AoE Nerf: Overkill

I agree completely. while both modes are fun, making PvE like PvP will mean a few things. first, it severly limits your choices for builds/skillsets in order to be an effective party member, meaning you'll have to use the same sort of specialized builds you see in PvP in order to find a party willing to accept you in PvE. moreover, tactical gameplay is pretty much useless against foes who are randomized with their aggro/attack patterns. this eliminates a lot of the skill involved in aggroing and where to stand, etc. while i like that Anet was trying to change the dynamics of the game, i think they missed the mark. solo /dual farming is essential to the economy of the game. now only those who had been farming since before the update will benefit, while noobs or those who didnt invest in a 55 or another farm build will now be forced to pay higher prices for ecto/shards or other rare items.

Well, they attack casters because they're squishier. The quicker you can decrease an enemies numbers, the less effective they will be. I would suspect that they break aggro because of AoE.

Both of you do bring up some very good points. There are fundamental differences in PvE vs. PvP. I personally prefer PvE leaps and bounds above PvP because I'm not terribly competitive in nature. I personally like a good challenge, but I dislike it at the cost of stress and rage.

I would be more of a fan of the improved AI if it was at different levels with different enemies. For instance, you can go up against bug-like creatures with crappy AI, and they don't scatter even while being blasted with Firestorm. But, when you attack a group of centaurs, they are extremely intelligent and act closely like real human players. This I think would be a good medium. That way, if you favor a more relaxed play style, smash the bugs. If you want a challenge, go wreck a centaur's village.

Everyone keeps saying AOE a lot here, but I think we need to narrow that down to what Guild Wars has always considered a scatterable AOE spell. They have always been Area Of Effect Over Time, and basically a spell that hits a specific location over a period of time at given increments. This is like firestorm where it hits every 1 second for 10 seconds. This is basically what I have called AOEot.

There are other AOE spells which are an instantaneous attack, or are conditional on such things as counter-attacks. These causing scatter just defeats their usefulness. Anet has never had these types of spells/attacks cause scatter, and I do not believe they intended to in this build. They have always used specific language when discussing updates. In this build, they say that the AOE scatter isn't triggered like it used to be and will only happen when when HP is low. This isn't broadening AOE scatter, it is actually narrowing it down to where it shouldn't happen as easily. I believe this has two goals for spells like Firestorm, Lavafont, etc. One is to make them useful again to deal damage without messing up the containment pattern your group is trying to achieve, and second to prevent these skills from being used intentionally to scatter enemies. I know that just earlier today I was using my Lavafont to keep melee enemies from swarming me, this change makes this less useful, but I don't have a problem with that. With my opinion of what Anet was trying to achieve, it doesn't make sense that ALL damage to low HP enemies causes scatter.

Like I said before, I believe there is simply a part of code missing which narrows this new scatter effect to damage from locational AOEot spells. It is just like the previous concept, that it narrowed it to AOEot damage which was shorter than two second intervals. Well, we are just missing our narrowing variable right now.

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Best comment on the night right there.. nuff said!

Amen Brother Amen.


In any case, since Anet likes to make PvE so much alike as with PvP, perhaps someday we will see this sort of thing:

Thunderhead Keep Mission:

"IWAY group LF rank 3+ W/R and Orders Necro for mission, show rank before invite."

/sighs

Before we continue to complain about the 'AoE Nerf', keep the following from Guildwiki in mind:

• Monster AI is currently erratic. Monster will break aggro from one target if they take damage, but instead of re-establishing aggro (on the same target or new ones) they will get stuck on a target (to the point of just standing there doing nothing).

In short the AI is bugged at the moment.

But of course! Having Crippled enemies makes them attack you even through SS and VwK. The Fire line was still ratehr usefull due to this argument. Now that spells like SS and VwK trigger it, there's no way to still deal damage to foes using those spells. Wonder if Empathy still works...
Anyway, SS is now nothing more then an Elite version of Pacifism. And that skill gets used a lot


A warrior's job in PvE is tank. He has been given the highest armor for that. In PvP, they don't tank, and the armor just soaks up the small amounts of damage they get. Why there are 2 different jobs for the same class? Why are Monks healers or protectors? Why do Eles have (had) nuking abilities, Spiking, Warding and Snaring abilities? All classes have different jobs depending on PvE/PvP. Snares and Spikes for Eles in PvP, Nuking and Warding in PvE. Monks had the same jobs in PvP as in PvE. MM are used in PvE, Necros aren't used in PvP anymore. Also, you might want to look at the Warrior's Tactics line. It was pretty much meant to increase the warrior's durability even more while holding aggro. Yeah, add most of those skills to the junk pile too.

