Curse

Gaile Gray · Jun 12, 2007, 11:13 PM // 23:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by dts720666

Gaile,

Thank you for your grace and patience toward all of us complainers and critics. We're a tough bunch to please. Few (if any) of us could do your job.

I will try the ele earth farming tonight in HM, and see what happens, then post results here later. My prediction, however, is that I will be dead...dead...dead...dead...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Kurd

I second that, i hate to be a Anet employee right now. If i was i would pay the Liongaurds to protect me against all the angry ppl here.

All in All great update , Keep up the good work.

Thanks! That's a really kind thing to say, and I do appreciate it a ton.

*rereads "grace and patience*
*hits print*
*pastes to forehead*
*hires cadre of Lionguards*

But remember, these updates won't be in the game for a few days, so please do test out the changes when you see the official Update Notes on the website and get that new build.

*****

Izzy wanted to add another thought: "I know there are a lot of concerns about hexes, so this week during the test please bring out all of the hex builds and really push the issues you feel are going to be a problem, as normally during this week you will have a lot of eyes from Anet on things and if you want skills to change, now is the time to prove they are broken."

ThorObliterator · Jun 12, 2007, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despozblehero

Why is soul reaping getting a huge buff from controlling a spirit? as far as i know no necro skills summon spirits so you have to be a Rit or Ranger for this to help at all with the current SR problems. so no N/E or N/ME or N/Mo or N/W or N/D if you want your characters inherent skill to give you decent energy management? ouch.

...he'll still receive energy from humans and monsters dying, as well as minions...

icymanipulator · Jun 12, 2007, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Despozblehero

Why is soul reaping getting a huge buff from controlling a spirit? as far as i know no necro skills summon spirits so you have to be a Rit or Ranger for this to help at all with the current SR problems. so no N/E or N/ME or N/Mo or N/W or N/D if you want your characters inherent skill to give you decent energy management? ouch.

None do. The other profession combos are still viable. Don't forget even with spirits we still have an obnoxious timer to satisfy. You could spam to your hearts content and it will still hit a wall...eventually.

Despozblehero · Jun 12, 2007, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThorObliterator

...he'll still receive energy from humans and monsters dying, as well as minions...

Yes, but at a level which previouslt wasnt good enough for a rit or ranger secondary to deal with? My problem is that a necros inherent skill is so hugely effected by spirits which arent native to its class. so i spam all my high energy skills then have a spirit that dies fast (or use a rit skill to kill it) and my energy is full again? but no other secondary can take advantage of this "necromance inherent" effect?

icymanipulator · Jun 12, 2007, 11:24 PM // 23:24

It was effected by spirits the entire time, the scope has been shrunken to your own personal spirits and now you get full energy instead of half. Honestly it makes no difference in PvE whatsoever, you might as well ignore that portion if thats the side of the game you play.

Edit: Your example of "abuse" only applies if you happen to be N/Rt or N/R. I can see N/R maybe for SQ or if you are in the DoA or something, but N/Rt aside from elite skill capture is like finding bigfoot. PvE here folks, not PvP.

countesscorpula · Jun 12, 2007, 11:26 PM // 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by makosi

There's still no changes to spirit spamming or Shadow Prison and now Vital Weapon will be prolonged and still cannot be removed by any means other than death.

THere are other ways of dealing with a problem than removing it. Try using their extra health against them. Grenth's Balance and Spoil Victor are just two skills that punish someone for having extra health (there may be more, but these are the first that come to mind), and they are still usable when in more normal situations.

Wildezword · Jun 12, 2007, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Actually, the Mesmer Illusion changes are kind of a nerf. Typical Illusion/Inspiration builds don't only use Conjure Phantasm.

What about Phantom Pain, Images of Remorse, Illusion of Pain, Migraine and Crippling Anguish?

If Mantra of Persistence gets nerfed and none of those skills get boosted, then Mesmers are actually LOSING an enormous amount of damage from them and only gaining a miniscule damage bonus to Conjure Phantasm.

sindex · Jun 12, 2007, 11:31 PM // 23:31

Can you guys please buff Illusion of Pain please, if you nerf Mantra of Persistence please buff that skill. It’s the only other good skill I use and it would be great if you buffed it; then I will be absolutely satisfied with update as a whole. Thank you.

