Update - Thursday, July 21, 2011

Maybe now causal PvP won't be a Dervish festival. I feel like an idiot being the only one with another class in Alliance Battles...lol
Dervish Shadow Step, Dervish Shards, Dervish, Derv Derv ahhhhhh.

OK so they stall super easy on Kurzicks firing from on the ledges (who can easily outheal them with a single self heal) but I did notice somethig new.

A turtle that is standing near/in/on a gate when it is repaired will start walking back and forth (it has never done this before) to avoid getting stalled on that gate. Ironically this just ends up stoppng it from firing on the gate and thus the gate stays up (because the warriors won't kill the eles). If the turtle is aggroed on the location of a gate after it's been broken, it will still often stall on that gate (same old problem).

I think there are some slight changes to it's aggro when it comes to melee (turtle aggro and whether or not it moves forward has always been retarded) and I think it might be less likely to stall on close opponents. It still stalls just as easily and as often on anything further away which has always been the problem, so it's a move in the right direction but nothing truly meaningful for Luxon players.

my cries have been heard

Loooooool, who didn't see this coming?
Way to not fix the actual problem, as always ANet *golf clap*.

Cross-dressed pyjamas emo still has higher armor that Warrior. How silly is that?

Just a reminder: This is a discussion thread for yesterday's update. Stay on topic.

It's a step in the right direction to fix the FA bugs and I'm pleased about it. However, there's still the problem of leech bots that needs to be properly addressed.

Way to "fix" the problem with the triple dervish + frag mes.
Quickly losing faith in the live teams ability to see problems and rectify them.

Is this real life??

I don't see why PvE needs to be made any easier.
And really, shadowsteps don't add all that much in PvE so it wouldn't really be worth bringing them anyway.

Someone help me out here: Did they actually buff Mind Wrack with another functionality?

No? They removed the damage it did whenever it caused energy loss.

Oh, right I thought it always ended when you swapped to your low set like wither/malaise.

Lol I just read the pve version, since when has mind wrack been like that???

Since the big mesmer update a year or so ago. It was the same update that Fast Casting got a recharge buff for PvE and a casting speed nerf for non-mesmer spells.

FD nerf was expected, fastest/easiest(most lazy? lol) way to cut the triple derv train in high pvp. Competitive fixes are good anyway, but was surprised by shadow walk shorting.

I only wonder....how long will Anet continue nerfing 2 derv skills at month?
Just fix all toghether if they have actually understood what to hit (but latest updates are steps in right direction i think).

What's annoying about GW updates/fixes is that even after years of trying and having the community tell them stuff, they get it wrong. This applies to new content and this weird ass skill fixes.

I think we need to give Mr. Stumme the benefit of the doubt with this one and the first part of WoC. His mind was on his wedding and work took a backseat. I expect everything from now on to be better.

I kinda like the Mind Wrack change actually.

People often criticise anet's work, saying how the players keep telling you what needs to be done, why dont u listen?

Well consider the fact that 99.99% of the suggestions proposed to anet are absolutely horrible, and would do nothing but make the game worse, its not all that suprising that they ignore a lot of people's requests. People simply just dont understand what skill balance is.

Best example is all the people who sit here saying "wheres my ele/paragon/ranger buffs??????". gw needs NO more buffs. nerf back the OP stuff, then other stuff which has always been somewhat balanced, wont seem so bad/useless. Unfortunately this is a really big job, and despite the stick that anet get, their updates regarding skill balance are "usually" aimed in the right direction, just unfortunately they are not swinging the nerf bat quite as freely as many people would like, taking a much more cautious approach.

The best analogy i can give for it is this:
In your garden you plant a little bush and some other flowers, for a while its nice, the bush then grows out of control into an enormous hedge(ie- dervishes), its now so big that you cant see the other plants in your garden. What do u do????

a) Buy some new really big plants to go with ur massive hedge. (buff other stuff)
b) Trim the hedge back.... (nerf the actual problem)

I dont think it takes a genius to see the obvious answer.

To use the previous analogy of a flower garden, ANet appears to be going with an entirely different option:
c) remove the flowers, no problem with an overgrown hedge if there's nothing else to see.

It's not the best fix, but it could be a temporary solution while they work on solving it for real (flowers can be replanted).

For the most part, you are correct. There is absolutely no way to achieve good balance if OP classes and skills are dominating. The problem is that there are, at the same time, several skills that have always been crappy (even before the powercreep) and that still are crappy. Simply nerfing all the OP crap isn't going to balance alone. While nerfing rits, necros, and mesmers in PvE would make the format more balanced, it would be so much more effective if the underpowered professions were buffed slightly to reach a happy medium point. I'm not talking about the rediculous buffs that anet tends to do, like the spirit or mesmer update. I'm talking about slight buffs that would make those skills that have always been crappy somewhat less crappy.

One extremely generalized way to look at it is by profession. If the mesmer, necro, and rit are the most powerful professions in PvE and the ranger, paragon, and ele are the least powerful professions in PvE, nerf the first three to the level of the professions in the "middle" of the power spectrum, and buff the underpowered professions to the level of the professions in the middle. Obviously, this is somewhat generalized, but it gets the point accross that balance can only be achieved through a combination of nerfs and buffs (though at this point in the game, far more nerfs are needed).