ArenaNet talk:Developer updates/Archive July-Dec 2008

Ursan

Nerfing Ursan is the biggest mistake ever made. People complain that it isn't balanced or it is to powerful a skill. I couldn't disagree more. What made Ursan fun wasn't mashing keys 1-4. It was balancing a characters armor and modding their weapons to fit the char prof. This, of course, varied from prof. to prof. This, in turn, brings up all the money and time wasted by people. As far as Ursan being to powerful, that is a fallacy. I have never heard, nor seen, a 2 man or solo Ursan. Unlike a Permasin or a 55/600 monk. Instead of balancing the skill, they have now created a generic skill that, for the most part, benefits Warrior prof. only. Due to him being able to stand toe to toe against someone when skill expires. They have basically took GW back 2 years with this change. We shall now go back to the 3-5 hour elite dungeon run. I for one do not have that kind of time to waste. No longer can an Ursan team clear FoW in 1 hour, or do a full run in GoA in 2 hours. So thank you GW for all the time and money you let me waste on a great skill, only to turn it into just another skill that sits on my bar. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.14.123.56 (talk • contribs) at 12:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC).

July 10 PVP Skill Update

So is Anet continue to allow gvg to be a non skill system? Obviously teams like afk who have made massive climbs with the AT system ay to noobs who does'nt know anything about the game. That is WRONG. Wolf: You claim you know about the gimmicks in game because what; You encountered gimmicks in AB and beated them? Is that a fucking joke? Try against heroway. Try against sinsplit. Try against SFwadon't have a shot in the universe to make the top 16. But I remember b-surge being nerfed to make it a more "Active" Skill. But at the same time the new meta incorporates button mashing 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 bars even worse than before. The dervish is not situational at all and just does massive damage with 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234. The mesmer that runs signets are also 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234. Then the signet mesmers all of a sudden think they can run PB mesmer which is hilarious since they can only barely PB water attunement. Now there is 4 healer teams. Maybe make the game more active? Not 1234 1234 1234 1234 1234 passive ya? 69.230.207.156

"Another goal is to alter the grind currently associated with many PvE-only skills." Dear Anet: Please don't ruin them in the process.76.190.134.18 08:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

it depends on how you look at it. i think this update makes gvg take more skill, it may be easier defence, but it makes it much harder to make a suprise spike, so gvgs last longer. offence can no longer just jump in, spam thier attacks and jump out, they have to approach thier target then spike em to death. also it takes out some very powerful skills that makes the offence really easy. thats my rant. it makes defence a little easier, and offence a little harder. File:Joshthorsig.jpgJoshThor Talk 06:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Uh, if it was supposed to nerf "offense", can I ask you why the hulking beast that is the new Wounding Strike is still untouched? Throwing up a covered Deep Wound every 3 seconds doesn't seem over powered to you at all? So instead of reverting the unjustified nerf to Wounding Strike they should kill off a mesmer build (that if used by people that know how to mesmer isn't 1234 at all) and all the skills associated with Wounding Strike bars EXCEPT Wounding Strike? You think just like them, maybe you have a job in ruining Guild Wars more. Er - sorry. I mean "balancing" Guild Wars more. 72.81.247.139 22:22, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Please feel free to criticize what i'll say if you fell like it. The drastic (and i mean it) nerf on those shadowstepping skills sure gave monks and others class time to react to a sin trying an attack...but shouldn't assassin actually be ABLE to do precisely this?. It was already risky for an assassin to step on a monk, risking a Guardian, or to an elementalist risking a pointblank nuke, but now assassin after a shadowstep have to simply stand there? waiting for the inavoidable strike back?. And to add some spice to the sauce, you seem to have forgotten the nerf on Shadow Fang! thus allowing the ShadowFang=>Iron Palm...etc etc (overpowered by the Toxic+DeadlyCorruption spike?). To put it clear : you nerfed regular assassin without limiting the really overpowered builds...i dont know if others share my advice but I think this should be reversed...for instance, Aura of Displacement which had a hard time coming back into the game, now is just useless...since after Shadow Stepping and with the latency, the target has .75 seconds to continue its movement, thus going out of melee range, and subsequently killing all the benefit of having shadowstepped....If you nerfed it because of shadowstepping dervishs or that kind of builds...why not simply nerf their overpowered attack skills? which not only affect up to 3 people at once (i find it normal though) can kill them in three or four strikes (which i dont find normal). Please after having forced ranged Rangers to play only with conditions by nerfing their damage, do not force assassin to go back to signetspikers or moebius "tankers" (Omg ROFL). Thats was my 10 pence. Yun Swiftblades 86.218.39.182 10:04, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

only 9 of the 10 professions get PvE reverts.... Dervish miss out

Why? 118.92.215.143 03:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Which dervish skill got badly nerfed in PvE due to PvP? -- ab.er.rant 06:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Mystic Regeneration--74.61.209.219 06:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Mystic Regen is fine as-is, you can still hit the regen cap easily on a dervish, and 1 pip below the regen cap on a non-dervish. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 06:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, Dervishes have Eternal Aura, which makes their elite forms sustainable. -- Gordon Ecker 06:40, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Mystic Regen was "abused" by 55s to get crazy regen with nearly no attribute point investment. Normal use wasn't effected badly enough to warrant a change. Biz 08:24, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I was a little shocked at the changes, I don't think many got a change good enough. There was so much I wanted better, can we expect more over next few weeks please Anet? We need more buffs if we want to combat other things like Ursan if it won't get nerfed which I think is fair :) -- this precedingly unsigned comment was added by 220.235.245.160.

Haven't watched the nerfs too closely, but what about Avatar of Melandru and Avatar of Grenth? Didn't those get hit with the nerfbat pretty hard at some point? -- Elv 22:31, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Aye, melandru used to be +300 hp when nightfall was released, then slowly (50 hp at a time or so) melandru was nerfed to hell and back again, and then back to hell once more File:Joshthorsig.jpgJoshThor Talk 06:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

AoM was originally +200 hp. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 06:56, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Lulz, even if it was +300 Heatlh, I still wouldn't use that PoS, Lol. Its an extremely good skill in its own respect, and Immunity to conditions is always priceless. But Cmon, 25 energy? Hexes and deep wound are the usual killing cruxes of physical classes. AoD FTW! -- this precedingly unsigned comment was added by User:Phill Gaston.

Saying AoM is bad because it costs 25 energy is just dumb. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 11:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I didn't say it was bad. I said it simply doesn't fit my play style. I also complimented it twice >__> -- this precedingly unsigned comment was added by User:Phill Gaston.

Could you please sign your comments? Thanks. -Why 12:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

imo Just put mystic regeneration into Mystcism and forget it. Therefore non dervishes can't receive nice regeneration, and dervishes don't usually have high mystcism so they won't benefit from the extra regen usually. --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 10:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Needed balance changes

For me and many many others, the current state of the game is stale with overpowered sets and common gimmicks running rampant. Guild Wars is losing players because of this. We need a drastic balance update and fast. A few things that need to be mentioned:

--Warriors-- Eviscerate: This skill alone is the cause of most warriors playing axes and is featured in many many builds, do something to it (reduction related). Back Breaker: Change its knockdown to relate to points in hammer mastery . Hundred Blades: I just isn't worth being an elite, requesting buff. Tactics stances in general: Overused as defense for monks and other characters that are non warrior primaries. Not quite sure how to suggest a change for them. Disarm: Have it remove weapon spells as well.

--Rangers-- Expertise itself: Causes more problems than soul reaping, divine favor, fast casting and critical strikes added together. Suggesting a decrease in reduction rates or change of the stat itself. Interrupts: Cause them to have a longer recharge should the attack not interrupt a skill, would discourage spamming thereof Distracting Shot: Change so the disable time relates to expertise rather than a static 20. Escape: Too popular, fix recharge and/or duration, I can't fathom "escaping" 50% of the time. Melandru's Resilience: Change to where the health and energy regeneration is wilderness survival based.

--Monks-- Mending Touch: Change so protection prayer level affects the number of conditions removed.

--Necromancers-- No problem here.

--Mesmers-- Anti Melee skills: These were reduced drastically a few patches ago, they are almost un-usable at this present time, requesting revert.

--Elementalists-- Shock: 50% chance of failure with air magic of 4 or less, too much reliance upon it at this time. Glyph of renewal/energy: Change so there is a failure rate of 50% with energy storage of 4 or less and move renewal to energy storage line.

--Assassins-- Critical strikes: works at 100% rate with daggers, 50% rate with all other weapons, this would fix its ability to conflict with other classes weapons. Dagger usage: I'm not quite sure why Izzy wanted to move sins away from daggers but I feel that it was a bad move, revert? Blades of Steel, Twisting Fangs, Trampling Ox: Overused, reduce effectiveness and buff other attacks. Shattering Assault: Damage output too hight for having extra abilites, reduce damage Entangling Asp: Why does this skill not do any damage? That seems silly, by the skills description you get "bit" by an asp and poisoned. Mark of Insecurity: Change so it causes all actions to be easily interruptable. Return: Add a 2 second disable for all skills after returning.

--Ritualists-- Offering of Spirit: Increase conditional health sacrifice to 33% Blind Was Mingson: Increase Recharge time

--Paragons-- Nothing to say here.

--Dervishes-- Wounding Strike: Increase recharge time

If anyone has any other skills to mention that I missed feel free to do so. -- 71.203.248.214 23:23, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

So in general, you want all classes to not use any secondary profession, yes? — Poki#3 11:44, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can see there is no problem with Expertise, the only time I have heard complaints about it was combining it with scythe attacks, and touchers. Since there has never been any major problems with it before the introduction of scythes I'm pretty sure it is a safe bet that Expertise is not the problem. -- Broodling 00:16, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Ranger's cannot "spam" distracting shot; distracting shot has a 10 second cooldown which is a VERY long time for an attack cooldown. Escape remember is an elite skill, if it was nerfed any further it would be difficult to justify as an elite when you consider non elite counterparts such as lightning relfexes (33% AIS, 75% block with longer cooldown? - Makes warrior stances look dire) --85.62.18.8 11:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

As for the Ritualist, do not increase health sacrifice... It would be offering of blood with less energy gain :( 58.179.83.204 04:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Keep in mind that sets of skills (like warrior stances) are ment to be viable for other professions too. Warrior stances on monks is a good example, make your monk more sturdy. Take my warrior by example. Sever Artery, Gash, Whirlwind Attack, Hundred Blades, Save Yourselves, Dolyak Sigent, Stoneflesh Aura and Silver armor. Atts: 13 stength 12 swordsmanship, 11 earth magic (Sup Strength, minor swordsmanship) Wtih Dolyaks and stoneflesh + Sentenals armor, I'm pretty much invinceable to all but very high damage spells and degen. I grab all the agro, have a monk back me up some, throw up Silver armor and I start to dish out some major damage. On top of a constand HB and WWA and SYS from all the adrenalin of HB and WWA having such a high concentraion of enemies around me. by the time the nukers start flying, most enemies are down 25-50% and just get the floor mopped with them. Stick Kinetic armor on a monk and you would have an non-stop +60 armor buff. There seem to be a set of skills that just work better when used as a secondary profession. Afterall, isnt that what a second profession is all about? Picking up some awsome skills that your profession doesn't offer? --Wolf 14:02, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The whole point of have dual classes is that you can use skills of your second class to create new ways to play. I'm all about balance, but at the same time I think it's great that Glyph of lesser energy, expertise, critical strikes, etc are so versatile. Besides, I'm sure assassins are well-versed in the use of various weapons. -- Alaris 14:41, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Lolz @ his suggestions. I beleive you jsut want everything nerfed into oblivion, then? Hell, lets make every class asuseless as eachother, that way your suckage is equivalent to a regular player. ATM, no one of the balances you mentioned are relevant to the current meta-game((Except probably wounding strike). You should read up on Game updates/suggestion page Discussion and figure out whats going on.

I think its funny someone else noticed what I've noticed for a while in that Expertise is the last untouched "overpowered" primary. Rangers are way way past due to feel the sting of the nerfbat and none of these little piddly nerfs like machinegunners, splintbar etc. You missed one thing on necros though (and this is coming from a die-hard necro player) nerf sabway. Even if it means redoing necromancers from the ground up something must be done when you can essentially go eat lunch and have 3 heroes do missions for you effortlessly. If you want a guaranteed win at anything H/H in the game run AE + assassin support + ursan, sabs and cons and its literally impossible to lose. Put a SY! or TNtF! in there for fun and its literally IDDQD time. Its like Guild Wars answer to a Diablo 2 hero trainer. 98.219.48.111 18:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Nerfing Ranger's expertise has been suggested before, but it's not that overpowered. It gives you flexibility, but for the most part, it does not give you increased power. Touch rangers have their counters, SWAY should probably be nerfed (not necessarily via expertise though), and otherwise Rangers are not amongst the trinity or power farmers or anything. I play ranger as my main because it's flexible (i.e. less boring in the long run), not because it's overpowered. -- Alaris 18:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Just keeping you honest here buddy...I could argue anything in the game provides flexibility, Ursan provides flexibility through removal of profession favortism. I see what you are saying, its just a bad way to look at it. I've argued elsewhere that scaled reduction is superior to scaled gain and I stand by it. With enough points spread between exp and marks or any other weapons attribute rangers can play for free. In fact I don't remember the last time I saw energy management grace a rangers bar...which is ironic to me since that was one of many complaints that lead to overpowered scaled gain arguments on soul reaping. 98.219.48.111 18:20, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with scaled reduction > scaled gain, and that rangers don't need energy management. But I don't agree that Rangers per se are overpowered because of it. Ranger expertise only works on ranger skills, spirits, and attacks. R/Rt spirit spamming is only useful in rare places. As for attacks, what Rangers get for "free", D or A have 4 energy regen (instead of 4) + energy returns via their primary, whereas warriors and paragons have extra armor and extra damage or energy return via shouts. How common are energy management skills on non-casting classes anyway? I could point out other differences, but no need. Suffice to say that rangers' primary is not overpowered IMO. -- Alaris 17:53, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

There isn't a problem with Sabway. It provides players that don't play 24/7 to play the game. It's not overpowered at any way, I can't play it in any Elite Area (UW, FoW and DoA) and its not "gg" as soon as I get in an explorable area. It's still a challange of pulling and killing for me. I don't have players in my guild that can come to help me or the money and skill points for consets or time to grind for high Norn Rank for Ursan. It's the only thing that is left for me and many other casusal players, don't take it away. It's not sabway that takes advantage of the game, is the Ursan players and their Consets.77.125.107.237 17:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Last Week's Update

"Because Health degeneration can be countered with strong party-wide healing, we've altered Soul Bind so that it can be used to reduce the efficiency of party-wide healing." Can someone please explain to me what party healing he's talking about? thanks!--Lancy1214 12:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Heal Party and related skills. — Poki#3 12:43, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

If four people have soul bind on them, and A Singer uses Ballade of Restoration,thats alotta damage flying around. Phill Gaston 11:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

June 24th - HoM changes

I want to say new changes to HoM is a wonderful news to players who cannot commit every waking minute of their life to the game. Also thanks for letting us know that there's no cut-off date for HoM accomplishments. Props to Anet! – Barinthus 19:27, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Props indeed. I'm lovin the changes and Can't wait until they go into effect --Wolf 19:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Great news! My only question left now is: Will minipets spread across characters stack up on "Account mode" (Same for every other item-monument)? If so, I can safely add all my mini's to one HoM and they'll be HoM'd in all? Karuro 19:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's the intention. --Wolf 19:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Awesome news! thx for that! -- (Tribina / talk) 20:20, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I hope the whining about doing this too late is minimal. And also, Anet is listening a bit more than usual sure, but then some attention to the PVP gripes would be nice. Keep up the good work. Mango 20:31, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

/clap for anet, now i can finally focus getting r3 KoaBD for my main, and not bother about my other chars. thanks anet ^^ ShoGunTheOne 20:53, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

WOOT, now i can get a rainbow phoenix on my ranger even though the title is on my ele. --MageMontu 21:13, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I will agree with 99% of the update, that it is positive and a good move. My 1% of disappointment is still with the weapons. By focusing on only Destroyer and Tormented weapons, I think, even making it account based, forces people to grind to get gold to buy, or grind to farm materials, to get these weapons. I am sure I am not the only player who has a favorite weapon on, lets say 3 different characters. Example: a GOLD Necro Cursing staff that has better stats and mods than 99% of the Greens, The Razorstone Axe from my warrior, The Hand of the Forgotten Scythe from my Derv. These are my heroes, achieving the accolades displayed in the HoM. They are achieving these accolades using the weapons I have listed. Each of these have been customized, so they will not be leaving my acocunt. Should these not be the weapons in the HoM so that they can be revered for being wielded by the Heroes who achieved these honors. As another example: I think the Paragon is a great class, and I did try out playing a Paragon character. I did not find it a class that fits my style of play, therefore I have no desire, or need, to acquire either a Tormented or Destroyer Spear, and I do not feel I should be required to do so to gain the special "Unlocks" that will be associated to this monument in GW2. As a solution I propose the following: Allow one weapon of each type. Allow GOLDS and Greens to be added. GOLDS may only be added if they have PERFECT Mods and they must be CUSTOMIZED. GREENS may only be added if they are CUSTOMIZED. This would allow anyone to get a weapon to add, via many different means, and to add those to their HoM reflecting the achievments of either a Character, or possibly a Hero. This could also fit in the account based scenario by allowing a character in GW2 to have access to a comparable weapon once we know more of how "Class/Race" will be applicable in GW2. Please do not misconstrue this as a rant, it is not. It is an expression of a bit of disappointment, and the hopeful suggestion of one possible option. This game was touted as not requiring a player to grind. Requiring me to acquire Destroyer or Tormented weapons, at least to this player, makes me feel like I have to grind. Thanks for your time, patience, and work at providing us, the Players, with a game we all enjoy. I am greatly looking forward to hearing more about GW2 as things get ironed out. You guys are doing a great job even though we, the players, seem to always demand more.--Thorfinnr 22:06, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

@Thorfinnr:

I'm going to disagree with your suggestion, very few weapons should be displayable in the Hall of Monuments. I say this for several reasons. First, whatever unlocks are available in GW2, they are not intended for everyone to have. They are a reward for significant accomplishment. If golds and greens were added, it would undermine that principal and encourage people to fill their halls with junk, simply for the sake of filling it and meeting the requirement. Second, the displayed weapon meshes are part of the stand they are displayed on and scaled according to the monument scale (I texmod a lot, so take my word for it). To recreate the thousands of possible skins used by golds and greens and make them displayable is asking a lot more than people realize. They would literally have to rework every skin in the game to do what you're asking. That's an incredible waste of a developer's time. There are other things they should be focusing on. While I'm glad they have dedicated some time to the HoM, it's far from being the top priority in GW1 or GW2. Also, it should be recognized that the mechanics for unlocking items in GW2 are as of yet unknown (at least to us), so there may be no need for you to fill the entire monument with every weapon to gain the GW2 unlocks you desire. The addition of more weapons also undermines the efforts made by players who have already filled the monument. We have worked hard to fill that monument, allowing the addition of easier to obtain items cheapens the accomplishments of many players. The purpose of the HoM isn't to reward you for playing the game, it's to reward you for playing the game better than the average casual player. That being said, the 11 destroyer weapons I have were earned casually with no grind. They are if anything too easy to obtain. While I welcome the addition of Torment weapons, I think it should stop with that, save the possible implementation of allowing PvP only characters to access and unlock items for their hall through PvP accomplishments. If anyone is being left out, it's them.

If (and I believe it's very unlikely) the Devs decide to offer additional skins for use in the Hall of monuments, the weapons added need to be equal in difficulty to obtain. Possibly the creation of a new crafter who could for instance create "Elite" weapons with a skin comparable to their normal counterparts for the same price as a destroyer weapon. For example, they may craft and "Elite Elemental Sword" that would have the same stats as a destroyer sword, and differ from its normal counterpart only in it's ability to be displayed. Price that with materials at around 30-40k and it will offer more selections to players who simply don't want destroyer weapons, while not taking away from those who have already invested in the current system. That won't ever happen, I'm sure. Still it's the only fair way I can think of to offer you the selection you want in a way that's fair to the rest of the community. Countess Dramethia

I think that just about hits the mark. Back when I got my Elemental Sword, I could have sold it on the street for easily 500k. But no, I decided to keep it b.c that was an accomplishment. Now its worth, what 20k for a perfect req 9? EotN KILLED the ele sword. I liek the idea of a crafter that will make certain skins for you and have them end up costing around 40-75k. Heck if I had it my way, you would have to CLEAR the UW, pay 100k and the combined materials of FoW armor to craft an Ele Sword, as thats what it was worth when it was first discovered. --Wolf 18:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Great changes. Thank you ANET --Kyrax 22:08, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Cameronl | talk 23:11, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Its a very positive move giving more and more players the opportunity to complete a Hall of Monuments. Yes, I do have a personally preference to see green weapons added to what can be displayed. I have managed to acquire two Destroyer weapons since GWEN came out but thats a bit of a struggle, and Torment weapons are just far too unrealistic for me - and I'm sure many thousands of other players - to get through game play, let alone buying. I personally have had a changable relationship with the Destroyer weapons but aren't totally against them; their price yes, they could halve the material costs and it would still be more of a time challenge for many players.

Saying this now is a positive, they've made the decision but also expressed they don't have a time frame for it yet, a wise move considering staffing issues but it is solid progress. It is good to see Arenanet is understanding where a very substanical bulk of the players are coming from. This is a good thing.

There are however questions of how the Hall of Monuments reactions when in account mode that need to be answered, but I am sure Arenanet has worked out that kind of thing; my main question is regarding the Honor monument in how titles across the account will affect the statue on the account basis. Will it include all titles on the account? Will it only count titlesonce? Or will the statue be determined by the Maxed titles track of the character with the highest rank in the Maxed titles track? 000.00.00.00 01:16, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm personally not in favor of greens being added, as i think that only things considered hard to aquire should be in the hom and greens are peasy to get. I know that minipets and hero armour isn't hard to get but i still think that thats beside the point. Green's opens up a consideration of too large a group of items and completely cheapens that stand. I personally like the addition of the tormented weapons. I just wish their was a comparable set being added for cantha, such as zodiac weapons. I think the addition of a weapon crafter in the deep and urgoz warren,which crafts perfect inscribable zodiac weapons, would be a good idea. I don't think zodiac weapons should be craftable for money but rather something like an ambrace of truth but its factions equivalent. Make it some random drop from end chests in those places. Maybe to differentiate the crafted zodiac weapons from their dropped counterparts they could have some token change to them, such as inverted colourings or maybe a red swirl pattern instead of gold and name them slightly differently. So that peeps can't add normally dropped zodiac weapons. -- Salome 02:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

A huge thank you to ANet for doing this change, and for also letting us know about it well in advance. This means that I finish filling up my HoM one my one character, and I can again start playing *just for fun*. Sure, playing HM and doing title hunts has been fun, but at times demanding. I also have a few neglected games in my closet that want some attention before GW2 =D -- Alaris 02:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

YAY! I can no longer worry that my monk was working on the sweet tooth title even though my Ele is my closest thing to a "main" or that my old characters can never, ever be survivors (Who was afraid to die way back when the game came out? That was the whole point, to me; I never had to fret about dying. In fact, you had enforced PvP long before level 20, and often before level 10). And I can finally accept that finishing my title on ONE character is "good enough". It even makes sense! I mean, what's to stop X and Y from making a baby who had a thing for the famous child of B and C, anyway? Although I'm confident you've gotten lots of positive feedback, more can't ever hurt, can it? I wanted to say "Job-super-well-done!" and I am very happy with this change, more so than anything I can remember since Survivor was added (and I hate Survivor).Miss Innocent 09:40, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I wuv you. Now I will finally lose the 'wasting time' feel when I play with characters other than my main. The only thing that kept me from playing lately. MithTalk 04:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

So they're updating all this and forgot the most easy and obvious, a proper rearranging option ~~Brodly 07:00, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Go Anet, Go Anet!!! *making weird circular movements and flapping with my arms*. ;-) --Silverleaf 07:08, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

And here's a responce from a non-wiki reading fellow guildmember i told about the upcomming HoM update:

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. --Silverleaf 07:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

My question is...why do they have enough resources too fix this but not enough to fix this? — Teh Uber Pwnzer 07:34, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Regina already answered that. They are working on Ursan, might even be testing various options between developing GW2, Dragon Festival, PAX preps, and many bug fixes. Not start it here please. Besides the discussion about HoM is older than the discussion about Ursan. --Silverleaf 07:45, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

There we go again, This is not an Ursan thread, take whatever you have to say about ursan here. --MageMontu 07:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I just want to say thank you to Anet for these changes, and I would like to say that Green weapons have no place in the HoM. They are NOT a sign of any sort of achievement since they drop regularly and are as common as dirt. Any player could fill the weapons monument with greens for under 50k, or probably less than a month of boss farming by even a casual player. Maintaining the focus on the elite areas at least keeps the illusion that the HoM is a record of a player's accomplishments.-- Wynthyst 07:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

What they need to do now is:

1. Remove Zodiac weapons from drops and make it Craftable on scale with the destroyer weapons from a crafter who appears after Urgoz/Kanaxai is defeated.
2. Add a weapon crafter in in Sorrow's Furnace (maybe appear after you kill the Golem) with new weapon skins and make the price on scale with the destroyer weapons aswell.
3. Add the new Zodiac and the New weapon skins to the HoM.

That way there will be a set from each campaign add able to the HoM and revive those dead elite missions (maybe make SF harder on scale with the other elite missions) --MageMontu 08:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Or just make zodiac weapons craftable as i said above as that way you will have set for each continent. Tyria, Cantha and Elona. Either that or add the crafted deldrimor weapons from the end area of prophs. -- Salome 08:56, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Any insight on improving the way trophies are sorted and arranged? --Scottie theNerd 08:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

@Silverleaf, HoM problems were discussed before Ursan? Who cares? Ursan has received much more discussion in less time. In addition, a large portion of the damage Ursan does is permanent and increasing as time goes by; Ursan is driving down the economy, elite items are becoming common (and thus not elite) and titles are becoming more and more worthless. The minimal problems with HoM is retroactive. It wouldn't matter if they fixed it now or right before the release of GW2, the end result would be the same. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 09:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

This is NOT the place to start another Ursan rant, and if you continually try to turn every discussion into one, people (including the Devs) will very quickly stop listening to you at all. So please....-- Wynthyst 09:46, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I was going to post my opinion, but people posted while I typed... no thx to typing that whole thang again xD Jonny10 09:50, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Usually when that happens to me I click the back button, copy everything and than paste it :P --MageMontu 09:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, every place that discusses another useless update is relevant to Ursan. Every useless update ANet makes = time they could have spent doing something useful. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 10:06, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, Armor will also be able to be displayed in Account based mode. Althought I like this (and although it's a bit wierd) I see a slight problem here:

• Core professions can't get Elite Exotic and Elite Imperial armor.
• Factions professions can't get any Prophecies, Elite Sunspear and Primeval armor.
• Nightfall professions can't get any Prophecies and Factions armor.

