Curse

fripple · Aug 17, 2007, 06:28 AM // 06:28

Changes to Rage, Burn and Strike are all good; Rage is particularly clever. No one in pve can complain, and these modifications sharply curtail the degree to which ritualist teams can overwhelm others by making two of them spikeproof and the third significantly weaker. Good job here.

Ben-A-BoO · Aug 17, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Weeeehhhhheeeee,

I haven't even tested the changes to the Ritualist but like them already

I finally got my pressure spell: Spirit Burn;

Mele Spike support: Ancestors Rage;

And can happily join in a rainbow spike team: Wielder's strike

Won't miss the exhaustion on the spirits really

Wild Strike finally joined its cousins...

And /drumroll: "Changed the layout of the Forgotten Shrines and Fetid River Heroes' Ascent maps."
Can't wait to test them!

Thanks for listening to the community Anet!

Cheers,
Timebandit

Ensign · Aug 17, 2007, 07:47 AM // 07:47

No complaints with the changes in general, though I don't know why Spirit Burn was nerfed so hard; the new Ancestor's Rage is very likely overpowered, as a 130 damage spike skill for 5e and .25c is pretty ridiculous. It also combos very nicely with any 1c followup you might use because of the delayed damage.

Byron · Aug 17, 2007, 08:31 AM // 08:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvndoom

Assassins are a hard class to balance; they always tread the line between being too powerful (insta-kill) and almost useless (warrior lite).

QFT.

Changes seem to be okay. I won't cry about ritualist nerfs. I am waiting for the signet of illusions meta, though.

around · Aug 17, 2007, 08:36 AM // 08:36

WTB buffed BLight.

BlackSephir · Aug 17, 2007, 08:42 AM // 08:42

/tearinmyeye
That's some cool changes AN! Keep it up >:D

Akaraxle · Aug 17, 2007, 09:17 AM // 09:17

Some feedback about the new VoD from the German forums:

http://gw.gamona.de/forum/showthread.php?t=321489

Basically, few so far like the change and would want the guild lord to walk out later. I pugged 4 matches around the 200th position, all on Frozen Isle, and in 3 of them our opponents featured a combination of the following: 1-2 nukers, splinter weapon, 3 monks, a hammer linebacker. In all three cases they successfully destroyed our NPCs despite us having the upper hand throughout the match; we lost two of such matches, and in one we had to win by pushing on them by aggroing their lord and wiping them - because they were so damn bad.

In short, the new VoD changed nothing, if not encouraged more 8on8 and VoD builds. If this was an attempt to shorten the waiting times for ATs, it's a really bad idea IMNSHO. ATs are fundamentally flawed in that they became a replacement for the ladder, rather than being an occasional, more competitive activity: changing GvG itself to fix them is not the way.

evenfall · Aug 17, 2007, 09:44 AM // 09:44

Ancestors' Rage needs to go back to 10 energy. The reduction to 5 energy I believe was done in view of exhaustion. Now that the exhaustion is gone, the cost should be reverted. As mentioned by others, 5e .25c 130 damage AOE is likely overpowered.

DreamWind · Aug 17, 2007, 10:59 AM // 10:59

Well I'm glad the rit is overpowered again. It wasn't for about 5 seconds at least.

Burton2000 · Aug 17, 2007, 11:31 AM // 11:31

ancestors was slightly overpowered on a single rit before the nerf to it with exaustion now its freeking imba with 5 energy and 1/4 cast.

Nurse With Wound · Aug 17, 2007, 11:34 AM // 11:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

the new Ancestor's Rage is very likely overpowered, as a 130 damage spike skill for 5e and .25c is pretty ridiculous. It also combos very nicely with any 1c followup you might use because of the delayed damage.

Yeah, exactly my thoughts. 130 damage, 1/4 cast and 5 e reeks of imba. Especially @ VOD.

Divinus Stella · Aug 17, 2007, 12:03 PM // 12:03

A SS nerf needs to happen sometime, the new skills in GWEN are just gonna make it sick.

moko · Aug 17, 2007, 12:13 PM // 12:13

nice rit changes; except spirits and ancestor. /yawn for spamming.

whatever.

WTB nerf on SS, Deadly Paradox, AoM and Black lotus already.

HELLO? :/ buffing semi useless crap doesn't make overpowered skills any worse. -_-

EDIT: for the PvE players that might get confused;

SS = [skill]Steady Stance[/skill]

misunderstandings deleted.

Patrick Smit · Aug 17, 2007, 01:17 PM // 13:17

Its an enchant ment so you cant stack rages with an all rit team, but can be delivered as spike using sp or any other fast shadow step skill, ride the lightning is too slow, even with +20% to enchants, which may be needed when using shadow steps. The damage is quite considerable i must admit.

