User:SylvXIII/Overpowered Skills

Introduction
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Preface
Throughout the history of Guild Wars, many skills have risen to fame within a few days as the discovery of a build including them overthrew a whole meta. Those skills have undergone a balance process usually known as "nerfing" (as opposed to buffing) in a typically short delay in order to tone down their effectiveness. However, some more subtle skills have always been there and have caused issue without being balanced half as fast as the previously mentioned skills. Even as of March 2010, the game is far from having a solid balance a game like Starcraft has although the game types are significantly different. While some skills will always remain better than some others balance-wise, most skills and weapon types have their uniqueness that makes them balanced in comparison to other similar types.

In the past, many skills have been toned down to the point where they are still pretty usable wheras some other skills where WTFNERFED to the point of uselessness. Finally, some skills had their functionality partially or completely changed to make them a "new skill". As a note, this is mostly written from a PvP point of view. As a matter of fact, one way for the game designers to balance an overpowered skill in PvP was to create an exclusive PvP version of the skill in order not to affect the PvE balance. While this balancing method should have been used ten times sooner in Guild Wars, some skills are almost useless in both PvE and PvP because of that. The method was also used to buff PvE skill without affecting their PvP version, so because skills have a PvP version does not mean they were once overpowered. Pretty much every skill from the Command line were made a PvP version of them because they were too good and I'm still waiting for Anet to simply generalize this into a Command (PvP) attribute. Some skills have been fairly toned down, some overly, some have had their functionality reworked and some are still overpowered and all of those are categorized by my own personal judgment which you can discuss on this article's talk page.

Examples of skills that have been toned down fairly
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Examples of skills that have been overly toned down
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Examples of skills whose functionality has been reworked
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Overpowered skills
In this section I will introduce skills that I believe are still overpowered, in what format they cause a problem and my reasons for thinking they are overpowered. There are a couple more but the page is large enough.

"I Will Avenge You!"
In theory, this skill is nothing special. Its major issue is the simple fact that this skill (IWAY) is triggered by every dead pet your party has in compass range. What it means is, if you have 4 pets in your team setup, they are low-level and you send them to oblivion, all your warriors carrying IWAY will have 40 seconds of 25% IAS and +6-7 (14 strength is recommended, sometimes 15 along Defy Pain) Health regeneration. That's a pretty good way to start a Warrior bar isn't it? In practice, this skill is overpowered in 8 v 8 HA where 4 warriors bring a copy of Charm Animal with a level 5 pet, they lock it on the enemy Ghostly Hero who proceeds to use Cyclone Axe on them to instantly create the perfect conditions for IWAY to be effective. After the dead pet cooldown, all the warriors use IWAY. Main issue with this skill is that it stacks with an IMS such a Sprint in order to form a virtual un-nerfed Primal Rage-like buff without the drawback of taking double damage. An effective way to nerf this skill would be not to count dead pets as dead allies or to make this skill a stance. However, although this skill has been known as overpowered for many years, because the skill balancer of this game is in love with it, he has refused to do anything against it other than nerfing the range of the shout. In practice, this skill is commonly used with Defy Pain (in a setup with no healer) or with any other elite if your team setup has healers.

