ArenaNet:Developer updates/Archive July-Sept 2008

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[Dev Update] Guild Battles - 25 September 2008

Removed the reduced durations of hexes and conditions on the Guild Lord so that they last the normal amount of time.
Refined how aggressiveness is measured for teams in Guild Battles. Dealing damage to the enemy Guild Lord still increases your team's aggressiveness. Casting enchantments and weapon spells on your Guild Lord now decreases your aggressiveness. If neither Guild Lord is killed before 28 minutes have passed, the more aggressive team is awarded the victory.

Originally, the reduced duration of hexes and conditions was meant to keep powerful, long-lasting effects from bypassing the Guild Lord's high armor, making him unable to do damage, or abusing his AI. As the game has matured, we've discovered this is not necessary and also creates problems (such as making spells like Wastrel's Worry stronger when used on the Guild Lord). We've removed this mechanic entirely.

Our goal is to encourage active and tactically rich play in Guild Battles. Because of this, we've used each team's "aggressiveness" to determine which team should win if neither Guild Lord is slain. Recently, some degenerate builds were developed to exploit how aggressiveness was calculated. Using six or seven Monks, these builds would attempt to prevent any damage to their Guild Lord while sending a token offense to deal nominal damage to the enemy Guild Lord. We've changed how aggressiveness is determined to prevent these builds from playing a role in the upcoming Monthly Tournament and in the future. In the long term, as necessary, we will make adjustments to ensure that the primary objective in Guild Battles is to kill the enemy Guild Lord.

Dev Update - 10 September 2008

Hall of Monuments

We are releasing the previously announced changes to the Hall of Monuments in two stages. The first stage lets players enjoy adding their accumulated Tormented Weapons to the Monument to Valor [sic] sooner than otherwise. Support for this first stage is expected to release in October's scheduled content update. At this time, there is no expected release date on the remaining account-wide changes to the Hall of Monuments.

Skill Updates

Today's update makes a few skill changes to address outstanding PvP balance issues, returns Order of Undeath to its old functionality, and closes a PvE exploit. The PvP-oriented changes start with some Elementalist skill changes to adjust the balance between Mesmer/Elementalist and Elementalist primaries. Because this imbalance isn't necessarily game-breaking, we've been conservative with these changes. In Guild Battles, the bodyguard, as long as he's alive, will now reduce damage done to the Guild Lord. Based on player feedback, we've reverted our changes to Order of Undeath. Finally, we fixed an exploit with Unyielding Aura's unlimited range.

Guild Battle Changes

Added "Oath of Protection" to the Bodyguard; "While the bodyguard is alive, the Guild Lord takes 20% less damage."

Over the course of these last few months, we've adjusted GvG to reinforce the game type's core objective: killing the enemy Guild Lord. Killing the bodyguard is meant to be an important step toward killing the Guild Lord. To reward teams that recognize this, we've given the bodyguard a damage reduction ability.

PvE and PvP

Elementalist

Glowing Gaze: functionality changed to: "Deals 5..50 fire damage. You gain 5 Energy plus 1 Energy for every 2 ranks of Energy Storage if target foe is Burning."
Glowing Ice: functionality changed to: "Deals 5..50 cold damage. You gain 5 Energy plus 1 Energy for every 2 ranks of Energy Storage if target foe is hexed with Water Magic."
Glowstone: functionality changed to: "Deals 5..50 earth damage. You gain 5 Energy plus 1 Energy for every 2 ranks of Energy Storage if target foe is Weakened."
Master of Magic: now ends whenever a non-elementalist skill is used.
Mind Blast: recharge time reduced to 2 seconds.
Icy Shackles: energy cost increased to 10.
Shock Arrow: functionality changed to: "Rapid projectile: deals 5..50 lightning damage. You gain 5 Energy plus 1 Energy for every 2 ranks of Energy Storage if you hit an attacking foe. 25% armor penetration."

After last week's modest adjustments to selected Water Magic skills, we've found that fast-casting Mesmer/Elementalists are still superior to Water Magic Elementalist primaries in Guild Battles. We've made Glowing Ice, Glowing Gaze, Glowstone, and Shock Arrow return Energy based on Energy Storage to give Elementalist primaries an advantage. Icy Shackles' cost has been increased to 10 energy as well, in an aim to make it less affordable for Mesmer primaries. We've removed a second of recharge from Mind Blast to make Fire Elementalists more viable in GvG. With the removal of NPC-killing as a core GvG tactic, we believe that the types of builds enabled by a more effective Mind Blast will not be detrimental to overall playbalance. Master of Magic was meant to support Elementalists with multiple elemental attributes, but it ending on Energy Storage and unattributed skills really limited that potential. We've changed this spell to end on non-Elementalist skill use instead.

