Game balance: Expertise

Lets take a look at profession primary abilities.

Warrior - Strength Does not effect other professions skills

Elementalist - Energy Storage Does not effect other profession skills

Monk - Divine Favor Does not effect other profession skills

Necromancer - Soul Reaping Does not effect other profession skills

Mesmer - Fast Casting Does not greatly effect other profession skills

Assassin - Critical Strikes Does not greatly effect other profession skills

Ritualist - Spawning Power Does not greatly effect other profession skills

Ranger - Expertise has a huge effect on other profession skills

Now the original description of Expertise stated "The Expertise attribute reduces the energy cost of Attack, Preparation, and Trap skills by 4 percent."
Back when the attribute was first developed and decided for the Ranger I wonder if they meant for it to only affect ranger based skills. During the Nightfall preview event there were a ton of people playing R/P, and lets not forget the rampaging R/N in RA and Alliance Battles. If it wasn't for the fact that Expertise greatly reduces the energy cost of skills, then hardly anyone would play a ranger primary other than for ranged attacks, interrupts, and traps (which the class was originally designed for).
Its time that Expertise was limited to only affecting Ranger based skills.

Don't nerf Expertise to only rangers just because some people created a cookiecutter build with it for a touchranger... Just make those touches SPELLS instead of skills if you want to nerf something.

Hi, Strength triggers on all attack skills, if I'm not gravely mistaken. It triggers on say, Ranger attack skills too... Bad argument, and I'm less than 20 words in...

/not signed

And now for the rest:

Ever see an E/Mo spamming Heal Party or Extinguish? Say, those are practicaly elementalist spells! Ether Prodigy powered spamming ftw? Yeah, sorry you're wrong here too, even if you argue that Ether Prodigy is a skill(that is linked to Energy Storage, and one that almost every elementalist brings), higher energy storage still effects how much you can spam somthing without energy managment.. So... Yeah...

You're right about Divine Favor. Of course, how many non-monk non-energy managment skills do monks use? Hmm... 0?

Soul Reaping effects energy levels. More energy = more skill usage. More skill usage = good. Those skills can be from your secondary. Although, for the most part Soul Reaping is entirely worthless.

Fast Casting... Hmm... You got me here... Wait, nope! It has the exact same effect on all spells, regardless of what attribute line they're from, and what class they belong to... Ever see Me/E fast cast air spike? What about Me/E shutdown guys run, say, Gale?

So, for the Assassin example, no one runes Assassin/X without daggars... No one seriously runs anything but a handful of assassins, and on each bar the skills are very simmilar... So... What's your point here? You're not using anything other than daggars and dagger skills/shadow stepping skills/1 utility skill as an assassin anyway, are you?

Yet.. What is the only thing Ritualists ever do? Spam spirits. Ritualist spirits. Oh, and this effects Ranger Spirits the same as Ritualist Spirits, and no other class has spirits. So, you're wrong here again...

Expertise only effects "Skills" and not spells. Want to count how many plain "Skills" there are that are actualy usable by Rangers in a non sub-par way? Oh, Touch rangers don't count by the way, they fall under the sub-par category. The only thing that's really entirely viable is Thumpers(and maybe one skill as a single utility skill, like hex breaker or CoP...)... And they just got a nerf with the Pet DP...

Why would anyone nerf touch rangers? It's not like they're actualy any good.

Let's take another look at other professions' primary skills.

Warrior - Strength - Does help other professions skills (attacks).
Ranger - Expertise - Does help other skills.
Mesmer - Fast Casting - Does help other skills (spells)
Elementalist - Energy Storage - Does help other skills (ones that need energy)
Necromancer - Soul Reaping - Does help other skills (ones that need energy)
Monk - Divine Favor - Doesn't help other skills
Assassin - Critical Strikes - Does help other skills (attacks)
Ritualist - Spawning Power - Does help some other skills (ranger spirits, necromancer minions)

So Divine Favor doesn't help the skills of your secondary profession at all, and Spawning Power only a bit. All the rest do.

Yeah Divine Favour is the most selfish primary attribute, but you can't change divine favour because its too useful for Monks.

Oh, and Ranger having a huge effect on all classes?

Healing Touch & CoP - two monk "skills" that a ranger will never use.
Blackout - one mesmer "skill"

Expertise is fine, you cannot "fix", that which is not broken.

In end dicussion

Every primary attribute gives each class something unique. No two primary attributes behave the same way.

Expertise is designed to synergize with energy based skills that include:
Attacks, Skills, Shouts, Stances, Traps, Preparation, Spirits

The ranger provides a great primary to synergize with a secondary profession that uses these type of skills. That being: Warrior, Assassin, Dervish, Paragon

All attack classes.

This is a limited synergy because it does not affect SPELLS.
Spells being: Hexes, Enchantments and Spells

Lets take a quick look at exactly what does expertise affect core professions only?

R/W: This is a great combo, it allows the ranger to spam low energy cost warrior attacks.

