Curse

Riotgear · Aug 10, 2007, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

for great justice + enduring harmony = permanent 100% adren gain

...... what?

diabiosx · Aug 10, 2007, 04:00 AM // 04:00

Change assassin armor to make them more widely used.

If assassins have more health on their armor(like the dervishes) they might be more widely used or buff their AL to 80. Most Assassin skills are powerful but they die so easily which is why I don't like to use them in PVP. SP sins can come in and out of combat fast to compensate for their weak in the face combat abilities.

The metagame is stale because 90% of the skills in this game are not USED at all because they are utter crap.
Buff all of the never used skills significantly and I bet this game will see many new builds.
Builds that we never see in PVP.
Smiter Monks without air of enchant.(i would love to see reversal of dmg monks)
Ritualists without splinter weapon, Ancestors Rage spirit rift
Inspiration Mesmers.
Assassins Without a instant kill combo.
beast masters without Rampage as Ones.
Axe warriors without eviscerate.
Earth eles.
Death Necros without Tainted flesh.
Blood Necros.
Dervishes without AoM, wounding strike

Elite Ranger Spirits change I think the buff is great but it still wont be used. If you want it to be actually seen in PVP effieciently make the casting time 2secs.

Aggressive refrain must be nerfed honestly. It is the more superior version of Soldier's Stance(warrior elite) No normal skill should be better than an Elite.

U completely killed Ritualists in this game.

I agree with changing the energy cost for blessed light to 5energy with a conditional 5.

Glyph of Renewal and Divine Spirit will be the new combo in 4v4.

yesitsrob · Aug 10, 2007, 04:05 AM // 04:05

Pretty good update imo.

Shame Izzy wants to marry Steady Stance but in general nice

Vermilion · Aug 10, 2007, 04:13 AM // 04:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Riotgear

...... what?

Well I actually had to look up what enduring harmony does.

5 1 10 For 10...30 seconds, Chants and Shouts last 50% longer on target non-Spirit ally.

Since its under leadership you might think a warrior primary wouldn't get use of it, but looking at the recharge..maybe not.

So with EH, FGJ! will last..30 seconds. (?) Unless you buffed EH and I missed it.

Thats all I got.

Shendaar · Aug 10, 2007, 04:21 AM // 04:21

Crap update as far as the assassin is concerned. The BSS nerf hit most of the non-SP build I experimented with and they weren't even that great to begin with. GPS 5e hmm ... what is that good enchant based combo again?

I almost fell off my chair laughing when I read that line : "To diversify Assassin Skill Bars". Oh well, back to waiting 3 months for the next round of skill "balancing".

Riotgear · Aug 10, 2007, 04:23 AM // 04:23

Oops, confused FGJ with To The Limit.

So now Zergway's paragon backline makes IWAY last an even lengthier eternity and the zerglings can gain double adrenaline forever. Yeah I'm really looking forward to HA tonight.

This has potential to be obnoxious in other ways. Infuriating Heat + FGJ = "Fear Me!" on every hit? I must make a gimmick around this immediately!

AlienFromBeyond · Aug 10, 2007, 04:30 AM // 04:30

Except not, because adrenaline gain increase is capped at +100%.

Nurse With Wound · Aug 10, 2007, 04:36 AM // 04:36

I like this update. First of all I'm glad on the change to ritualists. Spirit spamming is a bad play and should be gone. Nerf on spiking skills is awesome change too. This was the most annoying, skill-less build plaguing the pvp. It should be gone forever.

Good adjustment on hexes to promote more active play.

I'm glad on the buff made to drain enchantment. Its about time the inspiration line will return to meta as solid energy management ( apart from always good power drain )

New Rodgorts might be an interesting pressure skill, but have to test first to be sure.

Change to aegis is awesome. I'm so glad that split teams won't get that 50% chance to block given from the other side of the map.

Sadly, I haven't seen two elites that should get a slight nerfing down. Steady Stance and Rampage as One.

Good job on fixing some of the maps in HA. I'm glad you;re still working on improving it, although the amount of good work made on it already, is worth the praise. And yes, HOH relic run is bad. I'm glad you're willing to change it.

VoD.. interesting.

On a different note, I've done the usual PVE/ QQ purging. You guys should really refrain from posting your zero content whining in here. You have your own riverside thread made by Gaile. Gogogo spam this bs there.

Sab · Aug 10, 2007, 04:50 AM // 04:50

Good update overall. Nice job on nerfing Rits and fixing hexes, plus it's good to see you're ironing out the rest of the problems in HA.