Necromancer

Order of Undeath: functionality changed to: "Your minions deal +3..16 damage and you lose 2% of your maximum Health when a minion hits." Energy cost increased to 10, duration reduced to 5 seconds.

We'd underestimated how many players used Order of Undeath at its previous functionality. Since the new implementation hasn't garnered a similar amount of play, we've reverted this change.

PvP Changes

Ranger

Sloth Hunter's Shot (PvP): unconditional damage reduced to 5..20, conditional damage reduced to 5..25.

Sloth Hunter's Shot did a little too much damage. We don't want to eliminate the damage-style Ranger from play, so we've done a small damage reduction on this to bring it more in-balance.

PvE Changes

Unyielding Aura: Now only works on party members within spell casting range.

Players were able to use an exploit with Unyielding Aura to transport themselves across the map. We've added a range limit to prevent this exploit.

[Dev Update] Skill Balance Update - 21 August 2008

This week, we targeted several key playbalance issues. Smiter's Boon Monks have had a negative impact on gameplay in Team Arenas and Guild Battles. Mesmer/Elementalists have proved more effective Water Magic users than primary Elementalists. In addition, we adjusted Glimmering Mark and Disrupting Lunge.

While these updates are aimed at PvP balance, we believe that most PvE players will be largely unaffected by these changes. Therefore, we decided to not create separate PvP versions for most of the skills. We try to make different PvP versions of skills only when it is absolutely necessary.

PvE and PvP

Elementalist

Glimmering Mark: increased damage to 10...26...30
Glowing Ice: Energy gain reduced to 2...8...9
Icy Shackles: snare duration reduced to 1...8...10 seconds.

Because of the higher cast time on Water Magic spells, fast-casting Mesmer/Elementalist were favored over primary Elementalists in competitive play. To shift the balance back toward primary Elementalists, we've increased the importance of a high Water Magic attribute for two key spells: Glowing Ice and Icy Shackles. Glimmering Mark became too weak when the damage stopped ignoring armor, so we raised the damage level to compensate.

Ranger

Disrupting Lunge: recharge time increased to 20 seconds.

Disrupting Lunge's 20-second skill-disabling effect combined with its 10-second recharge made for frustrating gameplay for opponents. We've raised the recharge to match the duration of its skill-disabling effect.

PvP

Monk

Smiter's Boon (PvP): recharge time increased to 90 seconds, Energy cost increased to 25, duration reduced to 5 seconds.

Smiter's Boon is a key skill in smite-heavy PvP teams that were generally overpowered and which too strongly discouraged the use of hexes and conditions. Their combination of healing, damage, and removal invalidated a lot of alternative builds within Team Arenas and has had a negative impact on GvG combat.

We recognize that the changes to this skill will essentially remove it from play. In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.

[Dev Update] August Balance Changes - 7 August 2008

This month's skill balance is larger than normal. There were a number of issues we wanted to address:

Ursan-way. Changes to Ursan Blessing are included in this update, with the goal of both balancing it and not requiring players to grind out the title just to be able to play with others.
PvE-Only skills. With a few balances, we've also changed a lot of PvE-only skills to function better at lower attribute levels, reducing the need to grind a title just to use a skill associated to it.
Victory or Death. After a lot of discussion, testing, and reworking, we're implementing significant changes to Victory or Death. See the section below for specifics.
Weak Elites. Each profession has received updates to a number of unused and very weak elite skills to give players more build options and diversity.

It's no secret that the Ursan skills have been overpowered compared to other late-game options. Although this opened up high-end areas for a broader range of players it had several negative side effects: pick-up groups pressuring players to use Ursan Blessing; a diminished importance of profession and skill choice; and causing many players to feel that achieving a high rank in the Ursan title was required. We're attempting changes (described in more detail below) to address these problems without eliminating Ursan Blessing as a fun and viable play choice.

Similarly, we're reducing the effect of title rank on many PvE-only skills so that players don't feel so compelled to grind and raise their title ranks. Future updates may address additional issues with the rate and manner in which titles are acquired, but we view these changes as an important first step.

For PvP, we are not making many skill changes. We are instead focusing on the Victory or Death mechanics in GvG that have motivated players to play defensively and play to win specifically at VoD.

Finally, we're taking this opportunity to address many severely underpowered elite skills. In some cases, this has involved completely reworking the skills (and altering the creatures that use these skills in PvE). We don't like to radically change skills and risk invalidating the play styles that people may be enjoying, but in the case of the elite skills modified in this build, major changes seemed entirely appropriate.