So you still need to finish campaigns with multiple characters... — Poki#3 10:57, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Ponders* how will that work for the items/titles i have double dedicated for my characters like FoW armor and double minipets and all *ends ponder* I'll watch and see :). --Silverleaf 11:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I imagine there is a removeDuplicates() method somewhere in the HoM code. Srry I guess I'm the only Java Nerd here.... I imagine that in the case of titles it will take the highest rank and remove any duplicates, and mini pets will remove duplicates. Also on the armor, ya knwo how it always re-dyes in the display bades on the color of the players armor? I imagine the skin will be like that. for Example, if I added FoW on my warrior, Primevil on my monk, and Vabbian on my Ranger, and walked in with my derv, I would see the Derv skins for Fow, Primevil, and Vabbian, with any duplicates removed of course. Ya know what would make a good non tormented/destroyer weapon addition? Design a weapon contest goodies. They are harder than destroyer, but probably easier then tormented. Also, I think Zodiac in some way and maybe craftable Deldrimor stuff from end of proph would be a good move too. I never could get into the tormented and destroyer stuff and personally see pretty much any other skin as "better" --Wolf 13:58, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

@Salome: How about just "End Game Greens", like the Deldrimore weapons. I can see your point on some Greens just not being "Elite" enough. I still think, even if all could agree to "End Game Greens", that they should be Customized. Perhaps then they could lead to an "unlock/exclusive skin/whatever Anet comes up with thats cool" per "class/race" once GW2 comes around and all those logistics get worked out. Please realize I am not asking for the Destroyer or Tormented weapons to be removed, just others to be included. My idea of allowing all Greens to be added more reflected my example of my own situation where I probably would not go out and get a Destroyer Paragon Spear, since I do not play a Paragon Character, and my heroes have very cool tweaked out Gold weapons. It opens up the potential to get a spear of some kind, green/gold, and not have to grind for cores or blow a bunch of gold on an item that as a player, I really wouldn't use. I do like your idea of an Elite Zodiac crafter or something similar. I'm open to other suggestions, ideas, and compromises. I'm just trying to come up with ideas for the casual players as well as the "hard-cores"(I think I fall somewhere in between. :) ). Good discussion, lets hear some more ideas and hope some Devs give our thoughts a good look. :)--Thorfinnr 14:08, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I also have to agree with Wolf...I'm just not a big fan of the Destroyer Skins...Tormented are ok, but I'm just not a fan of those either. I do like the idea of including the "Design-a-weapon" Greens. But some of those would be just as hard to get as the Destroyer or Tormented. But people do love those Zaishen Keys!! :)--Thorfinnr 14:12, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Um, "Design-a-weapon" gear isn't green, their golds. I would also like to take a second to applaud you guys in having a good constructive conversation and not degrading into something akin to Ursan. (omg, I said it, please forget about it now.) Anyway, we have soom good ideas, It would be nice to get Regina's thoughts on them at some point or another. --Wolf 14:23, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not against adding more stuff, however the idea of adding greens just goes against what I think that monument is about. Is it not supposed to be for hard to acquire weapons. Tormented and Destroyer fulfil this, however most greens don't. Also you have a wee problem with end game greens. They are restricted to 1 per char through natural play without buying new ones. This is problematic as they would basically end up a new goldsink and in effect cut poor players out of any possible way to gain them. Whereas poor players could in theory build up materials, money and torment gems through natural play of end game areas/dungeons. Thus they can get their own weapons without any need to purchase them off people. Also on a personal note, i just dont like green's due to them lacking in the the customisation department. I certinly dont want to have to be stuck with a bunch of green's im never gonna use, where as if they keep it as elite craftable golds, at least every weapon i buy i can customise to my own personal play style. @ Wolf, some design a weapon winners are green, see end game faction rewards for an example. -- Salome 14:30, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Only the Spear and Scythe have a green counterpart. take a look at the rest, they are all gold and have VERY limited drops. Its MUCH harder to come into possetion of DaWC skins than it is to get a destroyer or even a tormented skin at that. Their prices are pretty high, and their just so dang hard to find. Plus, there is a DaWC skin for pretty much any kind of weapon. I think it is more of a show of greatness to have a DaWC skin than a tormented or destroyer wep, plus I love pretty much ALL of the DaWC stuff. --Wolf 14:36, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

No wolf,you're wrong. Sorry, but ALL the end game greens are design a weapon models except for the shiro blades and shiro swords. Everything else is a design a weapon contest winning model. EDIT See here for the 2005 contest which is what everything except the spear and scythe is based on, as the spear and scythe are based on 2007 entries. -- Salome 14:46, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Also on a side note, the gold versions are easy to get. Run in a steel wall group in the deep in HM and you'll be mercing the gold design-a-weapon weapons afterwards as theirs just so many dropped. -- Salome 14:52, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a simple solution as to why you can only add selected weapons, and that it GW2. Each weapon you add will be seen in GW2, and that means that the designers have to make models for them. From a designer standpoint, giving the option to add any weapon is probably teryfying. Now, from a player standpoint... I'd love to add Shiro's Blades, Stygian Daggers and an Undead Longbow. That's what I'm using. These are "my" weapons, not the Destroyer Hammer. It's pretty hard to find a balance here. Hopefully we'll see more additions in the future. — Poki#3 14:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I was refering to the 2007 entries only. Skins such as the Draconic Aegis, Demonic Aegis, Emerald Blade, Celestial Compass and the likes. --Wolf 14:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Errr...okay fair enough. Seems odd for you to assume that, when I mentioned the end game faction items in particular to be as an example but fair enough. :) Glad we've cleared up that wee bit of miscommunication. Anyway their is another consideration why random drops wont do. As who defines whats perfect on a random drop? Way too many varibles to be considered once you start adding random drops. That's why they use weapons that can be bought from traders, as they are all at the same basic stats with the same basic requirements. It makes sense to me from both a logical and technical limitations view point. Having weapons only from these traders just means that the coding needs one wee boloeon yes/no value to each weapon. Adding random drops however would add a whole range of new queries to each weapon, such as: is it perfect? which mods does it have? is it even inscribable? is it gold? etc.... it's vastly more complicated than tormented shield = y, tormented sword = n, etc.... I have to be honest I dont see why others cant see the amazing amount of needless added coding complexity adding random drops to the hom would cause overall, for no true benefit. I stick by my suggestion, add a new trader for a new type of slightly altered zodiac weapons (be that with them being slightly bigger or maybe a an altered colour scheme that isnt blue/gold but something else) , which are gold and inscribable, and call them something like Greater Zodiac Weapons and then add these to the HoM. That way dropable zodiac weapons aren't adable to the HoM but yet their is still a Canthan weapon set in the HoM which are similar to the much desired zodiac set. -- Salome 15:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, for zodiac, they would need a crafter. With tormented and Destroyer weps, you get them clean, no mods. Mods should not be required. Also, do any of the DaWC 2007 entries drop in anything other than req 9? --Wolf 15:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Yup, I have a req 11 Demonic Aegis and req 13 Celestial Compass. I also have friends with most of the 2007 DaWC weapons and none of them are req 9. -- Salome 16:00, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Then you make it require req 9 stuff and oyu got a good enough challange, but any req would be preferable. --Wolf 17:49, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The one quick and dirty change I'd like to see to the Hall of Monuments: When our armor is put on display, it's a GIANT representation of your character standing up there. When our weapons go on display, it's a pathetically small representation (smaller than a "tall" character wields the weapons). Please please please, add a quick scaling function to the weapons. Adding tormented weapons as a new option, adding other weapons as a new option, etc will all be useless if I still need to zoom in to first person and pull out a magnifying glass just to see what the hell I've put up for display.68.219.159.21 15:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The man makes a good point. But, if they make them TOO big, then you won't be able to diplay them all. --Wolf 15:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the IP, but maybe we dont need to show all of them. I would setlle for showing 5 of them on HUGE stands! -- Salome 16:00, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

How about they just make the weapon bigger and leave the stand the same size? --Wolf 17:47, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Poki#3 brings up a good point...being able to add any weapon, even if limited to greens would add more weapons to be designed and added to the skins in GW2...talk about a monumental amount of work. I will concede the point of Golds and Random Greens...it is too much to ask. :) I see Salome's point on the Destroyer and Tormented fulfilling that "hard to get" idea, and I see its validity. How about a middle of the road, and reward those with a monumet filled with Destroyer, Tormented, etc. get an exclusive Green skin with "selectable" max mods and maybe a small extra Damage or Energy "buff" in GW2, and perhaps if you put in "End Game Greens" (Deldrimor, Forgotten, etc. which also goes in with the Boolean value Salome mentioned, i.e. Deldrimore Sword = y Forgotten Scythe = n, etc.) you get perhaps the same exclusive skin, Gold, say 1 selectable mod, and you have to get the other mods for it yourself the old fashioned way and you don't get the extra "buff". Like I said, I'm trying to find a "middle of the road" so the casual players (maybe play 1-3 times in a 2 week period), the devoted players (maybe play 3-4 times in a 1 week period), the "hard-core" players (maybe play a few hours every single day), and all the players who fall somewhere in between can all get something cool out of their efforts when GW2 comes along. :) --Thorfinnr 20:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I see Thorfinnr's point and it sounds like a good idea, different rewards based on what weapons you fill it with. Can we all agree on the fact that it needs SOMETHING besides Tormented and Destroyer, or are there people of the mind that those should be the only kinds? --Wolf 21:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Still...Tormented Weapons are for Nightfall players...I'm a stricly Factions player...it'd be nice if Zodiac weapons would be added. Besides, you get them on elite missions...208.63.194.21 21:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Salome, I like that. Being able to display five weapons would be nice, large enough to actually see them. If I was able to mod I would put a statue through holding the weapon, five reasonably sided statues holding the weapons. 000.00.00.00 22:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

In response to 208.63.194.21 above me: Since you have Eye of the North (or else you wouldn't care one way or another), you can always get Destroyer weapons to add to your Hall of Monuments. You could also buy tormented weapons from other players. --Goteki-45 22:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

The daggers for both aren't that spectacular :/208.63.194.21 23:09, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm in favour of these new changes as they put most GW players at ease, but there are still some things which I'm curious to know, yet, would find too risky to try out once these changes have been made. If, say, I have a survivor title within the HoM and my other characters have no access to this title, would the trophy suddenly 'disappear' if I were to delete the char who added it to the HoM in the first place? Would the armours given in also be deleted? I'm running out of character slots, but I'd like to maximise the amount of things shown in the HoM, the only way I can see me doing so is by buying more character slots. 82.112.151.75 23:51, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Would love a Zodiac Crafter, Hard too reach and find materials for it but it would mean a Zodiac Scythe & Spear!!! Yay! No greens please! Would love a resize of all the displays so some like the weapon display get a bigger & better representation where as i would like to see the hero's and armors be smaller and more displayable. (Now i think of this they are problable working on that already for there are so many armors and weapons addable after the update). Still YaY!! (1) for the upcoming update and YaY!!! (2) for this not becoming some norn-skill-discussion. --Silverleaf 06:48, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the reason of not adding too many weapons to the monument is because of the GW2 unlooks will be too much? -NeHoMaR 10:27, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes this is a very nice update indeed, I am glad to see it account based, Thanks Anet for making these changes. -- Natalie Black 12:42, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would love a zodiac crafter too, even if I couldn't put them in the HoM, I was always a fan of zodiac goods, but can never seem to get the ones I want. Also, Hero and Char armor diplays desperately need to be scaled down to diplay more than 5, I have 11 heros displayed in hy MoM and 7 sets alone on my warrior.... I need more room.... --Wolf 14:35, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Am I the ONLY one who's been annoyed by the fact that Celestial and Zodiac weapon sets... Lack Focus Items? There are Wands... But no Foci. I mean, sure, there's shields... but come on, would a foci be that much to ask for? :x76.174.38.191

Ugh, giant page. In any case, I'm excited for this new Hall of Monuments, I think it'll be a great change for everyone. (My idea for the "Tormented" unlock: What if you filled the monument with tormented weapons, you could have the option of a "Ghostly" human? That would be neat, and 'very' exclusive.)Theta Republic 19:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

HoM update Questions

The shift to an account based Hall of Monuments is a welcome change, as is the addition of torment weapons. Thank you for hearing us out on those issues. The change does present a few new questions however:

• In regards to the additional weapons, will there be new stands added to display the additional weapons, or will the monument cycle through them with the current 11 as the maximum displayable at one time. I ask because I currently have my hall filled and want to know if I'll be needing to buy additional weapons to retain that designation.

• Is there any advantage to adding aromr of the same type on multiple characters in preperation for the release of GuildWars 2? For example, If I have Elite Luxon armor on my elementalist, should I also add it on my Mesmer? Will guildwars 2 see them as two distinctly different armor sets, or as a single series of armor?

I have many other question, but those two are the most pressing as they will dictate what achievements I aim for in the coming months. Thanks to the devs for putting in the effort to address the communities concerns. Countess Dramethia 13:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Making the Hall of Monuments account-based is definitely welcome as mentioned above, but it's not the thing that makes me play just one character instead of playing all my characters evenly like I used to. The culprit there is Kind of a Big Deal. And with the addition of the Rainbow Phoenix, I have completely stopped playing all of my other characters in favor of the one that was already farthest in KoaBD. I'm not suggesting that KoaBD be made account-based, because that would certainly piss off people who have already made significant progress in it on multiple characters. I don't know that I have a good suggestion for a solution, but I did want to point out that the Hall of Monuments is far from the only thing that is encouraging people to play only one character. 70.184.179.84 15:19, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Something a guildie pointed out to me, this update will allow both Leg. Survivor and Leg. Defender of ascalon to be displayed. --Ʀєʟʟɑ 22:14, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

obvious much? -- Salome 04:38, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Question: does this mean i only need to get a title once on any char? like i have my war do the explorer, and monk get wisdom, and my mesmer gets some other title? Do i only need to get one set of armor for all heroes combined? can you understand was all title are account wide now? i think you will need more spots, for a couple of places now like mini pets and armor. sry i'm kinda a nub when it come to the HoM -- --Dandan X 18:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Double Stuff in HoM's?????

How will it work with all the double armors, weapons, minipets and title's that i accumilated to secure an "inheritance" for my hero's children? Or was that all for nothing? I am happy with the HoM update but i do feel a bit cheated about all the hard work/play (yes i have very much fun) i put into my characters. Having 5 maxed Sunspear/lightbringer titles was all for nothing? Getting the little Moa chick after questing for it multiple times was a waste of time and in-game spending?? --Silverleaf 11:21, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't all for nothing. Now you have five characters that can use sunspear skills at max levels and have the best advantage against torment creatures and margonites, and a source of minor revenue selling the extra pets. Plus, your characters in GW1 have nice armors :P --Goteki-45 12:28, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Meh, titles, its not like Arenanet can give you that time back, and nots of sets of 15k armor is always cool and fun to brag about, I myself have 12 15k sets and one vabbian (more expensive than reg 15k) across all chars. On the other hand, I think it would be fair for Anet to allow us all, on each character to undedicate and uncustomize anything in our HoM once per character. So that those of us who HAVE filled it with duplicate minis and dest weapons, and claim them back and maybe sell them to people or something along those lines. I think it would be perfectly fair, and many people would love you forever. This is one goof-up you should realy fix before it's too late. I understand it would take more time, but as long as this HoM unpdate comes out before GW2, I don't think it will matter how long it takes to finish. --Wolf 13:56, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Feel sorry for your loss. I do wish that this announcement came much earlier. But then again, the new and improved HoM is a better idea than having to redo all these accomplishment per GW2 character. It takes a huge amount of time just outfitting one HoM, and for non-professional players, outfitting a few HoM's is just unrealistic. -- Alaris 17:00, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

There are people who play this game professionally? i would love to know how they went about getting this job, as an extra source of income from playing a game i enjoy sounds pretty attractive. 68.54.150.61 00:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Either apply for Q&A, or play tournaments for cash rewards. =D -- Alaris 02:50, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Can no one stay on topic anymore? Professional players are against the user policy. I asked about all the double Kirin or Elite Kurzick armors I have for two characters and how that will work now that the HoM accomplishments will be account based? --Silverleaf 13:12, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Getting back on topic, My understanding is that you will be able to choose whether your HoM is account based or character based, and be able to switch between both modes. It is uncertain how rewards will be transferred over to Guild Wars 2, so having duplicates has not had any negative effect on you yet, and may not ever. There is the potential to get screwed here, but nothing as of yet that would make me think it's likely. - Countess Dramethia

Actually doesn't matter. No answers anyway's. --Silverleaf 14:36, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe the Developers Notes mentioned that the armor displayed would be for the character actually in the HoM at that time, regardless of whether you are displaying by account or by character. Pucktrapper 20:04, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I know what you mean last year I took time to get PKM on all my characters because I wanted all three of them to have the rainbow phoenix. We'll see if the people who played the game and got duplicate titles will be thrown under the bus or not.

HoM Storage

Might the developers consider adding a mechanism for storing armor and weapons in the HoM? There are many of us that would appreciate not having to carry around multiple armor sets. A couple of ideas I've come across are: 1) a HoM chest that will hold up to 5 armor sets (character-based), but would not hold other items.. only items that are displayable in the HoM. 2) Make the armor and weapon displays interactable where a player may remove an armor/weapon piece or put it on the stand, and the actual item is removed from inventory while on display. Pucktrapper 15:20, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This isn't really the place for suggestions: this is. But don't think it's hasn't been mentioned over and over... — Poki#3 09:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Poki, for showing me the link to suggestions. You should, however, scroll up and see the very lengthy paragraphs posted by other people talking about changes they feel should be made. At least my brief comment was on topic with the HoM discussion. And, no, I don't presume to be the first person to suggest HoM storage. But the fact they are changing the HoM in response to player desires leads me to believe that more people should be urging them to include a storage mechanism. If this page isn't for discussing impending updates, then what is this page for? Pucktrapper 20:15, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

For me to add that I second this suggestion =D --Wolf 21:51, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Impending updates =/= suggestions for future impending updates. The previous discussion already spawned a 3rd child, and I just felt like I had to beat the 4th Child with a Linkstick. — Poki#3 23:45, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

HoM modifications

Once again, it is an update that will please the casual players, but I, as a Hardcore GW Gamers, feel completely cheated. I've spent lots of time and money to complete titles on several characters, which now reveals to be useless for GW2. I have also chosen to spend money on destroyers weapons when Onyx and Diamonds were far more expensive than now to complete the Destroyer Weapons altar, and now I am told I will have to do so with tormented weapons...

Time passes and I have the growing feeling that Devs tend to average players skills and achievements through mediocrity - Ursans first, making HM and elite areas nothing more difficult than a walk in the Pre-searing, and now the HoM update. 82.65.7.110 07:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Character achievements are different then character achievements. Things you did didn't go to waste. And remember: No one is forcing you to fill the monuments up! — Poki#3 09:10, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

If i had know sooner i would have bought a second account at Anet and dedicate my double investments there. --Silverleaf 11:19, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

And if anyone knew something was going to happen before it did, there would be no point in gambling.

ArenaNet is a smart company, they know that the majority of their players are casual. Only a minority are "hardcore" about Guild Wars. It's too bad that you spent all that time and effort, but more people never did and would like to be able to get something for what little they might have achieved. It's always better for a company to please the majority or else they'd loose business. --Curse You(talk|contribs) 07:50, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You dont need to get tormented weapons, they are simply allowing them into the hall if you so desire. Also, I would think that the more achievments you have (of course, no doubles) the better stuff you'll get in GW2. It is a shame that all your double titles go to waste, but really, what were titles before the HoM anyway? Those double titles are still as flashy to other players as they always were.

Re: July 2 Update

I would like to take a sec and say something and ask something.

This looks like a very good step in the right direction. I would have liked to see a different approach implemented, but with my expirences withe the UW (600/Smite/Famine FTW!) This seems to be a very viable option and a very good implementation. Altough, I look might be needed in some other areas of high Permasin farms

Now, one simple question. When does this build go live?

Thanks for your time and I look forward to this update. Keep up the good work guys, and thanks regina for keepin us in the loop as much as your allowed to =D --Wolf 20:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it goes live thursday. together with the HoM changes and the new potion/TRP -- The Warrior Of Timi 20:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Awsome, thanks. potion/TRP? --Wolf

The new potion for the Zaishen Chest and Tournament Reward Points. (Seriously, if you're not betting, you're totally missing out on free crap.) :D Kokuou 20:49, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

KK, thanks, only ever heard em refered to as Tonics and didn;t reacognise the acronym. --Wolf 20:53, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Great solution! Speedway UW clears are still possible, and solo Sin will go much slower =) Thanks for the update -- (Elder / talk) 20:51, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally, you got it, Anet! :D

Ah but they DIDNT get it. 50% dmg reduction is overkill. They could have just made all of the Dreamriders have sig of disenchant that way none can be avoided. Instead they ruin the skill for more then just UW farming. You can just avoid the new foes in the Chaos plains and still get ectos maybe not as fast but just as easy. Again 50% dmg reduction is just plain overkill.

Thank you for this quote:

Sold enough copies of Eye of the North now? :P

Then, please, finally nerf Ursan as desired by so many players. 0:) —ZerphaThe Improver 21:12, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

And here i was wondering how long it would take until someone came to drop the "ursan bomb" here. Seriously, this thing is not funny anymore, regardless of how much true there is on it.--Fighterdoken 21:16, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

A.net might not nerf it as theres players who love ursan. So it might turn into another rant on why ursan was nerfed. IMO though ursan needs a good kick in the teeth...(at least be able to get blinded, health degen, etc). Dominator Matrix 21:18, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It needs Balanced not nerfed. there is a difference. --Wolf 21:22, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Just when favor runs outXD, is this a hint for a new dungeon in ToA etc(melandru anyone?) 145.53.242.142 21:32, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Zomg favor! Buy ectos, buy buy before the price goes over 9000 :).--Fighterdoken 21:35, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Oddly how favor is almost out also. And the other "blessings" need balancing also. Dominator Matrix 21:36, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

so what happened to all those other farms, in specific, RAPTOR FARMING, that a-net promised to never nerf again? huh? 70.48.246.48 21:39, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Well yeah, by speaking of "nerfing" with regard to OP skills, i actually understand "balancing". ("Killing" a skill is never a good idea imo.) I don't want to kill the skill, i just want this skill's values fixed, possibly also some functionalities changed, but still keep it useful. —ZerphaThe Improver 21:42, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Go somewhere else to discuss now please? →→→ --Star Weaver 22:09, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I wub those arrows. Also I has not bought EoTN, don't nerf ursan yet! 99.235.230.36 01:35, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

To an off topic response in this thread, hey yea A-net...why haven't you come out with new areas for the gods to give out. I've been waiting for a "redeeming of the heavens" (Dwana), fighting off demons attacking a heavenly fortress (or whatever), am "Entangled miasma" (Melandru) fighting plants in a corrupted swamp, a "Plane of Chaos" (lyssa) where a chaotic dragon has vowed to destroy lyssa's connection to the world! Or whatever the heck you guys wanted it to be! Just pleeease! come out with a new area! As of now it doesn't make sense that there are only 2 gods that you can do missions with!--71.67.243.230 03:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Three Gods actually, if you cound Kormir, Goddess of truth and the Domain of Anguish. But yes, I'm all in favor of melandru/dwayna/lyssa.... or at least giving SOME reason to summon the bloody avatar of those gods.76.174.38.191

Shadow Form

Now that every farming build that used Shadow Form has been nerfed, everything from Ectos, to Tormented gems, to even regular assassin tomes will go up in price. I'm happy that there was a nerf to the Ecto farming builds, but it could have been less harsh. For example, now 600smite groups will have extreme problems in this area/wont be able to do it anymore. This will also smash any Obsidion tank builds, HB ursan healer builds, 55/SS builds...yada yada yada...

• Shadow form doesn't make sense that you would deal 50% less damage anyways. It's like how Earth Shaker doesn't attack the ground and attacks the person. When the skill name clearly states that you are simply shaking the ground. It doesn't make sense.
• To change this, perhaps instead of almost killing a skill; make it so that glyph of swiftness doesn't stack with Deadly Paradox. It didn't before, why should it now?--71.67.243.230 03:31, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't make sense that you deal less damage? Hay wait, since when have shadows been able to damage things at all? — Teh Uber Pwnzer 04:55, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, isn't it a good thing that those builds were damaged by the UW change? Last time I heard, being able to mindlessly farm high end areas is bad for the game. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 04:58, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

you mean like half the other builds in http://www.pvxwiki.com/wiki/Category:Great_working_farming_builds ? 70.52.163.176 08:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

why should assassin tomes raise in price? who would want to buy the stuff for their sin now that they can't use them for easyfarming anymore? sin tomes will drop as nothing else and shadow form runes will be available again. as for farming and economy, this was one of the best nerfs they could've done. the only big issue left now is kinda ursan. - Y0_ich_halt 10:45, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Guess I'll write it here as well. You can still farm the Chaos Planes with a Perma-SF A/E. Just switch a few skills and you can kill most enemies you killed before. Still earning quite some ecto's each 30 min. I tried it myself and got 3 ecto's. Anet only wanted to reduced the effectiveness of Shadow Form farming in general, if you ask me. That means that other overfarmed area's might take a hit as well. Have fun farming. (Ate of DK 10:42, 3 July 2008 (UTC))

What's wrong with farming? Why as soon as a new build comes out, it must be nerfed? Game itself requests high amounts of gold to achieve items, materials to craft items. New builds using Shadow Forms where very useful: mainly I had the please to take a screenshot at the end of Tomb of Primeval Kings done in solo, in HM. Anyway... ok on changing the skills used by monsters, but the reduction to 50% of damage dealt while using Shadow Form makes no sense to me. (--Zerohour 10:38, 4 July 2008 (UTC))

This update will do nothing at all, the ecto prices are still low (I consider it pretty bad) and the perma sins can also still farm, a little slower but they can, and this also ruins terra tanks etc, so if a group wants to take a terra for tanking, when they reach the chaos planes the tank will be screwed, and on bad conditions can wipe the entire team, maybe not allowing the shadow form to be maintained permanently would be better, but thats just my 2 cents. Also ursan should get some sort of effectiveness reduction, it makes most of the elite areas too simple, there is not any prestige from vanquishing or other things like that, when u can simply kill everything spamming 2/3 skills, also creates a lot of discrimination, check DoA/UW/FoW groups "not ursan? go away" so everyone goes get a damn skill and do some grind for r10 norn, and its done, no more variety no need for professions, its ruining most of the PvE. 82.154.31.107 15:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

UW monster skills

isn't it possible to give the spectres in UW a monster skill to remove shadow form something like this:

Skill. (monster only) For 30 seconds, whenever your attacks miss target foe, that foe loses one enchantment.

Spectre Claws

ID unset

• 5
• 30

Special

Monster skill

Type

Skill

Campaign

Core

Skill. (monster only) For 30 seconds, whenever your attacks miss target foe, that foe loses one enchantment.

Ofcourse, shadowform can be reverted, thenDre 11:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The point was to cut down on the farming and require more skill in this run, not killing it off completely -elviondale (tahlk) 13:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Then give the skill to the mindflectres only (instead of signet of disenchantment). I really hate the -50% damage, since i like to use Shadowform for regular pve (as in: not farming) aswell Dre 20:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Then you're bad =P Mango 20:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

10 July 2008...Please turn in your resignations.

If you're going to nerf "teleporting melee" (I'm assuming this also includes non-Assassins), shouldn't other, less surprising parts of Assassin skill bars be buffed to hmm, I don't know, balance the profession? I know it's not like a job you get paid to do or anything. That'd be stupid, right?

And Chilling Victory isn't the problem with "dervish spikes", a covered Deep Wound every 3 seconds is. Why the fuck did you even buff Wounding Strike anyway? It was a great skill that saw a lot of use before the un-needed buff. Now it's just over-used, and instead of reverting like you should you're probably going to turn it in to Discord and make it suck more than the original, right?

And the horrible stupidity coming from the Signet of Judgment and Enfeebling Blood changes hurt my eyes. If you're going to "fix" a skill, you don't change that much of it. Why not nerf the damage now on Signet of Judgment and see if that fixes i, instead of killing the skill by lowering damage AND added a half range restriction. Same thing with Enfeebling, if you're going to increase the sacrifice wait before you go and lower the duration.

Do you guys come up with these changes by banging your heads repeatedly on a solid wood table?

72.81.247.139 01:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

If some of the assassin teleports are going to receive an aftercast, then at the very least, the other teleports such as Return and Death's Retreat should also receive the similar effect. In a scenario where an assassin teleports to a monk and tries to spike him, the monk can easily either teleport away or use a defensive stance before the assassin can get a 2nd attack in. I don't really see the necessity of nerfing the offensive teleports without at least touching the defensive teleports too. It should be "an eye for an eye," not "an eye for nothing." Ekelon 01:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I sooooo agree with the ip guy. --Super Igor 10:41, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

While I currently have no stance on the content of the changes, I an extremely pleased with what we were told about further updates and such. The first 2 paragraphs pretty much hit the mark on things I was looking for in a Dev blog, or update like this one. You addressed pretty much every major skill related issue that has come up and some steps your taking to solve them. I like that and would like to continue seeing it. --Wolf 14:21, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Judging from these updates you clearly did not even CONSIDER Hero Battles in regards to balance. You nerf the offensive assasin shadowstpe skills yet leave return untouched.. retrun FYI is a Snare and a teleport with 15 sec r-charge for just 5 energy. While you may want to tackle SP's effects please do NOT nerf one set and ignore the other. Also builds such as bb and monks in general in HB are completely overpowered compared to the SP sin. Why make pointless nerfs? Please justify decisions you make in the future especially these extremely poor ones. 82.32.64.95

I think they're beating a dead horse with the shadowstep nerfs. What's the point of a gank class that can't gank? Shadowsteps were the few saving graces of the Assassin profession, especially after wreaking havoc on their offensive skills prior. Now you have a class that can "almost" gank and more recently, can "almost" surprise support classes. 68.51.112.211 08:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

wtf game are these devs balancing...worst reasoning behind an update ever...I'm moving onto AoC, this game is pretty much over now...lol

Un Nerf SF?

The environment changes to offset the SF builds in UW made sense, but please lose the 50% deduct on SF. As a casual PvE player, the A/E Perma SF farm build was alot of fun that broke the routine. Thanks for your time, Jwbjunkmail 03:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

"Casual player" and "farm" don't really go together. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 08:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The 50% damage reduction isn't THAT big of a deal anyway. as an A/E assassin I could solo ToPK in HM before it was nerfed, and afterwards I STILL can. It just takes LONGER. Big whoop. That's what they were trying to accomplish, making it not obscenely overpowered. There must be (Some) price to pay for being invincible against nearly everything.76.174.38.191

Ursan Blessing Used In a Tactical Way?

If you're planning on having the knockdown hit one target or having it last 10 - 60 seconds with a depletion of energy, I wholeheartedly agree with your approach, but it sounds like you're favoring Ursan Full Run. It sounds like you want to remove the energy degen so people can sit around and discuss how best to put ursan up and obliterate the next mob. Lack of skill in Ursan use is not the issue. Over power and lack of creativity in Ursan use is the issue. Anti-Ursans don't want to see people using Ursan Blessing full stop because they see it as an insult to the game's roots - creativity and skill. The skill's existance desecrates those two principles. Raising the difficulty of use may mean only the truly good players can use it, but its not like ANYONE is going to respect a successful Ursan... ever and its still going to make me sad to see people spamming lf 5 R10 Ursans. That's the reason why people don't care about the other blessings: because they don't make creativity redundant. I applaud you for suggesting a change but you're going to have to change it quite a bit before I'm going to be happy... before any anti-ursans are going to be happy, I'll wager. Happy nerfings. Spawnlegacy 08:04, 12 July 2008 (UTC) PS However pissed off you are, please only reply with valid and original arguments. That goes to you too, Ursan haters.

I have, and always will, say that the easiest and most logical way to "fix" ursan, is to turn Ursan Strike into... well, similar to Twin Moon Sweep. A double-striking melee attack, but rather than enchantment lost and health gained, say... +40 damage double-strike melee attack, which would be my preferable solution. Other possible changes include... Scaling damage, turning Ursan Force into a stance , so it cannot be used at the same time as defensive stances... Adding exhaustion to Ursan Rage, increasing Ursan Roar's Recharge... Add a disabled duration to all skills for 5~10 seconds when entering and/or exiting Ursan.. Any combination of these suggestions could be viable to change the blessing and make it less overpowered. 76.174.38.191

My suggestion is to have the damage scale down, something like this:

Ursan Strike - You deal 90 damage twice. For each Ursan in your party, this skills does 20 less damage.

That way it would still be good but only if you didn't load up on Ursan. 98.21.13.130 21:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I like that idea, but think it should be 15 less damage per rank in ursan. so it'd be... 1 ursan (buffed to 90) 2 ursans (same as usual) and so forth... getting weaker until 5 ursans would be... 15 damage twice. unlike yours, which would be negative 10 damage twice.76.174.38.191

heheheehe... owned. Anyone ever realise Grizzly Bears don't hunt in packs...? That is a brilliant idea. It makes it so a group of Ursans can keep an enemy in a permanent knockdown if theyre reeeeally tactical but it'll take far longer to kill. Like, I really don't mind if people wanna take the easy root. I just don't want them farming. But still, it really shouldn't get a buff for solo. Most of the division is because people want to keep the pride they get from maxing titles and most titles are maxed solo. So there should probably also be a duration nerf. For instance: After 60 seconds or if your energy drops to zero Ursan Blessing ends and Ursan Blessing is disabled for 120...30 seconds. Then it'll still be the destructo-button but title grinders won't be so likely to use it because its slow. Deter the exploiters, but help the less than creative. I really hope ArenaNet treats this with the heavy nerf gun it deserves.

Spawnlegacy 11:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I have no Idea or contemplation on how to even begin reworking the skill.