Blinding Surge
Blinding Surge has one funny skill balance history which can be found here that's worth taking a look at. Now now, dont go on thinking I do not know how to deal with bsurge eles: I know many many ways to deal with those while playing a physical damage dealer. What needs to be pulled off (diversion, dshot, dchop, stripping air attunement, knockdowns) to deal with this is essentially ten times harder than what the bsurge ele has to do to remove you - physical damage dealer - from the game. With many sources of energy management (Air Attunement, Shock Arrow, Glyph of Lesser Energy, Aura of Restoration, etc), one can easily manage spamming perma blind a single target 24/7 without this character being able to pull off anything (especially frustrating in Random Arenas). A typical arena monk cannot deal with this, a ranger will have a hard time against a smart player on a bsurge ele, a foul feast Necromancer will be camping his 40/40 SR set to deal with this and so on. In practice, this skill is sometimes used in conjunction with Blinding Flash, an anti-interruption skill, knockdown skills such as Whirlwind and Gale, Enfeeble and a blocking skill. It is problematic in 4 v 4 PvP where cleaning the frontlines of a bsurge ele is a ridiculous waste of energy although this skill can do it for one guy. Bsurge however has an AoE effect, therefore anytime frontliners ball up, they can both get blinded by this single spell. If you don't want your Random Arena streaks to get shattered by this skill, consider bringing Sight Beyond Sight as your utility skill along with an Adept Spawning Power staff of Enchanting (on PvP chars) and using it wisely. Some eles might use Rip Enchantment on SBS, so interrupt it or make use of the 1 second cast time to knock him down before he can cast bsurge again. On a side note, SBS has a lot more uses than just countering Bsurge (countering EDA, attacking through Weapon of Shadow, ignoring Blind Was Mingson, Signet of Midnight, etc). Nerfed on May 21...You call that a nerf? They made it a little less powerful in the 4 v 4 arenas.

Diversion
This skill can shut down anything in the game in the world of PvP. It is simply the best skill in the game. Using a skill successfully through diversion will disable it for an additional 50 seconds. This is the most dangerous hex possible for a healing backline. If Word of Healing gets diversioned, the game is usually over in 4 v 4. In 8 v 8, you have to retreat immediately. This skill is a counter to every skill in the game when timed properly. It is so amazingly strong that sometimes camping a mesmer 24/7 as a ranger (especially in 4v4) with interrupts can be worth it for your team's survival. While I could care less about the 3 second cast time (which becomes about 2 seconds with the fast casting attribute and should be used on a 40/40), no matter how good of a player you are, when your skills get diversioned you can't do shit about it. Whether it's your one and only lead attack, crip slash, frenzy, rush, dshot, woh, bsurge, guardian, mind blast, balanced stance or diversion, whatever the diversioned skill is can fuck you up from 0 to 11 on a 1 to 10 scale. Expect the mesmer to call what skill he diversioned on vent and for the whole team to take action in accordance with what the mesmer has done in appropriate times. Mesmers have no armor and no good insignias? They have the strongest skill in the game, fucking use it instead of playing shitty IOP builds.

Enraged Lunge
Whoever thought this skill would be balanced is bad. Like seriously? Because pets used to be pretty bad, some guy thought giving pets a good buff would make more people use them. While I'm fine with this idea, it was overdone. A pet is a battle companion that will fight alongside you, therefore the damage you can pull out with a few attack skills in conjunction with the damage your pet does should be balanced. If a pet using 4-5 skill slots on your bar is outdamaging a pure frontline bar, something's wrong. This skill is troublesome in 4 v 4 PvP where no one will bring Spirit Bond or Protective Spirit to deal with a pet. The skill easily meets the +80 damage requirement by using this skill and is typically used alongside this and a pet IMS to make the pet unblockable and unkitable effectively. In the end, the pet will use an unblockable +80 damage skill every 5 seconds. To counter a melee damage dealer, a healer can use this but the unblockable nature of the pet makes it useless; a Necromancer can use Enfeeble to shut down melee but it's hardly effective on enraged lunge because weakness does not affect the +80, only the base damage; a hammer Warrior can use KDs on melee to lineback them but who's going to bother linebacking a pet that can be rezzed forever? In the end, the only effective way to counter this pet is to snare it. There are other ways such as killing the pet and dshoting Comfort Animal, diversion it and kill pet again, sig of hum and so on but that's a lot of efforts. Alongside a source of deep wound and an interrupt, an Enraged Lunge user will easily outpressure a WoH monk along with its teammates.