Also, PvP != PvE. And PvE'ers don't want PvP shoved down their throat, just as little as you PvP'ers wanted to PvE to get skills. Now look what you got, PvP unlock packs, easier way to swap chars, more armor and shield options, doubled Balth's Faction, increased Balt's Faction cap, ...
Yeah, you PvP'ers should be the ones complaining about what's going on in PvE...

Someone tell me what the point is of this monster AI update? What is the benefit? It made a TON of people mad and there is no upside.

Please don't say it improved the difficulty of PvE. Monsters have always been a joke and this hasn't changed that. It just made things more tedious which is what the last AoE change did.

It won't drive people into forming more teams because for the most part, people hate playing the "find a party" mini-game for 10 minutes. Nightfall's heroes stand as a testament to how much people hate trying to find parties.

Farming and botting will always exist and their impact on the economy has become minimal at worst, beneficial at best. Besides, why should such a large part of the community suffer because of ANet's endless, unattainable pursuit of killing a few bots that will regenerate faster than a scattered Attaxe.

Lastly, the Marketing dept must be pulling its hair out. Here we are on the brink of a new release and ANet just alienated a lot of its farming fanbase.

Of course people will adapt....that's a given but it doesn't excuse how pointless it is for ANet to continually punish farming for practically no benefit.

Oh yeah, one more thing. We have a ton of new "stuff" with this update that I don't see a lot of you asking for. There wasn't a huge cry among the community for new damage animations and build saving templates. I'm not saying they're all bad but there are a lot of things that we've all been requesting since E3fE that still haven't been touched.....and I'm not talking about skill gems. The biggest one on my list is some kind of decent buying/selling tool. The constant selling spam is as dated as text-based MUD's. Why all this effort at providing things that hardly anyone is asking for while some major concerns STILL go unnoticed?

I am not against an improved AI, i just think that randomizing isnt improving the intelligence at all. a huge part of the gameplay is tactics, i.e. casters not trying to tank, etc. and randomizing what youre fighting against, while seeming like a good idea, makes the game a lot more frustrating and unenjoyable because it takes a lot of that sort of gameplay out of the picture. granted, ive been hearing a lot of "if you cant adapt ur just a n00b, go away" in-game, which is expected, but frankly i dont see anyone adapting to an enemy that is random, not logical. while i dont want to see the melee monsters restricted to attacking tanks only and never running away or some other such nonsense, perhaps making them conform to a more logical, party oriented behavior, or one more suited to the regular average joe player out there, is better for the game. farmers might benefit, but i still dont see the harm in that, the more people farm greens etc, the lower the prices get. if some ppl buy and sell gold than tsk tsk on them but i dont think the whole economy needs to be nerfed to stop the bots and gold farmers


long rant over.

See My Previous Post in this thread or just scroll up to see it.

Summary: It is probably bugged and they were not trying to make scatter happen more, but actually less... the damage which caused it just wasn't clarified in the code.

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Ya right now the monsters scatter and wait till they regen. Gaile Gray said that they're still working on balancing the game until the final Build on Friday.
There are still glitches such as the Green Staves not having any mods.

Wow... I think I've just been called a PvPer. I'm not sure if I should take that as a compliment, or an insult. I guess, it is just a title with no connotations, albeit completely false. Ah well.

So umm, you think that a warrior being considered a 'tank' in PvE and a pressure class in PvP is equivalent to a Monk being able to heal or protect (no matter the game type)? Odd relation. I would say a warrior could be an Axe-spiker or a Hammer-knockdown, or a Tactics-tank, no matter the game type.

Not what I'm saying. I'm saying the warrior has two completely different uses depending on the game type, PvP or PvE. No other class can truly say that, not to the extent of the core uses. Sure an Ele Air spiker has more use in PvP than PvE, that doesn't mean you're not ineffective at all as an Air Spiker in PvE. In fact, an Air Spiker can do pretty damn good in PvE.

