Nov 11

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.