Faintheartedness
While this skill has been on and unchanged since the very release of the game, after discussing it with a couple of individuals, I came to believe that it's sincerely overpowered. This skill has the same issue that Bsurge, it's far too easily used to shutdown anyone. Being a pretty good Curse Necromancer myself, I can easily fuck up a Ranger and an enemy frontliner 24/7 without getting rupted as a single character using a single skill with a cover. The Duration/Recharge time ratio is far too high, the effect is more than just reducing physical damage dealers' effectiveness by 50% (inability to time interrupts as well, kd chains are destroyed and qknocking becomes an achievement under faint): fainted enemies become close to useless especially if the hex is kept on them at all times. Curse Necromancers have always been part of balanced Team Arena setups for their high ability to shutdown anything physical based the same way Primal Rage warriors were amazingly strong but were nerfed in a recent update. I don't think we can hope for a Curse balance. Devastating anywhere in the game, your best bet is to have many hex removals and a good rupter.

Grasping Earth
"Perma Snare target foe and every other foe near you after successfully hitting Bull's Strike on him" if you're a Warrior and "Perma snare all nearby foes" if you're a caster. This is a hex spell that's very effective with spare points (3 or 6 in Earth Magic and it's all good). With a very low energy cost, casting time and recharge time, this skill drives a whole codex meta by itself, as well being typical gay shit in HA where an N/E can perma snare you during his spare time with spare energy, especially if your monks are not removing it. Without any need to spec hard in Earth Magic, an amazing cost, activation time and recharge, this skill should cause exhaustion like Shock or simply have less overpowered properties. It's just way too good.

Mind Blast
While the damage part of the skill is pretty fair, the energy-management part of the skill is a joke. Often used with 14 Fire Magic, Fire Attunement, Aura of Restoration and a high energy set, successfully casting this skill on a foe with lower energy (which is not an issue, you're an Elementalist and you have a high set) will reward you 8 (mb) + 2 (attunement) + 1 (aura) = 11 energy for a net bonus of 6 energy. Often used with Immolate and Rodgort's Invocation for damage, a mind blast elementalist basically has the best energy management in the game and can manage spamming skills such as this and Rodgort's Invocation mid-game without any issues. Attempting to interrupt a mind blast ele will result in ; Failure because you randomed like a noob; Failure because your interrupt did not land because of this, this or something like that; Failure since he fake casted you as many times as it took; Failure because he got a fast cast on his 40/40; Failure because you were knocked down by Meteor; Success because you managed to anticipate him; Success because you rupted a 2 seconds cast time spell; Success because the ele is bad; Success because you're camping him 24/7; Sucess because you timed your rupt properly; Success because you were unpredictable on your interrupt or finally, Success because you randomed like a noob. This skill's recharge time is simply too short and the energy gain is too high. Having unlimited energy is imbalanced. Mind Blast grants you unlimited energy. Mind Blast is imbalanced.

Oppressive Gaze
The whole blood magic line was buffed in a recent update. Because Arena Net wanted to kill Blood Spike, they replace this by making bloodspam just as annoying and overpowered. The key skill of that build being Oppressive Gaze. Whether it is played on a Me/N fast cast blood spam or a primary Necromancer, this skill is used along Barbed Signet to instantly trigger the conditional weakness and poison. Basically this skill inflicts -7 degen, lowers every attribute of the target by 1 and reduces the damage it deals from attacks (does not affect the bonus damage from attack skills) by 66%. It has a strong degen damage potential as well as a good usage in defense. While a single RC will pump up a strong heal and clean a target affected by oppresive, it's virtually impossible for a monk to deal with this without a Foul Feast Necromancer or "It's Just a Flesh Wound." in 4 v 4 PvP. It has the damage of Barbed Arrows + Poison arrow while being non-elite (although less spammable and in conjunction with Barbed Signet), about 2/3 of weakness's duration from Enfeeble and the area of effect of bsurge. The elite version of this skill is Virulence whose degen is stronger although shorter and has the drawback of possibly getting your own party members diseased, a smaller energy cost although a longer recharge and has the same condition for being effective although not synergizing as well as Oppressive because its attribute is Death Magic. For a non-elite with blood magic synergy with barbed signet, this skill is arguably better than it's elite version, has the same damage as the dual skill combination Barbed Arrows + Poison Arrow though less spammable but has AoE adjacent effect as well as a long duration weakness and without disease's drawback. Who the hell thought it would be balanced!?