Actually, "used tactically" sounds a lot like "forced downtime" to me (as the offensive use of Ursan is permanently maintaining it on 5/8 of your team, i.e. strategical). And I would very much applaud that, because

1. It would either make ursan teams waste significant time waiting for recharge. Then other PUG teams have a chance of beating the ursan's time for a FoW/UW/DoA fullclear/HM mission (Yeah, there is the occasional cryway PUG, but you know what I mean..)
2. Or ursans would have to find a way to fight while the blessing is down, so the other 7 skills on their bar become actually relevant.

If that's done properly (disallow Mimicry!), I see nothing wrong. In fact, easily maintainable extremely powerful elites are a bad idea in general (*cough* revert shadow form to pre-pvp-split *cough*). Ursan being a viable skill is not a problem, Ursanway being a viable teambuild is the problem. Oh, and don't claim I was no Ursan-Hater :D 134.130.4.46 20:29, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Elite Form. For 10...58...60 seconds, you take on the aspect of the bear. You have +10...20 armor and +100...200 maximum Health. All Enchantments upon you are removed. Bear attacks replace your skills. This Skill is disabled for 120 seconds. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Ghosst (talk).

You can echo/mimic Ursan? Sweet! --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.138.6.177 (talk).

Don't remove others' comments. -- Gordon Ecker 06:08, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

He had the right idea, I wouldn't want to see that implemented either. Ghosst 08:53, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Again, please do not remove comments from talk pages. If you have changed your opinion and wish to show that, please <s>strikethrough</s> your comments instead of removing them. See Guild Wars Wiki:Talk pages for more info. -Why 10:23, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Shadowsteps

In PvP, teleporting melee characters have become extremely commonplace, due to their unpredictable nature and the speed with which they can focus on a single target. We've added a .75 second aftercast to teleports to give targets (and their Monks) a chance to react to the incoming damage. Shadow Walk got a different treatment because it is a stance. Since stances have no casting time (and therefore no aftercast), we made it disable attack skills for one second so that it is not strictly superior to other teleports. We recognize this is harsher on Warriors using the skill (because they lose all built up adrenaline when their skills are disabled). However, when we made this change, we accounted for the fact that Warriors typically use stances to increase attack-speed or movement-speed. The disabling effect makes Shadow Walk less desirable than other teleports for Warriors in most situations. Because teleportation and movement do not play the same role in PvE as in PvP, we did not create separate PvP versions of these skills.

So how are we suppose to use skills like Leaping Mantis Sting? --Lann 21:23, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Try asking warriors how they use Crippling Slash or Bull's Strike without shadow step - it works. --Xeeron 21:56, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

QFT. -- NUKLEAR IIV 13:50, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

What about Shadow Fang? It doesn't have an Aftercast, and it's like a non-elite Aura of Displacement that causes Deep Wound.

It's recharge is 15 seconds longer then most Shadow Steps, your back step is pretty much uncontrollable and so is Deep Wound. Maybe it'll see more play now... maybe not. — Poki#3 00:02, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

See, this update has failed to remedy one of the most critical issues of shadowsteps - Splits. AoD is still, arguably, one of hte top 5 elites in the game - It can still be abused to rape a base without impunity. This fix was shoddily done. -- NUKLEAR IIV 20:55, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Anyone got any Elite Skills they'd like to see buffed?

As the title Says. Are there any Elite skills that people would like to see BUFFED in the next update? (No QQing, please) and if you want, you can post suggestions for those elite skills you want to see changed. Basically a public version of the Skill Feedback page. Nothing overpowered, and try to be practical, please. I'll give you an example!!

Word of Censure

10en. 1cast. 3rec.

"Target Foes takes 15...45...60 holy damage. if that foe is above 33% health, that foes takes an additional 10..22...30 (untyped) damage. If that foe was or is injured beyond 33%,Word of Censure takes an additional 7 seconds to recharge, and you gain 7 energy."

Sexy No? Now you try. Phill Gaston 02:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Depravity isn't as good as chaos storm. This makes me sad QQ. More like 7 energy drain would be good.

Soul Bind, the new soul bind, should be like 5 energy with a 15% health sacrifice. Because its spammable see, and curses necros run out of energy quick. Psychic Distraction is a bit hm... reduce other skill disabled to 5 seconds or something.

Tease is underpowered but funny. Reduce the recharge and I'll so be seen shadow stepping with mesmer distortion. Lerooooooy Jenkins!

Avatar of Grenth - only bad Dervish skill. Really needs a damage buff and last time i tried spinal shivers with him it was pretty buggy. I dunno if I just didn't test it thoroughly but the cold damage.. yeh i dunno.

Headbutt - 100 physical damage and 10 energy.

"The Power Is Yours!" - No one uses it and I so would for the lulz if it wasn't so horribly bad. Just a suggestion, make it an adrenaline skill and target one person. 8 adrenaline - target other ally gains 1..6..7 energy. And remove the energy degen. I dunno about you but I don't see any uber powerful exploits that could open up, so why is it so restricted?

All the other elites are spot on. I don't know much about assassins, paragons and ritualists though. Spawnlegacy 10:17, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

---

@ Spawn- what about Whirling axe? no one uses it. Or Or Cleave, Mark of Protection, Second Wind, Ether Renewal (PvP), Lingering Curse, Scribes Insight, Blessed Light(People TRY to use blessed light, but its really difficult because it inhales your energy bar) Dwarven Battle Stance, Oath Shot, Peace And Harmony, Mind Burn/Shock/Freeze, Water Trident (Only useful on flaggers)MageHunter's Strike, Traps IN GENERAL, (Due to the bulk required to kill a foe)Withdraw Hexes, Skull Crack(May be a daze skill, but it costs WAY too much adrenaline, but 9 your usually killing or killed your target.)Ray of Judgement, Scavenger's Focus, Healing Hands, Power Flux, Symbols of Inspiration, Every involving Para-Singing,(C'mon, they're paragons, they're supposed to rock) Hidden Caltrops, Stone Sheath, Feast of Corruption (I wish I could see a Spike team w/ this skill) Forceful blow, Melandru's Shot, Famine, Energy Boon, Double dragon, Onslaught(Un-maintainable? Lulz.) Wielder's Zeal, Preservation (Good, but the random ally target makes it kinda crappy.) Raven Blessing, Volven Blessing!!

I think thats everything.Phill Gaston 11:34, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Mind Shock, water trident, Blight (be good and itwon't inhale your energy) are still used, FoC spike is as strong as ever, Raven and volven are just outclassed by ursan, and traps are just too much win. -- NUKLEAR IIV 15:07, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit, trappers have a unique playstyle that does not adapt well to all situations, but they can single-handedly take out groups of foes in HM if played well. They also appear every once in a while in HA. -- Alaris 15:35, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Not once in a while - every time with SWAY. -- NUKLEAR IIV 18:53, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Once in a while, as in, not in every team build. If SWAY is somehow nerfed, then trappers will also disappear from HA... until the next team build that uses them. -- Alaris 19:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I must say ele's and warriors aren't my specialty either. Other than those ones mostly their crappy skill descriptions mean theyre less than elite fullstop. I doubt ANet will be doing that much of an overhaul. I'll just say this any skill that reduces the effectiveness of heals is hax tactically. ANet probably realised that the week after creating lingering curse and made it unusable for a reason. I'd like to see either the sacrifice go or the energy reduced to 20 if that's possible but I can just see a smart GvG team becoming uber in a day if that happens. Not that many guilds test necros mind you. Skull crack - remove the if. You're right for the most part, specially stone sheath. What the hell is that meant to be? Spawnlegacy 20:28, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Seeping Wound, Shroud of Silence, Scavenger's Focus, Second Wind, Lightbringer Signet, Unyielding Aura, Amity, Keystone Signet, Glimmering Mark, Withdraw Hexes, Energy Boon, Shadow Shroud, Locust's Fury, Magehunter Strike, Defender's Zeal, Assault Enchantments, Golden Skull Strike, Mark of Insecurity, Reclaim Essence and Reaper's Sweep seem to me to be the most useless elites in the game at this time, and a buff to those would be great. Get them in play (again). Last but not least, I would really like to see a buff to Xinrae's Weapon; this skill could be a great counter to many lameway-spikes in HA, but needs to get a better energy cost and/or recharge. -Why 21:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I reckon Glimmering Mark is priceless. Try channelling with it. Spawnlegacy 06:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Glimmering Mark is amazing xD it's pretty much the magical EDAV Ranger. Nikdanbro 11:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Please revert Shadow Form to the pre-buff we had before

Please revert Shadow Form to the pre buff version we had. At least then it was most balanced from the current three PVE versions we have seen so far.

To many other fair builds suffer from the bane it recieved by the overkill UW perma sin farmers. Really. It has lost nothing considerable to its effectiveness in the UW farm, it only crippled all other build to trash builds now. S_Serpent (talk) 09:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Anet has a tendancy to Buff Skills then Murdalize them. (AoG, sundering/Penetrating Attack, Shadow Form) Prebuff was when it was best, so please, revert it and the others. Grenth could just do w/ some re-work.

My 456 dollars: It was fine pre-buff, ruined by the buff and destroyed secondary use buff-nerf. Nikdanbro 13:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Since Deadly PAradow was nerfed, theres no reason to not revert it. Phill Gaston 18:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Just like to take the time to say

Thank you, Izzy and all the devs. I've been reading this talk page along with multiple others and it seems that all people do is whine whenever you make a skill update. It seems that every time you try to do your job, a small minority of losers tries to run you down. What they don't realize is that it's impossible to please everyone, and you all put a lot of time into testing these skills just to try and please us.

On top of that, I challenge all of you Internet tough guys to try Izzy's job for a month. I guarantee you it's not as easy as you think. Between trying to determine what "balance" really is and trying to find a way to nerf overpowered builds without pissing off too large a sect of the community, I'm hardly surprised that he doesn't have time to play HA all day and be as on top of it as y'all are.

In short, I know your jobs are tough, and all you hear is moaning whenever you fix something, but it's just a game and people shouldn't rage at you for trying your best. I really appreciate several things you've done, including nerfing the solo shadow form builds and fixing most of the issues with VoD. Thanks again and I hope you get done with the new PvE update soon! Snakes on a Wii 22:18, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I will gladly take on Izzy's job for two months with no pay just to prove you wrong. (Actually, I take that back; I'd have to move back to San Francisco, where I lived up until the summer and which is just a few miles from ANet HQ, so I'd have to take... minimum wage, so I could pay rent.) Izzy's not expected to please everyone; that's not part of his job description. People don't whine after every update, we bitch solutions at him, because he just doesn't get it. And balancing isn't hard; it requires some knowledge of the game, yes, but when you're the one who helped make the game from the ground up, that shouldn't be hard to come by. Unfortunately, it seems to be.

I don't see why you're glad that he nerfed shadow form - any intelligent person in his position wouldn't have buffed the duration to start with. Now it's made running PvE easy as hell, and in reality, the nerf wasn't that effective - it's still the best farming build in the game, but it takes a bit longer to do and doesn't require skill to maintain Shadow Form anymore.

I also don't see why you take the standpoint of "it's just a game". Well, ok - it's just your girlfriend. So what if she broke up with you? There's plenty of other girls out there (just as there's plenty of other MMOs out there we could play). Why does it matter to you?

Oh, right, you put a lot of time and effort into your relationship, and then it all just got thrown out the window. Well, guess what; some of us put over two thousand hours into the game before this wiki was made, and are fed up of having put so much time and care into it and having the glaring problems with the game - not our issues, the game's issues - completely ignored.

Things are valued by the amount of effort put into them. Anyone that can make the claim "it's just a game, why do you care" obviously hasn't put nearly as much effort into the game as the people that want it to be fixed, or else they would actually care about the game's balance issue. (The flip side of the coin is that you're too inexperienced to recognize what the issues are and how they're destroying the game.)

Izzy doesn't need to play HA all day to figure out how to balance it - all he has to do is pop open obs every now and then. It's not hard to find - and I can pretty much guarantee you will - someone abusing Wounding Strike, someone shitway, and at least one from column c: Hexway, SF-way, or ritspike.

I'm also not following your claim of "a small minority of losers". Oh, so the members of DF, dR, sup, EW, uF, rawr, and all them are "losers" now? They - or at least the good players in those guilds, along with Ensign - most certainly don't like the way the game is working right now, as they're skilled and they're forced to run skill-less builds to keep up with the gimmicks rank 400+ idiots are running. No one cares whether it's a minority or a majority complaining - what matters is whether they're right. And I defy you to find proper evidence that we're not correct.

I'm also not seeing why it takes a lot of time to test skills before they're updated on the live servers. We were told they were testing Ursan updates, and they may be ready for release "as soon as next month". What the hell takes a month to update in that skill? Unless they're completely reprogramming and redesigning each and every aspect of Ursan and the replacement bar - including graphical updates - it shouldn't take anywhere near that long. The actual coding of a complete skill redesign, a la Wail of Doom and, to a lesser extent, Wounding Strike, takes a few days at the most. (The graphical parts would be the longest part; even so, for a skill that's broken PvE to this extent, I would think a bit of priority would be put into these things, and it could be done within a week.)

</endrant.>

-- Armond Warblade 02:40, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I want Armond in charge of balance. I mean, one point of "so-called gimmicks" is that they provide different challenges and different ways to play rather than just running balanced. Some of those team builds are actually fun to play for new players. Skill always matter in these games, organized groups outperform disorganized groups running the same build. But if you made it that only the skilled could compete, then that would be devastating to all those trying to get to r3. I enjoy HA, but unless they implement a ladder system so I'm matched to equally-skilled players, it's a frustrating experience to keep losing to better groups, and gimmicks at least gives us a change to get a win once in a while. -- Alaris 14:36, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd say both Armond and Alaris has a point - I don't like brainless gimmicks just as much as Alaris, but dislike the brainles, not gimmick. You see, perfect game balance has to have some sort of leeway for new players - they need to get in, play, get a hang of things, and get a balanced build, and only then can you expect people to play well. A good game has to allow for that learning curve. In GW, we have a much bigger a problem - one hell of a curve. It doesn't end! You can become a "pro" player using mindless 1234 builds, and the game rewards you for it. That needs to change. I'd say bring back old, fun-but-not-quite-broken gimmicks, and do away with "play now - be band and win" mentality.

I, too, will gladly do balance - but not alone. That's really a big job for someone - and I'd like a bigger team than whatever Izzy has. -- NUKLEAR IIV 15:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a reason Eve Online has under 30,000 players. The learning curve is so steep, you will think you hit a wall. --Wolf 15:40, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Izzy is just... slow. Or he hired market researchers... Its just taken the developers a very long time to get things done... (Terra Xin 12:39, 19 July 2008 (UTC))

A man once said that ingenuity is just a gimmick that people happen to like. 71.215.181.62 13:35, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with armond for the most part. I'd like to see a little less gimmick and a bit speedier so-caled balances. SF needs a nerf, Ursan needs a nerf, and I'm hoping they do away with the overpowered form of HB. Sure, its easy. But I hate to see my favorite proffesion dumbed down to "hey look! a low red bar, hit 1 and it goes up!". I think most people on this talk page could do a comparable, if not better, job than izzy. Simply because most of the people on this page care more about the game than a job (i.e. izzy's). Also, I would venture to guess the people on this page are more in tune with the games meta and inner-workings. However, I think the learning curve is a serious issue in GW. In PvE...wut curve? In PvP, wtb less vertical curves? Imo PvP is geared to be very elitist, and difficult to get a beginning in. At HA, GvG, and occasionally TA, there is a rank req. I'm not a fan of this as skill > rank. If you can do a job better than a rank 7, then you should be doing it. I'd like to see in GW2 a less elitist PvP and a better learning curve on both ends of the spectrum. 68.187.16.3 22:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

<3 and yes thats a <3 for even you Armond, who wants my job ;). Keep in mind while everyone knows my name there are a bunch of people that make anything around here happen, making MMO's is not a one man job, it's a team job. Izzy @-'---- 20:59, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd take your job, not because I can do any better, but b/c I think it would be interesting, and quite possibly enjoyable =D -- Wolf 21:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to say again that I think Izzy (& cie) did a far better job at balance than I've seen in many other games I've played. I agree that there is room for improvement, but with that many skills, what else do you expect? -- Alaris 21:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. (Hi Izzy! ) -- Wolf 21:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Izzy, the reason everyone wants the position is because they want to fix the nearly unrepairable damage you have already caused. Many of my friends (And in many i mean as in MANY) and nearly myself have left guildwars due to useless balance. You clearly dont give a damn about GW. And thats why people like armond (who actually gives a damn) want the job. Hell, even i could balance better than you. Not that i would want that job <,<Oni 21:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

So, Izzy does read Wiki. (As seen above)

Lets all QQ on him more, so he thinks the community is full of douche bags, and doesn't talk to us. Phill Gaston 11:09, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, he already doesn't talk much, and I can see why. Props to Izzy for even comming on the wiki with how much flame and hate he takes every day. --Wolf 21:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Armond,

I respect you as a player, but I think you're assuming too much. Like you, I have put well over 2000 hours in this game. I have also accumulated 10 PvE characters, over 1,500 fame, a few mill in Balth (don't know exactly how much, don't care to start up the game to look), and a respect for what happens every time someone does a skill balance.

I have met many players who think they know everything there is to know about this game, and who rage at people like Izzy for not listening to all of their complaints.

The fact is, that no matter what anyone does to balance the game, it only pisses a segment of the community off. If you nerf Shadow Form, you annoy the farmers while pleasing those who depend on the price of ecto to have any money. If you nerf Build X or Build Y, you will piss off everyone who runs that, and hopefully please everyone who doesn't like it.

No matter what the skill or the build is, you constantly hear whining from people when you change it. I don't claim to have all the experience in the world to lay out exactly what's "wrong" and how to "fix" the game, but I do know that it's a damn complicated job, and no one should belittle or insult the developers for not "doing it right".

On top of that, your mentality is a prime example of what I mean when I say that people just don't understand. You assume, for example, that I was calling players in top guilds "losers". I never called anyone in a top guild "loser". There are many components to this game that people overlook, namely, the simple fact that the game is not a simple, objective experience, and that what "balanced" means is very vague, and differs from game style to game style.

Firstly, you can ask a hundred guild wars players what skills need to be changed, and they will not all respond the same. This has little to do with their experience or their intelligence, as you would assume, but everything to do with their personal opinions.

The challenge of balancing the game relies on ensuring that you make as many people as possible feel as if the game is "fair". And with a very negative community, that constantly insults others' intelligence for having a different opinion on game balance, this is a very delicate task.

And about this "just a game" comment, your behavior in response to my posting illustrates exactly what I mean. Did I put in as many hours as you? I think so. Do I lose sleep overnight if Izzy nerfs my paragon? Not really.

Cause all in all, I know it's just a game, and there's no use getting all bent out of shape because a 13-year old boy beat you with some "gay" build.

I think people on the whole just need to relax

PS: Hi Izzy! Snakes on a Wii 21:47, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Well said Snakes, and if I may, I'd liek to add one thing. PLeasing everyone is nto possible. A utopian society (now matter how small and contained) is a complete and totaly fallacy. You will always have atleast one person that is unhappy, and in being the only one, or one of the few, will see to sread his/her missery and make as many other people as possible unhappy also. Every time you change even one skill used by a good many people, your going to please some,a nd upset others, always. Someoen once said that the vast majority of those here on the wiki comprise the vast majority of the unhappy players of GW. Most people seem to just come here and vent there anger and frustrations. You rarely see anyone posting anything possitive after a major skill balance. --Wolf 22:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Guys. You got it all wrong. Stop typing for a second and tell yourself izzy's position out loud. Skill balancer.

His job is'nt to please everyone, it is to balance the game.

Perma shadowform= Immortality = running is wtfeasy = farming is wtfeasy = game is wtfeasy. That must mean that the skill is BAD for balance.

A unranked guy who never haed before winning over a semi experienced team using sway = Bad. Which equals = Not balanced.

He just needs to understand this. he keeps trying to stop all the qqing nabs who complain about having a hard time doing DoA. The result is ursan and such.

The second he wakes up and understands that his job is to balance and not please people will be the second this game will be balanced.Oni 15:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's high time YOU stop QQing, get off your ego trip and think about this. It's not about just pleasing people, or keeping the game as balanced as possible, its about pleasing AS MANY POEPLE AS POSSIBLE! If the game was 100% balanced to the way you would like it, the game would consist of around 50,000 players, instead of 5 million. Yes, I agree Shadow Form is a total loa dof BS, and Ursan is somewhat over-powered, but oh well, it's getting fixed. And OH FREAKIN WELL if you get beat by a total noob or someone less skilled then you sometimes. Thats life, thats the game, suck it up and drive on! I might remind you that you were a total noob like them, and less skilled like them at one point too. I might also rimind you that games are for HAVING FUN, or have you forgotten that in your ego trip? I remember the first time I won a HvH match against someone significantly better than me, I was thrilled! I had fun. Now, I can also have fun getting it totaly handed to me in a fair fight, but I'm one fo the few. I can see why Anet allows some of these gimick builds. They are rather entertaining to run once ina while, and gives those noobs and less expeirenced players a chance to actualy do reasonably well. I might also remind you that these same players that would need a gimmick build to do well make up a decent amount of the player population from ym observations. I might also make a point that I crush these gimmick builds in AB's all the time, sometimes with the odds stacked against me, with a rather balanced build. I think Izzy does a FINE job as a skill balancer ( 's for Izzy ) and I would quite GW THE HOUR you or anyone else like you took up Izzy's job, and I'm you would manage to amke a record number of players quite the game in record time. If you don;t like the way Izzy does his work or that skills are balanced, either quite and GTFO of the wiki or suck it up and drive on. --Wolf 16:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see Oni's credentials. No one who's good at the game thinks sway is a real problem or a threat; it's always been just a minor annoyance and a way for new players to beat idiots and win fame. No decent player could get pwned by sway unless they REALLY drop the ball or have a dc or something. Wand the trappers, prot the R/Ds, spike them out. They have zero prot, and if you don't be an idiot, learn to kite, and kill spirits, you'll be done in no time.

Is sway overpowered? Maybe. But that doesn't mean it's unstoppable. The only time I've ever hated swayers or sway is when I didn't know how to beat them. That's because I was a bad player. But now I rarely, if ever, lose to sway. And think of how many copies of GW that sells, eh? If HA is welcoming to new players by providing them with easy builds to learn the basics with, why is that so bad? I see people on Guru Forums QQing all the time about how HA is dead and it's so hard to pug a group. How is making it some elite area that only the absolute best of balance can win in help the long-term status of HA as an institution? It doesn't. And no matter how many scrubs get r9 on sway alone, in the end it doesn't matter, cause the alternative is a lifeless HA where halls matches seldom occur. That's the end result when you stop making HA accessible to new players. The old players will move on. A bunch of idiots flashing their ill-gotten tigers can only be a nuisance if you are so insecure as to base your self-worth as a player on /rank. And so the real problem with the state of the game is not people like Izzy and all the others on the dev team, who I really believe don't just come to work every day and sit on their asses laughing at the players, but who really try to improve the game; it's players like you who take this game way too seriously.

Also, Wolf, well said. Snakes on a Wii 19:51, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you :) Now, here is the plan, you hit him low, I'll hit him high. Jump him on 3. 1... 2... Sorry, I'm easily amused. =D --Wolf 19:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

So much badness in this wiki. Where the fuck did i say that i actually lose against sway? I say that half decent people lose against sway. Try against hexway. You obviously epicly fail for thinking that izzy is good, Darkwolf and sucking up for him. Did you know that izzy said that wounding strike is balanced? Did you know that he called hexes underpowerd? This is all i'll say to you darkwolf. When you got some experience of the game; (That is, OUTSIDE of RA and AB). I'll argue with you further. All the areas in the game is unbalanced. i wonder why?

TA= So many gimmicks. And dont come here with your fucking bull that I can do ta eaaasily running balanced. screenshot, or show me ingame or gtfo HA= Sfway, Hexway, and sway. I dont give a fck if you can beat a sway. The fact that i know over 20 people ingame who got r9+ by just farming sway is just wrong. GvG: So much. so much. PvE: Ursan, Shadowform.

Now if you would stop being a fag and sucking up to izzy, is he such a good balancer if every area in the game is dominated by gimmicks and broken skills?Oni 20:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC) Edit: Also, i'd love to show you my ranks snake. My charname i'm on atm is yordiron the oni. (g4 h7 c1) gg?Oni 20:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

QQ much Oni? Also, learn the difference between complementing someone and sucking up to someone, they don't often go hand-in-hand. It's also very funny how you fail to address pretty much any of our points and are resorting to personal attacks, and keep spouting the same old tired load of BS. Here is an idea, how about until you can raise an intelligent argument against the points Snakes and I have presented, how about you take you QQing elsewhere/keep it to yourself or just GTFO of the wiki. This is a place for constructive discussions, and so far, you have showed that you DO NOT have the capacity to discuss anything like an intelligent human being. --Wolf 20:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I cbf to look around your walls of text. gimme one of your amazing points and i will argue em then. because all i see is that you are some random noob who thinks gimmicks = sin builds in abOni 20:28, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

My walls of text contain every single one of my points. take some time, and read them. --Wolf 20:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

if you get beat by a total noob or someone less skilled then you sometimes.

i do not. fail.

I might remind you that you were a total noob like them

What is your point? Because i was a total noob i should have rolled better players?

I remember the first time I won a HvH match against someone significantly better than me, I was thrilled!

So some better guys who used a balanced build got rolled by you using a gimmick? Where is the arguement?

Anet allows some of these gimick builds. They are rather entertaining to run once ina while, and gives those noobs and less expeirenced players a chance to actualy do reasonably well. Smashing your head onto the desk in order to get the 123 buttons is not entertaining. its just farming. the old gimmicks were actually fun. try checking youtube for minion factory. it was a fun build that didnt roll things. but it was fun to play.

I might also make a point that I crush these gimmick builds in AB's all the time This is the part that made me knew how badly you fail :)

I think Izzy does a FINE job as a skill balancer ( Look at the point where i quote what he said. and that not a single area is balanced. and heart? fucking suckup Oni 20:39, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I love how you took half of what I said out of context, and only half the sentence too. I also love how your still throwing around personal insults like you think I actualy care what you think of me. can you come up with something better than more personal attacks? Phailz for you. Try these on for size

• It's not about just pleasing people, or keeping the game as balanced as possible, its about pleasing AS MANY POEPLE AS POSSIBLE! If the game was 100% balanced to the way you would like it, the game would consist of around 50,000 players, instead of 5 million.

• I might remind you that you were a total noob like them, and less skilled like them at one point too. I might also remind you that games are for HAVING FUN, or have you forgotten that in your ego trip? I remember the first time I won a HvH match against someone significantly better than me, I was thrilled! I had fun. Now, I can also have fun getting it totaly handed to me in a fair fight, but I'm one fo the few. I can see why Anet allows some of these gimick builds. They are rather entertaining to run once ina while, and gives those noobs and less expeirenced players a chance to actualy do reasonably well.

Lets take a look at the later of the two from a perspective outside of that fo a player's a take a look from Anet's side. Their sould source of income comes from people buying copies of the game, not just from holding onto a small number of players and sucking money from them through a monthly subscription. GW hinges around someone being hooks enough from on campaign enough to buyt he other, or enjoying themselves enough in a trial to want to actualy buy the game. So, the only way to sell a game to someone is to provide them with a source of entertainment independant of skill. Gimicks are mainly the source of that. They are there so a new player cna pick up a build, and go win a few matches and have fun. Afterall, games are for having fun. If you convince one player that a game is fun, chances are very good he is going to go tell his budies that it's a fun game and try and get them to play, and the chain keeps going. Lets take a look at Eve Online. The learning curve for that game is so intense, and becomeing skilled requires such a large investment in time, that it turns away a HUGE number of people. Last I checked, ti had somewhere around 50,000 total players. All a gimick realy is, is a rather strait-forward and easy to use build, why should there be anything wrong with that? SERIOUSLY? Tell me, right now, why should a new player be forced to adapt to a balanced build, and learn how to use it fully and correctly before ever enjoying the game? Why should someone have to invest hours on end to becoming good at a game when all they want to do is hope on for an hour or so once ina while and just have some fun? --Wolf 21:10, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I can only speak for personal experience, Oni; I can't speak from your obviously unpleasant experience with stuff in HA. But I rarely, if ever, lose to WS dervs or sway. There are counters to each of these so-called "gimmicks" in the game. Things like snare, kiting, prot, etc.

Since you insist on not reading my "walls of text", I don't know how else to make this clear to you. But I will try again. How is it that if these builds are truly godlike and imba as you say, I can still beat them? Might it have something to do with the fact that I don't rage at people on wiki all day about it and spend my time instead coming up with a counter? Maybe. I see triple WS, what do I do? Mirror their taint, divert taint, then strip conjures, snare their dervs, set up ward foes and kite. GG. I see SF spike, what do I do? Mirror their fire attunements, spread out, spirit bond their spikes, and draw burning. I see Hexway, what do I do? Normally nowadays I bring a third monk if not an ele with convert. Call your deprav, convert it off, switch to your low set, etc.

What does SFway do on cap points? Split all their 60 armor targets up, not have enough damage, and die. You see in the end these builds have their limits. If you can learn how to survive in annihilation, and get some good tactics on cap points and relic run, you can win HA.

What I am doing here is what the Guild Wars community would do more often if they were rational, civilized, and resourceful. But it is clearly evident that the portion of that community that is represented here is far from all this. And this is exactly my point: there will always be whiners and QQers who will not want to adapt, or think about counters to builds. Are there overpowered builds in the game? Sure. Are there unstoppable builds in the game? No.