Mysterial · Jun 12, 2007, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apok Omen

I fear Ride The Lightning might be a huge change towards the revamped Eurospikes (watch Hellas Team [Gr]).

With an added buff towards the recharge and damage, RtL>Dismember>Executioner's Strike>Agonizing Chop (.5 activation time will make it better than crit chop) will descimate any unsuspecting guild, especially since there are no more hexes to click Infuse on.

Ride the Lightning needed an Exhaustion-worthy recharge, but the damage buff is overkill and I expect it'll get reverted.

Agonizing Chop at .5 activation is insane. They've already got Critical Chop, which had to get nerfed once and I wouldn't exactly shed tears if it got hammered some more. Sure, Agonizing doesn't have +damage, but in the usage case it'll get it's also an almost guaranteed interrupt unlike the more random Critical Chop.

Enix · Jun 12, 2007, 11:32 PM // 23:32

I am really waiting to see what is going to happen with that Mesmer PvE buff they were talking about long back. Arcane Conundrum... pfft... it will only prove to be an irritation to PvE Players (when it is cast on players). Clumsines will be the same - irritate mele chars, but not actually do enough real damage to multiple targets to help your team. As long as AoE damage is king in PvE and Fastcasting remains pointless, Mesmers will continue to be darn near useless in PvE.

Makes me sad - my mesmer is a hot one.

On a positive note, good buff for Earth in the Ele line. The rest of the buffs dont make enough of a difference for me to change my skills or any of my hero's skills. Just disapointed again about the mesmer...

Quantum Duck · Jun 12, 2007, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by icymanipulator

How many people is "a lot of people" exactly? I never ran this...nor did I run a bar with 8 15e skills on it, which would not be viable under any circumstances. You'll have to excuse me for saying so but this sounds like tremendous exaggeration. Why not just remove the +15 sets if its such a huge issue?

Um. *Raise hand* Yeah, remember me? I was running the kinds of skill bars he's talking about because I could afford to with the old SR. It might be a slight exaggeration, since I usually included a few skills that were only 10 energy, but I figure the 25 energy skill I spammed probably balances that out. It definitely wasn't a tremendous exaggeration. And apparently I wasn't the only one, though being told by the people running the game that I wasn't the only one isn't likely to convince you I guess.

Also note that he's not calling the +15 sets a "huge issue". He's saying that if people can have constant -regen, spam expensive spells, and still hover near max energy, that's an excellent sign that an energy source is a little rediculous.

I'm really hoping "later this week" means tomorrow in this case. I'd love to give these changes a try as soon as possible. I don't think the hex changes effect the ones that are really problems, so I don't expect hex builds to get any worse than they are now. And since many of them were SR/Spirit Spam powered, I would think they'd be more fragile than before for the most part. It'll be fun to see how it all plays out.

As a side note, I think it's really awesome to be seeing all of these concerns addressed almost directly (one small step of indirection being that it gets typed up and posted by Gaile, thanks for that) by people closely involved in making the decisions. I'm a huge fan of presenting as much information about the decision making process to the public as possible.

Liberations · Jun 12, 2007, 11:36 PM // 23:36

And I was sure this update would be a winner... Well I guess there will always be people who aren't content.

Anywho, updates look cool. Thanks for the info about the updates too. NJ. Can't wait for sunspear skills.

XvArchonvX · Jun 12, 2007, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSecorsky

I have a critical-interrupter build I play with... assassin with a bow. Keen arrow is a devastating part of that build, so it's a far from useless skill.

It's not useless, it's broken and has been broken for a long time. If it worked the way it was designed to, it would be excellent. As it is, it's not terrible, but it's just not living up to what it could be.

ChaoticCoyote · Jun 12, 2007, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Izzy wanted to add another thought: "I know there are a lot of concerns about hexes, so this week during the test please bring out all of the hex builds and really push the issues you feel are going to be a problem, as normally during this week you will have a lot of eyes from Anet on things and if you want skills to change, now is the time to prove they are broken."

Since observer mode only covers PvP, I don't see how anyone at ANet can be watching for any serious problems in PvE.

So let's say that long-time PvE builds are broken by these changes. Does ANet care at all, and if so, how do we let you know? How do we "prove" that they are broken in PvE?