Because of the large number of changes overall and the depth of the changes to VoD, we will keep a close eye on the changes and may revise or remove some of them. We aim to take care of any major fixes within a week.

PvE and PvP Changes

Assassin

Golden Skull Strike: This skill no longer requires a lead attack; reduced Dazed duration to 1..5 seconds.
Hidden Caltrops: increased recharge to 12 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(10 seconds.) Causes 50% slower movement. End effect: inflicts Crippled condition (3..15 seconds)."
Way of the Assassin: functionality changed to: "(20 seconds.) You attack 5..35% faster and have +5..35% chance to land a critical hit."
Flashing Blades: functionality changed to: "(5..30 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block while attacking. Block effect: 5..20 damage to your attacker."
Shadow Form: reduced the damage penalty to 33%.

Golden Skull Strike was similar to Temple Strike but clearly inferior. Instead of having them serve a similar function, we've turned Golden Skull Strike into an elite version of Golden Phoenix Strike, which allows faster access to dual attacks and Daze. Hidden Caltrops has been turned into a stronger (and also more thematically-correct) snare, applying a 10-second hex that also Cripples when it expires. This protects the skill from those only using a single type of snare removal. Way of the Assassin grants primary Assassins new access to an increased attack speed stance that synergizes well with skills that trigger on a critical hit. Flashing Blades now causes damage when it blocks, which makes it more attractive in PvE and smaller-format PvP. Shadow Form's damage reduction was lowered so that it's more viable for a wider range of uses, including boss hunting. We're further adjusting the effectiveness of Shadow Form Underworld farmers by changing the Underworld, rather than additional changes to Shadow Form.

Mesmer

Tease: decreased casting time to .25 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Interrupts a skill. Interruption effect: also interrupts all foes in the area and you steal 0..5 Energy from each interrupted foe."
Visions of Regret: functionality changed to: "Also hexes foes adjacent to target (10 seconds). These foes take 15..90 damage whenever they use a skill."
Air of Disenchantment: functionality changed to: "Also hexes foes adjacent to target (5..20 seconds). Remove one enchantment from target and nearby foes. Enchantments expire 150..300% faster on those foes."
Extend Conditions: functionality changed to: "Spread all conditions from target foe to all foes near your target. The durations of those conditions are increased by 5..100% (maximum 30 seconds)."
Lyssa's Aura: increased recharge to 30 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(10 seconds.) You have 0..4 Energy regeneration. Renewal: every time you cast a spell on an enemy."
Signet of Midnight: increased casting time to 2 seconds.

Tease was both confusing and entirely too specific to be playable. We've reworked the skill to have it double as both area-interruption and Energy management. Visions of Regret had a too-specific trigger effect, making it weak in most situations, and frustrating in the few where it worked. We've changed it to work on all skills, but not attacks, as a sort of elite Backfire. Air of Disenchantment has had problems due to spike damage in the past, but fell into obscurity after rebalancing. We've given this skill a new function -- area-of-effect enchantment removal. Extend Conditions becomes an elite Epidemic, spreading conditions in a wide area and lengthening their durations. Lyssa's Aura had a limited effect and uncontrollable triggering condition, which made it a weak choice for an elite. We've changed its functionality to Energy management that can be maintained. Finally, Signet of Midnight's dominated in four-on-four matches because it was independent of attribute investment. Signet of Midnight was originally balanced before Fast Casting affected the activation time of Signets. This change brings the skill closer to its original balance.

Necromancer

Life Transfer: decreased recharge to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Also hexes foes adjacent to target (6..12 second). Causes -3..8 Health degeneration. You have +3..8 Health regeneration."
Vampiric Spirit: functionality changed to: "Steal 5..50 Health from target foe. You have +5..10 Health regeneration (10 seconds)."
Order of Undeath: increased recharge to 15; decreased Energy cost to 5. Functionality changed to: "All but one of your minions die. If that minion is non-Elite, it deals +5..30 more damage, has +5..20 Health regeneration, and attacks 33% faster (20 seconds)."
Pain of Disenchantment: decreased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 15 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Target foe loses 1..3 enchantments. Removal effect: that foe and all adjacent foes lose 10..100 Health."

With the addition of new elites that can cause Health degeneration (Reaper's Mark, Corrupt Enchantment), Life Transfer slowly fell into the realm of underpowered. To give it a needed update, it now hexes adjacent foes as well, allowing Necromancers to more efficiently spread degeneration. Vampiric Spirit's previous functionality required us to make it either too weak in general or too strong in very specific cases. We've changed it into an elite version of Vampiric Gaze, doing a direct life-steal with additional regeneration. Order of Undeath is now an alternative way to make one, powerful minion that persists longer at the expense of additional minions. This skill should give minion masters interesting options without crowding PvP areas with masses of minions. Pain of Disenchantment now allows Necromancers to combine a multiple removal skill with area-of-effect damage, allowing greater utility while punishing enchantments.