And since all I'm hearing from you today is unwarranted blame and rage on the devs for your troubles, I suggest this: take a chill pill. Calm yourself. Then think about how you can fix your problems in HA, etc. Good luck Snakes on a Wii 21:44, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

LOL YOU HERD RIGHT LOGING IN IS AWESOME! lawlz. Sorry, I'm still extremely easily amused today =D 's for Snake, you gotta stay calm, stay loose, stay collected, good job keepin it that way. --Wolf 21:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I learned a long time ago that rage is not the way to win in HA. It's sorta like GvG, in that you have to play with people you know, and be rational and accepting to win. In that case, I like it. I don't like to PUG people much anyway, because I've been in enough PUGS to know that a lot of PUG people are people who don't have enough friends to group with... and if you're r9 and don't have any HA friends, well... it's pretty likely that you're not a very nice or fun player to play with. Snakes on a Wii 21:54, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

My browser is doing some funny things with images this past half hour. I stopped PuGing a LONG time ago, and for the most part, dropped outa most fo the PvP scene as of about 6 months ago, as it's pretty much over-run with people like Oni. My All and Team chat have been off for two years solid now. Except they come on once in a while when I'm chillin in one of my alliances halls, or plaing with alliance members and friends. It's also funny how much of a jerk people will be to someone they know they will never encounter or have to interact with again. The GW community seems to be taking a nose dive in maturity, but then again, so does every multiplayer game's community after long enough. Angry people are also MANY times easier to deal with when your calm and stay that way. If ata any point I sound angry, I;m probably not. I start swearing when I'm realy angry. --Wolf 22:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Gosh what the fuck snake? o.ô read my text ffs. I clearly said that i have no problem in ha. I said that dont lose to sway. but I am not the rest of the community. I know r9+ friends who got it by nothing else than farm builds. thats wrong. Stop fucking failing and read what i say. thanks. I'd love to quote what shard loves to say constantly

Having a counter does not make the skill balanced

Thats it. Guildwars is supposed to be a skill game. Matches are ALWAYS supposed to be skill vs skill. not build vs build. what you dumbasses are saying is mirror their taint ect. thats fucking buildwars. Not a single area is balanced in the game. this is a fact. Top300 guilds are pretty much nothing but noobs who run gimmick builds. care to explain why? Your first point fails. When anet created the game (And when i bought it) Anet said skill matters more than time. It does not anymore. They lose people due to that (MANY good people have left.) And gw community is starting to be a retarded ursanway. Your second point still fails. You basically say shitty players can do reasonably well when smashing their head on desk which spams 1-2-3. Thats not good for any game for anyone except those tards who just cant get better.

Dont get me wrong. i dont give a damn about gw anymore. I just love arguing with people who keeps staying at their point all the time even though they are so wrong ;).

Let me lay out the facts. no insults at all.

1. Guildwars is NOT balanced in ANY area
2. I'm not posting here because i think shitteams are hard. they are easy. but THEY ARE STILL BROKEN.
3. Izzy is not a good balancer. thus, the game ot shadowform and ursan
4. The most important one. please understand: HAVING A COUNTER DOES NOT MAKE THE SKILL BALANCEDOni 21:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

You can post things in list form to try to make your point, or insult us for having a different opinion, or continue ad nauseum, but you aren't proving anything but that you don't like being contradicted.

In the world you will encounter people like me who disagree with you. And hopefully you will learn that calling them fail and insulting everyone else to make yourself feel more secure will not get you anywhere.

What is balanced? Define "skill". It is clear you don't understand either of these definitions, because "balance" for you is a world in which people who are somehow better at pressing skills (how one can be better at clicking an icon is still a mystery to me) trump people who can plan and lay strategy, and come up with a build that rolls over anything people play. What is an overpowered build but a combination of skills that trumps what the majority of players run? What is sway, but an ingenious and popular combination of a diverse set of skills put together so that the new player can run it easily? And despite your unfounded poor opinion of swayers and others who run these "gimmicks", I think that the stereotype of some random idiot pressing 123 does not accurately represent the majority of new players, or the HA community.

Bottom line: I'm unsure of how one can have pro skillz when it comes to clicking skill icons. Unless we account for the skills they're running... their "build" if you will. But you said that Guild Wars isn't supposed to be "build wars"... Snakes on a Wii 23:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

If you use a R/D (scythe thumper) build and press nothing buth 1233456457657 all the time randomly, you can kill stuff. If you use a shock axe and press 1253426477346 randomly, people will laugh at you. In my eyes, shock axe is a perfectly balanced build. So lets compare it to wounding strike derv:

1. Wounding strike+ mystic sweep does more damage than the entire shock axe combo
2. Wounding strike does not need adren
3. Wounding strike gets a covered deepwound
4. Wounding strike does AOE damage
5. Wounding strike can get psycho 150 damage crits.
6. Wounding strike can do 750 damage in one hit (assuming that you are lucky like a fckn freak and get crits on 3 targets, the crits go for 150ish damage if you run dervsmite, + deepwound x3 which equals 750)
7. Wounding strike is a spammable eviscerate
8. Izzy claimed that wounding strike was perfectly balanced (Just fyi)

And if you dont think that people can have pro skillz you have not observed enough. Nor played. Although like i said before, top300 is now pretty much only people running 1-2-3 build.Oni 11:40, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

@Snake While, yes, there will always be people who contradict others, do make sense before contradicting. By making sense, kindly experience the build yourself and find out how easy it is to grind buttons and win. If you think diversity is having the same old build spread across R/D s and the same old backline with the same old skills, do, please, check out the dictionary. You probably have mixed up with the word "stale". While sway does allow new players to play it easily, it shouldn't allow those players to get away without using brains. Emphasizing on what you had mentioned, yes, GW isn't supposed to be a build wars, but fact remains that it IS currently a build wars. Denying that PvP needs overhauls would be attesting to Ursan shoud be buffed because it, also has your warped idea of "diversity".Pika Fan 11:56, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The nature of the game is naturaly build wars. when someone finds a skill combo that works, everyone else is all to quick to jump on the band-wagon and use it as well. There are better alternatives to SF (the fire kind), mm (variations besides flesh golem), ss (not better, but just as good), and others, but everyone wants the known build b/c they know it will work, and don;t want to take chances. The problem comes when people see a creativley constructed build that wins, but is not a "balanced" people cry gimick and want it nerfed. Iway, Minion FActory, Bloodspike, Rit Spike, Bunny Thumbers (or w/e that Starburst spike was) and many others that I do not remeber. I dropped out of the HA scene quite a while ago, when fun to run and creative builds liek this started going down because the were gimicks when they were just something other than a balanced build. Someone care to exlain to me why anything that's not a plain old, boring normal balanced build always falls under the xe as a gimick and everyone crys for it to get nerfed? I'm not talking just about Wonding Strike or w/e, PLENTY of good builds have fallen under the axe just because the people that run balanced don't like it and it can actualy win against them? I ran Iway quite some time ago and can tell you this, you can not puG an Iway team and get them very far, if anywhere at all, most just suck and can not cuoperate, it just doesn't work. It's good for grinding out fame, but not getting to the Hall. Now, I grouped with some seasoned veterans in my alliance and we made it to the Hall, only to go down after one of our memeber's D/Ced, but we were doing good. then, a few months later, people cried gimick, Iway fell under the axe, and got nerfed, same with blood spike, same with minion factory before it, and same with the late rit-spike. I think the reason we are missing that diversity is that as son as a non-balanced build comes up, people cry so hard for it's nerf that it goes down in a 1-2 months. If non of these so-called gimicks got nerfed, there would be a very large number of working builds all fully capable of getting you to the Hall and winning. I dropped out of the HA scene pver a year an 1/2 ago, b/c it was full of douche-bags that just wanted to win, and were all pissy that their precious balanced builds could be beaten every once in a while. I got sick of having insults thrown at me for playing the game and having fun running a non'balanced build. Honestly, Oni, people like you ruin the PvP expeirence for quite a large amount of people. --Wolf 16:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wolf, while I don't agree with the way Oni is expressing his arguments, yours unfortunately aren't much better. All arguments relying on number of players are weak - that's information we simply don't know. You could say that GW would have only 5 players if it were perfectly balanced; I could say it would have 50 million players; and both of us would be wrong, given how we do not have the knowledge to predict this kind of thing.

All we have left to argue with are things we do know. We know that Arena Net's original statement was to have a balanced game in which skilled players would win over non skilled players. Is GW balanced right now? No - regardless if you think having fun is more important than having balance, Arena Net's stated goal was to achieve balance, and so far it has still not been found. Is skill the most important thing in deciding who wins? No - some builds (the ones called "gimicks") give unskilled players a considerable chance of winning over people who are more skilled but are running balanced builds. Therefore, regardless what we think of that, another of Arena Net's goals has failed.

Is Arena Net allowed to change their goals with GW now? Of course they are, wouldn't be the first time. However, until they say so, players are still going to ask for what was originally promised - a balanced game in which skill is the determing factor of who will win.

Besides, if you think that Isaiah is such a good skill balancer, and that nerfing most of the so-called gimicks was bad, then Isaiah would have made plenty of mistakes so far. Likewise, saying that you were tired of "douche-bags that just wanted to win" and complaining that you "got sick of having insults thrown at" you is somewhat contradictory, as you have basically just insulted those with a different playstyle (wanting to win), just like you were insulted for having a specific playing style. Erasculio 17:04, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

My only point, Erasculio, is that a large part of the GW community behaves as Oni does, and blames Izzy and all the devs for their problems. This includes a large number of people who cannot beat sway. My point is that people just need to get better at the game. It's not the game's fault that you don't understand the meta and how to counter it. If you look through history, truly unstoppable builds have been corrected quickly (Avatar of Grenth, Incoming Chain, etc). It's easy to see when a build is unstoppable. But overpowered? That's a very subjective term. If I couldn't find a way to beat WS dervs, I would probably consider them overpowered. There are those who cannot defeat Hexway or SF spike. This is not Izzy's fault. Those skills are there to challenge your team.

It seems that a large number of players simply wish to be able to win without a challenge (No hexway, ritspike, or sway) and assume that all people who run the so-called "gimmicks" are bad players. Like I said, I don't consider any build in HA to be unstoppable. I can beat SFway, sway, Hexway, and WS. If I don't beat them, fine, whatever, go in again.

People seem to talk about power and overpower as if it's some objective term. If a WS derv can spam DW faster than a shock axe, so be it. We don't consider Icy Shackles to be overpowered because it's better at snaring than imagined burden. For the same reason, we don't consider Fireball overpowered because it's more effective than flare. However, when a skill first enters the meta, and provides a more effective way to accomplish some task, people are quick to label it as "overpowered". The cries are even worse when a counter is slow to emerge. This is not to say, again that "unstoppable skills" do not emerge - skills like Incoming and AoG. But my own experience has taught me that you have to be pretty bad at the game to lose to sway, and inexperienced to lose to SFway and Hexway. Snakes on a Wii 20:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Oni, you are neglecting Strength bonus on a warrior and the plus damage from executioner's, also intrinsic bonuses that warriors have such as Frenzy, Rush, 100 armor v physical, etc etc, and if you strip the dervs (which I always do, just btw, because I know how to counter), they have NO DW. On top of that Bleeding as a cover is a joke. You can RC that off and heal for even more. Snakes on a Wii 20:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Uno mas!

HAVING

A

COUNTER

DOES

NOT

MAKE

A

BUILD

BALANCED.

You want challenge? Balanced vs balanced is challenging. Take a look at Prophesies world tournament, back when things were balanced.

Having to bring a counter specifically to beat a common build makes that build overpowered. If you look at Starcraft, which is pretty damn balanced, you don't see everyone rolling to beat zergway - it's a gimmick, yes, but it's reasonably counterable no matter what you roll.

The problem is not, the problem has never been, dR or EW or rawr losing to sway or something like that. The problem has always been mid- to low-level skill players losing to complete retards who roll sway, hexway, etc. These are the new guys to PvP, these are the guys that can easily learn how to get better and have fun while they're at it, and they wipe over and over and over again to the overpowered builds. It's just not fun, and it makes people leave the game because of its stupidity.

If you don't understand how reaction times + field vision + using the numbers above wasd (and re-keying your skills to rgvc, in many cases) as opposed to the mouse requires more skill than casually moving the mouse over some skills and clicking them at leisure, I'm not sure what sort of skill you expect to find in the game.

If you think it's "ingenious" to make a build like sway that rolls every other team build out there (but see above comment about top guilds), I don't know what to say to you. I have a 14 year old nephew who could have told you "duh! escape to make you invincible + expertise to make everything free + scythe skills for aoe damage and huge crits + traps to force everyone to cluster together + healers with infinite energy = win!". It doesn't take brainpower to build an overpowered build, just overpowered skills.

-- Armond Warblade 22:33, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Uhm Armond, before you go 'voluteering' perhaps you should make sure your volunteering at the right company. ANet's dataservers may be in California, but the company is in Washington state (Bellvue), more than just a couple miles from where you'll be, unless someone removed Oregon from the map and forgot to tell me :) Dargon 05:50, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

This began as a compliment on Izzy's work telling people to stop QQing and has turned into three or four people exchanging statements of personal pride. Oni is a troll (read his userspace) and even as an admitted troll he has more points than the people arguing with him. Gimmicks with little to no regularly used balanced counters and skills that encourage duplicates are overpowered full stop. Commonly used, successful team builds and skills need to be balanced full stop. The unskilled players are generally new and should not be aware of PvXwiki and commonly used gimmicks. The people who are aware of these builds are, for the majority, exploiters. They don't need gimmicks to extend the seemingly steep learning curve. They're just using them because they know they're successful. Just because it's possible to beat them does not make them balanced. 6 SF eles in sync deal how much? 500 aoe damage in 1 second? 2 seconds later they can do it again. 6 Ursans in sync deal how much damage? 805 damage to all adjacent targets with permanent knockdown. I can't really calculate SWAY but I do know that adding targets to the tab list makes spreading hexes and conditions a bitch. As such, running a balanced build against them is also a bitch. If these team builds don't take a hit, skilled players are encouraged to run them to compete. This means less skilled players NEED to run them to compete. This means everyone has to run them to compete. That isn't balance, that's bad game design. No matter how many different teambuilds copied from PvXwiki are run in PvP you cannot call that diversity. Gimmicks create an annoying cycle and every one should be nerfed as soon as soon as its identified. If you disagree, you need to revisit Prophecies. 219.90.254.89 16:40, 28 July 2008 (UTC) Spawnlegacy 08:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

219 ip thingie ,lilondra here (cant be bothered to log in),i disagree with the fact that they should be nerfed.Nuking a skill is not always an option but youre right about everything else and yes gimmicks should vanish.To everyone who says izzy does a great job balancing CHECK THE FKN STATE OF THE GAME.Ok you cant fix everything but everytime he recognizes a problem (50 % of thetime) he A: oes nothing about it B:Completely nukes a skill often the wrong skill. r unagallantly fixes it because he is out of good ideas (if he had any)81.244.127.181 06:33, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi All! just regged to adress to the arguments you have with each other and for someone Izzy. As for me, I wouldn't take your job but give you all help i can give, thus i ask you: can you copy the code of Ursan Blessing and an other skill (probably There's nothing to fear or save yourselves) to the wiki? or if it's too large at least send it to me in an e-mail please. Adress: monokli_oszto@yahoo.com Borotvaltgandalf 18:14, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Tournament Reward Tweaks - 23 July 2008

This change is really bad. First of all it won't solve the problem completly, and you also prevent the lower rank guild to join in which is stupid as they didn't need that change. Nerf the AFKers not the lower rank guild, that two different group. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:207.134.66.35 (talk).

Seriously, what are the chances a 1000+ guild is gunna be a group of AFKers? --Wolf 21:25, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Just because it won't fix the problem completely doesn't mean it's a bad update. And from personal experience, I know many guilds who do that AFK stuff. I'm sure it would be more useful, if you really dislike this change, to suggest a new plan to fix the problem. Snakes on a Wii 21:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

simple way to fix the problem : dead npc's = reward points. this fixes the issue because it makes people try and kill npcs which is kind of the point of gvg, the points would be given this new way to people based on the amount of npcs dead at the end of the match regardless of win or loss. this would fix a few problems; the afkers, it would reward every one who plays in the match (not just the first match up[how it is now]) the current 'fix' will fix nothing. the other part of the reward system they need to fix is the Guessing part, people shouldnt get 100+ reward points for making good guesses. 75.165.101.71 06:42, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

You mean the predictions? No way! You can't ditch that, plus I can testify that every single point is earned by most people. Observing GvG and HvH battles is like a religion in my guild. Also, I've seen a good number of GvG matches where it's resolved with ONLY the Guild Lord deing. If it's going to be anything besides just rank/ratting, it needs to be a culminatio between many factors to ensure that both teams are actualy trying and putting forth effort. --Wolf 13:41, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I can't believe how staggeringly bad this update decision is! This update seems to exclude anyone other than the established guilds and guarantees that no new players will enter the game. ANet should be doing more to encourage new blood in, not exclude them by design. Really badly thought out update. 81.86.254.13 11:13, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Where are these changes posted? its not on the update page, and any tweaks to the game are suppsoed to be noted. wanna send a link?Phill Gaston 14:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

It's planned, hasn't been put into action yet, but it's going to be. --Wolf 14:17, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

So is it a rank 1k when you start the tourney or rank 1k when you finish it? With tourney rating changes being so much higher than regular GvG it could make a big difference to a rank 900 guild. Sadie2k 18:23, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I imagine starting --Wolf 18:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes i do mean the predictions it needs to be fixed i would much rather see people who win get more points then people who do nothing but watch.75.165.101.71 00:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wounding strike.

Needs a buff.

Seriously, it still sucks.

Phill Gaston 22:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Try ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Dervish -- ab.er.rant 07:06, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Or, try not be an obvious and a baed troll. -- NUKLEAR IIV 12:08, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a joke, I wasn't saying anything offensive towards the topic, or saying anything insulting, so I dont see any trolling.

Phill Gaston 21:59, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

The wiki does kinda have a "No Sarcasm" rule, and I would say that falls under sarcasm. I'd say just avoid using sarcasm in touchy subjects like Wouding Strike, ursan and the like. --Wolf 22:03, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

heh.

heh. -- Brains12 \ talk 22:06, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

No sarcasm policy was rejected. Sarcasm is perfectly allowable. However, using sarcasm can sometimes make you look like a retard (like phil above). — Teh Uber Pwnzer 00:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ursan needs a buff. 217.234.213.188 01:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Coming next week. :P -- Inspired to ____ 01:42, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

To a theater near you :P --Wolf 02:06, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

New team faster balancing

As from I see from most of the flaming about Izzy's job, You should think before saying that he is not working hard enough. When he is working, he works on gw2, and in his free time, he is working on gw1 skill balance. If you think it's not enough, learn programming and sign to the newformed Developer team in Arenanet interaction: gw1 suggestions section 84 hire a game balancer Borotvaltgandalf 11:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Well it depends, what launguage. I know python, which gw is a BIT written in i think. I think izzys doin an alright job, but hes not balancing everything that needs it, and is nerfing stuff that doesnt need it. He does a fine job, and he cant do everything. They just need a couple of balancers. Maybe one for pve and one for pvp. Would make better balances.--172.134.56.27 01:04, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

It would be nice to see minor changes one a week just to show that they aren't in hiding or some crap. The only reason the community has gone to hell in a hand grenade is because the Anet staff (Besides from what I know, Regina) rarely converse or interact with the community, and the only other face we know is Izzy. We get unsatisfactory or minuscule updates at almost about every TWO MONTHS.I mean, c'mon. The last three updates we've had are all sideways attempts to nerf things people are annoyed with, while trying not to touch the thing requiring the nerf.

Hopefully having one or two more people on the balance team would bring more frequent and enjoyable updates. we already have several dozen people willing to balance for free, all that matters is who is fit for the job.

Phill Gaston 01:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Good God, you can fit the enite community in a single hand grenade O.O Anyway, I think we would see much faster and better results if Anet had another skill balancer or two on board, especialy with GW2 comming. Thats a lot fo work for one man, even if that man is Izzy. --Wolf 04:41, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

This thinking, that a game should change often, implies a subscription based mmo where the company is paid to continuously make changes. I buy a boxed game for a one time fixed price and I neither expect nor particularily want it to be changing every time I want to play. I got what I wanted when I bought it and wish a few others would quit trying to screw that up with constant calls for changes to the game. -- Inspired to ____ 02:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Just because a game is good, doesn't mean its fair. In a game meant to be about skill>build, there should never be any gimmicks.

PaTrollin'‎ 11:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

If something is broken it can and probably should be fixed (maintenance updates = yes). But you were calling for more frequent changes, and if anything, every change in skills is just another opportunity for new gimmick builds to be created (updates for the sake of change to keep Phill happy = no). -- Inspired to ____ 14:19, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Try replacing "Phill" with "the entire PvP community". In a game where the devs were so retarded that they put in over a thousand skills, balance is a daily task. -- Armond Warblade 14:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There are wayt o many almost exact duplicates of skills. --Wolf 14:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Random replies. (1) Closed deck is one way to bring some variety in PvP. But generally, skills in a game should be stable. I don't want to have to constantly adapt my build because the skills I use change, or because other skills just got better than the ones I use. (2) As for gimmicks, those will happen, but as long as gimmicks are not overpowered. (3) As for 1k skills requiring daily balance, not all of them need to be good all the time. Some of the give slightly different pros and cons to give choice. Some are niche skills, useful in specific builds. Some are not particularly good, but that's ok. (4) As for hiring some random person to do balance, I don't trust that idea... balance is good enough as is, it just needs some small adjustments here and there. I wouldn't trust just anyone to do it. -- Alaris 14:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

In general GW needs to be balanced. truly balanced. Arenanet has to start project after project (where projects are expansions, (factions, NF, Eotn) or completely new content (like gw2)) to survive and to let the servers running, so they can't really balance while everyone in the company (except two ppl) are working on the next game. This work goes to the fanbase, and I think the 5 million fanbase can produce at least 10 people who are devoted and skilled enough to do it. And If my words can just stop flaming izzy and making intelligent people to think, I have won. and If arenanet shoos us away then... dunno just thinking of what will happen. Borotvaltgandalf 15:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) My thoughts on the whole hiring someone for skill balance: Could be a good thing, but you need t he right person. One person is fine, but with two people, one is almost always going to think of something the other doesn't, it could help things get done faster, and more effectively. I think it would be good for Izzy to have another brain to poke when doing balance work. --Wolf 15:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Alaris: It'd be a daily job just because so many gimmicks pop up with so many skills. Ever heard of shouting smiteway? Five Zealot's Fire smiters each carrying three instant-activation target ally shouts. Melee gets in the face of the target, starts whacking away, smiters all pour all three shouts on the dude. You've now got Zealot's triggering fifteen times, plus the melee's damage (derv for aoelol, sin for spikelol or critscythelol, warrior for oldschoollol), and the shouts recharge in seven seconds I think it was. Don't think it ever got too popular, but this is the kind of thing you need to deal with on a daily basis. -- Armond Warblade 15:41, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I would call THAT (with an oldschool warrior) creative, and not soo much a gimmick. I saw someone run something liek that once, except it was slpiced with a balanced build, and the Zealot's was just for extra dmg. --Wolf 15:45, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Armond: it didn't get used much because it wasn't overpowered. Creative builds is what GW is about. Gimmicks are fine and part of the game, as long as they are not overpowered. The problematic builds are only those that too good, to the point that anything else is bleh in comparison.

I keep hearing things like this or that build has no counters, or it's overpowered, or the only counters against it are niche skills, etc. But the bottom line *should* be (1) does the build really make other builds obsolete, if yes, then nerf, and (2) are teams with more skill more likely to beat teams with less skill, if not, then you have a problem. -- Alaris 16:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem with overpowered gimmicks is how they hurt the non overpowered gimmicks. Those kind of builds - builds that rely on a gimmick to win but are not overpowered - are IMO good for the game, as they show creativity and are just a way of having fun without making skilled players lose to someone less skilled or making a new player to think that build is more important than skill. Adding overpowered things to those builds, in other hand...One example being what Armond said: IMO that way of using Zealot's Fire isn't that overpowered, but adding it to stuff that is overpowered (scythes) turns it into an overpowered gimmick. Minion factory, for example, was a mostly harmless build that relied completely on a gimmick until things like Jagged Bones came along and imbalanced it. And so on. That specific balance - allowing builds to exist other than balanced, even gimmick builds, while making sure that skill is always more important than build - is IMO one of the hardest parts of GW. It could even be used to keep "bad" skills in the game as they are - for example, I can't remember seeing Signet of Illusions in serious PvP, but it is a fun skill to use once in a while just to see what you get to play with. Erasculio 16:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Very much agreed and very well said Eraculio. --Wolf 16:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Faster balance might be too fast. When a new gimmick comes out, time is needed for other teams to figure out if a *reasonable* counter can be developed. If a counter does not exist, or if the counter otherwise makes your team too weak to compete against anything else than the gimmick, then a nerf is needed. But the problem is that a gimmick might be strong out of sheer novelty, i.e., that existing teams don't know how to handle the new gimmick. In this case, the gimmick naturally goes from seemingly overpowered to balanced or unfavored as other teams learn about its weaknesses, all that without nerfs. -- Alaris 17:15, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point. But, it just means that when they finally decide that they are goign to do something (if it needs done) it will happen faster, knowing Anet's "watch and see" attitude --Wolf 17:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

What happened to the HoM update we where told about over a month ago?

I have been waiting for this update for about a month now assuming the HoM update we where told about in JUNE would be in it, so my question is WHERE IS IT???

On a side note ya they nerfed ursan, did the devs consider just making it so it can't be used in the elite areas aka UW/FoW/DoA I was just thinking about how bad they nerfed ursan, if they are going to leave it this way it shouldn't be an elite, kinda like what they did to lightbringer signet --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:68.254.165.163 (talk).

Eh, they said specifically there's no timeframe on when the HoM changes would be implemented. They never said it was even close to happening. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 00:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

OMG i looooove the update as a mesmer (plus xinraes wep is awesome), i can't wait to capture it with a WoR vengeful wep build.... thats gonna be a fun area. Lyssa's aura=overpwered, but i'll use it while i can. 76.188.100.220 01:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I think the skill update took precedence over the HoM update, but I would expect to see that soon. -- Wyn 02:11, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

August 7 Skill Update

Glimmering Mark seems to be broken.. it states in the developer updates that:

Glimmering Mark now does damage to a foe until you cast another spell on that same foe, allowing persisting damage to an off-target.

However, almost anything will end it, attack skills, skill typed skills(like: impale, lightning touch, shock, etc..), shadow walk. Regular attacks work fine though. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:63.135.21.79 (talk).

I started loving A-net again because of this update, this is great. 81.71.25.43 01:09, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I like this update. Buffs are always welcome. It's a nice change from nerfs --Kyrax 02:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah buffs are good, but for this it doesn't work correctly, almost everything ends it, not just a spell. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:63.135.21.79 (talk).

The update was great except a couple of things.

1 Ursan needs to be hit alot harder than it was

2 Just remove the dmg reduction from SF altogether there were enough changes to UW to make the run really slow anyways no point in keeping it. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:71.231.14.212 (talk).

(Brian78wa claimed to have made the comment by 71.231.14.212)

"We also made the skills strip off any non-consumable buffs when they are activated."

That won't strip buffs bought from avatars at the statues right? Kirbman 15:13, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't wait testing all thos things I'm going to do with Master of Magic! MithTalk 15:21, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Good God, thats going to get MESSY! AB's this weekend are going to be VERY interesting. MS + Mealstrum + Unsteady Ground _ eruption anyone? --Wolf 15:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

August 7th Update

Freakin love it, good stuff. Ursan was nicely handled too. Keep it up. --Wolf 01:45, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Do the blessing changes apply to the mission versions, too? 24.179.144.91 01:51, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Dunno --Wolf 02:03, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

No, they don't. 79.89.236.147 02:41, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I absolutely hate the Order of Undeath change. It was a fantastic skill for PvE, now it's totally garbage. I thought this update was supposed to buff bad elites, not ruin perfectly good ones. -Angry! --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:160.39.48.247 (talk).

Agree to an extent. Minion masters are all about having lots of minions (who aren't individually that powerful). Having a single powerful minion is what Rangers do. Sadie2k 02:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

(Ranger pets are weak dude <.<). Btw Order of undeath will be sexy for minion bombing, but yea.. if only Anet could enable a hero to use it when all of them are Death Novaed up without micro managing... hehehehe Mango 03:17, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yea, i would rather have 10 things hitting for awesome damage than basically having an extra party member. Even with the old health sac, it could easily be mitigated with Vamp horrors. oh well, it will be interesting. 206.53.17.64 03:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

It's still not too late to eliminte PvE-only skills completely. It's still not too late to make all skills profession and attribute dependent, and to make it so all skills actually work within the framework established by the real game -- none of this cheesy grindy crap and having any profession able to take the same skills *ever*. It's still not too late to fix the mistakes of Nightfall and (especially) EotN. For one brief example, it still costs the unattainable 100k faction transfered even to get the grind-happy Faction skills. --71.253.35.203 04:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

What grind are you talking about for Factions ? Just do AB, you wont see the time passing. Yseron - 90.28.214.36 04:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is too late to get rid of PvE skills. Getting rid of a third of Eye of the North's skills would be a ripoff. And maxing out the Luxon or Kurzick titles requires an insane amount of grind, particularly in Alliance Battles. -- Gordon Ecker 04:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

PvP is a grind no matter how you look at it, as, it's escentialy the same idea over and over, but every match is different. I WOULD NOT consider any form of Pvp a grind. --Wolf 13:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Make these so-called "PvE-only" skills into good, real skills and give them to the PvPers too, so they actually might get something of value out of EotN. Even as a PvE player, I feel VERY slighted that there are so uncountable skills I cannot use because of the stupid grind involved even to get them. Not that I would, because they break the way the game works by not being tied to a profession's attribute. --136.142.214.19 14:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Ursan update... too late and too much IMO. Ok, Ursan Blessing was such a powerful skill, yet any nerf to it should have been introduced sooner. Now that damage has been done it looks a bit like a late intervention which doesn't really solve anything. There's people who have been maxing titles with ease out there, players who have been farming for such a long time: this way, you are just punishing the casual players who don't have a strong guild to back them up and stay competitive.

This update introduces every kind of nerf suggested up to now, all at a time. Why the hell? Step by step modifications could have helped finding a better balance between excess and utter uselessnes.

I think there are more serious problem you should take into account: you'd better think about redistributing skills in a more logical way, so that they sit under the most appropriate attribute line: primary attributes should provide unique support to the preferred secondary. That's not the case of some of them, like, say, Spawning Power, which are literally forced on you for almost any setup because of their inherent effect, but offer little to no decent support skill to work with.Sfrak 21:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Order of Undeath was a great skill for PvE before the update. I'll miss it. If it was underused, it was not the skill's fault. Cameronl | talk 23:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Order of Undeath now officially sucks for most uses, and it's bugged, working as a targeted spell (meaning it fails if you're targeting someone with Spell Breaker). KazDoran 22:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not Conform with the Plan's to make Titles easer:

Pardon my english is not perfect. But i have to tell this to the ANET Team....

Many are playing years or Months to get title's, so its not fair to them, that the new Persons got it in a few days. If you want to help them to get it make more events but don#t change the requirments to get it.

Also the Skill changes, the ursan was strong this is correct, but why cut also the Shadow Form and so on. Not all People are Pro Players how do they get gold, for them is imposible to do it, if you cap all skills.