Rampage as One
I heard Primal Rage was nerfed because it was too strong. Now what do we have? A Primal Rage for you and your pet without the double damage drawback (you need a living pet). Beast Mastery-wise, it's a combination of Run as One, Feral Aggression without the bonus damage and a 33% Tiger's Fury. Combining 3 skills into an elite one is not a way to create balanced skills. I mean, let's make an example. Let's combine Meteor + Liquid Flame + Fireball. The end result is a 25 energy spell with a recharge like 20 or 30 seconds that deals 21...273...336 damage, causes knockdown and hits foes adjacent to the target for 14...182...224 unless the target was doing anything, then adjacent foes will take the full 21...273...336. Lolwhat? Yeah, that's Rampage as one for you. If you even think the 25 energy cost is a drawback, look at this and this this and realize it's not really a problem. Has anyone ever taken the time to test what's the DPS of a RaO user and then compare it to something like a solid warrior bar? While the warrior typically carries a couple of utilities (shock, dchop, bull's) that have no equivalent on a RaO setup, RaO's DPS is still WAY OVER any frontliner's bar. Overpowered in 4 v 4 PvP (again). Though it's hardly relevant as you don't need a stance, RaO is a skill so it simply cannot be stripped once used like Troll Unguent. If that ranger is not shutdowned by any means, it's going to hurt. Because Anet wanted to bring back thumpers after nerfing them. Not so imbalanced skill tbh, mainly since RaO can hardly fit in any utility skills which is why it is not used much. Damage-wise, especially in 4 v 4, this skill is similar to enraged lunge although easier to counter

Rend Enchantment
Planning to make a build relying on enchantments? Don't even bother trying. This skill is the ultimate counter to any build that relies on enchantments (let aside Vow of Silence), it can easily be played on a rupt ranger without speccing any points in Curses. It was originally buffed up in order to destroy PvE 55 UW farm and nobody has realized ever since that it is the strongest enchant removal in the game and is non-elite and its drawback is hardly an issue. This skill might as well be described this way "Say fuck you to anyone relying on multiple enchantments". It can also be used to clean any pre-prot on a target right before a spike. If you feel like it, compare this to other enchantment removals (it's closest rival is the elite skill Pain of Disenchantment that is pretty powerful but at least requires speccing to be effective) and realize for yourself that this skill is blatantly overpowered in any PvP format of the game.

Restore Condition
Also known as "Red Bar target spiked ally back to 100% health", RC has always been there and used. The fact that it doesn't scale (it's just ALL conditions, not 1...3..4) makes cond-over setups pretty useless when a RC monk is around. For this reason, many setups used to bring a Signet of Humility Mesmer to balance things out (your enemy brought a skill to balance your elite skill, it makes it cast-able 50% of the time, funny right?) so noboby in Anet ever considered RC as overpowered. It was replaced by Life Sheath somewhere in Guild Wars history because bad HA prot monks could feel like they were good from spamming this spell on recharge, catching spikes in the mean of giving time to your infuser to do his job and removing conditions while still being bad and still not knowing how to prot. Typically, another character will carry a copy of Draw Conditions and use on the prot monk for him to RC those conditions out afterwards, giving the prot monk a strong heal on other allies. If the effect wasn't strong enough, the recharge is ridiculously low (the same as the pre-nerfed mend ailment, that got...nerfed...ages ago) as well as the energy cost.

Seeping Wound
WTF Nerfed lol

Spoil Victor
Stacks with all other armor-ignore damage dealing hexes without any kind of drawback. Duration Nerfed on May 21st 2010. Will test the balance soon enough.