Elementalist

Glimmering Mark: decreased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 10 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(10 seconds.) Deals 5..25 lightning damage per second. Ends if you cast a spell that targets this foe."
Thunderclap: decreased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Deals 15..75 damage. After 3 seconds, inflicts Dazed condition (1..10 seconds) to target and adjacent foes. 25% armor penetration."
Mirror of Ice: increased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge to 30 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(60 seconds.) You deal 5..35 cold damage whenever you cast a Water Magic hex."
Master of Magic: decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased recharge to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(1..61 seconds.) Your elemental attributes are set to 12 and you gain +0..2 Energy regeneration. Ends if you use a non-elemental skill."

The old functionality of Glimmering Mark and Thunderclap proved too difficult to balance. These skills were always either too effective at locking down enemies or too ineffective for an elite slot. We've dramatically reworked them both. Glimmering Mark now does damage to a foe until you cast another spell on that same foe, allowing persisting damage to an off-target; Thunderclap becomes a delayed, area-effect damage and Daze-causing spell. Mirror of Ice's previous function was too narrow and didn't support normal Elementalist play. It has been changed to amplify the damage output of Water Magic-focused Elementalists. Master of Magic has been reworked for easier mixing of elemental lines to allow interesting multi-element builds.

Monk

Healing Burst: decreased recharge time to 4 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Heals for 5..130. Also heals party members for 5..20 in area of your target."
Empathic Removal: functionality changed to: "Removes one condition and hex from target ally and yourself, and heals for 50. Cannot self-target."
Aura of Faith: this skill is now in the Protection Prayers attribute line; decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased casting time to .25; decreased recharge time to 8 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(3 seconds.) Target ally gains 50..100% more Health when healed and takes 5..50% less damage."
Signet of Rage: increased non conditional damage to 5..50; decreased conditional damage to 5..10.

Touch-range healing spells aren't something very desirable to Monks in any format. We've changed Healing Burst to be a cheap, effective heal that also has a secondary area heal tied to it. Empathic Removal now has an unattributed heal associated to it, making it especially attractive to Monk secondaries in arena formats. Aura of Faith has been drastically reworked: it's now a Protection spell that has a much greater effect for a much shorter time, making it an elite version of the popular Protective Spirit. Signet of Rage now has more of its damage in the non-conditional portion, making it more useful in a wider variety of situations without being overpowered against foes with numerous adrenal skills.

Warrior

Warrior's Endurance: this skill is no longer a stance.
Battle Rage: functionality changed to: "(15 seconds.) You move 33% faster and gain double adrenaline from your attacks. Ends if you use any non-adrenal skills. "
Defy Pain: decreased adrenaline cost to 5 strikes. Functionality changed to: "(20 seconds.) You have +90..300 maximum Health, +20 armor, and take -1..10 damage."
Quivering Blade: increased adrenaline cost to 5 strikes. Functionality changed to: "Deals +10..40 damage. Inflicts Dazed condition (5 seconds) if target foe was moving."

Warrior's Endurance was not useful as a stance because it did not boost movement or attack speed. Changing it to a skill allows Warriors to couple it with stances to cover these needs. Battle Rage no longer throws away all the adrenaline gained while using it, a drawback that previously invalidated the skill. Defy Pain now also slightly reduces damage taken—which we believe will be attractive to certain PvE warriors. Quivering Blade now applies Daze to a moving opponent (instead of to yourself) giving sword-using Warriors a low-cost damage boost and a unique way to inflict Daze.

Ritualist

Reclaim Essence: functionality changed to: "All your Spirits die. If a Spirit dies in this way, you gain 5..20 Energy and all of your Binding Rituals are recharged."
Consume Soul: increased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 5 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Steal 5..60 Health. If target foe was a summoned creature, you steal all of that foe's life."
Xinrae's Weapon: this skill is now in the Restoration Magic attribute line; decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased recharge time to 3 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(8 seconds.) The next time target ally takes damage from a foe, that damage is limited to 5% of target ally's max Health and that ally steals up to 20..80 Health from that foe."
Defiant Was Xinrae: this skill is now in the Restoration Magic attribute line; decreased Energy cost to 5; increased casting time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(15..60 seconds.) You cannot lose more than 20% of your max Health from a single hit. Drop effect: steal 30..90 Health from nearby foes."