I think i speak for many poeple, if i say they area angry by this changes. i dont spend 3 month for Titles for nothing, and now a new Player get it in a few days! I will think twice times befor i buy the Guild Wars 2, i don't like many changes, and i am not the only one.

Dont make this changings...

Greets. "Adrien Ansem" Gw Acount

i am open for discusions

I have spent almost 3 years playing Guild Wars. I have a lot of titles in my main character, and I don't care at all about the time it takes for other characters to achieve their titles. I get the things for MYSELF. I fulfilled the requirements for many titles BEFORE those titles ever existed. I explored before the cartographers, I captured before the skill hunter, I ate, partied and drank before the festival titles. We got the titles becaose we do things. We don't do things to get titles. Si if they make them easier to achieve because there's no need no make some things even more than they are already done, THAT'S GOOD. They can't make achievement titles easier (exploration, protector, vanquish, etc) as much as with grind titles, and most grind titles have no merit. So it doesn't matter the changes they made to make easier the grind titles. MithTalk 20:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Adrien:

If it is like you say and you spend so many time... i even more want accept to make the Title free. Why nit just a Joke more "The Titles lost there valor" so all have max Ranks and all will leave game because they left it to have no Objetives for the game.

Its the same like the Elite skills you can buy in OnlineShop...., many People had to win them and you get them nearly free in Online Shop. I will neven accept this. For me buing Skill with realmoney is Chaeting... Online Shop oficial or not.

Greetings Adrien.

There are still plenty of stupidly underpowered skills.

Looks like Anet forgot to fix Double Dragon and Thrill of Victory.

Double Dragon can be pretty powerful if you use it right...

Not as much as other PBAoE skills of the fire line. MithTalk 00:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

hi guys i heard i was utter trash --71.229.253.172 00:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Seeping Wound, Symbols of Inspiration, Strike as One, and yeah Wastrel's Collapse. and those are among the worst. --Cancer Angel 00:25, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Lol, Ursan is also a stuiply underpowered skill now. Please buff!

Ursan post nerf

Oath Shot need changing so that they can't recharge Ursan (doesn't recharge Forms would be simple enough), as teams now simply use Ether Signet followed by Arcane Mimicry followed by Oath Shot to recharge Ursan. Now the only chance you have of getting in a party in high elite areas is if you're a Ranger or a Monk. Equality much? 86.1.181.73 08:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

So Arcane Mimicry and Ether Signet are monk skills now? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.64.2.87 (talk).

Of course not, ursan groups still need healers. -- Gordon Ecker 08:51, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree with this, even though Ursan strike is weaker, keeping Ursan up almost all the time like that gives them the armor boost, plus because people are idiots, they still look for a high norn rank even though all it does is give you a small increase in health >_< --Stu 10:21, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

how can u have both ursan and oath shot at the same time? theyre both elite --AnorithTalk 11:33, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

According to the new build on PVX wiki, they sacrifice one ursan and bring a ranger with Oath shot, while all the ursans have arcane mimicry and use that to copy oath shot --90.202.69.166 11:50, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Can arcane Mimicry copy Ursan? But it's a form! Well... a form that do not change models... but a form! It should not work with them. MithTalk 15:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Lol! Read the post above yours Mith! The Ursans uses Arcane Mimicry to copy Oath Shot from the Ranger then they use Oath Shot to recharge Ursan instantly, as Oath Shot recharges ALL skills. The problem is that every Ursan must be a Ranger as Oath Shot requires Expertise to be successful, thus creating unequality in team play as everyone except Monks must be the same proffession.86.1.181.73 18:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

So I guess Anet thinks Wastrel's Collapse is perfectly balanced. 62.51.183.226 19:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

So they should change all skills that recharge all skills to ignore forms. (The PvE skill that reloads Forms affects only Dervish skills, not all skills) MithTalk 20:42, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It was fairly obvious that the fall of Ursan would result in rampid class discrimination. The update failed miserably to prevent this. Either the nerf to ursan should have been more subtle, or more elites from the various classes should have been buffed to create more potential. A suggestion to Anet - give the players a reason not to be in Ursan. Something other than more nerfing (which creates negativity in the game). The hidden treasures in EotN dungeons, for example, was a good idea. You can't find them while you're in Ursan. Decrease the drop rates on mobs, and increase the value on the treasures. Another possiblity would be to have the chests in elite areas drop an extra goody per person in the group if that group is made up of at least 4 (or 5) different primary classes... --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:217.234.207.205 (talk).

Disrupting Lunge

Shouldn't Distracting Shot get the same nerf? Because all of those arguments apply to Distracting Shot just as well. 145.94.74.23 22:41, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hush you! Don't give them any ideas. :p RabidCoqui 23:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

If they did that, then they would stop favoring rangers finally... so it will happen when pigs fly 68.47.192.6 23:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Dshot is, actually, pretty balanced. Dlunge was, iirc, only a problem when combined with the insane damage of thumpers. (Do note the bow ranger's conspicuous lack of viable damage.) -- Armond Warblade 00:33, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I see your point Armond, but why didn't they mention it? They make it sound as if the skill itself was the problem, when clearly it was not. 145.94.74.23 08:00, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

It's a problem when combined with RaO, dismember, agonizing chop, and disrupting chop. It's dumb to have an absolute tard be able to cspace and interrupt pretty much every single one of your skills for 15+ seconds. -Auron 09:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

If that's the case, why not do the same with all interrupt skills, or maybe remove daze and blind, those can be "frustrating" too. --Kouadio 23:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, this, Distracting Shot, Distracting Blow, Distracting Strike, Magebane Shot, Disrupting Chop and any other disable skills I've forgotten to mention should scale like Disrupting Stab. There is no reason for them to not scale, and it makes all of them overpowered in anyone's hands when they don't. And saying bow rangers don't have DPS is like saying degeneration doesn't exist. RitualDoll 03:05, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Stop trolling, please. -Auron 07:05, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Bow rangers have, like, three damage skills worth using - BA, IA, and Sloth. Sloth is generally dumped for more utility (if you've got the space to consider sloth, you've got the space to bring debil), and a ranger without a cripshot is a sad ranger indeed. -- Armond Warblade 12:41, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Rangers who hope to do damage usually will invest in 3 attributes (exp, marks, and one of either wild, some elemental, channeling, ...). This already makes them somewhat weaker in each attribute, on top of cluttering their bar. I don't see how that's overpowered. If it was, you can bet that rangers would be used far more often in groups. -- Alaris 15:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

GVG and Smiters Boon

On the update page they said that they did this to remove it in GvG because it was overpowered there. So why not disable it for GvG like the PVE skills are for all types of PVP and change it again to its old discription for AB,TA,HA,RA and HB?Robertjanvaneijk1988 07:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Because GvG = PvP and AB, TA, HA, RA and HB = PvP, so the change was made to PvP. Besides, it was also OP in TA if not on more places. — Poki#3 09:20, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Smiter's boon was VERY balanced in AB and FA. Just change/reduce the functionality/effectiveness of the skill instead of blatantly removing additional options for casual PvP players.Lala~Lalalala~Lala 11:57, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

You'd have a point if AB and FA actually mattered. 75.191.186.158 13:15, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course ABs and FAs don't matter. Lets remove those modes of play from the game too.Lala~Lalalala~Lala 19:27, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

The way I interpretted their reasoning was because they didn't have a current fix, they disabled it until they can find a viable alternate function. Bascially, they wanted to incapacitate it until they can edit it like they did the other elites a few updates ago. You might see it as lazy, but it was a quick fix, so they went with it. ~ Da Si 03:08, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you have too much faith in Izzy. Read the dev update: In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. may means: f*ck you guys, we won't continue working on this skill. ever. instead we're going to figure out some more skills we can remove from the game until we're down to a list of 30-40 skills you're allowed to use in pvp. deal with it or buy yourself a game with orcs, minotaurs, elves and stuff.--Makku 18:52, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Makku has it right. That is exactly what they did. As for TA. Get this into your head people....IZZY DOESN'T GIVE a @#$% about TA. He nerfed smiter's boon because of one relatively easy to beat smiting gimmick in GvG that he probably got beat by when he was playing GW. Remember guild wars as a game is subject to Izzy's whims and moodswings and there is nothing you can do about it no matter how many pages in Anet interaction portal you post on. Psychiatric Consultant 19:00, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Ya, that's the problem with Guild Wars exactly. It's a good game with a lot of potential, but it has one major flaw: Izzy Cartwright. Somewhere in GW history Izzy decided that GvG should be dominated by balanced builds and how a balanced build should look like. Ever since that point, Izzy Cartwright did everything he could to remove all the builds that didn't fit into his perception of a balanced build from competitive play. What he does really isn't about balancing stuff, it all follows a simple formula: 1.) Find build that I (Izzy Cartwright) don't like. 2.) Nerf key skills. 3.) If build isn't used anymore: job done. If build is still used: proceed with step #2.--Makku 01:19, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm somewhat confused, they had a few weeks to come up with a fix for the skill, and we get what basically amounts to a "you can never use this" change. What exactly are the guys at anet doing all the time? Pillow fights? Grab ass? Shopping? Because it sure as HELL isn't their job. Maybe if they read what is posted in the interaction portal they could act like they are doing their job, but they are just not that smart... 68.47.192.6 00:57, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't force admins to delete this whole thing. Also, I saw many great suggestions by various people that over 100 skills should be outright removed from the game, and I now see complaints when it happened to one... I don't get it. Actually I do get it, you just have to have something to complain about at all times. — Poki#3 01:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Stop with the personal attacks, including those against Izzy. -- Brains12 \ talk 01:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to escape at you!

Or on you, however you like it.

Alas, I feel no build/skill should ever deserve to be dead. Even the Imba-ness of Scythe rangers. (And dont call them Crit sins, call them Crit Dervishes, the only other two weapons you see are unlikely spears, and even less likely, bows.) the Smiter's Boon nerf REALLY made the poonage in my heart for Anet go away, after all that mustering up from last months update. killing skills show laziness. (and Whoever said +38 more heals, its actually +51, or else you dont do high-end much. Spec as high as you can, as well and efficiently as you can.) It pretty much was slightly weaker divine boon with no cast cost. But shoot, the second i saw the nerf to hell, I came up with a better idea.

Leave in Divine favor, Spec heal bonus to Smiting prayers rank, ranging from 20%.....39%...50% More divine favor effect? I'm pretty sure it wont be as serious as before, but at least it will work.

And when did they nerf Strength of Honor? o___o --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Phill Gaston (talk).

Bug

Had a party member D/C in outpost, was already dead. All died, went back into zone, kicked the d/c, but couldn't invite anymore heroes or henchies in the party than his spot had contained(2) anyone seen this? 75.172.11.7 02:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Guild Wars Question

I have talked to alot of other alliance leaders and guild leaders as well as to other players, Alot are looking into other games to take the place of GW. We need to stop this migration to other games. Can you develpoers, add some things to help stop it? Perhaps, Reasons for completing titles ie: rewards of some type gold equipment or even mini's better and more inticing than what is currently offered And look at the titles some need reworked to allow more to obtain them. The game pros may have the advantage on most but hey, the majority of players are far far from pro. I don't know what you can do but I really love this game and all the people who play it I know and have been privilaged to play with. Maybe if wiki admins can help too by providing lots of friendy help an assurances instead of some of the negative stuff I keep finding. We have a great game but it can be better and all of us that like the game need to do what we can to fun and exciting even after doing a mission (a stretch) a million times helping players complete it. ---Greyhawk of tyria

For the one, the wiki admins can't do a thing to the game. For the other, this sort of thing would require a major game update, which ANet has specifically stated they will not be doing. There was a discussion some months ago that a major game update is exactly what Guild Wars needs, but ANet's said they won't be doing that. The conclusion was that people would eventually leave GW and not come back for GW2, which is exactly what's happening.

I agree, GW was a great game, and it still has a ton of potential - but there's so many problems, not least of which is the fact that they take so long to get fixed that they create worse problems, that I really can't blame people for leaving for WoW. WoW's not a great game, either, but at least it's better than this.

Btw, anyone who's considering hopping over to WoW, roll on Hyjal server, Horde if you like me, Alliance if you hate me. -- Armond Warblade 17:31, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I foresee lots of new alliance players. :P Lord Belar 18:46, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I as well. -- Armond Warblade 22:19, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Eh, lads what on earth are you talking about? In a game where you have little or no reason to grind you eventualy run out of stuff todo, with out new content you get a much lower number of players, they haven't left for good just wait for next chapter(game) and one more thing, you either like WoW or GW if you leave for WoW then you wern't really a GW player to begin with. Biz 18:27, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol? -- Armond Warblade 23:43, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, a new Hero Sweet. Anet Thanks, And the missions are a blast. This was what I meant by providing some new stuff to keep things fresh. Also I have noticed some new graphics in alot of the areas Great job!! ---64.199.229.102 13:05, 5 September 2008 (UTC) Sorry forgot to log in first. Just want to add, I knew you all at ANet do care about all of us that are loyal to GW. ---Greyhawk of tyria 13:10, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

/agree Have really enjoyed the new "MOX quests", and they have really brought people into teaming up in a way that hasn't been seen since way back at the release of Sorrow's Furnace!! I know these sorts of things are not quick (or cheap) to put together, but please ArenaNet could we have more of this, pretty please! ;) 00:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Anet wanted to show us some "skills and bosses" :P 217.126.155.7 04:58, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm never going back to WoW, for two reasons. First: I finally got to 70, then I have to spend eons grinding good equipement in order to MT a raid (which I did). Then, I heard that (it was about 4 months ago when I heard this and quit) that they are going to raise the level cap again, and that all that gear I could get raiding is going to be crap. Second, suppose I want to raid with Armond. Unfortunately, my MT is on Scarlet Crusade. So I can pay some money and move, but then I wouldn't be able to raid with my brother in law. Also, I met people in real life that play WoW. They are on Bonecrusher I think. So it is impossible for me to play WoW with 2 or more friends, unless all my friends move servers, since each of my friends is on a different server. I can alternatively level a character to level 70 on each of the servers that I have friends on. Too bad they don't offer you the ability to copy characters over to another server. I wouldn't care if I only got my level, no gear. StatMan 03:12, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, Blizzard really does not handle expansion packs or server divisions well at all. Let's ignore the gear-grind once you hit 70 for the moment, whoever thought of adding in battlegroups needs to be shot. Also, raising the level cap every expansion means once-epic fights and dungeons like MC and Onyxia become... deserted. A better way to handle things would be to make the gear better in every expansion, toughen up the old monsters, and make the rewards from the old dungeons better. -- Armond Warblade 03:31, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I joined after BC, so I never got the chance to do some of those raids. You can't just keep on increasing loot. Sooner or later level will then become unimportant, and your gear is what defines you. Actually, it sort of is that way already. I just don't like power being about gear and time spent. I also don't like blizzard balancing out each class and dictating what you are weak against (ie mages can beat huntards, but generally speaking huntards have a significant advantage over mages). I prefer the GW model, where I can choose skills and professions so that I decide that my mage is good vs melee, or good vs ranged combat or whatever (not discussing viability of a elementalist that is good vs X, but choice). I also didn't like the sort of "Power Gaming" method of balance in WoW. It seemed that there was too many ways to essentially negate a person's influence in combat, like Stun Lock, and little chance for my poor warrior to do much about it. It was very frustrating to try and kill a warlock, only to get curses and DoT's on me, then feared until I died. Sure there are counters, but generally speaking, if you are a warrior, there is really only one build that counters it. The only fun I had in PvP was as an arcane mage, and occasionally as a paladin. Anyway, I think I'll write a rant about WoW on my talk. StatMan 06:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, this classically shows why I love the GW way. I've been playing GW since the very start, recently met a new friend at work, we got talking about on-line gaming, and long story short, he decided to start playing GW too. In the space of just a couple week-night evenings and a Saturday, he had a character at max level, with max armour and max dmg weapons. (Yes I know reaching lvl20 etc can be done a lot quicker, but that's not the point I'm making here). Rather, than in just a few days, we both had equivalent level / equipped characters and so he was able to participate in most of the same quests / missions (in one campaign) as any of my characters regardless of the difference in hours played. Takes no time at all to "map travel" a character to where-ever a friend is currently, regardless of which territory / district / server they happen to be on, and since the gameplay is about what skills you carry on your skills bar, rather than how many levels you've gained over hundreds of hours playing, you can all gainfully contribute to the completion of a quest / task whatever. 02:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Quote from Dev updates

The update states the following: "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."

? I'm puzzled, Escape and Wounding strike have been used far longer and have had no changes. This is just like the strenght of honor nerf, anet does not target the source of the problem but everything else. So here's my bit: next months update focus changes on rangers and dervishes, not the other classes. They are not a problem.

I say this because I have played pvp for a very long time and watched the updates, and I see a trend. Do us all a favor and just take the current metagame and kill it, in the same fashion of your smiters boon "update" if you must and for christs sake do it now, its been over half a year of the same crap, and you are losing players because if this. 68.47.192.6 05:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that Escape rangers have reasonable counters, and so they do not constitute a imbalance. Am I wrong? -- Alaris 13:38, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

My main arguement is updates should change or at least steer the metagame in a different direction, that hasn't happened in a long time, I was just using some skills as examples. 68.47.192.6 21:27, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're wrong, because regardless of whether it's reasonable to bring all sorts of antimelee, escape rangers shouldn't be able to do so much more melee damage than (for example) a shock axe without having to even look at their screen. (Yes, I've played escape ranger with my laptop covered, and won. That should not be possible.) -- Armond Warblade 23:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Rangers who abuse (and not just use! I'm fine with them wielding scythes and what not, but being in a constant 75% blocking rate and +33% IMS while dishing out major damage is just wrong) should be nerfed. Dervishes however should not, their out of favor this days anyway (GvG wise).--ITAMAR 23:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It's damnably hard to use a scythe without abusing it, period. Unless you've, like, figured out how to never crit and either never splash or do reduced damage on a splash. -- Armond Warblade 13:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that scythe rangers shouldn't be better than dervish scythe users, but they can be as good as. What needs a change, if anything, is a slight nerf to some scythe skills that rangers tend to abuse. For example, scythe skills that take away an enchantment might now require an enchantment to be removed to have its effect. BTW, Armond, I played HA, lagged the whole match so I contributed precisely nothing to my team, and won. What is your point? -- Alaris 13:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Uh, what's yours? That your team ran up against another team that you were a lot better than? My point was that I was mashing my keyboard without even looking at the screen and doing tons of damage. I couldn't have hit a bull's, I couldn't have interrupted anything on reaction (though with Warmonger's, all I had to do was tab-space until I hit a caster and have the rit throw me my daily dose of interrupt-high once he noticed), and half the time I wasn't even certain which buttons I was hitting - and I still did more than enough damage to be a significant threat. (Vent was used, but only to the point of "ok Armond, you're dead now" or "resing Armond", and only because I was too lazy to keep up my massive button smashing up the entire match.) -- Armond Warblade 21:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I only mentioned dervs as per their attacks are stupid powerful. Many of these attacks are being used to greater effect than any derv primary could pull off. Any skill that is abused should get wacked, Anet has the stats as to what skills are used most often and they do nothing with that information. Also any combo that causes someone pulling a secondary class (like R/W with war weapon, or A/D with scythe, or whatever around those lines) thats doing a better job than the primary its completely imbalanced. I'm all for using secondary classes until this crap happens. The two examples I put are not the only ones, others include M/E's running water magic gimmics, A/W's running backbreaker (because its nonsense) and so on.

Then there are the classes that abuse skills they get automatically. Spam rangers are one such group and lemme tell you getting hit by 2 arrows one amounting to 100 so damage and the other to 130 in seconds time is utter nonsense. Interupts should be disabled for X time extra if they don't hit a skill. Oh and smiters boon was something that allowed us to punish the hex using and condition using meta game, now what would have become the new trend gets kicked in the head and rolls away with a concussion. Sure people found it annoying, but thats because they wouldn't stop using the same old combos.

And for gods sakes, if you escaping then add a damage reduction of 50% or something, or change the damn skill to "advance" 68.47.192.6 06:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

A skill used often is not necessarily a skill that needs to be nerfed. A skill that gives an unfair advantage is a skill that needs to be nerfed. It's a much harder stat to calculate. -- Alaris 13:45, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that scythe rangers are problems and there are many overpowered combos that have existed far longer than they should have, I feel scythe sins are far more powerful than any of the above. I've been instagibbed by them so many times that I lost track long ago. Primary stats should have more limiting factors, like how divine favor is only for monk prayers. Also am I the only one that feels that fast casting shouldn't work for sigents? Those builds aside, how exactly do you cast signets? They are not spells. To the above reply: So if every monk used word of healing, should it get a change? What about if every sin used shadow prison? Or if every war used eviscerate? I feel that nerfs to skill overused in a similar fasion changes the gameplay and forces players to think, not just spam the same old pvx builds /skills. 216.145.77.113 19:27, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

You do want to nerf builds that are overpowered. Usually, by now, professions are not overpowered, so nerfing primary attributes is a bad way to go about it. Also, some skills are popular because they are fun, not because they are overpowered. Nerfing by usage will unfortunately nerf balanced fun skills. It will also nerf fundamental skills like energy management skills. -- Alaris 19:21, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

He's got a point, though - Primary attributes need a rework. They should be bonuses, not requirements, as we see in necromancer healers, escape dervishes, and critical weapon assassins. -- Armond Warblade 21:34, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The Smiter's Boon enchantment is by far the worst display of "balance" I've ever seen in the history of Guild Wars. It shows merciless and biased control, possibly with intent of suiting the Developer's, or Developer's friend's preferences (be it Izzy's or any of their colleagues). Sure, the game is ultimately controlled by Anet, but is this image of "Supremacy and Control" by way of Ownership considered the best interest of the Community? Skill balance isn't being given hardly any thought.. Instead, overpowered skills are being fubar'd through lack of thought and sheer laziness; underpowered skills don't seem to get too much attention anymore. WTF Anet?! Ya'll don't care so much about the Community anymore now that you've maxed out on profit? Guess that's the drawback of free gaming.. -_-.. meh! Warren G 21:45, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

On my user page is a list of ways to lose an argument. Most of you broke one of those. Skills are not balanced just because they have A counter. Escape on melee rangers is OP because it makes them invincible. Scythes are OP because they're the best weapons in the game by far. Wounding Strike is OP because it's an aoe energy deep wound with nor echarge. He's right - anet is nerfing AROUND the problems like they've been doing for the past 3 years. The only time they targeted the source of a problem was with the most recent splinter/A-rage nerf. Look at smiter's boon. Was it broken because it gave people 35 more health when targeted? No, Rampage As One Hammer Warrior And One Sword Warrior With Both Unremovable Sprint And Burst Of Aggression is what they should change. Pets is what they should change. Scythes is what they should change, not strength of honor. Izzy can tell when a build is broken, he just doesn't ever have a clue of what to do about it.

People don't run "too much defense" to wait out until vod, they run too much defense because the offensive skills are too overpowering. 3 people can clean spike 3 different targets at the same time, that's why people run 3 monk backlines with defensive anthem paragons and healing rits. If you keep weakening defense, people will bring more of it to counter the imba BS you put in the game. Try nerfing offense instead. If you weaken offense, people will NEED to bring more offense to kill, and thus will have less slots for defense.

Guild Wars is a big deep hole right now. Every time they try to fill up the hole, they dig dirt out of the hole next to it, and it causes more and more problems.

One last related thing, the spirit bond change was just stupid. Why would you make all prot skills recharge slower than all the good damage skills? I guess you want to take skillful defense out of the game too. ~Shard 22:18, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

How is it skillful to channel tank & spam spirit bond on your entire party, which is easy to do on some of maps in HA. The increased recharge was really the only way to hamper this style of play whilst leaving the skill useful to those who are skillful players. Ajax Baby Eater 19:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

With regard to a post above, yea rampage as one is trouble, but do you remember why its energy requirements were made to 25? Too keep it from being overused. Oh noes with expertise that doesn't do jack! 68.47.192.6 22:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with a ranger using a ranger skill? -- Alaris 15:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed that there is no Decent Dungeonm grps now? Like all of us who used to do Slavers Exile and others dungeons has gone and in their place lots of newbees gathered for so called VS Farm. Please some1 tell them to stop looking for VS and play the dungeons. And there is another problem. All of us who used to do dungeons by teamwork, has gone and only runners rise. I am talking about 600/smittyer combo runners. Well I don't mind their skill, But why we only take runs why can't we play dungeons as before? The most problem I see after the ursan nerfing is that dungeom teams gone, all runners rise. I heard that DOa is also in similar situation. Please introduce a new skill, that doesn't need rank and class but players need to earn it by doing a series of 10 or 20 quest solo and then proove themselves to be worthy of it. Even if that skill is maintainable and powerfull than Ursan, I doubt that any1 will have any reason to disagree as people has to earn it. Then we can go back to dungeons days again.60.240.51.3 07:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree that at least the first time through, you should not run dungeons, and play it straight. There's a lot of fun in that. But title hunter eventually have nothing left to do but titles that are incredibly expensive, and to pay for those they farm specific locations. That was the prime motivation of most who use CoF runs, Ursan UW clear, and now VS farm. The solution would be to somehow make playing the game be the fastest way to make money again, and then the farmers would go back to playing it. Books are a nice step in the right direction, but I think even they are not nearly efficient enough to compete with farms. IMO, one-skill solutions should be avoided, it forces a gameplay style. -- Alaris 13:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

By definition, a RaO is not a ranger. What idiot put that skill in the game. It has no practical use on "ranged" rangers. It's like giving warriors a spear attack. Absolutely stupid. ~Shard 23:47, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

R. I. P. "For Great Justice!". Nerfed into the trash can October 9, 2008.

None of the skills changed this update affected anything important. No one really cared about BB sins. They weren't really much worse than any other sin build. All the things that did need to be changed however were left completely alone. Scythes are still the best weapon in the game. They have the highest damage, are _AOE_, and have the most spammable deepwound in the game. Mesmer's do about as much damage as a derv, though they also shut-down characters for longer than a blackout. The thing that kills me about this is that ranger skills were changed because one skill was being used more than another. The same thing has happened with mesmers and nothing was changed about it. Who cares that rangers are picking one skill over the other? Now they'll just pick burning arrow. Nothing was fixed. It didn't need changing. Mesmers on the other hand are able to effectively shutdown any character. Hex removals aren't strong enough to deal with it. With enchantment removal so powerful even veil doesn't provide much relief from hexes. This has led to monk builds that no longer require any skill to be used in 4v4. 3 heals, 2 hex removals, 1-2 stances. Spam 1,2,3,4,5,7,8, rinse, repeat. If the goal is to remove skillful play then keep it up. Nerf monk heals just a little more and people will stop running monks entirely. Instead, everyone will just run 8 offensive characters with self-heals. That or rits. 24.155.230.233 01:42, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They didn't change incendiary arrows or burnign arrow just because incendiary was used more, they changed it because there was no longer a reason to use burning arrow. That was primarily a PVE change anyways, but now each of them have an advantage. BA might be better for pvp now, but theres still a reason to use incendiary (preparations on an aoe basis?). 71.84.240.55 04:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Archive?!

this page is getting quite long could some one archive the oldest stuff i would do it my self but i don't know how. 75.172.47.227 19:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Done. -- Brains12 \ talk 19:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

i also meant the article it self....75.172.47.227 21:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

We could use DPL like we do for the main game updates page. -- Gordon Ecker 00:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Unyielding Aura

Please change Unyielding to Compass range instead of earshot (assuming that spellcasting range refers to earshot). The loss of a pip of energy and elite status is not worth the 50% healing boost and full energy when rezed. Changing it to a skill instead of a maintained enchant that fell off as soon as a party member died would be an effective change as well. Thanks! 98.30.140.196 00:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree, I've been using Unyielding Aura since it got buffed last time, now with this fairly major nerf, I'm gonna think twice about carrying it now. This should be compass range at the very least, otherwise it's not really any better than rez-chant, and certainly not worth the elite slot.Anon-e-mouse 00:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

No. Fail. -- Armond Warblade 01:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well thought out response. Care to spell why it shouldn't be compass range, or did you just want somewhere to use 'fail' cos you think it's funny to do so. Anon-e-mouse 07:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a pretty prominent nerf. The extended range was my primary motivation for carrying it; otherwise, Renew Life with Healer's Boon or Holy Haste would be my resurrection of choice. I was excited for the buff and disappointed by the nerf, but I never used it exclusively. There are too many good monk elites for this one to dominate, though it certainly was very strong. The reduction to casting range is severe... I look for this to be mitigated next month, if not before. Compass range sounds more reasonable, though I'll still miss the month or so when this skill was well worth carrying. --RoyHarmon 06:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the nerf of UA is a bit too extreme. I can understand nerfing hero running and spawning a team on top of a boss, but please at least allow UA to rez at compass range. Otherwise UA will go back to becoming a worthless skill that no one uses.  :-/ Just Me 06:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Holy crap, are you guys all serious?

Do you not recognize how overpowered this skill is? Have you not considered stealing Healer's Covenant from an hero so that your spells cost essentially nothing but heal for an extra 30%ish? And, on top of that, you have an instant cast full-heal res.

Your complaints boil down to, essentially, "Wow, I'm not going to use this anymore because they brought it in line with other resurrection spells", when the resurrection isn't even the main part of the spell! It is a bonus, and any monk will tell you that being able to spend a grand total of half a second using Rebirth without the downsides is, on its own, almost worth the elite - it's like a res sig, only faster and stronger, and it beefs up your healing by an insane amount.

If you're using Unyielding Aura like Holy Veil (that is, popping it and removing it almost immediately), you're clearly doing something wrong, as you're not taking advantage of the huge bonus to your healing. So why are all your comments ignoring the healing aspect of the spell?

The only major thing the new UA now requires is a bit of skill to use - you can't let some members of your group die, run half the zone away, and res them; you have to actually pay attention to what's going on and not let people die until you can res them from spellcasting range.

The point remains that the weakest part of this spell is the absolutely amazing in-combat res.

