Curse

Midnight08 · Jul 22, 2007, 02:32 AM // 02:32

yea, that is an awkward balance atm with fort "usually" winning out, but +5 AR still has its place... if cracked becones readily availible they might dissapear for the most part (with only 4 skills that cause it its no big deal yet, but could be worse if other skills are changed to add it)

Master Ketsu · Jul 22, 2007, 03:28 AM // 03:28

cracked armor also hurts rangers alot. Its sad how many people seem to forgot the 100AL against elemental rangers have when considering the meta...

Draxanoth · Jul 22, 2007, 07:44 AM // 07:44

I just hope there's some PVE skills for tanks to help the support more than just some armor and adjacent evasion for 9 seconds.

"NOOBS!" - All foes within earshot try to kill you, and only you, for X seconds.

Alright maybe that's a little imbalanced, but you know what I mean.

NeHoMaR · Jul 22, 2007, 08:15 AM // 08:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draxanoth

I just hope there's some PVE skills for tanks to help the support more than just some armor and adjacent evasion for 9 seconds.

"NOOBS!" - All foes within earshot try to kill you, and only you, for X seconds.

Alright maybe that's a little imbalanced, but you know what I mean.

A tank skill, hmmm! it's really possible; I am not sure how difficult is to implement. Maybe the skill must be:

Hit Me!: Shout. For 1...15 seconds all party/allies are invisible to foes, excluding you. (strength skill, or PvE warrior exclusive skill)

JeniM · Jul 22, 2007, 08:25 AM // 08:25

I like that skill idea

arcanemacabre · Jul 22, 2007, 08:31 AM // 08:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeHoMaR

A tank skill, hmmm! it's really possible; I am not sure how difficult is to implement. Maybe the skill must be:

Hit Me!: Shout. For 1...15 seconds all party/allies are invisible to foes, excluding you. (strength skill, or PvE warrior exclusive skill)

Oh man, can it have a Fight Club reference?

"I want you to hit me as hard as you can!" Shout. For 1...15 seconds, the next skill used or the next attack made by all foes within earshot target you instead.

Yumm...

ZenRgy · Jul 22, 2007, 08:39 AM // 08:39

Spear Swipe... Free dazed with almost no conditional... Hmm.

I like some of the new hex removal options though.

Melody Cross · Jul 22, 2007, 08:51 AM // 08:51

On the smiting prayers:

Smiting Prayers are not spammable due to the high recharge. The idea is good, but the skills don’t exist in the smiting prayers line atm to make SBoon usable on a defender. A half monk, a runner, some type of support build for splits that adds pressure, maybe. In the end, a regular caster with off-monk Draw is an improvement over most smite monks in terms of pressure to opposing teams and provides more utility to their team. Existing hybrid protection build rely on heal per cast to keep players alive. Mend C and Dismiss are good because they remove conditions and heal.

I’m not saying that support smiters should have the same damage that an SF ele can put out. But it should be respectable and comparable to other utility builds out there. In the end, I wish Holy Damage were not armor ignoring. I think that was a huge mistake because it has gimped every skill in the smiting prayers line since…including these.

Because of this, Smiter’s Boon will not see serious play.

Purifying veil will defiantly see play . Good idea; just wish it wasn’t in the smite line. It may be useful to consider increasing the conditions removed, however. Dazed usually comes with a cover…still, It's Just a Flesh Wound and Cautery Sig may have found a new best friend...

Recycle for smite condi should be dropped. It’s a situational small range AoE spell that takes 1 second to cast (full cycle 8 seconds). Not worth a slot.

Castigation Signet should reduce cast time to ¼ second. Frankly, so should Bane sig while you’re in the shop. How can you use either effectively if they take 1 second to cast?

The Protection Prayers line is obviously solid, so I understand why only one skill was added to that line:

Steadfast Soul looks a useful skill for an off-monk or support smiter (overpowered in some builds, actually, where wars may intentionally KD themselves or bring skills that can put them on their backside like Crude Swing). Time and testing will tell.

Healing Prayers has some very interesting additions:

Cure Hex looks like a great skill. A non-elite Divert, just like we asked for. Can’t wait to see it in action.

Spotless Mind could be a solid non-elite removal if it doesn’t get nerfed. A non-elite Divert pointed in a different direction. Could be very powerful against hex teams for passive removal.

So could Spotless Soul. Passive condi removal sounds neat, especially in PvE. Their only problem will be that they are passive. Do they remove a hex/condition on cast or do you wait for 5-3 seconds? I’d like to see the either uptime increased or recycle reduced for both to make it easier to remove 2 hexes or 3 conditions without locking yourself into HP (and to combat enchant strips; can you say shatterbait?) but this may be a step toward viable “pure” healing builds other than HBoon or an improvement thereof.