Relambrien · Aug 17, 2007, 02:34 PM // 14:34

After some experimentation with the new Ancestor's Rage, I'm actually a little bit scared of its spike potential again. If you stack it with a shadowstep, it goes off the instant you reach the target, meaning you can never know who such a person would be spiking.

6 Rt/A's with 2 shadowsteps and Deadly Paradox could spike at a scary-fast speed, and you could even bring two monks along since the damage is so high.

HolyHawk · Aug 17, 2007, 05:12 PM // 17:12

I've read the updates and one of them mentioned a bug that guild lord was taking extra dmg (did not specify which source). Is that me or the Lord is still taking a lot more damage from _players_ than before? I might be wrong, but lord used to be more resilient, even at vod.

hurric · Aug 17, 2007, 06:15 PM // 18:15

Thanks a lot for great Rit reverts! Ancestor's rage is quite good still. Learn to move around instead of stay in 1 place when fighting ritualists people. I'm quite happy about all the updates! Thanks for fixing this mistake! Awesome job. Time to bring back my Rit. I was almost never a spirit spammer in PvP and was left totally crippled but this is awesome! great job!

Saider maul · Aug 17, 2007, 09:45 PM // 21:45

Overall it was a good update and yes Blight does need some luv. My only complaint is " throw the necro a bone " Every anti melee is now 15e. True we want hexes to be made more skillful to utilize and reckless haste was a change in the right direction with short duration and 10/1/12 stats. However currently everything is a 15energy cost, dispite the power of soul reaping that is just to excessive and something should be given back.

I personally would like to see these 2 changes.

Reckless haste: 10/1/12 for 5-12-14 seconds target foe attacks 25% faster but misses 30-48-52% of the time.

Price of failure 10/2/12 for 8-18-22sec target foe has a 25% chance to miss and takes 15-35-40dmg when foe misses with an attack in this way.

With the sorter durations cheaper costs and reapplication in tune with the recharge of most hex removals this would put some skill back into the use of anti melee hexes.

FlyingCube · Aug 17, 2007, 10:16 PM // 22:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saider maul

I personally would like to see these 2 changes.

Price of failure 10/2/12 for 8-18-22sec target foe has a 25% chance to miss and takes 15-35-40dmg when foe misses with an attack in this way.

With the sorter durations cheaper costs and reapplication in tune with the recharge of most hex removals this would put some skill back into the use of anti melee hexes.

Are... are you serious?

Oni Firestarter · Aug 17, 2007, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Poor izzy.

i like what he tried to do with ancestors, by making it so they dont stack. But it just seems like right now, its asking for spike spike spike with rits behind them. You can now drop the 130 ancestors to land incredibly close to your follow up. Its like.. the critical chop for rits now lol. But hopefully that can be fixed somehow. You aren't going to have 8 rits or anything, but Im sure that there are going to be teams with Ancestors + weilders or something on spikes, and thats some 200+ damage landing in effectively... one chunk.

------

I just want to weigh in on this Blight discussion. Quite simply, LoD has COMPLETLEY changed GW as we saw it. And its really hard to talk about any comparison of monk bars before and after LoD.

Put simply, before LoD, there was an entire character devoted to party wide heals. The ele runner. Powered by Prodigy, it dealt with non spike damage while running on most maps. At stand, it would hyper charge a couple HPs to push bars up, and then regen energy via prodigy while running.

No more. Not only did it take two skill slots, but it was pretty much the entire basis for that character. It wasn't INCREDIBLY common, but I did see teams parking their runner at times and opting to use them purely as an HP bot while another char ran flags.

And LoD shattered that. LoD took that runner, and just... annihialated him. With the EP ele no longer needed, teams moved to different types of runners, lets look at the 4 generations of runners:

1) Mo/Es (elites varied, most notably I saw ZB, tho I also saw teams playing around with LoD and other elites to mixed sucess).
2) E/Rts - WoW + Freezing gust (elites varied)
3) E/Mos - SoR + Freezing Gust
4) Rt/E or Rt/D - this is just emerging. Usually weap remdy, shadow, WoW etc

Almost every team is allready putting a skirmish capable healer in their 8th slot. Blight making a monk splittable is such a marginal gain right now. Blight has got to be strong in an 8v8 situation, and it needs to be the FOCAL point of a monk bar. Monk bars are absolutely driven by their elites. LoD is going to be on one monk for sure (only time I can ever see it justified to drop LoD is ..... 4-4 on corrupted?), so your other monk is going to be the blight. A good backup skill just aint gonna cut it. With the exception of possibly RoF, monk elites are almost always their most used skills.

Its why I think the 5 3/4 5 discussions are a viable option, and the 12r or 10 en options just really aren't. A 10 en elite needs to act like SoD does and just deny targets for 7+ seconds. And at a 12 r, I just dont think monks can afford "luxury" elites.