The point is, you simply cannot 'apply pressure' with a warrior in PvE, because the AI simply doesn't treat threats like that the same way a human would. You can't 'tank' in PvP because humans are simply not stupid enough to huddle around one warrior whilst being pounded on from everyone else.

Granted, that causes certain skills to be useless, as they are. But once AI is at human-quality, those certain skills can be buffed, and altered to become useful in both PvP and PvE. Thus, the synergy between the two worlds.

As I said before, agreeing with others, that may not be the best way to go, but there can be alternatives, like what I listed about altering levels of AI. I don't like the idea of a super-intelligent zombie just as much as I don't like dumb-as-bricks human NPCs.

Dude, all these complaints about the AOE changes would be valid if it werent for one thing: PVE is damn easy.

If I can go through most of the campaign with henchies then how hard can PVE be? The answer? Not very hard at all. I'm not saying that I'm perfect, in fact, I'm saying the opposite. And if someone like me finds the PVE easy, I dont think you all should complain so much about the "nerfs"

And for the love of god, try adapting and stop clinging onto the same old 55 and SS builds and the same strategies of warriors taking all aggro. Now you'll just have to adjust and bring some protection for the backline. Big deal.

I just went back to my old farming spot, not minotaurs or trolls, and there was no AOE scatter from SS in my area. Any1 else find this with their farming spots?

The new damage display is crazy, they should be accompanied with BOOINGGG sounds.

Just wait. Im SS in Uw sometimes and i want to know:

Does the AI still not recognise SS as a AoE spell. I understand that they would spaced apart now(Aatxes and the like), but they should hopfully converge on the monk who holds aggro. So my question is, does SS farming still work?

Well I tried out 55 farmign with just SoJ and uhh once they hit 1/4~1/6hp hp they run away and stay away... only re-agro once you attack them...

uh this kills everyones farming everywhere.

even W/Mo's trying to farm trolls with cyclone axe...

Well this will make the 1 mil out of 2 (half the warriors) choose a real prfession now wont it

Wooops, they did it again.
Well i was allways asking myself why they left SS out of the AOE Scatter and was happy that they didn't kill strategy completely. Now they've done and none too soon it seems. I have the slight feeling this will make me think twice about making my dervish -.-

I just hate it when the mobs run left and right and turn everything into utter chaos. It's annoying, frustrating and takes the purpose out of builds completely. Please, have them run from a warrior too, i'd just love to chase them around the map. Oh and please, make them run from staring at them too. And while you're at it, why not make them run if they're outnumbered and give them some solid speedbuffs and selfheals? RA Runner Syndrome for everyone, isn't it fun? Well normally just for the runner so i guess the AI gets some fun now.

Thought I was playing a FPS myself, I dont need some humongeous animated numbers blocking my view, whats coming next? "Multi Kill" with a Nuke??......

I was talking in general, PvP'ers vs PvE'ers, and their feeling towards another. Yes, you can apply Pressure as a Warrior in PvE, but you can't atnk in PvP. Seriously. The only Tactics Tanks in PvP you'll see are noobs in the RA.
The Warior's Tank/Pressure in relation with Monks was that every profession has multiple uses, one being more usefull in PvE then PvP. Bonders for example are pretty much PvE only, and only in small parties.
In PvP, the Warrior's job is Pressure. Ripostes and Evasive stances have no use in PvP. Monks may be a bad example, but let's look ta Necros. What rae they used for in PvP these days? Order and Tainted Necs as Damage buffers to the team, or Blood Spike. The Only place you see Order necs in PvE is TotPK, Tainted ones are pretty much non-existant. Other uses for necs in PvP: non-existant. In PvE, we have MM (nerfed hard before, AI affected Melee minions too so they're now like mobs spreading damage instead of focussing on a single target, which could be considered a nerf too), SS necs (nerfed) and the occasional experimental Curse necro. Blood Spike is arely done unless vs high-armoured foes, in which case the SS or MM would dish out more damage.
Also, the only way to buff said skills would be completely overhaul them. No way to focus aggro = no need for evasive stances or skills that increase your AL ("Watch yourself", "Shields Up" would still be usefull though).