But...it's disappointing that there are no changes to Steady Stance/Fear Me or Deadly Paradox.

karunpav · Aug 10, 2007, 05:09 AM // 05:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

Drain enchant is really a nerf. Its still a max of 10e gain but now its easily interrupted and cannot assist in removing prot during spikes. GG Anet.

Rending Touch pretty much makes up for this nerf and then some.

C2K · Aug 10, 2007, 05:16 AM // 05:16

This update is fine. If there is anything to add on to it, I would say mess with AoM's duration in the same manner they fixed AoG.

Also, I think quite a few of the nerfs people propose are coming from biases against or for certain classes. The way some people sound, we might as well just remove all skills and make it a "vanilla" fest lol. Instead of calling for more nerfs/buffs, why can't we all just sit back and put this new update to the test and see how well/poor it really is in after about a week or 2 of adapting.

Patccmoi · Aug 10, 2007, 05:30 AM // 05:30

Overall it's a good update, but my main concerns personally:

1) Rending Touch. Seriously this buff is ridiculous. Watching 2 W/Ds training monks by Rend Touching every significant prot reminds me of Grenth Dervs far too much. Losing an Enchant on yourself was never a downside for warriors sadly. I see 2 options : first being just put it back at 10s, it was GOOD at 10s. Second is throw it in Mysticism and do 'this skill is disabled for 10..5 seconds' so that it's only faster recharge for Derv with high Myst. At least those have some downside to losing enchants in general. If this buff didn't exist i'd say that the update is great as a whole, but until that's nerfed again i can't really like what i see.

2) Rodgort's Invocation. It's really powerful now, but i'm not sure to say it's imba yet. It's definitely a GREAT skill, but you also run out of energy fast if it gets interrupted repeatedly. But when you compare it to Lightning Hammer, it does more damage to main target (and because of the burning, this is true for nearly any AL) while being Nearby AOE. For 1 more sec of recharge? Seems kinda ridiculous. But it's definitely worth 25E now at least. Will have to see how it plays, but 2 Mind Blasters in a balanced build doing RI-Liquid can basically do 500+ damage in Nearby AOE straight. And that's just 2 guys.

3) Assassins in general. The main build will change slightly, but no real change to the class is made to encourage different play. Now you see Assassins running AoD-Shadowy Burden-BLS-TF-GPS-BoS-Tiger Stance instead of the old SP bar. Basically the main build will be changed a bit, but no other build will really take its place.

4) Exhaustion on Rts. There was better ways to do it. Exhaustion on a class with ITEM SPELLS (which screw up your max energy and disables weapon swaps) makes no sense.

5) Guardian. This might not make much sense and might turn out to be no cause of worry, but this seems extremely powerful at low Prot on Me/Mo now. At 8 prot you have a 5s Guardian that blocks for 50% (which is like before running it at 15 Prot) and casts fast. That's not a problem atm cause Rending Touch is ridiculous, but it might make it extremely hard to pressure through. But at least it requires some skill to use efficiently.

Although a lot of stuff weren't touched that should've and a lot of changes are meaningless (like Judge's Intervention...) the update as a whole is still good though. The overall game should improve, but plz nerf Rending Touch and plz think about Melandru and SS Warriors too... i know you love them but they're NOT good for the overall gameplay.

Pwny Ride · Aug 10, 2007, 05:35 AM // 05:35

It seems that A-net have improved tremendously regarding Skill Balances. Kudos to an excellent change.

Ensign · Aug 10, 2007, 05:51 AM // 05:51

I like the update in general. The Aegis change looks like a real winner.

Rending Touch was overbuffed. It saw spot play before the update and now it's crazy, you basically can't keep prot on someone ever. This one should be reverted, or upped to 8r at the very least.

I'm a little wary about the current power of Reckless Haste and Blurred Vision as well. Their raw energy costs to keep the effects up are higher, but the hex sticks better and is harder to fight since it is reapplied more often, and casts faster. I'd suggest upping the recharge to 15s on each of these.

Rodgort's Invocation is really good now, though if that can overcome it being a fire skill, I don't know.

Guillaume De Sonoma · Aug 10, 2007, 05:52 AM // 05:52

I like the update, few minor problems although:

Paragons: Aggresive Refrain
Assassian: Black Lotus Strike
Monk: Shield of Deflection

What if... · Aug 10, 2007, 05:56 AM // 05:56

I'm fine with many of these updates. Though I don't understand a lot of the hits on the mesmer end of things.