-- Armond Warblade 10:22, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

You never preveil or maintain veils Armond? Misery 10:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I do, but these guys... -- Armond Warblade 10:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I also chuckle at people who complain about the Vow of Strength "nerf", oh noes, my terrible build doesn't work any more! Misery 10:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the VoS change was an icky one, I actually used it before, and I used to get 100+ hits w/ regular attacks,and 160~170ish with a crit. Unless you plan on doing it solo, I really doubt any team would NO have conditions, or not get them out in the first four-five seconds. What is that, 1.3/4s of a swing? ~Phill Gaston ‎ 11:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Do consider the possibility that you could do so much more with attack skills than VoS (particularly cast-time attacks). The VoS change made it go from only working in horrible player builds to only working in horrible team builds; I think I would consider that a nerf. -- Armond Warblade 15:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful; the healing bonus is great. I'm just saying there are better elites out there, in my opinion, and for a little while, there weren't. I was learning how to do some cool maneuvers with this and hero flagging while running, and while I know that's probably not supposed to happen (and should therefore be nerfed), I'm still a little sad to see it go. I still like Healer's Boon with Renew Life, though... Maybe throw in some Holy Haste, just for kicks... :-P --RoyHarmon 23:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I guess a major point I missed was "why are things dying anyway?". -- Armond Warblade 00:04, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

So you can resurrect and teleport them across the map with Unyielding Aura, duh! --RoyHarmon 19:09, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Lol

They unnerfed Mind Blast. I doubt they will stop playing Me/E, it just means you have to be more conservative with your energy. It did good to Glowing ice or Gaze, one of those got energy return lowered too i think.--Relyk 00:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not unnerfed until it's +9 energy at 16. But yeah, now we just have to wait to see if a fast casting mind blast ele gets to see play... -- Armond Warblade 01:39, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Since the new Glowing Gaze is actually a lot better for primary eles, I would be very much surprised if fire eles in general didn't see more play. With only 10 energy storage you can get 5 energy back overall from using it regardless of your level in Fire Magic (could this lead to problems with using it or, say, Shock Arrow, to get loads of energy with no investment? I smell some possible abuse on the horizon...) which is pretty good if it's every 8 seconds (that's nearly the equivilent of +2 energy regeneration).

One of the reasons people began using Me/Es for snaring was because there were Power Block mesmers which would pretty much make you useless for about 18 seconds when they hit one of your 2 second casting skills. If people run annoying Eles, then people will probably reply with Pblock again. Mr J 16:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Mesmers rarely have 50+ energy, unless you want less than 530 hp.(That, or if your afraid of major runes. WHOOO!! omegwad, my 75 hp!)~Phill Gaston ‎ 05:13, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Running their +30 energy/-2 energy regen sets mesmers have much more than 50 energy. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 06:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

STOP!

Stop killing our fun everytime something new is revealed! You killed the VS farm which was about the last PvE-fun for most players. Now what are we gonna do? I'm not very keen on taking up vanquishing or Guardian title again on another character. Fix some of the instances instead to attract ppl. I have said it before and i say it again: BUFF SF AND TOMBS!!--Treasure Boy Talk 05:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Endless farming for a few fancy items is not really what I see as fun. If they want to make PvE fun again, from my part they should increase the population of the high-end missions ( As you said for example, Furnace of Tombs. ) by whatever means possible. For example, by making them more rewarding for full teams of players, making it easier to create groups of players. And countering the solo-farming or hero-henching parts in those area's. As those are the bane of highend PvE. SniperFox 10:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Some people do have fun farming, some people don't. If you don't like farming, don't, if you do, do. Misery 10:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Either way, don't get annoyed if they fix an obvious glitch or exploit. Mr J 10:21, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

What tombs need is a repeatable quest, a Reward chest and an unique set of weapons dropping there (not just greens). Then no one would complain. MithTalk 13:37, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks it's fun to cheat (invincibility in a game based on living is cheating, whether it's allowed or not) shouldn't be playing games. Maybe you should learn how to play instead of having to find exploits. ~Shard 23:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

VS Farming has most certainly not been killed. Fixing Unyielding Aura just got rid of shitty Shadow Form runners. It's still far too easy to obtain the high-end loot from that chest, and it's still killing the economy, but at least it's a group activity. The same can't be said for Tombs and Temple of the Ages - both of which are FULL of solo A/E's. Even the elite Nightfall areas are farmed with 2 or 3 people. Until high-end PVE requires a full team, endgame PVE and loot is still going to be reserved for elitist solo farmers. I can solo the Tombs with my A/E, but my girlfriend and I can't Hero/Hench it together. How derelict is that balancing?Ninjatek 17:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

lololol. Take two mm's and tombs done. Xandra with jagged and olias with order of undeath. Gfg. Also A/E soloing of tombs takes like 2-3 hours. A/Me if you're pro (Like me) Like an hour and a half on hard mode :P. It takes skill to perma tombs wurms are a fucking hassle. ~Sexay Raskay 96.25.96.218 18:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

What about steam+glyph ?

← moved to ArenaNet:Skill_feedback/Elementalist/Steam

Hall of Monuments update

When can we expect the update to Hall of Monuments (mentioned in August)? BenderRodriguez 23:06, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The September 10th Update mentions that part is planned for October, and the other part is still unset. The August mention, iirc, didn't give a specific date or timeframe either. 75.146.48.190 23:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Completely missed that, thanks. I was hoping for a timeframe for cross-character achievements in HoM. /sigh EDIT: also noticed the original mention was on June 24th and not in August. Was talking off the top of my head :) BenderRodriguez 12:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

Gotten a lot of people confused about the wording so I figured I'll clear up the math a bit here. We're using the term "Aggressiveness" for the tiebreaker.

Aggressiveness is determined as such

• every point of damage done to enemy guild lord = 1 point of aggressiveness.
• every enchantment or weapon spell cast on your guild lord = -50 points of aggressiveness.

If both teams fail to kill the Guild Lord before 28 min the team with the most Aggressiveness wins the game.

Note:

• Lifestealing, and degen don't count as damage, and thus don't add to your Aggressiveness.

In effect, we treat every enchantment and weapon spell as though it is preventing exactly 50 damage. Obviously, that's not really accurate, but it does make the sort of stall builds that had been cropping up obsolete and does something to even things out between healing and damage prevention. We only had time to do something simple, and well continue to refine this as needed.

Izzy @-'---- 22:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Izzy, thanks for the explanation of the underlying mechanics. --128.196.188.23 20:25, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Just one question: can the aggressiveness go negative? I mean, if my team hasn't dealt any dmg to enemy lord, is casting enchants/weaps on our lord making any difference, or it just stays 0-0? --Yawg 03:31, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Simple answer is yes Izzy @-'---- 18:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

PVE needs more respect

Would you guys please start working more on making PVE fun again, and not on GVG? 217.126.155.7 04:58, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Epic fail typo? -- Armond Warblade 05:34, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

why work pve ?????? u just got new hero and quest change gvg and hb needs sorting out atm--92.13.28.207 11:50, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

So by adding a hero and a new quest PVE is done? Go re-think man. 217.126.155.7 15:28, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Oi, oi. PvE-content updates are MONTHLY now. So, if you get other kind of updates don't worry, it doesn't mean that you are not getting anything else for PvE. Just pay attention to Linsey's journal and Anet Portal. MithTalk 15:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I've not read either of those, but I'm willing to bet neither of them include "remove consumables and PvE skills from the game, rework old titles, and introduce new FoW-equivalent armor to make up for the problems EotN introduced... by Monday." That's a problem. -- Armond Warblade 03:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Quoted from Mith: "PvE-content updates are MONTHLY now." Dang it; they used to have PVE and PVP udates every 2 days. And now they are using the dumbest excuse ever. "GW2 will make* up for everything." Anet, get real. *=Mess up everything... --217.126.155.7 07:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

You paid for content, content was delivered. There was NEVER any mention of them supporting the content, or Adding new/changing it, that part is FREE. So say Thanks for updates, how ever scares they might be and wait for Gw2. If you no liky that, go pay for a game with monthly fees that will add a Single quest every few weeks and call it "New content". Biz 12:47, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

there is a small amount poeple who are just dedicated to working on gw1 atm and id rather they sort out gvg and hb instead of anding a few new quests and maby a new mission witch will what keep u ocupied 1-2 days then you will whine again that there not doing enough?--92.11.182.137 17:27, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Anet does not have a legal responsibilty to balance the game. I do hold them responsible for outright bugs though, and they seem to be rather good for fixing those up. Can you name a free play online RPG with PvP that is as balanced as GW is? As for PvE, what do you expect from them? New quests? What is the purpose of the quest in the first place? Lets assume that everyone is level 20. You don't need experience, unless you actually have used all your skill points, in which case do a few missions (they give skill points). You don't need items(I was just looking at shields... Oh my goodness there are tons I've never heard of). I think what you are demanding is a new dungeon type place to raid, like FoW, and such. Have you purchased all the chapters? Do you have EotN? Bonus missions pack? I really can't see your demand to be reasonable. I paid about $180 total for all the GW content. In WoW terms, that is about 6 months of playing ($90 for the box WoW + BC, + 6 months @ $15 a month = $180). Do you think you have enjoyed playing for 6 months? I think you could easily get a full year of enjoyment out of the GW chapters(if not 2 and a half), which is equivelent to a year subscription to WoW, not including the cost of the game, or expansion packs (next month if you play WoW, expect to fork out an additional $50 for Wrath of the Lich King, otherwise you might as well quit). Also, after you are done with GW, you can put it down, come back in 6 months, and your gear is NOT obselete, and start playing like nothing happened. StatMan 04:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

That's great and all, except for the huge, gaping holes in your logic.

ANet doesn't have a legal responsibility to balance the game, true - just a moral one, and a financial one. We - all of us who bought the game back in the days before Nightfall and EotN - paid for a game that advertised balanced PvP and rewarded skill over time. Currently, we have neither. This wouldn't hold up in court as those lines have been removed from the game boxes (wonder why - didn't Izzy say some rit skills were deliberately overpowered so rits would see play?), but that just hurts their credibility and, as a result, their GW2 sales. (The PvP playerbase was huge, before ANet showed they couldn't balance worth a damn - now there's millions of dead accounts from people who paid for the balanced PvP, got it for a while, and left when they lost it.)

Expecting regular PvE updates isn't a smart move on anyone's part - those, for the most part, come from expansions, no matter what game you're looking at. Every now and then you get WoW-style overhauls where an insane amount of content is changed (2.3.0 and 2.4.0 come to mind), but these, for the most part, change the balance of the game and thus fall into the above argument.

New quests, for the record, aren't just for experience. The quests in, for example, FoW give access to the armor crafter; the quests for DoA give loot; there's a whole lot of things quests can give besides experience, if the developers are willing to code it in. (The problem Guild Wars has is that experience is semi-useful past 20 - for buying consumables and new skills - but there's no way to change your quest rewards if you already have too much experience. In WoW, there's no use for experience past the level cap, so all experience rewards are changed to cash rewards.)

You actually do need items to be good at PvE; if you're going to try FoW, etc, with starter weapons, armor, and shields, well, good luck.

A new high-end dungeon would be a nice thought, but it would be affected by PvE-only skills by definition, making it not enough. The problem isn't the lack of content (most players actually do have all the campaigns, EotN, and the BMP); the problem is the lack of challenging content, which makes everything farmable, kills the economy, and makes all the prestigious items and titles relatively worthless. As Armond said above, until the game is challenging again, anything that's added will be worthless - simply because once you realize that you can bring a utility midline instead of a bunch of nukers (which are excessively weak compared to physicals + orders), the entire game gets five times easier. Bring an imbagon with you and you'll be amazed at how easy even the high-end areas are.

WoW is actually cheaper per month the more months you buy. I believe if you purchase a 6 month subscription, the price is cut down to perhaps $13 per month - but that's not the point, and nor is the fact that WoW's subscription policies and expansion packs are horrible. Those lose Blizzard money just as ANet's failure to balance their game (or even sufficiently monitor it; did you see their comment that they "didn't realize how many people used [Order of Undeath]"? Also, has GvG Zergway been fixed yet?) loses them money. The difference is that Blizzard charges more for their services, and thus they lose more money, while ANet charges a one-time fee that lets them cater exclusively to new players.

You cannot put down GW for six months (or even, in some cases, two months) and come back as though nothing happened; meta shifts, game updates, and expansions prevent that. The official Guild Wars site recently discussed a guild that did essentially that and is facing huge troubles because of all their time off (as you can see in a review of that article). You can't even rely on your gear not being outdated; if you could, iQ's ranger spike would still be immensely successful, with a few modifications for dead skills (distortion, eprod, windbourne, drain enchant and blackout on the rangers perhaps, boonprots verses proper prot monks, etc, just off the top of my head). However, that spike was designed for back when there wasn't an immense amount of damage going around; as a result, it does around 600 damage per spike (give or take - I've not done the math) - which was acceptable when most people ran ~480 health on each character, but nowadays major and sup runes are essentially nonexistent and a divine favor heal would stop the spike. (If you try to tell me that sup vigor runes are everywhere and thus my point is invalid, I'm going to stab you.) Also, even if ANet sat back and did nothing after the Factions championship (meaning no Nightfall, no EotN, nothing at all except bug fixes), the meta would change so significantly in a two year (or even six month) time period that coming back to Guild Wars would be akin to buying a new game - but for free, thanks to the lack of subscription fees.

75.182.89.73 00:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Gaping holes in logic aside, I consider that I got a lot of value for my money, a great set of 4 games overall, and high incentive to get GW2. There has been enough balance changes (although some were long in the coming), in both PvE and PvP. We have a game that is much more balanced for PvP and much less grindy in PvE than most games of the genre. Finishing everything the game offers provides a fair level of challenge. The loot problem is mostly because it's easy to abuse some fixed-build mob, and to make money from it. It's relatively easy to abuse a dungeon if the mobs in it have no decent counter to what you bring. -- Alaris 13:51, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Your gear only goes out of date because of balance changes, not because weapons are dealing more damage, or have better mods. Superior vigor is EVERYWHERE in PvP, atleast for me it is, since I unlocked it, and I use a PvP only character for PvP, so I don't have to spend a fortune on gear and skills. StatMan 17:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Alaris: You have far lower standards than me if you think that GW is good enough just because it's better than WoW. Yes, there have been many balance updates, but the fact remains that balance is still absolutely horrible in all aspects of the game (except like... pre-searing... wait, guild hall glitch for tomes, nevermind).

Stat: None of those make your arguments more correct. My point about sup vigor was that if you tried to refute my claim that "no one uses sup runes in pvp because you can't afford to lower your health that low" with "sup vigor is everywhere", when sup vigor obviously does not lower your health (and is thus unrelated to my point), I would be annoyed. 64.241.37.140 19:40, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Linsey Murdock has a huge PvE update on the way (even titles apparently?), won't be in the October build sadly, but if they were to rush there would be lots hideous bugs to plow through. Just chill till then. Nikdanbro 21:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

@64.etc. You saying that I have low standards is like me saying that you have unrealistic expectations. I understand the quest for perfection, but then I have seen some so obsessed by it that it would prevent them from being productive. My argument was that GW was balanced enough to be lots of fun, and I maintain that it is. Or at least, it is IMO far from "absolutely horrible in all aspects of the game". -- Alaris 02:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

If you think GW is balanced now, you either don't know what's being run or don't know the definition of being balanced. Here's one link, here's another. -- Armond Warblade 06:52, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at the pages. I have one friendly advice. The "angry fan" style of communication does not serve your arguments well. You're right that balance is not perfect in GW, I didn't claim to the contrary. But like I said above, it's balanced enough to be lots of fun. In my experience, focusing too much on flaws spoils the whole thing.

One last question. What is your comparison point? I mean, is there a RPG out there that is perfectly (or very well) balanced? I'm serious, I'd like to know. -- Alaris 16:31, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

For starters, being an angry fan requires being a fan. :P

I can't really see how you think Guild Wars is balanced with stuff like Shitway, SF-way (or, really, fire-ele-way), hexway, and SV zerg rush running around. The fact that other games are balanced worse doesn't make GW any better.

Chess is a pretty good reference point. Magic: the Gathering, I've heard, is well balanced, but I stopped playing years ago so I can't really tell you much about that. The same goes for Starcraft and D&D v3.5's PHB (with a few changes; they still didn't fix rogues, fighters, or paladins, but there's a few easy solutions there). I'm currently reading through the v4.0 PHB, and while I've not gotten very far, it seems much better balanced than the previous versions (outside of the devs not remembering that the elven racial power + the demigod epic destiny power = always hit, always crit, but that form of cheese is essentially an infinite loop and easily killed by the DM).

But realistically, balance isn't a relative thing; it's an absolute value. There's a few definitions out there; I favor "no one option should have any greater chance of success than any other, within reason"; Shard says "I define balance as the gap between a the game being too easy and too hard. If players have fun and are challenged at the same time, that game is balanced."; D&D had a similar definition in the v3.5 DMG, but I don't have that book available.

As I said, the fact that in WoW a rogue can pull off a CHEAP SHOT HEMORRHAGE HEMORRHAGE KIDNEY SHOT HEMORRHAGE HEMORRHAGE SHIV ENVENOM combo and kill you before you can react without requiring any sort of skill doesn't make things like sway more balanced. That's the important thing to bear in mind.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

First off, if you need to give me a long list of overpowered team builds to prove your point, you've shot yourself in the foot. A game is balanced if it's neither too easy or too hard, and offers lots of different viable ways to play it (not everything should work though). So you've pointed out 4 team builds, each containing several profession builds, but I know there's a lot more that have been complained about. Paragon-way. Scythe-Escape Rangers. SH-eles. Add a few more from your pages. If all those builds are overpowered, what happens when they meet each other? Frankly, I often get the impression that people complain about any build that is not "balanced-way", "random way", or "what-I-like-to-run-way".

Balance is hard to measure objective, it's subjective. So I find it hard to even discuss how it could be absolute. Some things are so extreme that we can agree on though. Starcraft, with 3 races and 15 or so units, is very well balanced. So would be GW if it had 3 professions, with 30 skills each, and no secondary profession. Not to trivialize here, Blizzard did a great job on Starcraft, but one way to balance is to remove a lot of content and diversity, and balance the rest. Another way is to make the game much more dependent on something else that is available to everyone. Make it dependent on quick reflexes (Fury comes to mind) or equipment quality (WoW etc) or level grind. That makes it really hard for new players to enjoy it. The MMORPG genre would not survive if it catered only to the elite.

To finish off on a positive note... Being a happy fan also requires being a fan. No need for the anger part, even when discussing potential changes and fixes. -- Alaris 17:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

You are quite wrong on nearly every point, and my previous experiences with you indicate that I will be unable to demonstrate thus to your satisfaction. Good day. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Then we agree to disagree. Good day to you too. =D -- Alaris 20:10, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

"no one option should have any greater chance of success than any other, within reason"? So random skill way should be as good as anything (HA!!! you know I'm not serious). Anyway, there are many builds that work in GW. My definition of balance is "Any attack can be countered with less energy/resources." in that definition, StarCraft is NOT balanced, but you can take that discussion to a talk page (meet at my place?). Most of those whatever way's can be countered using less skills. I do think that the Guild Lord having cyclone can be counter productive though. The problem with GW comes with counters to counters (hex that counters melee, and hex removal) and such. However, there are many skills that still need nerfs in some peoples opinions, and others that need a boost. StatMan 23:51, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Random skill way should work about as well as the builds from Shing Jea or Istan, because it takes about as much knowledge of the game to make them. It shouldn't be as good as something like Shock Axe, which requires a modicum of skill to both realize why it's good and use it well - thus the "within reason" part. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 01:15, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Increasing For Great Justice´s Shittyness

Herobattle Sins build up adrenalin too fast.. well i lol´d. Seriously , why does this already nerfed to dead skill for most warriors have to suffer another nerf because Sins use it? They should have simply made it for warriors only but this is just ridiculous.

There's no way to make a skill for X class only - secondary professions see to that. However, a far smarter move would have been to make it scale with Strength. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 23:15, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

you´re right .. thats somehow smarter :>

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, and the lack of signage makes me think you are. But that is smarter. Forcing things to scale differently intelligently fixed a lot of skills, like Burst of Aggression. When Assassins and Dervishes could use that to get a 5 energy, 4 second condition-less 33% IAS, it was broken, but it lasts just as long at higher levels of Strength but limits energy-based melee professions to 2 seconds. Armond is right. Have it scale 8...18...20 or 30 if lasted that long may have been a better move by the Dev's parts. But hey! They're busy re-making WoW. So we shouldn't bother them with things like logic.173.67.13.30 23:33, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

i wasn´t sarcastic at all , i totally agree with you so lets hope World of Charrcraft will be better :> --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:89.56.136.32 (talk).

I think the balancers honestly believe that the change to "FGJ!" is one that won't affect "most" warriors in PvP, a conclusion likely reached by virtue of the fact that most of the high-ranked guilds don't use it on their warriors in GvG, which appears to be the only thing that is deemed important nowadays. The fact that warriors are an adrenal class, and that they now have only one really viable adrenaline-affecting skill, apparently doesn't strike the balancers as any kind of contradiction -- and that fact alone tells you everything you need to know about the balancers. Making "FGJ!" scale with strength is the obvious solution, although this still might screw over any warrior who has the temerity to run a Tactics build. The whole idea of nerfing a fundamental warrior skill because another class is overpowered with it is just absurd. The mere fact that its another class being more powerful with the skill than the warriors themselves is itself indicative of imbalance. If a skill is going to be imba, it ought to be imba for its primary users. =P STALWART 11:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Battle rage is viable?

Also, you missed a couple other adrenaline-affecting skills.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 13:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Backbreaker

Shockingly - I'm not upset by this change, although the FGJ nerf makes me want to kick someone in the shins. I didn't use it, but they keep nerfing skills that do nothing but help make weak skills acceptable. BB Sins weren't too much of a threat if you had the right skills, but it was still quite annoying when you didn't. What perplexes me is that I was told that Knockdown durations must be hardcoded. They can't scale, and while it wasn't Izzy himself that said this to me I was linked to a page where Izzy had indeed said it. This all stemmed from a buff I suggested for Gust, that it's KD duration be changed to (2...4) like BB is now...Still, did they just find away to scale it or did he just lie? 173.67.13.30 23:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The first part of your post basically said "sins were good at build wars, and I'm upset that they were nerfed."

The second part is easily explained: ANet's coders are bad. (There's plenty of other examples out there; AoP comes to mind before anything else, with SoGM running a close second.) Most likely, it was hardcoded, and they simply didn't feel like making it otherwise.

In layman's terms, what they did was essentially change the code to "Target foe is knocked down for 4 seconds" to "Target foe is knocked down for {{gr|1|4}} seconds". The only thing is they also had to create the {{gr}} template so it would work. It's probably a lot more complicated than that, but it'll give you a general idea of what had to happen.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 03:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They already had knockdowns, and they already had if statements. They just learned how to combine the two. ~Shard 04:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Avatar of Grenth

Still no pve/pvp split for this skill....seriously? Still haven't fixed the cold dmg either? Wow....somebody has their head up their arse. 75.61.32.166 00:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

This is news to you? May I point you to every major update ever implemented since release? ~Shard 04:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Guild Battles

LORD RACING IS SOOOO TACTICAL AND FUN!!!!!!!

CAN YOU FUCK GVG UP ANY FUCKING MORE? Cougar22 02:40, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

If you've got a problem with it, which you obviously do, SUGGEST A SOLUTION rather than simply crying like a little baby. I'm not saying that lord racing is a good thing, but certain changes have been put in place for certain reasons, come up with an alternate solution that will have a different outcome. Dargon 06:04, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Revert the changes, bring back VoD and Gates, stop making GvG imitate HA. I would rather have VoD matches, where you got a decent match once in a while, than be forced to lord race. Cougar22 13:48, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Because VoD required so much skill to abuse, amirite? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 14:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

You ran into teams once in a while that didn't turtle to VoD. Now with "aggressiveness" you pretty much have to lord race, there's no gates, pretty much forcing you to run splits. Aggressiveness is the dumbest shit ever.

Also, "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" - Developer Updates Cougar22 02:26, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Paraphrase

What they said: We've also taken this opportunity to fix an abuse of the Guild Lord's AI

What they really meant: We didn't change the AI in any way, you can still abuse it. We just made it slightly harder to exploit a completely unrelated bug by making the guild lord more of a pussy. ~Shard 03:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the bitchfest above, if you have a problem with it, make a flipping suggestion that actually addresses the problem. Perhaps suggest a new build for the GL. Dargon 06:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

He's done so many, many times. Do your homework. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 06:17, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I know he has in the past, but this is a wiki, it's not the most organized place for finding a single suggestion among hundreds or thousands of threads. I think if you have a suggestion on how to fix a problem, then put it in every damn place you mention the problem. Someone will either debunk your suggestion as having a large hole, or it'll eventually get noticed and someone who can do something about it might have it in their mind next time they make a fix. Dargon 15:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The truly worst part, Shard, is that they attributed the glitch to the Lord's AI and the use of Insidious Parasite. What is that about? Had they mentioned the skill people were actually using, I might have thought they were trying to save face by blaming the AI rather than the sloppy coding of AoP. But claiming it's an AI issue and citing IP as the skill being abused just speaks volumes about how much they're paying attention. As you say, the problem is still there. You can't abuse Cyclone and SV to make him explode anymore, but when he's on half or quarter health, it's still possible to abuse the AoP problem. Mr J 10:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Dargon. You don't even have to do homework. I have/had a suggestion in its proper place on the skill feedback pages, and a link to it from the spoil victor page (the skill that actually allowed fast lord kills), which is also linked to on izzy's talk page. Arenanet not seeing ANY of that is more proof that they do not care. ~Shard 04:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Dargon, if the idea is to re-post our suggestions every single time we complain, the wiki would probably crash from information overload. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 04:19, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe you should all stop complaining so they can actually find the suggestions in the pile of crap everyone has contributed to?--75.94.77.148 04:29, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe they should look at the skill feedback pages, which is where this stuff is supposed to go for the specific reason of keeping it out of the rest of the wiki. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 12:54, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Too much too late?

So, with FGJ nerfed to hell and beyond now we can see how the secondary's are causing trouble with primary skill/weapon/attribute sets. Is it too late to consider a coding of some sort that would penalise secondary class skills so that they are not as powerful as when used by the primary class? I suppose in a way ANet expected the class's primary attribute feature to control these things, but then it turned out that the primary attribute skill set was in fact not where all the more powerful skills were allocated.

I suppose doing something like this would also ...'diminish the originality and variation of builds'... out there. --Shaia 08:31, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Secondary skills are already limited in that you can't use runes or headgear to raise them above 12. Sadie2k 20:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

In the instance of FGJ, it's not because people dedicate their primary class to their secondary class. It's cause of the no-attribute line of skills. That's about it. However, I am for advocating some way of limiting secondary classes so they are useful but not stupid. --Ezekial Riddle 20:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

According to 64.241.37.140(up above in the PvE needs more respec), no one uses runes that lower your HP in GvG, or other high end PvP. So, one fix might be to someone make it less necessary to have 600 HP, or make the superior runes more tempting to use. I think armond has some suggestions on healing or whatnot that he believes would help the HP crisis. StatMan 21:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Next month's PvE title update (November)

"This month's content update is lighter than usual as we are currently working on a larger update due next month. Next month's update will focus primarily on balance and pacing issues associated with many PvE titles." Does anyone know (or have a guess) as to which PvE titles this is talking about, and what will be done? I don't lurk GW forums enough to know what sorts of issues they could be addressing. Xapheus 23:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

A lot of it is focusing on the "grind" titles, such as luxon/kurzick. Also, supposedly treasure hunter and wisdom seeker are going account based. At least, that's the talk being kicked around.--Pyron Sy 23:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The ones I know are; making Wisdom Title and Treasure Hunter account wide, and I think the r scaling the Allegiance rank down a bit. Others I do not know--MageMontu 23:11, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The Wisdom/Treasure Hunter change might happen, but thus far I've only seen Linsey offer a "I'm thinking about it," response to the idea. She has stated that the numbers probably won't change on the Kurzick/Luxon titles, but there will be some updates to the rewards on things like lacklustre Challenge Missions. Consider the small Faction rewards on Aureos Mines and think of that place as Target #1 for getting a major Faction reward boost. Another one on the "Maybe" list was a small tweak to the rewards in Urgoz's Warren and The Deep, but we'll have to wait and see with that one as well. Head to the discussion page of Linsey Murdock where these details tend to surface. ;) -- WarBlade 00:04, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I think they were kicking around the discussion of making allegiance titles account based as well. Namely because the beginning SS point grind is a major ass-kicker for veterans --Ezekial Riddle 04:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Account based? I think not. I've seen a mention of reviewing the repeat completion reward for dungeons and also some possibility of tweaks to the Sunspear point acquisition in early Nightfall, but nothing about making allegiance titles account based. -- WarBlade 12:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

About making Wisdom and Treasure Hunter account based: link. Linsey also mentioned somewhere that they are not going to change anything else to account based. Some other stuff she plans to do: link. Erasculio 12:56, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Incendiary Arrows in PvE

shouldn't have been nerfed. I understand the need for a nerf in PvP, but this was my favourite Ranger Elite for PvE. Hell, I even named my PvP Ranger after the skill.

It wasn't overpowered in PvE, because even with Ignite Arrows, it wasn't any better than Barrage, but with all skills, the proper team (someone with Ebon Battle Standard of Honor, namely) can make one Elite (IA) better than another (Barrage) with a similar use. Alex The Incendiary is still QQing. Mike 22:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Uh... this was far superior to Barrage in PvE. Dunno what you're thinking of - or did you not know that EBSoH affects the AoE from Ignite?