Healer’s Covenant using enchantments has long been an idea I’ve tinkered with. Buffing existing HP enchants on a whole would widely increase the attribute’s abilities. Prot has better enchantments (the best in the game where utility is concerned) so prot sees use and is more seriously considered outside of LoD, Infuse and GoH (I think Seed still sees play in HA…been a while).

But…RC is king at condi removal, and needs to stay that way to combat the massive condition potential that exists in most team builds, PvPwise

I’m not sure which underpowered skills you are buffing though. Build diversity would improve if Elite skills that have existed since Prophecies were improved. More on that in end of post suggestions.

Healing Ribbon…no. Balling teams get owned by the AoE that exists from all the casters (and dervishes) in the game. I don’t see it seeing play without better healing or a self target ability so you can control and use it to better effect. It’s a rare and powerful skill that sees its way onto a monks bar and is incapable of healing her/him.

Patient Spirit: I dunno. It looks too weak on its heal for starters, and a lot can happen in 3 seconds. You throw a heal, you want that person healed ASAP. Derv teams will see use for spamming this. Beyond that…maybe this a turn toward “sloppy monking”. Throw it on someone who may get hit, then swap targets to someone who is getting hit…and throw it again. Maybe make it more like RoF or Divine intervention it self strips if the player takes damage or fatal damage? I just don’t know yet.

Suggestions/wishlist:

Overhaul existing ally targeting smiting spells to be viable in PvP. Retribution or Holy Wrath should not be maintained enchantments but on par as a smiter’s Spirit Bond. Change Defender’s Zeal to an ally targeting enchantment (and 5/1/10). Give Balthazar’s Pendulium a nearby AoE damage strike per cast (not a big hit, but something that would make spamming this skill worthwhile outside of a KD fest). Reduce the recycle of Judge’s intervention (and Divine intervention) by half. Then you’ll have the makings of a solid smite build that can provide support to the team via SBoon. Its not as subversive as a mesmer nor as powerful as an ele or rit, but it’s a support character that does damage…and that’s what smiters should be, imho.

If Holy damage makes you wary of such action…remove the armor ignoring aspect. It’s either that or remove smiting, and you guys seem to be trying to buff smite a little…

Healing Prayers enchantments need to be improved and made useful. The only people who take HBreeze are those who don’t know any better, your henchmen or farmers (and PS is the farmer’s bread and butter…though, if you mess with that, I think you’d have a monk riot in-game and RL). The only people who take restful breeze are…does anyone? Does anyone actually use Supportive Spirit? Outside of 4v4 arenas, Vigorous Spirit is trash for passive healing. Buff them. While you’re at it, increase heal per cast for most skills as well (orison, Words of Comfort, Whisper, et al) as well. Where protection is super because it prevents damage, HP needs to rock because it (yes, I’m saying it) overheals. So long as HP heals are as tight as they are, prot or hybrid prot will always be a better alternative hands down. You’ve made it too easy to outpressure a healing monk and ignored or stopgapped the lines shortcomings (sans LoD; one of the few great anti-pressure skills in the game). These skills are a start, but only a start, at making the HP line viable in pvp. To get HP into contention, it needs to be addressed at a fundamental level. While we’re at it, 1 second is an eternity to a decent mesmer. Reducing cast time to some of the straight heals would improve an HP monk’s ability to survive (why HBoon was so successful and remains viable in PvE). The other reason why monks prefer prot is because when they cast a spell, there is a reasonable chance it will actually land on the target. Not so much for HP.

Increase range for Healing Burst and decrease recycle, decrease uptime and recycle for healing hands and healing seed by about half to force proactive use. Buff Glimmer's heal or remove the recycle; you overnerfed it and its trash now.

DF skills need a buff. Do it. Aura of Faith could make a viable healing build or smiter build OR prot build if you could maintain it on 8 people with relative ease. Boon Sig should apply to enchantments on you, not target (and increase heal), Blight is outdated (reduce recycle to 4 and bump healing up), PnH should either supply 2 pips per cast or give an energy boost if it is removed early from you (by means other than attacking), Scribe’s insight should have massively reduced recycle, Spellbreaker…reduce recycle and leave everything else (there are too many ways to remove it now not to and it doesn’t see play because its not worth it to run something that only works on one ally ¼ of the time). Even at 7 seconds, I still wouldn’t take Withdraw Hexes into a match. Increase range to start with, lower cost and…drop recycle even more.