Reclaim Essence now functions as a way to recycle Spirits. Destroying Spirits will return some of the Energy investment and recharge them, allowing more dynamic Spirit placement options. Consume Soul now can steal life from any enemy—making it a more broadly useful skill—and still counter hostile summoned creatures. With Xinrae's Weapon, the aim is to give Restoration Ritualists an alternative to Weapon of Remedy: the reworked Xinrae's Weapon is an elite that functions much like a one-use Protective Spirit that also steals life. Lastly, Defiant was Xinrae now protects the user from single big hits and also can steal life when dropped, making it a self-support option for split tactics and arena settings.

Ranger

Expert's Dexterity: this skill is now a stance; decreased activation time to 0; increased recharge time to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(5..20 seconds.) You attack 33% faster and you gain +2 to your Marksmanship attribute."
Scavenger's Focus: this skill is no longer a preparation; decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased activation time to 0; increased recharge time to 20 seconds. Functionality changed to: "(10 seconds.) You gain 3..12 Energy if you strike a foe who has condition."
Scavenger Strike: decreased Energy cost to 5; increased recharge time to 10 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Deals 10..25 damage. You gain 3..15 Energy if target foe is suffering from a condition."
Incendiary Arrows: changed skill to an attack skill; removed activation time; decreased recharge time to 3 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Hits 2 foes near your target and inflicts Burning (1..3 seconds)."
Melandru's Shot: decreased Energy cost to 5; decreased activation time to 1 second; increased recharge time to 10 seconds. Functionality changed to: "Deals +10..25 damage. Inflicts Bleeding (5..25 seconds) and Crippled (3..15 seconds) if target foe was moving or knocked down."

Expert's Dexterity and Scavenger's Focus could not compete with other preparations, especially considering that they were elites. We've changed these both to stances: Expert's Dexterity now has an attribute and attack speed bonus that can be used with preparations; Scavenger's Focus returns Energy when hitting foes with a condition. Scavenger's Strike offers similar Energy management, but is an attack skill as opposed to a stance. We also changed Incendiary Arrows from a preparation to a multi-shot bow attack that sets foes on fire. Melandru's Shot is now like an elite Hunter's Shot, inflicting Bleeding and Cripple on moving or knocked-down foes.

Dervish

Onslaught: increased Energy cost to 10. Functionality changed to: "(5..20 seconds.) You attack and move 25% faster."
Zealous Vow: increased Energy gained per hit to 1..7; decreased to -3 Energy degeneration.
Vow of Strength: functionality changed to: (20 seconds.) Adds +5..35% damage to your attacks against foes not suffering from any conditions.

Onslaught has been reworked into a combined attack and movement speed boost rolled into one, freeing skill bar slots and choice of secondary profession. Zealous Vow had an Energy gain that was poor even in optimal situations, so we've increased this skill's Energy gain qualities and decreased the downside. This aims to let Dervishes use expensive skills more regularly when taking this elite, as long as they stay aggressive. Vow of Strength now allows powerful attacks as long as conditions are not present, making it interesting to build around.

Paragon

"The Power Is Yours!": decreased recharge time to 0; decreased Energy cost to 0; increased adrenaline cost to 4 strikes. Functionality changed to: "(3 seconds.) Allies within earshot gain 0..1 Energy regeneration."
"It's just a flesh wound.": functionality changed to: "Remove all conditions from target other ally. This skill fails if you have a Deep Wound. Cannot self-target."
Soldier's Fury: functionality changed to: "(10..35 seconds.) You attack 33% faster and gain 33% more adrenaline if under the effects of a shout or chant."

"The Power is Yours!" was simply weak and complicated. We've overhauled this skill to be simpler and work off adrenaline, converting the Paragon's adrenaline into Energy for allies. "It's just a flesh wound" now functions as a more widely applicable removal elite for Paragons as long as the user doesn't have a Deep Wound. Soldier's Fury has an easy-to-meet condition that functions as an adrenaline battery, allowing a Paragon to fuel other adrenal skills more easily.

PvP Changes

Monk

Spirit Bond: increased recharge time to 5 seconds.

In PvP, Spirit Bond was too readily-available when coupled with enough Energy management. We've slightly raised the recharge to limit how often it is in effect.

Ritualist

Weapon of Warding: increased recharge time to 8 seconds.

Weapon of Warding, at high attributes, was often easy to simultaneously maintain on two people. This is frustrating because of the more passive and irremovable nature of the spell. We've raised the recharge so that a target needs to be chosen carefully, and so that target switching is a more viable strategy against it.