It also set up the rest of your team to use their skills - or, more specifically, your paragon to use Stunning Strike.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 23:22, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You had to use EBSoH with it, or else it wouldn't be worth running over Barrage. Barrage can also take better advantage of Great Dwarf Weapon, Order of Pain and most other physical buffs because it could hit more monsters more often. IA didn't replace Barrage on every Rangers' bar when it was first buffed/changed, tbh, and now it won't likely see any reasonable amount of use in PvE. Mike 23:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

That's because people are bad. Barrage is inferior because while it may hit more targets, it requires them to be far more clumped, which doesn't realistically happen. Barrage may have the potential to trigger GDW and orders more, but it doesn't often happen. Generally when I was running B/P in tombs I'd only hit two or three targets anyway. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 00:15, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

At least give me a 4 second recharge so I can reduce it to 2 with Quickening Zephyr or an Essence of Celerity+Serpent's Quickness. :3 Mike 00:33, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Eh, IA doesn't need buffed again. Its still by far the best ranger elite. — Teh Uber Pwnzer 02:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Unless you're a derv or a ranger that's actually interested in utility, yeah. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 02:34, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Would it be a sweet idea if Barrage was given the same aoe as IA? I think that Anet ought to try this change out! ^^ --Warren G 17:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Barrage should hit all creatures inside the range around the target in PvE. In PvP teams are equal, in PvE you can find things like 8vs16 fights. MithTalk 18:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Nooooo way will that ever be implemented, that's just like saying "Let's give Meteor a 5 second recharge and cause no exhaustion in PvE" ... It's an uneeded Imbalance xD! ... 'specially with the GDW buff, Barrage is rather superb like it always has been, just as is. Nikdanbro 04:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

VOD+dmg

I'd love to see VOD return with just an increase in damage effect. You can keep the no thief's, no npcs walk, and crappy aggressiveness functions. 70.29.38.120 16:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC) Echo

You know, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. --RoyHarmon 18:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This is pathetic

I've never seen a more feeble update. Four minimal nerfs. Thanks, that'll keep ME playing. 99.144.167.197 02:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's hoping you're being sarcastic. lol -- Inspired to ____ 02:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

What you expect a game changing update? Pah, like thats going to happen. GW is on life support so updates at all are good. Dominator Matrix 03:00, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned elsewhere (the Upcoming Features page, the latest update's talk page, Linsey's page, GWO, GWG, etc), the big update will come next week. Besides, given how we are not paying a monthly fee, Arena Net isn't going to lose anything if you stop playing. Erasculio 03:13, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The move overused reason in the book, we dont pay so they don't need to care? Companys still have reputations to keep, and even then wtf? If you owned a company would you just abandon a game? Guild Wars isn't even dead, theres still a fairly large ammount of players and new players are still coming. I convinced a mate to buy it a month ago and he finds it fantastic. This update was fairly week but I'm going to keep optimistic that the update next week will blow my socks off. 122.57.108.149 06:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This only shows that the skill balance is in a very good state overall, finally. It was far worse several months ago and much bigger updates were needed. We should be happy that the game is finally well balanced and massive changing of 20+ skills aren't needed and there are no stupidly overpowered builds dominating. For a bigger update not about skill balance wait till next week.--83.21.34.238 08:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

BRB Shadowforming through the game. 219.89.30.103 09:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

BRB spamming cry of pain on mobs balled around 219.89.30.103. -Auron 09:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Apperantly, some issues aren't as imbalanced as you guys think. It's their game, so they get to decide what is balanced. 145.94.74.23 09:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Just because its their game doesnt always mean they understand it fully... Divine 11:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Ye, Perma sins are so balanced. :/ 86.1.180.218 11:43, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

To the 122 ip above: it's not that we don't have to care because we're not paying, rather that Arena Net does not have to worry about keeping players playing, they have to worry about improving the game. Those two things are far from being the same - a skilled player may play PvP longer if it's balanced (which would mean improving the game anyway), but balancing the PvE titles so they require less grind is not going to keep players around longer, more likely the opposite, and it would still be improving the game. Erasculio 12:18, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I must say I do think they did abandon the game a little tooooo much, it has so much more to give, and so many playing, surely more than two programmers should be cavorting it's system 58.179.111.59 13:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe WE don't understand their game/company/business model instead. Anyway, saying they don't care about the game or should put more effort into them...seeing as there will be a big update coming next week...well, decide for yourself how that makes you look. At the very least have the decency to halt your complaining until AFTER an update. 145.94.74.23 17:22, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This IS after an update. And tell me the game is balanced when Blockway finally falls. 99.144.167.197 20:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually the game won't be balanced until I can find groups for elite areas with ANY of my characters - yes, even that much despised warrior that nobody wants in an elite group. This is just to say that the game will never be balanced. Anet either doesn't care to really balance it, or are just too incompetent to do so. We should all simply accept that. Perma sins, cryers, and monks own the game. Don't expect that to change and you'll be much happier... 217.234.241.212 00:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Then find better players. My guild has no problem clearing elite areas with whatever happens to be online at the time. Don't play with the anti-social metagamers that can only think in Permasin, cryers and monks. 145.94.74.23 07:11, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and 99.144...you're saying they don't care, when they have a huge update coming out next week. Guess how that makes you look. 145.94.74.23 07:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

@145.94... Sounds like you have a good guild. You're lucky, they're hard to find. I'll take that advice and look for a better guild myself. I don't feel, however, that action on my part - or anyone elses for that matter - excuses inaction on Anets part. As for the "big" update coming next week, don't count your chickens before they hatch. "Update" has of late been synonymous with "nerf" in this game. 217.234.241.212 13:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
@ Anyone at Anet who gives a damn - Sorry to be so negative toward you, but it is just the way I feel. There have been honest attempts on your part to improve the game (M.O.X., Halloween Redux, etc.)and everyone should recognize that. The problem is that this all does nothing to decrease the current rampant class discrimination in Guild Wars that prevent me from playing many of my characters. I believe that one should not complain about a problem without at least suggesting a resolution to that problem. As such, I would suggest buffing some skills for PVE (and maybe even PVP). Pick skills that are simply not being used - there are quite a few of them - to widen the window of possible builds without overpowering skills. Also increase the power of skills in primary attributes, to increase the value of the varying classes without allowing other classes to abuse powerful skills outside of their own class. This should aid in the elimination of class discrimination. 217.234.241.212 13:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your sentiment, but let's face it: the playerbase as a whole, is not too friendly towards those that are 'different'. There will always be those that look down on others that don't fit into their category of approval and sadly, there are many of them. I think we should be glad that we at least have PvE skills, that can be used by any profession. While many of them are overpowered, it does help a bit when looking for a team. Anyone can be useful with Pain Inverter in their build. 145.94.74.23 11:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Necromancer Nerfs

Vampiric Spirit nerfed? That's fine with me... it was overpowered after the skill functionality was changed tbh although I will miss it...

Angorodon's Gaze nerfed? Never really used it anyway. Although it ruins the blood drinker/ang gaze combo.

Vampiric Gaze nerfed? Absurd. Please revert this (at least for pve if not for both pvp/pve)

Vamp Gaze was the reason I made my first character a necromancer. He is my main, and in his main build I use vamp gaze. You just killed my 3-year old necromancer with this nerf. EIGHT seconds? wtf? honestly?

Oh and heaven forbid we Nerf VOR which has been plaguing RA.... lets nerf Necromancers instead GG anet. 98.193.121.227 13:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

ITT: people who don't understand balances --Metroid 15:57, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd have to agree on vamp gaze. It wasn't overpowered, really. I do understand VS and Angorodon's being nerfed, but not gaze! It's used in PvE (esp. in Pre Searing) and it's crucial that it be reverted for PvE at a minimum. --Warren G 17:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

guys, it's 3 seconds. get over it. - Y0_ich_halt 17:30, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly, y0.-- anguard 17:31, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's 60% more. And you forgot that it was put on three skills at the same time (one of which totaly lost its function of offense). Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 17:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

that's really great. it's still just 3 seconds. and no "ah, but they stack and then it's already 9 seconds!" crap, you shouldn't spam it anyway. using vamp gaze was stupid enough until now anyway, maybe this will get some people to actually stop using it, as bad as the reason may be. - Y0_ich_halt 17:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't really use Vampiric Gaze on my necromancer much these days, but I remember back in Pre-Searing Ascalon when I depended on it to survive. Maybe I'm not that great as a necro, but I can imagine repeatedly smacking something in Pre with a wand and thinking, "Oh, crap! Come on, recharge, recharge!" And then I would probably die because I'd try to use Blood Renewal instead and end up killing myself. Wait, wasn't there something in a previous post about the importance of improving the game for new players? Eh, I'm sure nobody in Lakeside County would depend on something like Vampiric Gaze... --RoyHarmon 18:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I just think that some high rank team got owned by a r3 bloodspike and bitched up a storm. "OMG BSPIKE r3 WTF NERF WTF HAX OMGOMG OMG NERF PLS" And anet was just like "DUR, K" why? because some nerdy people can't get over the fact that an unranked (but coordinated) spike team can beat a ranked balanced. That is why it is called a spike.

What do you get killed by more in PVP Vampiric Gaze or VOR? Didnt need a nerf is all im saying.

and btw... The three seconds is time spent doing absolutely nothing in certain builds. When you switch between blood of the agressor/dark pact and vamp gaze.... now you have got to wait four seconds instead of one. Wasting time....

98.193.121.227 19:34, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

This is really unfair. My first ever and main character is a PvE necromancer (I don't play PvP at all) and I've been using prophecies-and-core-only blood magic on him since Factions was released. I know the common builds like SS and MM variants are probably a lot more efficient, but unlike those builds I had fun with blood magic. I took pride in making and using a blood magic build when everyone around me said that blood magic was terrible (and then I'd consequently outlive the naysayers whenever we were in a party together and be the one to bring everyone back from near-total party wipe), and was happy when skills from Nightfall and EotN made it a little bit better and even more fun. Before this new update it needed 13 Soul Reaping to keep the energy going for it. But now I have no energy troubles even if I have 0 Soul Reaping because, most of the time, I'm just wanding while I wait for my skills to recharge, which isn't fun. The increased recharge times of Vampiric Gaze and Angorodon's Gaze have successfully killed my enjoyment of the most fun PvE build I've ever used (I don't care about the increased recharge time on Vampiric Spirit, I've always used Life Transfer). 68.9.183.54 20:26, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Blood magic is dumb in PvP, and bad in PvE. Everyone shut up now please. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 23:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

If blood magic's bad in PvE as you claim, then shouldn't anet be balancing out the power level of the attributes by making blood skills better in PvE rather than nerfing them? 68.9.183.54 00:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they should. They buffed Life Transfer in the August 7th update. -- Gordon Ecker 03:32, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Blood magic sucks now EVERYWHERE. It needs a buff. Life Transfer is mediocre at best.

Blood doesn't lack good elites (but yeah, Transfer isn't good). It lacks good nonelites. I did play a lifesucker build once too, and it was lots of fun. And great utility, btw: 4 slots damage, the rest (including elite and secondary) free to customize to the mission at hand. It was instantly rendered obsolete the moment Necrosis was put into the game, however. You just can't beat a Curses (or Death, actually) build for direct damage anymore, and Blood utilty is not worth speccing high for (no, I'm not counting Orders). So yes, the Vamp Gaze nerf is a hard hit for PvE, but only to those brave souls choosing to play without PvE skills. Or if anet does hit PvE skills after all. (Heh, I can dream...) And realistically, don't expect Blood to ever be viable again. Just like Smiting, it's too bad for PvP when it "works", because you get this nasty all-in-one package. And anet is not going to rebalance whole attributes PvE-only. 134.130.4.46 23:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

If an attribute isn't a viable option, then what's the point in even having it as an option at all? I can understand having bad skills, you can't appreciate that something's good unless there's something bad to compare it with, but having a whole non-viable attribute seems to be taking it a bit far. 68.9.183.54 02:53, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Its initial design was a poor concept. There's not much short of a full redesign of the attribute or a total pve/pvp split that would make it useful in pve or balanced in pvp. Unprottable damage will always be too strong in spikes to be useful in general teams. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 02:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

You might as well say that the ability to "prot" against everything is OP itself. You always have to think about a game's nature - is a character primarily meant to kill another or to stay alive forever? For a game's draw is very unsatisfying having better offensive capabilities than defensive one is a stable solution. And if you still want to have a counter against a counter's counter, counter it with simple healing. Only because people don't like to run nun-protection or healing-weighted teams does not mean it could actually proves useful if not as powerful. Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 11:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

In other words, let the player base come up with builds that can counteract the blood spike teams rather than nerfing the build? I've always liked that approach; if players are upset about the power level of something, let them deal with it rather than changing it for them. After all, Anet has given us over 1300 skills to work with, nerfing something for PvP reasons is pretty much the same as saying "you guys aren't smart enough to use what we've given you to beat the big bad [insert latest good build here]." 68.9.183.54 20:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Way to not understand how the meta works, 68. The point of overpowered builds is that unless you run something specifically to counter them, for bloodspike in particular, they destroy you. Having to run a build simply to counter an otherwise unstoppable build is just dumb. Also, bloodspike and such are much much easier to play than other builds, but could still roll most teams not built specifically to beat them, making them overpowered. And to Notarch, the point of prot is that with skillful play you can stop their damage. With no way to stop the damage at all, spikes are just stupid because they takes all the skill and challenge out of the game. As for the rest of your statements, I'm going to assume English is not your first language because I can't decipher what you're trying to say, and that doesn't happen to my very often. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 20:54, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The meta functions the same way in every complex system game; GW, WoW, Magic: the Gathering, everything. Some options are stronger than others, but everything can be beat. If you know your opponent is slinging a certain option, come prepared. If every team comes equipped with a way to decimate bloodspike, then bloodspike will cease to exist and you can move on. And you don't need to run an entire build specifically to counter bloodspike, you just need to run one skill: Power Block. If everyone on your team runs it (or you have 4 guys with it and Arcane Echo) you can shut down an entire bloodspike team long enough to beat the snot out of their fleshy caster bodies. Then again, it's a bit pointless to be arguing about this; the nerf probably won't get lifted, even as a PvE/PvP split. 68.9.183.54 01:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I really shouldn't have to point this out yet again, but your argument that its possible to build against bloodspike and beat them is just plain ignorant. In the extreme majority of GW pvp, ATs and TA being the exceptions, you are facing a RANDOMLY selected team. And should you run into a meta balanced team, or a physical heavy team, or basically anything but bspike you are going to get completely and utterly destroyed if you're stupid enough to run EIGHT copies of pblock. Even four is over the border into stupidity. Simply because a build or a single skill has a counter, does NOT mean that it is worthwhile bringing that counter, and it does NOT automatically make that build/skill balanced.--118.90.126.153 13:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I was unaware that most PvP is against random teams. Since you know a lot more about PvP than I do, could you answer a question or two for me? I've seen the bloodspike build, I've been running a variant of it in PvE since before factions, and it's hardly unbalanced unless you have a whole bunch of people running it on one team who can coordinate their attacks. If PvP is against randomly selected teams, then how are bloodspike teams frequent enough to be such a threat that they needed to be nerfed unless everyone or most everyone waiting in a PvP queue was running it? Because, if most everyone waiting in a PvP queue was running bloodspike, then wouldn't that mean that any team except for bloodspike is incredibly unlikely to occur, in which case the power block example I gave above is viable? Please don't take any of that as sarcasm or hostility, I honestly want my ignorance replaced with wisdom such as yours. 68.9.183.54 20:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Think of it this way: say 1 out of 4 teams in HA/GvG will be bloodspike. If you build against bloodspike, you lose 3 out of 4 matches by default. If you don't build against it, you lose 1 out of 4 by default. Metas work very differently in different games. The GW meta is frequently changing, due to skill updates, but more importantly, is almost NEVER a single build. For one single build to become meta, it must be absurdly overpowered to the point of having almost no counters, or good against every single other commonly run build. In this case, and in this case only, does your example work. For example, when hexway was at its height in GvG, some people would run 2 copies of expel hexes in addition to extra hex removal on the monks, because you KNEW you would fight massive hex spams almost every single game. However, if that anti-hexway build came up against a non-hexway team, they had 2 useless elites, and usually fared much more poorly. Your suggestion, multiple power block copies, is the metaphorical dual expels. Yes, it absolutely destroys bloodspike, but is useless against anything else. The problem is not that bloodspike can't be countered, but rather that its counters counter very few other builds. Also, you said yourself that bloodspike was imbalanced in teams of coordinated people. The only pure pvp arena without coordinated teams is RA, and the areas where bloodspike is used, HA and GvG, are by far the most coordinated areas in the game. He meant that the teams you fight against are randomly selected from the pool of organized teams waiting to enter battles, not that teams are created randomly. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 20:57, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ok. Thank you for explaining it to me. 68.9.183.54 22:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

@IP: Your pre-factions PvE bloodspike must have been pretty pro using Death's Charge, Angorodon's Gaze, Vampiric Spirit, and Blood Drinker with Proph only skills. Or do you not know how HA works? 208.43.113.147 21:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I said that I've been running a PvE bloodspike build since before factions. I never said that it's always been the same build; each campaign and EotN brought new tech to it, so it has evolved a great deal since I first started using it. 68.9.183.54 22:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You say blood magic was pathetic and dumb, Yet they nerf it.

You say blood magic can't be prevented? There are SEVERAL skills that completely prevent a blood spike.

You say we don't understand the META GAME.... but YOU don't understand. Whatever people run in HA or GvG does not always have a "counter" right away. Most (winning) teams run balanced builds. The opposite of Balanced is a spike. Even though you are not going to "counter" a balanced team by running a balanced team. You are running what works best against most teams. R-spike, B-spike, Rainbow spike etc. all effectively work against (certain) balanced teams. When a specific build becomes more popular... the balanced team brings anti's to counter the popular build. Why would anyone bring an infuser to pvp? to counter a spike that was not protted?

The argument has clearly escalated to "OMG LIKE BLOOD SPIKE CAN'T BE STOPPED!" Yet nothing was done to nerf the blood spike itself.

If you want to NERF something that is overpowered. You NERF IT!

Assassins abused the hell out of Shadow form in PvE (and PvP). But without (an) ele or mesmer skill(s) they can't do shit. So what did anet do? They nerfed the Skill causing the problem. Shadow form. Not Glyph of Swiftness. Not Arcane Echo.

Vampiric Gaze is not a spike by itself. Why was it nerfed? I DONT UNDERSTAND.

If life stealing is you people's problem. (OMG NOTHING CAN STOP LIFE STEALING) Anet should change the functionality of life stealing or blood magic. But that's not even really the case. Blood Spike Can be nearly stopped or completely prevented with several mesmer skills (which can also be used to pressure an opposing balanced team). If you know what the meta game is about you will realize that balanced teams that lose against bloodspike should take part in what the game is ("build wars") and add a small counter or just hope they dont encounter a bspike.

Don't support the nerf by saying things like "you don't understand" "blood magic sucked anyway" or "you can't stop bloodspike" because all you are doing is making the people who have non-biased views on the subject look at you as ignorant. This is an arguement. Provide some factual information to support your reasoning instead of bashing the opposing party's reasoning. 98.193.121.227 23:34, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what magical mesmer skill stops bloopspike? Cry stops one of the skills, and the current bloodspike is more bloodspam, just use skills until someone dies. You'd need dual copies of tease to really stop bloodspike. This prevents infuse from really stopping the spike as well, as it may keeps someone alive for a bit, but doesn't stop the build at all. The old bloodspike was easier to counter because it had one target, and actually was a spike. The new bloodspike is simply using the fact that blood can't be stopped to overwhelm monks with damage. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 01:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Interrupt - The wonderful people of the Guild wars Wiki have not only compiled a list of interrupts, but also skills/hexes that complement that ability to interrupt. Here are some good builds to run on a balanced team to counter caster-type spikes. (Particularly Domination magic) oh and to all of these you can add Cry of Frustration to make them especially "Frustrated." or Wastrel's Worry to make that time between spikes ever so precious, and/or Backfire to make a caster think twice about using any spells. and the basic interrupts Power Spike Leech SignetPower Leak etc. Arcane Echo and Power Block combined can easily (and completely) shut down two blood spikers at a time. One Power Lock Diversion and Psychic Distraction mesmer bar can effectively shut down about three blood spikers at a time. Even the skill Blackout can effectively shut down two spikers. (While the blackout mes can use diversion between blackout on other spikers)

Okay... that was all domination magic (i believe)

THEN you sprinkle in a few illusion hexes such as Arcane Conundrum Frustration Confusing Images (my favorite against blood spike) maybe if you dont want to run a Dom elite you can run Migraine. If you run all of those illusion hexes plus full fast casting.... you have 4 spikers ineffectively casting spells, but as i said before I like to mix dom with ilus magic.

Also... you're right Arcane Echo Tease and Cry of Frustration seems like it would work pretty well too. (though I have not tried it)

There are endless ways to counter casters and if a balanced team has enough pressure and one or more mesmer running a build with some of the skills above... The balanced team should win no problem.98.193.121.227 22:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

But they don't, because, as I said, the mesmer doesn't apply enough shutdown to stop the current bloodspike. Get one use of their skills with cry? They still have the rest of their bar. Diversion a skill or two? That's ok, they still have a bar full of life stealing. Only power block really stops bloodpikers completely, meaning you shut down 1 or 2 of them depending on if you brought Arcane Echo or not. Even with 2 shut down, they can still provide decent pressure. In HA, most mesmers are PD, which can shut down 1 bloodspiker at a time at most, and for a large price in energy at that. So yes, there are counters, but the practical counters are not enough to make bloodspike as easily stopped as you seem to think. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 23:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You are, once again, dancing around the subject at hand by picking away at at part of what was said. All the skills you claim are ineffective are all parts of a complete build, which WILL be effective against Bloodspike or any caster-heavy team.

I do agree with you when you say that PD is what mesmers are mostly in HA, but thats what the meta game is. Your balanced has its defenses/weaknesses/offenses. The meta game is always changing to adapt to beat/defend against what is popular. If you ask me, blood spike was not as popular... and unexpected! Most-often, teams were underprepared to defend against it because it is not commonly run (and the team would lose). Bspike is EASILY countered, I'd like you to take some time to relax and understand this, because you are having trouble accepting it. But why bring a small counter for Bspike when its unlikely that you will come up against it? That is why you see teams losing to BSPIKE. You act as if BSPIKE has never been beaten EVER and that is why it was nerfed. BSPIKE loses a lot of the time. <-FACT AND it is to teams which effectively shut down the spikers, because they have included enough anti-casters and enough pressure in their balanced to win... not because it was a miracle.

I'd like to bring Rspike into the light for a moment. Sight Beyond Sight Nightmare Weapon Seeking Arrows (of course with spike skills and spirits) Is very difficult to counter. MUCH harder to counter than bloodspike. Yet it is not nerfed. Why? I honestly and truly think it is unfair.

But please, if you answer any of these questions, answer them all. Don't dance around the valid points i have made, address everything for what it is.98.193.121.227 03:44, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I was not avoiding your points, I was explaining that they were valid, but slightly unrealistic. Yes, bloodspike is very easy to stop, but often a build modified to preform exceptionally well against bloodspike will loose a skill or 2 that would help greatly against normal teams. And the teams that beat bloodspike are usually the ones with the best positioning awareness, which happens to be good teams, which usually run balanced. So yes, the teams with shutdown do beat bloodspike, but not necessarily due to those shutdown skills. I'm not sure what you were getting at with the ranger spike thing, as none of the skills you mentioned are used in any rspike I've seen in ages. I think the biggest misconception is that bloodspike is a spike, which it isn't. It often spikes, by having everyone use some skill on a target at once, but the reason it is deadly is because their pressure from life steal spam is much harder to stop than a spike. Previous bloodspikes have been annoying, but usually stopped by cry because they were actual spikes. One last thing, keep in mind that bloodspike teams carry shutdown too, often having one character Arcane Echoing Wail of Doom, possibly on any shutdown characters, and usually carry interrupts, including one or more copies of cry. Bloodspikers know that they can be shutdown, the problem is that shutdown characters can also be shutdown. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 06:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

You ppl shud actually stop complaining & listen to sum1 who actually knows what they are talking about. Bloodspike had its day when it was very powerful (back in the old days where it was pure spike damage that was unprottable instead of the nowadays spamming). However, it was not very reliable, and had nerfs, power creep etc so its topped seeing use. The fact was, at Nightfall, while it was decent unprottable damage that healed you (which wasn't imba, because of high energy cost for low damage), it was pretty much unplayable because a decent infuse could catch the spike and basially most balanced teams could roll them. However, with the addition of angorodon's gaze, it became supremely insane. Before spamming life stealing skills killed your energy so low recharge was no factor since it made worse players even worse. However, with the addition of unlimited damage when combined with blood-drinker meant that blood-spike was very potent indeed. Blood Drinker+Angorodon's meant unlimited energy for a caster, so basically it became very hard to stop. Even interrupting Blood Drinker fails, because balanced teams rely on conditions (like Deep Wound) to kill foes. Thus a blood spike suddenly wasn't spike orientated any more. You could spike, but you could also spam unprottable damage. This means that healers cannot keep up witht he constant damage. The unprottable damage wasn't extremely broken in concept, its just that it was meant to be very spike orientated to kill a foe who was being protted. However, when prots don't work against something that has constant dps and the ability to spike, it becomes completely broken. In essence, the nerf failed to really do much except slightly reduce spammability and dps. Reducing angorodon's energy cost and damage fails miserably, it simply means you have to cast other spells to deal your damage, and you now have a lot more energy (5 more ever 8 seconds). Even increasing recharge on other skills fails, because it just makes the build less fun to play, not less effective. Best solution: nerf Angorodon's to the ground. Smiter's Boon it, and basically it is blood-spike over. Revert Vamp Spirit and Vamp Gaze, they aren't broken. Just get rid of the problem, not the skills boosted by the problem (just like don't nerf flare if you have a skill that allows it to be cast in 1/4sec for 0 energy).Crimmastermind 08:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Burning Speed

Any chance of an updated Burning Speed that might actually be worth using? I have to admit that setting my character on fire is fun, but the health degen hit, etc. make this spell too niche to normally be useful. Maybe increase the faster movement duration or something. Just a thought. Argel 03:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

It is best used combined with skills that make you immune to burning~, benefit from burning or that send your conditions to other enemies. MithTalk 14:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I HAD (keyword HAD) a pretty good build that involved a Touch Necromancer with Burning speed.

I used Vampiric Spirit and Blood Renewal to give myself alot of regen. Would use burning speed and then Plague Touch, following up with Necro touch skills. This would set a target on fire as you chased them around (target would suffer from burning twice). But now Vampiric Spirit is nerfed. 98.193.121.227 23:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Issues

I don't know were the best place for this is, so here goes: The following things are far more troublesome overall then a stupid blood spike and have been present for many months now:

M/W's with more stances then any sane warrior and blockway in general Damage caused by bow interupts as well as an overall high bow damage in general (and yes, its very very high, with many hits going up over 60-100 points of damage) with a special mention of "spamming" of many attacks Classes with the same skill sets beating primaries of those skills (M/E, R/W, ect) Dervishes in general, with a focus on Wounding Strike Ranger exploitation of Expertise Weapon spells and no method to remove them, also Chants should be noted (but no were near as troublesome) Alot more, but could easily be summed up by a lack of a suitable balance update since the one in May 2008.

In all seriousness, many many players have made suggestions on the Interaction Portal on this website, to the point were we the community are effictivily doing the skill balance teams job and all they have to do is code in an update. I, and a vast majority of the Guild Wars community finds the negligance to these and many more issues unacceptable. Truly Anet and NcSoft has no real reason to supply us with any updates, or much else for that matter. I also understand the merger that took place may be slowing things down but a six month period in which Guild Wars has become stale has allowed for alot of problems.

What exactly can we ask for? All we want really but the underlying problem is what can we get in return. The ability to report scammers is all well and good, but how exactly can that be verified? Do you have support members that comb over text until the part mentioning the transaction is found and then check the trade stats? That is a waste of time in my opinion with that effort sorrowfully needed elsewhere.

It really does not take much to make the Guild Wars fanbase happy, honestly and truly. For this reason alone many people have either left or worse yet mention the state of the game to many prospective players thereby crippling the growth for Guild Wars, something a company with the idea to make money off a game should realize. Throw us a bone already, then throw us about 100 of them, then throw some more. 68.47.192.6 06:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

No Issues

I Enjoyed this game, Thank-you Anet. --121.220.165.53 01:28, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Might wanna play longer than a week then. 122.57.103.239 02:40, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Could always be more formal but who am I trying to impress.. --121.220.165.53 14:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

i am perfectly sound with the way GW is. i have no complaints, either (and i've been playing for 3 years (w/ no break in between that time frame) before you say "play for more than 1 week") --Uchiha Lena 23:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Skill Imbalance Updates

Nerfs, nerfs, and more nerfs.. I wish I knew what substance Anet's consuming so that I may put it in my pipe and smoke it! What I'm trying to say here is that Anet doesn't balance anything about skills.. but instead, they just make like duck hunt and snipe all the good skills flying around and bury them in the pits of oblivion! Smiter's Boon is by far the biggest example of that! Shroud Of Silence is another, Incoming, then Ether Renewal (pre-re-buff), exposed defenses, Black Lotus Strike, Expert's Dexterity, etc., etc., etc... (infinitely more, really!) ..all in the name of giving in to lazy crybaby players out there that have such a hard time thinking outside the box. What gives, Anet? Why do ya'll not care about we, the community, anymore? Would monthly fees help inspire/motivate your teams to provide adequate quality updates and positive changes to gameplay? If not, then what? Please, let us all know! The game is dying and all I can do is sit back and watch? >.< C'mon!? Please unf*** the game, imbalanced skills and systems implemented. Revert some of the sh*t that's apparently broken/not-working (i.e.: Dishonor, /report, GvG *Agression*, etc..)if ya'll have to. Ya'll aren't perfect and are capable of making the wrong choices. Doesn't mean ya'll have to stay with them?! For the love of..! >=/ --Warren G 07:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You must be a PvP'er, because PvE got lots of buffs (especially when skill were split in PvE and PvP versions). Anyway, the problem is mostly that the power level of skills as a whole has gradually increased. There are many players begging to go back to Prophecies' power level, and that's what they're doing. I suppose. 145.94.74.23 11:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thats because PvE has been a joke since Shadowform. This big title update for PvE this week will probably be the last thing PvE'rs get. 122.57.98.211 21:10, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

PvE is imbalanced by design. PvP is balanced so each side has the same chances to wins and deaths happen 50%/50% in battles that are 4vs4, 6vs6, 8vs8, etc... PvE is balanced so players can vanquish complete areas with 0% deaths, and party sizes are completely different, they can be 4vs6, 8vs 16, 12vs16, 8vs3, etc... In PvP areas the same number of players in each side enter. In PvE areas, 8 player may have to kill 500 enemies. MithTalk 14:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Dungeons hard mode?