Buff spell shield’s uptime. I don’t care about Aspenwood, buff it. Divine Boon…gimme back my boonprot please. Reduce recycle on watchful healing to 5 or even 4 and reduce its strip heal slightly at the same time. Do all that and the DF line will be as strong a contender as prot for elite choice and diversifying builds.

Prot: Mark of Prot and Life Sheath. Reduce recycle on both. Make Shield Guardian’s effect scale to 1…3 attack skills or remove the nearby heal and make it 5/0.25/3, an attack damage triggering RoF. Guardian: reduce cast time to ¾ and increase uptime to 7. Increase uptime on Spirit Bond (or make it scale like PS) but leave the 10 attack removal in place.

That’s my wishlist anyway…when do we get a run buff?

GGs

Hong Kong Evil · Jul 22, 2007, 09:03 AM // 09:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Artdeux

Ritualists.
Need.
A.
Freaking.
Hex.
Removal.
Skill.

i support this,

Mending Grip
Spell. Target ally is healed for 15...63...75 Health. If that ally is under the effects of a weapon Spell, that ally loses one Condition.

i suggest it remove a hex instead of a condition

Cloud5646 · Jul 22, 2007, 03:33 PM // 15:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midnight08

Why do you say it'll do LESS damage as life steal? At the current levels the damage is as high as Death Blossom (the higest damage Dual besides BoS). Life steal will also ignore Armor making it generally MORE effective than many Duals.

It will do less dmg exatly cuz it ignores armor and it's not a +xx.
Compare it to blades of steel on a 60 AL target... bos does more then 80 dmg each strike while vampiric assault will do only 40.

Midnight08 · Jul 22, 2007, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cloud5646

It will do less dmg exatly cuz it ignores armor and it's not a +xx.
Compare it to blades of steel on a 60 AL target... bos does more then 80 dmg each strike while vampiric assault will do only 40.

BoS is the highest damage dagger attack, of course its higher... the only dagger attacks that do more base damage than vamp is BoS and Death Blossom. @ 15 BoS wins by 20 if yer using a 4 skill attack chain, while Death Blossom wins by 5. Otoh, prot spells mean little to vamp, while they can greatly lower the damage of the normal dagger skills. The real question as to how comparable this is is whether dagger damage is still counted in its equation or not.

MrFuzzles · Jul 22, 2007, 06:30 PM // 18:30

Just listing my first impressions on the Dervish skills since that's what I'm playing the most lately.

Can't argue with a weakness for dervish, even if it's for physical classes only (assuming the enemy monk doesn't start pew pewing me with his staff). I can't wait to try out Shield of Force with Armor of Sanctity, even if it's single target specific.

For Aura Slicer to be effective, I hope the cracked armor graphic is easy to spot.

Not that hot about farmer's scythe. The damage isn't that appealing for me to consider bringing it in pvp, assuming I manage to hit 2 players with it in the first place.

Radiant Scythe looks like an awesome opener. I'll have to actually try it a bit to get a feel of just how useful it is in the bigger picture.

Little bit reserved on Grenth's Aura. Something about "All foes", "nearby" and "15s" just stands out as slightly over the top. It sounds like a skill I will almost always bring, even without points in windprayers.
How about making it affect only 1 target per 2 points in WP?

Racthoh · Jul 22, 2007, 08:31 PM // 20:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by dsnesnintendo

seems alot of these skills are situational(why anet why no new minion)

Wait until the PvE skills are revealed, not like the PvP crowd will be crying if there is a minion they can't use.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LifeInfusion

I guess I might have underrated Smoke Powder. But consider it relies on the same mechanic as Riposte (Deadly riposte is 0 activation also but isn't a stance) but doesn't count melee only, so you potentially blind nothing while not in adjacent range. Wands/staves/bows count as being struck as well.

I was primarily thinking of it as a skill to use against a spike on a monk, where it would be unlikely that wanding will knock you out of it. Not like you see many other professions besides the monk going /W or /A for the defensive utility that becomes available.

Quote:

Since it is a stance, it gets killed by things like Wild Throw (which isn't in the adjacent range), and you cannot stack it with things like IAS stances, Dash, Dark Escape, and Shadow Walk

I'm not sure how the mechanics would work on Wild Throw, whether the effect would trigger or cause it to end before the blinding. Anyone carrying an IAS stance is unlikely to use a defensive cancel, they'll more than likely be using a run buff like Dash. Dark Escape would most likely end up on a monk as well, and I can't remember the last time I watched anything where someone was using Shadow Walk; usually just SP or Recall being used on sins for shadow walking.

Looking back at it, however, it's hard to say whether it opens up new possibilities or not. It doesn't require a heavy attribute investment to get the job done, a three second blind would be more than enough time to get a prot up and do some healing. But, outside of a spike situation it doesn't exactly do much to reduce pressure. Compared to a warrior's block stance, although a higher attribute allocation is necessary, they can be used more frequently to reduce pressure and mitigate a spike.