The Last Anthem · Jun 12, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyp Jade

Not to bash anet or anything, I always enjoy skill rebalances, and generally have had a high level of faith (only been dissapointed a few times), since if some team runs rampant, there is generally a way to counter it (but usually if you spec your build for that your hosed vs other teams).

I noticed they are closely monitoring Heroes Ascent when they mention SF, which largely isnt too much of a problem for most teams, and isnt even all that common, i see one team in 10 playing SF, yet they fail to notice Ritualist spike, which is more common and more powerful in both offense and defense than SF is. And Rt's get ANOTHER buff to vital weapon.

Yay for the Strength and Honor Upgrade

only 1 team in 10? wow what time do you ha? seriously every time i ha its like every other group it goes rit spike-sf-ritspike-sf with the occassional zergway ..yea sf is way easy to beat if you dont ball and have a good spirit bonder but still...but yea ritualist spike needs major nerfs >_< look at what metagame(the guild) is running with ancestors rage...thats just painful there..ok on topic..

good update like the mesmer updates but the ATS update is rather stupid..
thats like ok well guest [insert 4 top players] and theyll get us a gold trim! should reduce the guests to 2 guests and even make membership in the guild maybe not the 14 days but maybe like 5~? at least try to stop mass smurfs a LITTLE?

XvArchonvX · Jun 12, 2007, 11:42 PM // 23:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChaoticCoyote

Since observer mdoe only covers PvP, I don't see how anyone at ANet can be watching for any serious problems in PvE.

So let's say that long-time PvE builds are broken by these changes. Does ANet care at all, and if so, how do we let you know? How do we "prove" that they are broken in PvE?

You can 'prove' that they are broken by telling A-net what build you used and where. That's kind of the whole reason that they do things like check fan forums and talk to players.

Divinus Stella · Jun 12, 2007, 11:43 PM // 23:43

The stoneflesh change wasnt really needed, its mystic regen thats at the heart of all RA tank builds.

Hex's have been ignored and Rit spikes are still gonna be polluting HA, Ancestors Rage and Spirit Rift are still 2 massively overpowered skills.

I can understand why the devs dont want to change any more hexs as the angry pve necros will start crying but why have ritualists been buffed rather than fixed?

icymanipulator · Jun 12, 2007, 11:44 PM // 23:44

Beaten x5 or something like that already Quantum. While I appreciate that not only did you take the time to identify and abuse an exploit you also experimented with it...I really don't care. I got a good answer on why +15e sets were a problem and what they are intended for and thats all I was interested in.

Series · Jun 12, 2007, 11:45 PM // 23:45

Gaile, I have to ask. Why was the popular suggestion, "Adjust soul reaping so minions and spirits not made by you do not trigger soul reaping" not taken? Also, Gaile, may I suggest an alteration to the current method? Instead of making it not trigger when you have MAX energy, how about make it so that, say, if you have 10 points in soul reaping, you can not gain more than 30 energy over 15 seconds from it in bursts capped at 10. For example, say you have 30 energy and this happens in a 15 second period with SR 10:

14/30: SR triggers, you jump to 24/30
24/30: Oops, a double kill. You jump to 30/30, and have used 16/30 soul reaping points for the 15 seconds.
10/30: Boosted back up to 20/30, now 26/30 SR points were lost for the 15 seconds.
2/30: You are boosted up to 6/30, because that reaches the 30 energy cap set for the 15 second period. If you had 11 SR, the cap would be 33, etc.

I just feel that, if you really don't wanna remove the cap, then you should make it consistent and reliable- no energy lost because you had too much at the time. Just a suggestion for a modification to the current system. Thanks.

Sasuke The Betrayer · Jun 12, 2007, 11:47 PM // 23:47

The only issue I have is the armor buff. It's basically saying, RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO your defensive skills and bring only one that's past 25. I mean... I know people in DoA are gonna have issues (Stoneflesh Tank... loses like 50 armor or something AND with the stoneflesh nerf...). Anyways, this is telling us there's really no point in using dolyak + watch yourself, or things of that sort. Why couldn't they make it so the highest armor buff is counted full, even past 25, and all the other armor buffs only count half as much (or something like that).

Anyways, good job on update. I can only imagine the new SS/LB skills.