My biggest whine is:

Drain Enchantment - At 10 inspiration the spell returned 16 energy for a removed enchantment with a net 6 energy gained. Not a terribly big energy return at all, especially when compared to things like GoLE which are still comparable to power drain IMO. Now it returns one extra point of energy at the same investment and has a shorter recharge. This would be great if additional cost (which makes it a whopping net 7 energy gained) and ease of interruption (you'll never get this off against a half decent mesmer with a free interrupt or a ranger cycling savage and d-shot) didn't push this clean off my bar. I really don't understand where this came from and I'm inclined to attribute this to being another case of a non-mesmer player making changes to the skill mesmer bar.

Arcane Echo/Echo - If these aren't getting used by mesmers its because stances like MoR have huge advantages over them like affecting entire skill bars under its influence instead of just one. I've only seen this skill used effectively by ele's in pve and HA neither of which seemed to need any help.

Illusionary Weaponry - Believe me, recharge has nothing to do with the general disuse of this skill.

Spirit of Failure - Pre nerf it could only be maintained on one target and gave a barely noticeable energy return even at a decent insp spec. Whatever continued abuse this skill was rendering is lost on me. It's seems like a hit to Reckless Haste (which has happened) would've been more than enough to weaken the failure combo since the two have such obvious synergy.

Signet of Illusions - I'm still waiting for something interesting to come of this skill. ANET should do something dramatic (like the new glyph of elemental power) and see what comes of it.

Sword · Aug 10, 2007, 05:59 AM // 05:59

Hi, I really liked this skill balance. Alot of the skills seems to be fixed to balance the game more. Even small things like making Echo more of a viable elite.

The rt spike nerf is great, although it did take awhile to fix a build that was clearly imbalanced. I really like the ranger buff as well to elite spirits, now maybe we will see some nice new builds that dont have the standard oath shot spirit spammer.

I love anet for the guardian buff- but thats cause i play monk 75% of the time, great for requiring active protting - pushing away from the skill system that has too much passive defense imo. However, I do have to admit that I will miss casting aegis for people that are mutiple aggro bubbles away from me for whatever reason.

While the majority of these skill changes are really nice, im confused about some of them. Rodgort's Invocation seems way overpowered as its very easy to manage energy on an ele with proper skills. Also, Punishing Shot confuses me - I thought arena net wanted to move away from spike builds , and this makes ranger spike much more powerful. Both fire eles and ranger spike builds are widely used so im not sure why anet would buff a build that is clearly effective. (also, from a heroes ascent perspective: aoe is imbalanced on capture points - players are forced to ball if they expect to win and aoe is awlays a huge factor that must be dealt with or a team wipe will occur - and when you have teams that come with tons of aoe its nearly impossible to stay alive without ridicolous monk support - which no team runs anway...so its suprising to see aoe buffs, especially on a fire ele, being put into the game).

Also, rending touch is broken, and you pretty much cant argue against it. Putting a skill with 5 second recharge enchant removal on a melee class character is stunning.

Also, is it possible to get any comments on the reason for waves of npcs at vod? i read somewhere that you guys said you were looking to force teams to keep NPCs alive during match - but having waves just makes it easier for teams to get rid of NPC pressure fairly easily - if your monks are not together with NPCs or the other team gets off a few nice spikes. Not really saying this is bad or good just wondering what anet is looking to accomplish by this vod change.
Also, i find 300% damge a bit overwhelimg, i think somewhere in the 100%-200% range is much more reasonable.

PS: nice playing you guys in heroes ascent earlier tonight - was nice seeing some devs playing =)

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Further comments after reading what others posted in this thread:
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Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

4) Exhaustion on Rts. There was better ways to do it. Exhaustion on a class with ITEM SPELLS (which screw up your max energy and disables weapon swaps) makes no sense.

Sorry to quote you. Im really suprised people are complaining about rt nerf. Classes are not supposed to have the ability to have a ton of defense and offense without even factoring in a secondary class. The nerf was for offense skills causing exhaustion. IMO the place of a rt is this game is a secondary healer/protector with some extra offense in the mix (ie a spike (no not a rt spike type build, but a spike on skill to add to a balanced/rainbow spike, while healing / protting with weapon spells in between matches), or warmonger or vengeful+remedy spam as other skills , the rt is very diverse even after nerf). The fact that using the class as damage+healing then getting your secondary profession to be whatever you chose is imba. The rt is still very effective post nerf. I still have rt builds that I have made, as well as guildies that were not even affected by the "nerf".