Visions of Regret
Also known as "Guild Wars 10 seconds ban", this skill can shut down anything in the game the same way diversion does. As if the skill was not strong enough at this point, it has an are of effect as a hex spell, which is pretty rare throughout the skills of Guild Wars. This is overpowered anywhere in the game, with a good energy cost, good casting time and recharge (which is fairly balanced) anything that can shut down anything deserves to die. Now if you dare use skills through this, you have to pay a high price of losing a strong amount of health. At least, the skill has a little drawback of not synergizing with other Mesmer hexes too well. In my eyes, Diversion and Spoil Victor are still better skills so you might as well consider another elite such as Psychic Distraction when playing a Domination Mesmer. The only thing that makes this skill overly strong in my eyes is the AoE effect.

Wail of Doom
WoD is a pretty similar skill to blackout, without the drawbacks of being touch-range, costing energy (I guess we can say it's coped up by the health sacrifice), of blacking out the user, of not being able to get a HSR. Main issues with this skill are its range, recharge and effect. It is used as an interrupt-like way to shut down any healing such as Word of Healing. In TA, this was used in a 3 sec kd>4 sec blackout(from the ranger)>Shock(if the first one was bull's)>Wail of Doom for an effective 10-13 seconds shutdown on a healer whose anti-kd is on recharge: enough to score a kill or to lower the bars by a lot. The fact that this skill and blackout both exist is a problem. Moreover, the absence of drawback from WoD and its extreme versatility (shutting down anything in the form of reducing its scaling effectiveness to the lowest amount, 35 damage backfire is strong, 10 damage eviscerate too) can pretty much get you out of a lot of situations. The casting time is a little troublesome too as it does not require any form of anticipation the same way a good blackout does, waiting for a skill (typically WoH) and hitting WoD that's quarter cast will apply its effect in a similar way an interrupt would. Skill should be renamed to "lol owned!". Dreadful in 4v4.

Wounding Strike
Before you even think "lol wtf this skill ain't OP", let me clarify this: it's OP in 4 v 4 PvP (was not an issue in TA because of Foul Feast necs). Now now, within a couple of seconds a dervish can have his 4 enemies bleeding and deepwounded. The condition for the deepwound to apply is trivial as Dervishes and enchantments are like warriors and IAS. While RC can red bar this easily, although exhausting on energy if spammed as much as WS is spammed, nobody brings RC in 4 v 4. The recharge time of this skill is what makes it overpowered. Because the bleeding covers the deep wound, disposing of the deep wound is twice as hard as it is for any other condition. Along with a cover condition such as poison (Apply Poison), attempting to remove the deep wound is a waste of energy and time. Wounding Strike cannot reasonably be dealt with by a single backline unless the said backline is using over-time heals such as Healing Breeze or Resilient Weapon and even then, it'll be a major issue. Mend Body and Soul deals with WS as long as 2 Spirits are up, but a good WS derv will most likely bring at least one down. Can be used by /D as long as the condition is filled. Very effective in an hexway-like setup to render healing less effective and add to the degen.

Xinrae's Weapon
Skill description to be fixed to "solo target physical damage dealer without losing a single point of health or taking any pressure if not KD'ed" or "Steal 80 health from target foe, gain the protection of Protective Bond without the drawback for the next hit you take". Commonly used in conjunction with Vengeful Weapon, a Ritualist using both Xinrae and Vengeful weapon will be able to deal damage to the opposing team as well as pushing the red bars from any physical damage dealers within the same Restoration Magic attribute. Combine Reversal of Fortune, a better version of Reversal of Damage, add a prot that makes to fill the 5% max health loss and you have Xinrae's Weapon. For only 5 energy, 1/4 second cast time (aka good luck anticipating it) and a very low recharge that makes it chainable with Vengeful Weapon and spammable on a 40/40 resto set, this skill will deal epic armor-ignoring damage in the form of life stealing. Since when healers do damage? Combines with other damage skills (empathy (55+76), Spoil Victor (95+76), Backfire (133+76) and so on) for ridiculous armor ignoring damage. Particularly annoying in 4 v 4, where its used in conjunction with Wielder's Remedy and Vengeful Weapon. Also an overplayed codex skill, wonder why. Another skill that was once horribad, had its functionality changed to something else and the end result is a broken skill. Weapon of Remedy should be on this page too, but Xinrae is the most broken out of the two.