Quote:

Originally Posted by arcanemacabre

I'm wondering if Cracked Armor is going to make +30 fortitude mods more attractive than +5 armor on the average...

Carry both. Only four means of applying the condition, you won't see it that often.

Malice Black · Jul 22, 2007, 08:55 PM // 20:55

Curses with Hexor's Vigor will be interesting

Defile Defenses good for warrior shut down

Atrophy - Will be loving this if they don't nerf it.

Age · Jul 22, 2007, 09:08 PM // 21:08

There are some good Monk and Warrior skills in there I haven't gone through all of them but some look really good.I just wonder what is an elite or whats not if these are just normal skills.

To Melody Cross maybe they should reduce the energy cost on HB.

Risa · Jul 22, 2007, 09:26 PM // 21:26

Only recently began looking, but Feral Aggression is looking pretty darn nice...
Added - Cure Hex is making Healing Prayers a little more attractive to me.

achilles ankle · Jul 22, 2007, 11:19 PM // 23:19

OK..here we go lol

After looking at the skills, im loving almost all of them. The only reason im a little concerned is because, some of them just seem too good to be true.
Atrophy seems way to powerful, as well as rapid fire. An assassin investing only 5-6pts into marksmanship can keep up a 33% faster attack rate indefinalty....along with all the other melee professions. Have a feeling this is going to be moved to expertise. Cure hex, well first i have to say THANK YOU ANET, and secondly...please dont hurt it that much. Monks have needed a cheap hex removal for a long time, considering a necro can put on about 6 hexes in less than 5 seconds and a monk, minus an elite, can take off maybe 1? in that same time. At least there is some balancing going on i guess.
Burning shield is a skill i have been wanting since i first began playing guild wars and discovered the condition burning. Dont really fear it being nerfed because since mending touch conditions are not really a problem anymore.
Spear Swipe looks awesome, cant wait to try that out. Disrupting anthem's recharge will be increased, especially because of AB where a shout can affect, literally, ur ENTIRE team. The two "Spotless" monk skills are pretty cool IMO. Poison tip signet just killed poison arrow if it wasnt already killed.
Vampric assualt combined with nighmare weapon(VERY NICE), as well as Signet of deadly corruption+signet of toxic shock looks nice too.

Cracked Armor seems like a pvp condition, as well as alot of these skills. Not really worried though because there are 50PVE ONLY skills coming out, as well as all of the elites.
Sorry if this seems more like a pvp post, but i have not really dont much pve in the past few months because it has just been too repetative.
well..thats all i got for now, go ahead discuss/rant/tear me apart.
---> http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_...e_North_skills <--
ah one more thing, melody cross..about your wishlist. I think 80% of the suggestions you made were to reduce the recast rate on monk spells. Dont really think its gonna happen, i mean how often does anet actually REDUCE recast rate. I wish it would happen, but i highly doubt any of it is gonna happen. and i think boonprot/heal is dead lol, move on to bigger and better things.
just wanna say again THANK YOU FOR THE MONK HEX REMOVALS since they will actualy be used.

Siva arwen · Jul 23, 2007, 02:31 AM // 02:31

before u say Vampiric Assault suck, do u know y this skill used Deadly Arts instead of Dagger Mastery or Critical Strikes? do u know there is a build that use high Deadly Arts and throw dagger? do u know any of these skills Iron Palm, Dancing Daggers, Mantis Touch, Impale? with this skill, Vampiric Assault, Deadly Arts doesnt need a high Dagger Mastery to use dual-atk for high dmg or hight Shadow Arts for self-healing. Dont u understand it now?

MagmaRed · Jul 23, 2007, 06:46 AM // 06:46

Defile Defenses + Dual Shot + Forked Arrow + Needling Shot = dead Protect Monk

Guardian, Aegis, and Shield of Deflection get raped.

Ranger and Warrior will too, as they both have many stances to block.

I don't look forward to playing my Paragon in PvE with Necros using Vocal Minority. Cacophany will just be worse.

I see Necro getting nerfed big time before this goes live.

Ouch.... I just realized Vampiric Assault is a Dual Attack, meaning it hits twice. 84 stolen health at 16 Deadly Arts..... wow.

Zaganher Deathbane · Jul 23, 2007, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Way of the Warrior? This doesn't sound like a useable skill. Assassins can't use this because they need daggers and for other class to use this, they need to pump up critical strikes to use its decent effect but since critical strikes is an assassin's primary attribute this will never see action in any skill bar