Cyclone Axe, Swift Chop, Belly smash, crude smash, Crushing Blow, Irresistable Blow, Renewing Smash, Hamstring, Hundred Blades, eeking blade, pure strike, savage slash, deadly riposte
All energy basedshouts, all energy based stances
Wild Blow, Desperate Blow, distracting blow(insert innuendo here), Thrill of Victory, Protector's Defense


R/Mo: Touch skills: Holy Strike, Smite
skill: Contemplation of Purity

R/E: Touch skills: Lightning Touch, Shock...um thats it really...i dont recall of glyphs are affected by expertise

R/Me: Stances: Blackout, Hex breaker, Distortion, the various Mantras (except recall), elemental and physical resistance.

R/N: Touch of Agony, Vampiric Touch and its copy, Wallow's Bite, Enfeebling Touch, Vile touch, Plague Touch


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Ok...so are those really that over powered?

the R/P is going to be basically the same as a R/W in terms of the types of skills it can use. Attacks. The adrenal based skills will require Ferocious strike to be really effective. The R/P pre-build is basically a bunny thumper with a spear and a shield.

Each primary allows it to do something others cannot.

Ranger's expertise allows it to use those skills i listed from its secondary with just the same "expertise" as its own ranger skills.

Why do people have a problem with synergy?

A Ranger primary will never deal as much straight damage as the X/ Primary, because they lack runes and headgear that add to the attributes. Rangers are just a little better at spreading damage around, that's their niche, and nerfing would remove a very large and enjoyable part of the game.

meh i say send in the dervishes agaisnt the touchies ...

Touch rangers are good only against melee attackers. Others can do hit and run strategy where touchers fall quite nicely.

As other have already said all the primarys attributes have there uses - except monks divine favor - if the reason u posted this is because of touch rangers and it seems like that, there are very easy to take out just outkite them using speed buffs thus making there touch skills useless - after a bit of chasing theyll give up goin after u, i usully then just turn around and hit em w/ massive degen

but yea next time u post dont be so biased...

This thread has been debated and answered already, so I won't bring up what has already been said. All I really want to say is that Expertise should not be nerfed- Rangers have a small amount of energy and only 3 regen. All of the abilities in the game (with the exception of adrenaline) require energy to use. If Expertise is nerfed and only effects ranger skills, they would run out of energy in 3-5 attacks and useful secondaries would no longer be used.

Quoted for accuracy.

actually, useless or not, devine favor also affects assassin enchantments with blessed signet. so it isnt completely class specific.

Critical Strikes carries over to other attacks perfectly, and Strength carries over to other attack skills perfectly, Energy Storage increases the Elementist energy available with any classes spells, not just Elemental, and Soul Reaping grants added energy when enemeis die, reguardless of whether or not you are using it for death magic. Ritualist Spawning Power increases the health of their own summoned units as well as Necromancer summoned units. Mesmers Fast cast improves cast speed for any classes spells.

The only class in the game who has a primary attribute which only works for their own skills is Monk, and it works great, it may be a bit powerful, but if they didn't have it, they couldn't compeate as healers with their own skills, so it is neccessary.

Ranger is one of the 7 classes with an attribute which is useful for other classes skills, just because it is the most effective form of energy management doesn't mean it is broken. I would argue that some other classes have primaries which lack luster, but that's not what this tread is about, the point is that Rangers Primary isn't broken because it grants effective combinations with other classes skills.

Honestly, I don't know why there arn't more Blood Elementist, they can certainly spam some of those skills with ether prodigy, with a full line of life stealing skills they could spam a hurt on someone.

Touch Ranger just underscores the value of good interruption and spell spamming counters, a powerful Backfire and Soul Leach as well as some disabling could make a touch ranger a sitting duck or a kamakazi, just because effective counters are not a bread and butter part of most builds doesn't mean that there isn't sufficient balance available.

your argument is crap, really it is.

Here is the way I see it

Necro, Ranger, Elementalist - Primary attribute affects all classes and increases overall effectiveneess through energy management
Warrior, Mesmer, Ritualist, Assassin - Primary attribute affects some and increases overall effectiveness through efficiency of skills used (more powerful, faster, more health, etc)
Monk - Primary attribute affects monk skills only (thereby affecting all other classes) and increases effectiveness through increased monk skill efficiency (more health for the same energy)

I think that the beauty of Expertise is that it does work with more than just ranger skills (I don't use a touch ranger). I think the beauty of fast casting is that it works with other spells (Fast cast ressurection spells FTW). The beauty of...I hope you get the point.

Leave Expertise the way it is.
Leave Vamp Touch/bite the way it is.

Instead try harder to find a way around the "problem."

Let people paly R/W, R/N, R/P, R/Mo (Smite=attack skill), and whatever else they want. They will get all the benefits of expertise and all the drawbacks of not having 16 in their other attributes (the BIG problem with a Me/E FC nuker).

/thread closed

Expertise should have energy cost reduction penalities for non-ranger skills.

Instead of the full ammount of cost reduction, you get loss reduction for non-ranger skills.

Not all, but some.

Leave them the way they are, as it's been said, every other primary attribute other than Divine Favor works with other classes spells/skills/attacks, and it would be dumb to nerf expertise and not nerf every other primary attribute...

Ever been playing a monk then get hit by broad headed arrow+ a large spike? if you havn't go see what its like and then come back and tell me rangers ARNT good