Quote:

Originally Posted by nmemoric

omg, that's so stupid!
this is the worst fake-nerf ever!
it's like saying: hey everybody we finally confess that we made a mistake with that skill and now it is nerfed and by no means overpowered anymore...

serious - as if that would change anything to that skill.
this skill is used to instant-kill your target in 1v1 or let's better say HB (if you're to stupid to achieve this on your one, simply add some AoE-Skills of an Fire-ele, and that's it) so it totally doesn't matter if this hex last for more than 5 seconds or one year....
if there's no hex-remove coming it's as good as over

although I SOMEWHAT agree with what you are saying i have to disagree in some senses, it is very easy to couter a 1 man sin spike, granted it is the most viable 1v1 class in the game - assuming your opponent has no healing or stances or whatnot - a sin will kill - but I think that is the purpose of the assassin, and in many aspects I think it works well in the game - dont get me wrong, i definatly think that there are many sin skills that do not work well in the game. Shadow stepping is something that needs to be revamped imo , i know some will disagree with this, but thats just imo =)
oh yea...and its not the hex that kills you - kiting away from a sin spike is not necessarily going to save you from dying. However, there are plenty of skills in the game to simply counter 1 man sin spikes.
And if your really concerned about the slowdown...holy veil is ftw. On a side note: since holy veil was mentioned with usage in shadow prison might as well lead you to think about how easy it was to counter rt spike with monks preveil when they attmepted to snare you with Shadow prison

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

Good update overall. Nice job on nerfing Rits and fixing hexes, plus it's good to see you're ironing out the rest of the problems in HA.

But...it's disappointing that there are no changes to Steady Stance/Fear Me or Deadly Paradox.

How can I disagree with a guildie? (although he claims to be in a long dead guild on his guru account

)
anyway it is suprising to see no nerf to steady stance. Although the nerf should be minor , the build is slighty imbalanced - having copies of the same skill on your bar that is spammed is lame imo. (whos idea was it to add copies of skills in the game?)
As for deadly paradox, i completely agree, the assassin has much to many very powerful attack skills that do not actually require using daggers. Deadly dagger spam and signet of toxic shock spike are very powerful , and combined with deadly pardox makes the build way to strong. I think its a bad sign when just about any assassin build that one might think up that dosent use daggers will have deadly paradox on it. Non dagger attack skills need to be examined closer and/or deadly paradox itself to balance the game further.

Nurse With Wound · Aug 10, 2007, 06:05 AM // 06:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by What if...

My biggest whine is:
Drain Enchantment - At 10 inspiration the spell returned 16 energy for a removed enchantment with a net 6 energy gained. Not a terribly big energy return at all, especially when compared to things like GoLE which are still comparable to power drain IMO. Now it returns one extra point of energy at the same investment and has a shorter recharge. This would be great if additional cost (which makes it a whopping net 7 energy gained) and ease of interruption (you'll never get this off against a half decent mesmer with a free interrupt or a ranger cycling savage and d-shot) didn't push this clean off my bar. I really don't understand where this came from and I'm inclined to attribute this to being another case of a non-mesmer player making changes to the skill mesmer bar.

I don't agree with your analysis. I'll just quote here my guildie Dag, and his awesome post from our forums.

Energy efficiency.

Then:

10 Inspiration - 0.17 EPS (net energy per second)
12 Inspiration - 0.23 EPS
14 Inspiration - 0.30 EPS

Now:

10 Inspiration - 0.35 EPS
12 Inspiration - 0.40 EPS
14 Inspiration - 0.45 EPS

As you can see, it gives a lot more energy now. Double the amount at 10 inspiration, 74% more at 12.

OK... but Drain Enchantment has double the cast time.

Well, for comparison in the finals of the last AT, Aegis (15 energy, 2 second cast) was interrupted 10% if the time - one of the top 5 most interrupted skills. Diversion was also interrupted about 10% of the time - a 3 second cast.

Lets not forget fast casting. Even if you're interrupted as much as Aegis or Diversion was in the AT finals (who are obviously the best interrupters about), then you're still netting over 20% more energy at 12 Inspiration.

Oh, and you also have the advantage of removing enchantments more frequently.

And under MoR this thing becomes an energy monster.

Seriously, this skill has not been nerfed.
Also, lmao @ angry pve mob in Riverside thread, attacking Ensign :P

What if... · Aug 10, 2007, 06:51 AM // 06:51

Thanks.

Your analysis of both sides of the situation definitely makes more sense. And if it takes into account factors like disruption and cast time, then my reasons for not trusting this update are irrational at best.

I'm got some more playing to do.

Patrick Smit · Aug 10, 2007, 06:53 AM // 06:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

blessed light: reduce energy to 5. keep the 5s recharge. change functionality to: remove 1 hex, 1 condition, and heal for x. if you remove a hex, you lose 5 energy.

trust me, this is about the only way to make it usable. i'll spam it as often as i need to get it changed.

This would make it for sure an interesting spell