Big skill shake up

Hi,

I really think Anet is missing a trick here in keeping people interested in this game until GW2 becomes a reality.

Before I start i would point out I play PvP and PvE and obviously gettting the game close to balance is important, especially in PvP.

Having said that, how would you, the players, feel about a really big skill shake up. I mean, lets take all the skills that no one uses and buff them in some way. Obviously this means that some are going to become very powerful and used in ways the developers never realised, so we give it a couple of weeks then re-evaluate the situation.

To me this would shake up this game dramatically, and inject new life into a game where the same skills are on every bar.

The effects on PvP would be dramatic as new team builds come into play.

High Level PvP appears on the surface to be dying a slow death. Lets Put some new skills out there, not do too much testing in house and let the players beta test them. I think our input is sometimes undervalued by Anet in terms of skill balancing.

I suppose what I am trying to say is it better to have a different type of imbalance or stay the way we are now?

you're not from 'round these parts, are you?

I do not want GW to have an infinite arsenal of powerful skills.

Updating the skills so that we can go from one imbalance to another? Yeah, there's a whole lot of progress being made there.

Seeing as skill balances are slow and usually miss the biggest issues more than they actually fix them, i'd say making more imbalance is a pretty stupid move.

If GW had an infinite arsenal of powerful skills, it would be balanced. If every skill is good, none is bad, and in turn there can't be no good since there is no bad. And with more powerful skills the meta can't become centralized around one build, since many other skills are as good or better/worse in certain circumstances. I'd say make all skills OP in some way!

/signed

GW desperately needs a big skill shake up.

One really simple solution is to let the players balance them by selection. If ANet simply look at how often a skill is put on a build, then nerf (slightly) the ones that are used a lot and buff the ones that are used the least.

Repeat every month and the game will be kept dynamic and ALL skills kept in close balance as decided on by the entire population of players.

The problem with buffing/nerfing/changing a whole bunch of skills at once is that it will be hard to comprehend how all the new skills interact with eachother. If something goes totally out of imbalance and that's the only thing people use in that specific area, then A-Net will have no idea what caused it, and have no clue on how to fix it.

The focus is on completing GW2. There are very few folks still hammering out upgrades for GW because of this....

That said, if all the skills were equal there would be people complaining that
there is nothing special..boooo...all skills are meh...it doesn't matter what you take.

That said, it is interesting watching a new Meta emerge with some skill buff/changes.
It kinda keeps the game fresh.

i reckon for abit of fun have 1 month skill nerf of every elite pvp/pve and make them all half as powerful..and lock all pve only skills, so they cannot be used (just for 30 days) and see how people at first will hate it...but then use there brain and think of proper builds. woiuld make one interesting month of gameplay lol

Why do they need to keep the children happy till Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars is causal game which dosent have to be played to death. Just get a hobby or go Emo.

I do agree that GW needs a big shakeup, but id rather have constant nerfs like now, so that the less used skills will be a choice when the current OP skills are tooned down


Summary; Keep nerfing^^

Sincerely the last skill update did create space for different builds in PvP.

We went from the WoH+PnH backline to RCs, WoHs, HB and PnH and we see Mo/W, Mo/E, Mo/A and Mo/Me.

Necros see more and more play.

Mesmers are still there, playing water, PBlock and VoR.

Warriors now went from WE to Eviscerate, Whirling Axe, Devastating hammer, Crippling slashers are back, etc.

I've seen some paras too, from motigons to pure Cruel spear.

Rangers are still mostly Mel Shots, but some Magebane and Crippling shots are around too.

Eles still function as flag runners with their E/Rt EP or as NPC killers with Mblast + distortion.

Rits are still absent and Assassins and Dervs aren't that much better (paragons aren't around that much either but).

I think last update opened more options in terms of builds variety. Now its a question of making Rits, Assassins (only saw a Wastrel's Collapse in obs) and dervs in to the game. Para could see some work too.

- You really don't get it, do you? Two skills can't be equal, because they do different things. One fire nuke deals slightly less damage, has better casting time or recharge, or has additional modifiers which makes some other skills function better. You pick the one that best fits the circumstances and it will become meta. That's why skill balances do nothing, they just change one imbalanced skill to another. Case in point: Light of Deliverance to Word of Healing.

I personally would like them to just leave the skills alone unless they are completely broken or unused.
Just because people on guru say a skill is bad or needs to be nerfed doesnt make it true.
Ask most of the people(outside your own elitist guilds) and they will say to leave certain skills alone that only a few people here want nerfed.
So just leave them alone.(Im talking about PvE here btw, nerf the crap out of PvP for all I care).

I agree, the game needs a new shake up. The last updates there has been no incentive to come back to try something new. When they updated a whole list of underused elite skills that held my attention for a couple months. With these updates there is nothing new to hold my attention, maybe log on once a week. To bring back the old players they need to shake things up, but the people who still continue to play have long attention spans it seems. A forum like this you are only going to get one side as most old players won't check it. We've seen it and done it all already and these updates don't change that. They need to change the way the game is played and skill updates are the best way to do that.

Guildwars needs to do something. I loved playing this game but that Z-quest update, and the recent update in my opinion is crap. I have actually been trying WoW lately, because it has gotten boring same thing over and over again

While I disagree with your choice to go to wow(just playing). I do agree about the z-quests being crap. People are so blind they actually think they got new stuff. All we got is rewards for doing the SAME stuff we already have done.
But I dont think changing the skills is the shake up we need.
We just need new content period.
Throw some stuff in like FoW/UW in the unused parts.

oh my god, are you people serious?

XP... yeah...

As big of work as it may be, I'd really like if anet stopped balancing only 6 skills per update, and instead did at least 25-30.
Heck. Even if it takes them two months. We need skill updates more..