I disagree with the manager in dungeons, because there is clearly an imbalance between characters. How can it be that, being hm, a character (generally a monk) with 2 heroes can clean the whole dungeon in hm? Now there is no team-work there are only runners for hm. and they are getting rich by spending just 1 hour a char can get about 100k. that is unfair for another character because they don't have good skill to reduce damage such as monks and doesn't have divine favor and protection skill, so because monks only need 2 heroes to clean the dungeon, why do they need a party? if they can run the dungeon in hm and get rich easily? Really that is unfair for the rest of the characters that try to do dungeons in hm but they can't. Of course it is hard to manage AoE in a heroes/hench team; they are vulnerable for AoE. So a warrior, mesmer para, ranger, etc cannot beat a dungeon easily against a whole party such as a monk that can clear the whole dungeon. Or give some dischentament skills that works (expunge echantments) to foes, or do something so that foes don't kill themselves with Holy Wrath and retribution, or nerf some skills such as (shadow form, spellbreak, obsidian flesh) that cannot be reused several times in a short periods. Or add some special skills for other characters that don't have these skills, such as rangers, mesmers, paras, warriors, necros. yeah... they can use obsidian flesh or mesmer can use the shadow form... but the performance is not the same and mesmers cannot attack with perma shadow form) for get a balance between characters. Thanks. --208.104.132.121 13:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Translation - "Nerf the game some more. Nerf, nerf, and more nerf! I hate them that farm that way because I'm not smart enough to do what they do, so cut them off for me, kthnxbye.. I'm a hater btw. xD" You're putting them out there like a little hater you are. You're pathetic! "Nerf, nerf, NERF! ZOMGROFLCOPTERZKTHNXBYE." --Warren G 18:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Uh, I know you're very anti-nerf but It is a joke when a Monk can go in with one or two heroes and solo entire dungeons. These are elite areas, and once again they have been made a joke of. There is a time for nerfs and a time for buffs. Dungeons need a buff to stop this crap, and the people able to solo it need a nerf. 122.57.98.211 21:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

A buff? Some of them are hard enough as it is without buffing them further. A marginal side step to add a few enchant strips into the mix should be sufficient to stick a dent into Monk dominance of certain areas. I'm also a bit puzzled how the situation in the Cathedral of Flames (infamous "CoF run") is somehow being tossed about as if it equated to all dungeons. That could use some further explanation I think. -- WarBlade 22:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

600ing a dungeon isn't as easy as you might think... it's Shadowform and Obsidian flesh I'd be more concerned with. Nikdanbro 07:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC) check out the bizarro prof I am developing

It takes actual skill to do a dungeon run 600-way, and it's not necessarily always faster. Besides, afaik that's only really done in CoF and they already made it harder to do ages ago. There aren't a lot of good ways to make money anymore in GW, and looking at the cost of some stuff (like FoW armour) I think it would be a fundamentally bad idea to nerf the last handful of decent farm runs as well. It's not like those poor Monks are clearing UW areas in 10 minutes or so anyway... >.> -- Elv 13:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Actualy most Monks do clear Uw area's in 10 min like me with 600/smite just use a 2nd account and turn it on smite and close laptop screen and farm on pc :P .... Mr-HaXx 22:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Why dont u make a monk then? max level is only 20 =] 114.74.252.54 04:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it was sarcasm. Note the ">.>" face. And 600ing the Cathedral of Flames is easy; the hard part is forming a party that will pay you to do it for them. My wife and I used to take turns smiting for each other, but it was exceptionally tedious. We always seemed to run into the same scenario: one or more members of the party would be a jerk and start talking about something really crude, and then everyone else would get mad and someone would leave. Then we'd get a 'gtg sorry' or two and end up with half a party at the end, despite not having died at all aside from when those who eventually left got too impatient and aggro'd everything. Yeah, I guess in that respect, 600ing isn't as easy as you'd think. --RoyHarmon 14:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Storybooks

Dear developers,

Prior to this update I already had Legendary Guardian, meaning I completed every mission in both Normal and Hard mode. Why can I not get Storybook credits for these? Why am I being forced to them all over if I want to enjoy the benefit of the update? Huge thumbs down, nice way to say "We don't give a damn about your time/effort" to your players. BenderRodriguez 17:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Why not do the missions just for fun? Not everything has to be for a title. I've done missions over and over and over again simply because they're awesome. -- Wandering Traveler 17:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

That has nothing to do with the point I am trying to make. BenderRodriguez 18:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

And having done the missions prior has nothing to do with getting the books completed for doing the missions after the books were introduced to get a reward from them. You got exactly what you thought you would get at that time and now you can get exactly what the game gives now. Why do some think they deserve more than everyone else? It does get sickening. -- Inspired to ____ 19:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

How do you figure this classifies as "they think they deserve more than everyone else"? If someone has completed mission x on a certain character at the time books are introduced, why not let that character fill the corresponding entry in an empty book, for the regular fee, ONCE? Thats the way EoTN works, isnt it? If you didnt pick up the hero handbook before you made your way to the end of the primary quest line, you could get one and fill it up once your done. Why would this be different? If I open my map and I see I completed (bonus goals dont even matter for the book) ANY of the missions in ANY of the campaigns in both normal and hard mode, I must have done it at least once. So why not let me, one time, add the corresponding entry to an empty book? I fail to see where you are coming from and how my original post is "sickening". BenderRodriguez 22:57, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

How Eye of the North books work is great. Campaign books should work that way too. Make the mission, pay the gold to fill, give the book. No need to keep the book. MithTalk 20:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Here's hoping that works better than it does in Eye of the North. I've been short-changed there fairly often. I'd also like to point out that the same people who would do and say anything if they felt that it ingratiated them with Anet are suddenly out in force here, argueing against the need for further storage and credit for things already accomplished, although this gains them absolutely nothing. Isn't that about right, Inspired? 217.234.246.148 20:59, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it gains me something that is hopefully tangible. Everytime someone conplains about something ANet adds to the game, when they clearly don't need to do anything further to this old game, it just makes it more unlikely that they will stop "wasting" their time trying to make users happy who compulsively cannot be happy. Or put another way, saying something would be nice is okay; but complaining that something that was given freely to you isn't seen as "perfect" by you is wrong and is likely to hurt more than just you. Finally, everyone has already gotten "credit" for everything they've already done, what some people are looking for is an additional benefit over what some others get. -- Inspired to ____ 21:25, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Such fervor, I find myself dumbstruck. I'll start by ignoring your remark about users who compulsively can not be happy. You said complaining about something that was given free to me (and nothing was) is wrong and likely to hurt people. Do you mean to tell me I should not be posting my opinion about the updates on the developer talk page? Why is it there then? How is my posting here (which is seldom at best) going to hurt people? And please refrain from personal estimates, let's try to keep the discussion about whether or not people who completed the missions prior to the emergence of storyline books should get credit for it. Explain to me why these people should not be allowed to fill the entries corresponding to completed missions once for a fee?BenderRodriguez 23:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't be dumbstruck; stating any opinion which does not praise Anet will instantly cause Inspired to attack you. It's what called sucking up to the powers that be. He won't use logical arguments either - just starts making stuff up... 217.234.246.148 23:32, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Back on topic and away from the drama... the update notes were poorly phrased, or there could be some sort of bug involved. Two separate bullet points I'd like to highlight...

• Once you have filled in half the pages of a Storybook you can take it to an NPC who collects copies of that particular book in exchange for rewards such as gold, experience, and title points. The more complete your storybook is, the better the reward you will get.
• If you forget to bring a book with you on a mission, the corresponding NPC can fill in the missed page for you for a small fee. Missions don't have to be done in chronological order for you to get credit.
  

When I read these earlier today this led me to believe that since I had completed all campaigns, I would be able to get one book and get the pages filled. It wasn't mentioned anywhere, but since it was a once-off in EotN I assumed it would be the same for these new books. However, I couldn't get a single page filled at all despite my Legendary Guardian status. So either the update notes are incomplete / poorly phrased (in EotN you need a certain amount of pages before you can buy more, if I recall correctly, would that be the same for these then, and if so why was this not mentioned?) or the mechanism isn't working as it should be. The update notes clearly mention some form of credit for missions already done and many of us interpreted that as once-off retroactive. Can we get some clarity? As it is I don't think players can be blamed for getting upset here, because there is definitely something wrong. -- Elv 23:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

The story books aren't meant for old characters. The books help new character/players keep track of the missions they did, and help get more SS/LB/Alliance faction in the progress. Just like EOTN. Dominator Matrix 23:35, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but you forget that in EotN people who had had early access did get a chance to retroactively get credit for what they achieved at the time of the early access. And if this update was really only in favour of new players (how many of those would there be, if we define "new" as "having started over the past 3 months") then they might as well not have bothered with all this, because it probably means that it's meaningless to at least 95% of the players. I never needed a storage-eating book to keep track. I have a handy little excel sheet for that. (All my characters at once, even better!) I had always understood that this update was meant for everyone, and that older players should have some reward for all the hard work they had done while easier ways became available. I thought it was about making it easier for everyone. I guess I was wrong? -- Elv 12:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I thought that was what the map was for...Koda Kumi 12:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I fully agree with the BenderRodriguez and Elv. More than fully, if that's possible. I have 10 characters for PvE, one for each class. Understandably, I've invested a lot of time in them, especially moving them through the campaigns to get access to skill captures, etc. There's a LOT of time in there. I don't farm, in part because I don't have the time, and I'm not really into it, so my titles are pretty low. This update was like a god-send. Until I realized that a huge chunk of it won't apply to me. I'll be damned if I'm replaying all those campaign missions again to get the progress my character has already earned. I JUST completed NF for the 5th time on Tuesday(Ritualist), having done 90% of it over the weekend! I wish I had known I was going to miss out on some valuable points that would have eliminated the need to farm, I would have not played Guild Wars all weekend.

It's not even about maxing titles (on 10 chars, yeah right, I've got ONE maxed title to date). It's about the principle, and also that there's some real useful skills that are dependent on title progress, and these are some valuable points we're missing out on. Cocytus 17:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, if we do end up having to do everything aaaaall over again, I'll be offering assistance or joint efforts with other wikians to at least do it in good company. I just hope I won't have to. I have 28 characters... -- Elv 17:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Whenever you do, count me in. My IGN is same as my username here. BenderRodriguez 16:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Same here. All of my chars are on one account; just stick a "Lord" in front of my name here. Cocytus 00:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreeing with BenderRodriguez and Elv here. unfortunatly it is made abundantly clear that there is nothing going to happen with this. So I'll also put in my name for assisting others in getting these missions done. IGN speaks for itself i guess :).KaylahWarcrave 14:08, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Isn't this simply a bug? ANet said the NPC should update the book for 100g and let that statement appear in the official wiki too. And that was how it worked for EOTN. And we know they have the info needed to do that from our maps. So we may just need to wait for them to fix this bug. Any comment from the developers on this please? --Vana Runedottir 02:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Not according to Regina, who said that letting us pay to fill the books was not something they intended to do because it was "bad for the economy". Then again, she doesn't seem to know what is in the update notes or chooses to ignore it / doesn't care to address them. I'm still waiting for Linsey to clarify the update notes so we'll know exactly what was intended and how it was supposed to work, but I think she may be taking a wiki break after the pre-update stress she's had. Not going to bother Regina with this because looking at her forum posts she doesn't seem inclined to elaboration on the matter (unless anyone has a link to any of Regina's answers on this matter that have actual substance?). One-liners ftl. :( -- Elv 15:50, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Just wait and see.. ^Teo^ 16:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Linsey's back and said she'll write up an explanation in the course of the next few days, so I'm going to wait and see indeed! :D -- Elv 19:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

The update burns insane amount of faction :(

It's really cool to get like 30k Kurzick and 30k Luxon faction as reward for your achievements on each character AT THE SAME TIME ?!.
Maybe I need to explain: If you use or turn in e.g. Kurzick faction you loose the equal amount of Luxon faction. That's why you never have both of them on your account.
But this update did and burned this way half of the faction earned over years :((
I hope that was not on purpose to annoy people that have played the game already ?!
When will this super embarrassing mistake be corrected?

Have to laugh, you complaining because you lost some of your FREE faction while gaining from the other FREE faction. --ChronicinabilitY 22:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the real problem here is a deeper dislike of the Luxon and Kurzick faction system that's been around since the release of Factions. I'm sure that it's all been discussed at that time, it's just that the update and the sudden influx of faction brings it all back up. That said, it does seem a bit of a waste, because in a way you did "earn it" (obviously, or the new system would not reward you). I'd personally like to be able to keep the reward for both sides, so I'm not cashing until I see a definite yea or nay. I'd like a yea, but I won't cry over a nay. The update had some (small) flaws, but overall I am very happy with it. :) -- Elv 22:28, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Same here - I don't know what to do with it. I'm too afraid to cash it and lose OR my precious luxon faction to finish the 10k luxon misson or the much bigger load of kurzick faction i've saved up. Could there be some kind of temporary you-do-not-lose-the-other-faction-when-cashing-in-your-points week? It would greatly help a lot of us.. -- Karasu (talk) 23:53, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

And then there's those of us who quickly spent that extra faction because the 'free' faction got it pretty close to the cap, but wanted to try out the new system. — kyrasantae 01:20, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

@--ChronicinabilitY : You have to laugh about what? That you did not understand that it's not free faction, because you earned it?! You can not even re-earn it, because you got it for achievements you can not repeat. Or do you laugh because you have not played in Cantha and make now fun of those who have? Last but not least the loss is considerable!

Why care for this faction? for you can earn notably MUCH more from vanquish, challenge, PvP (like aspenwood). Borotvaltgandalf 17:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: this week-end we gained x100 ennemies killed when vanquishing instead of x50 as stated within the update notes. Jaxom 20:22, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: It's double vanq weekend. ¬ «Ðêjh» (talk) 21:51, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I think everyone noticed but... Well, haven't checked the english ingame message, but the french ingame message told us about double gold, double scrolls and double XP... so unless I am blind, "double faction" is nowhere to be seen around :/ Jaxom 01:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I would have done some vanquishing instead of jq if I had known that. =\ 66.190.15.232 01:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Same! -- Salome 01:57, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the update is great but making it a little to easy. Some players have invested lots of time and effort in maxing titles in the past. Now everybody will soon walk around GWMM.

It's only the grind based titles that are affected. You still have to vanquish everything, and get masters/bonus for missions in normal mode and hard mode, and cap all the elite skills. Even the allegiance faction titles still require an insane amount of work to max. I don't think you have to worry about a massive influx of GWMM because of it, and even if you do, so what? It doesn't detract from your personal satisfaction of having achieved it the 'hard way'. -- Wyn 00:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I figure anyone who maxes 30 titles earns GWAMM, even if the grind titles are watered down. You can't get 30 titles in reasonable time if you don't max a few of the harder titles: Guardian, Vanquisher, MotN. As far as I'm concerned, if you max MotN, Vanquishers, and Guardians, you've already earned it... because there's nothing left you can't handle. -- Alaris 01:48, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Quite so. The rest of the title tracks have little to do with skill. Consumable titles are fun, but say more about the amount of raptors you've killed or the amount of savings you've spent (wasted?). EotN rep titles really only show how often you've rampaged through the EotN areas (in HM), which has little added value, because a maxed MotN is more than capable of showing that you can in fact vanquish those areas. Before the update, Lux and Kurz rep titles only showed time spent faction farming, either through the old runs, or the HFFF that became possible with the release of Nightfall. Little to do with skill. Heck, even Legendary Survivor is cheesable and has very little value nowadays... not a lot of people got it through skill. As for Legendary Skillhunter... money spent, rather than skill (ironically enough). The titles Alaris mentioned are the only ones that really tell you something about skill, the others are about patience (here in the meaning of "willingness to grind") and your bank balance. Guardian, Vanquisher and MotN are the big boys really. I actually enjoy vanquishing, too. On my way to my third LV... So yes, GWAMM may be a little easier now, but no less well-deserved. -- Elv 19:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I would add that Survivor is an indicator of skill depending on how its done, and Skill Hunter is also an indicator of skill to a smaller degree (because you do need to be able to kill most bosses in the game; although Skill Hunter also takes time and money). BTW, wasting normally-earned money on stuff won't make much of a difference on titles, as consumable titles (drunk etc) require upwards of 1000 each. That's not within the reach of regular playing styles, it's long to get even 100 through normal vanquishing (I think that's still the case since update). -- Alaris 19:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

My estimation of cash earned while vanquishing is roughly 300 per Legendary Vanquisher, excluding possible bonus weekends. So yes, that does make it slow going... -- Elv 20:14, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I assume that's from vanquish rewards alone (i.e. not counting drops), right? That's pretty low compared to farming / running... -- Alaris 22:02, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd say the drop rate averages to 1.5-2 per vanquish. That's including big areas, small areas, personal bad luck days and good luck days. There are 121 areas to vanquish, and some of those require only one or two kills depending on what character you take and if they have quests active (Zen Daijun on a Canthan character, Tahnnakai Temple with a quest, etc.), so an estimation between 181.5 and 242 is still fairly generous. I'm personally hideously unlucky with loot, so I'm only at a total of about 450 earned by the time I finish a Legendary Vanquisher. Considering the time it takes to complete one that's still pretty low... These are pre-update figures, though. I'm working on a third LV now and will have to see how much that will make me. :) -- Elv 11:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yea, I have drop issues as well, which made vanquishing (only done NF) an activity that's really more tedious than rewarding. I remember getting only 1 or 2 golds from vanquishing a few areas in Vabbi and the Desolation. Buying just 2 lockpicks from a merchant is always more than what I'd make from vanquishing (except one time where scored a superior vigor). -- ab.er.rant 03:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was doing TH/Wis on my Mesmer and got a fair number of lockpick drops as I worked on my Monk, all of which I stored on my Mesmer for later use (but could never be bothered to because chest runs are soooo tedious). With the big update Live, I can now take them on any character... that's probably going to boost my income a fair deal, even if I'm not very lucky with the actual drops or retention rates. I'm stingy, so I never actually buy the lockpicks. I wait for them to drop. I do enjoy doing vqs though and I (usually) know what I'm doing, so if you want to go for LV and want company I'm up for it. The update has me motivated! :) -- Elv 22:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: Just saw the note on the faction issue in the Dev Update. Shame it can't be fixed anymore, but I guess I understand the issue. Oh well. I still have more faction than I would have had without the update. :) -- Elv 22:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

At least they admitted they didn't completely think that one through... And that, at least for me, is enough. --Lady Rhonwyn 11:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

21st Nov. Developer Update Storybooks

"We are actively exploring alternative ways to relieve inventory pressure and would like to reassure players that this is an issue very much on our minds." Why not make it the same as for quests? Before you collect the reward the quest is in your questbook with a finished in parentheses behind it. Do the same for all the missions and we don´t need any books. 84.57.224.139 20:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

There's a little more depth when you have this book/journal when going through the missions. Obviously it's for the RPer's, and completely aesthetics for other players. Perhaps just condense all the books into one book (ie, all EN and storybooks goes into 1 clickable inventory icon that has "sub-books" inside). No need to assign each book an inventory address, and books you don't have in the condensed book would just show up as a "?". --8765 21:35, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I think a complete new chest tab is not needed. We need the books in the characters inventory while playing. I think we need more room in the character inventory is needed. So why not expand the Belt Pouch with five additional slots only for books? This would not completely solve the problem for people with carrying all possible books at the same time, but would give at least a little more room. Balwin 22:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't they need more server space for that aswell though?-- Mini Me 23:17, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep, they do. Though, I have to wonder, if server space is the issue, what would they do if everyone just bought one more character slot to use strictly for storage, as many of us have done in the past? Wouldn't this be an even bigger chunk of space requirement? Granted, they are getting $10 per character, rather than $0, but still the end result would be needing more storage space. Hell, I'm all for adding more storage tabs beyond the freebies we get for multiple characters, just let us buy additional storage via the online store, say $3-5 per tab. This would easily cover the cost of any additional space they may need and would give us something we've been wanting for nearly forever. Dargon 23:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to merge books.. I mean, most books now got about 18 pages? Who reads a book that only contains 18 pages? That's called a comic, not a book ^^. Merge books for all campaigns a person have and make a real novel out of it, 250 pages ftw =) -- (Tribina / talk) 23:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not understanding why the retroactive rewards can't me made for people who have completed the campaigns several times. If introducing free gold is concern then the gold reward could be mostly reduced or removed for retroactive books. If a player is missing 1-3 missions then the cost is 100 gold each. If the player adds more then the cost is ((number of pages updated / number of missions in campaign) * total gold reward). The faction, sunspear and lightbringer points gained isn't going to max a title, but would help reduce the grind. At this point it will not help those that have redone all the missions, but I doubt many people have redone the missions on all characters. 69.19.14.24 23:43, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

One of the purposes of not making the book retroactive is so that people will redo the missions and hopefully party with other people in doing so. Of course that's an ideal world. --8765 00:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Why don't make chapters.

• Chapter 1 Young Heroes of Tyria
  • Missions belonging to this
• Chapter 2 The Flameseeker Propehecies
  • Missions belonging to this
• Chapter 3 Shiro's Return
  • Missions belonging to this

etc etc.

And just make 1 NM and a HM version of it. Fox007 11:44, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

A book cannot have more than 18 pages, and some of the games have more than 18 missions. Erasculio 12:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Can't they add more links on the next page O.o Fox007 12:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Sigh Anet is really determined not to spend a cent more on Guild Wars. Thanks for showing how much you care. Servers are crappy enough as it is, upgrading them for more storage + stability would be really nice. 219.89.29.115 01:15, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Errr, so the notes only stated what has not been changed? Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 03:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying us that you won't improve the game Anet. In the future please consider rebuilding the skill balance from the ground up. All skills should be viable.

Seriously? ANet has one of the best support for a not-pay-to-play game. Go out and look at the "competition" -- Alaris 05:52, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

No support vs No support that's a pretty lame argument. Inb4 you quote patches that apparently take effort but do absolutely nothing. 222.154.170.147 13:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I lol'd at the "care about the economy" bit. --Macros 18:02, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Alaris, I thought Support was managed through PlayNc (NCSoft), not Arenanet itself? Perhaps one could say more truthfully PlayNc (NcSoft) has one of the best support services. --000.00.00.00 22:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Signet of Spirits (PvE)

I believe maybe they intended to make this change to Signet of Creation instead? -- 03:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Minion Master Change?

Shortly after Factions was released there was an update which only allowed up to 10 minions per character. This due to the fact that whoever had the most minions in Alliance Battles proved stronger or so I;m guessing. What I ask is that in the pve side of the game you take off the minion cap or raise it significantly. I think you have proven that you can have 2 different sets of skill effects for PVE and PVP. So could it be possible to have 2 different minion caps for PVE and PVP?

Uhhhh I disagree, I think 10 Minions is enough, specially if you have multiple MMs. Nikdanbro 13:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC) (forgot to sign~~) 03:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The cap on minions was put in because of how overpowered they were (and continue to be) in PvE. Not because of Alliance Battles, so I don't think this is something we would consider. The balance of minion masters is pretty good right now. :) - Linsey talk 11:31, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, as Linsey said, the cap was originally put on because MMs with specific builds could counter even -10 degen on all their minions using necro and AoE monk heals and easily lead 50 or more minions. Necros were therefore extremely popular for farming Sorrow's Furnace with 4 man teams (a tank, a bonder, an SS necro, and an MM could easily clear the bosses surrounding and inside the furnace). In fact, the update to cap minions happened two days before Factions was released (26-Apr-2006), so it would only have been available for AB in the pre-release event or beta. --Falseprophet 17:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

How can anyone complain about minion masters? It's the most powerful and definitely overpowered build in PvE! You could nerf minion master 10x and it would still be overpowered. And then some clueless PvErs come blaming PvP for everything that happen. Wake up! Have you not noticed how more powerful MM is? If not, then I admire your ability to find this forum and write down few paragraphs. When I put MM hero in my team in PvE, I read other things, then TAB, press C+Space, go back to reading. Heck I could probably have a team of 6 in a zone of 8, and still do that. Do this: Go to Vizunah Square, put 2 MM's in your party, and then do the mission. Then do it without MM's. Tell me the time. Servant of Kali 11:05, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

ps, to add this: How come no newbie PvEr ever complains about Mesmers in PvE? Like, how mesmer skill needs to be buffed 3x to be useful in PvE? I have never seen that in this forum, yet there is always a complaint about soul reaping or MM's or whatever. Hello? Can I exchange my mesmer primary attribute for yours? Or show me mesmer build (without pve-only skills) that matches your MM build in general PvE. I'd like to see that. And yet in all fairness none of you ever protest for that, but you want your overpowered builds to be even more overpowered. Is that selfishness, bias, or simply inability to judge skills and builds properly? Combined with the freedom of speech. Servant of Kali 11:05, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

lol, with the new Aura of the Lich buff MM's are really awesome. Insta-armies. but you're wrong about mesmers, Kali, they are awesome! The have the most feared skills in the game. If you just want raw killing power, you could try a cheap long lasting hex and then arcane echo, echo, and CoP. Add some energy management and nothing can stop you. Of course that's a no-brainer, there are much more powerful builds for mesmers. 217.234.252.96 12:16, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Inflation?

Is that a joke? The reason missions didn't count retroactively was inflation? I busted my ass off doing those missions, especially on hard mode. The sudden inflow of money would hit the economy like a shitstorm, sure, but it would have dissipated within a few weeks. But even if that was too high a price they could have found a different way to deal with the issue than denying those of us who spent hundreds of hours doing those missions the rewards now long past due. Like it wasn't enough that I vanquished entire Cantha just prior to the update, might as well not have been an update at all, didn't make one bit of a difference for my characters. -_- /rant Keneth 21:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

They made a decision, and I respect it. It's not like that gold will make a difference in my life, in the long run. But in the short run, it may well have a negative effect. And ANet has the data to calculate that, we don't. -- Alaris 04:23, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't really care about the money, sure I wouldn't mind getting a boost since I'm pretty much broke all the time but what's actually pissing me off is the faction I was supposed to get. The update was supposed to lessen the grind in order to get faction but doing the missions for the billionth time because the old ones don't count seems like just another way to grind it to me. So except from a small boost from quests of which you only got to use half of anyway, there has been no benefit in it for me. Not only that, they've also removed HFFF, thanks to which it is now impossible for me to get the alliance titles. So thanks Anet, you've really made some decisions worth respecting in the last few weeks. Maybe next week you'll decide that henches shouldn't be available in hard mode or that alcohol and sweets are no longer tradeable so that you can crush any hope of maxing those titles too. Keneth 12:53, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Seriously? Have you tried vanquishing under the new system? With HFFF I could farm 10K kurzick faction in about 40mins, that's 250 faction per minute average. From the vanquishing I've done so far, Ferndale, The Eternal Grove and Mourning Veil Falls all return a better rate of (Kurzick) faction gain than HFFF, and it's a lot less boring. --BramStoker (talk, contribs) 14:19, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

HFFF should not have been removed. I hate doing anything other than HFFF for my faction. AB is full of noobs and no other way is viable for me. They say the reason it was nerfed was people felt they had to do it. Well with that update, surely the people who felt they had to HFFF had other options available and the people who want to HFFF should still be able to. Now getting the faction titles is going to take even longer. Even worse of a grind .... --CAJOS talk 15:15, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

MAking the alliegance titles both PvE and PvP was a mistake, leaving around HFFF was another. Some mistakes are fixed faster (like the Lightbringer autofarming when resurrected and summoned torment creatures gave points) other not. Now we can get much more points than before, so the title will get done... just slower. If they see it's too slow, they will surely increase the rates later on. You don't need to finish any title until GW2, and GW2 is already on the far future. MithTalk 15:21, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Another part of the reason for nerfing HFFF was simply that it was far to easy to bot, and consequently, it was far too easy for town holders to just grind out massive amounts of faction to hold their town(s), at least now they have to put some work in. That said, Amatz Basin seems to be the new FFF spot, but I've no idea if it can be HFFFed, I guess it depends how well heros manage the perma-sin tank/farmer. --BramStoker (talk, contribs) 15:24, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It can be done with heroes, but the amount of micromanagement involved is enough to scare away a good chunk of the population. As of right now, though, it's easy to form a pug for it.--Pyron Sy 16:21, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

So, why did they have to include gold as part of the reward? I'm pretty sure even a new player makes more gold than the reward by the time they'd finish the book.72.188.3.126 17:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

@BramStoker: I've already vanquished the whole of Cantha, I do NOT want to do it again, I'd much rather be doing effortless grinding for an hour each day for 20k faction than busting my ass killing annoying mobs just so I get a couple thousand points more. AB or any other type of PvP for that matter is out of the question since I'm guildless and only play PvE and doing missions is a complete waste of time since the faction rewards are too low. At this rate I might as well waste another 3 years uselessly trying to max the title, so excuse me if I feel cheated by this update. They're supposed to be improving things, not trying to fix something that isn't broken. It's like taking away someone's toothbrush and giving them a pack of gum saying - here, this won't clean your teeth as well as the brush but hey, it's more fun! You don't say thanks to that, you bitchslap the dumbass until they realize it's pure idiocy. Keneth 20:58, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

all i hear from all of you is QQ, QQ, QQ, and some more QQ. tbh you people would never EVER have even thought about getting gold as rewards for vanq'ing apart from the initial gold you DO get when each area is completed. get the fuck over it and let life continue!! you people still miss the fact that GW is a free-to-play game w/ no monthly fees.. so why do you all cry and bitch so much when aNet was curtious enough to even HAVE a live team of people who try and continue to work on a game that their main attention isn't even verted towards? let aNet finish GW 2. let aNet do what thet want. it's their game, not ours. it's aNet's choice if they wanted to pull the plug permanantly on GW 1 this instant if they felt like it. --Uchiha Lena 23:52, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

what people seem to be forgetting is that for the hall of monuments trophy, is that you only need level 3 of the allegiance title to aquire it. Anything after that is just for extra little skill boosts from the kurzick/luxon skills, and maybe one more to their Kind of a Big Deal Track, if they feel they NEED to max it out. So, overall, there isn't really that much a loss in factionwise. --Poidrac

Uchiha Lena Arenanet keep a Guild Wars Live Team and Guild Wars running purely for business reasons not being curtious to the players; Guild Wars runs off a non-subscription basis, but they are still generating money through it otherwise Guild Wars would be running at a loss, and no business (or branch of one) wants to run at a loss, its finanical suicide. Also, point of interest, the Guild Wars series is the ONLY games Arenanet has that is completed. If Guild Wars servers were shut off before the release of Guild Wars 2 it would be very damaging to their image: in sense of business and in the eyes of the players.

Yes, technically its their game, yet they have to appeal to the players/consumers (like all businesses do) otherwise they won't get any sales (continuing sales for Guild Wars or any sales for Guild Wars 2.) You can only push the "its their game, not ours" line so far. And thats why Arenanet doesn't, because if it pushes its player-base too much they'll leave, and thats something Arenanet won't do, especially since Guild Wars 2 is an unknown.

The Free-to-Play notion isn't as dramatic of a selling point or justification as it once was: pushing that line in any kind of justification of low developer maintainence/attention towards the game while Guild Wars 2 is in production is a double-ended sword - having a small team with very few dedicated (only working on Guild Wars) people working on the game is an issue, especially since (as far as I know) we don't have a dedicated skill balancer (to which is hurting PvP at the moment) and there are other issues that the player-base is wanting addressed.

You have to keep the bulk of your customers happy. If a large enough amount of people "QQ" as you put it over issues Arenanet would more than likely cave or come to a compromise.

Yes, I love hearing myself type ^_^ --000.00.00.00 00:25, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

IMO even shutting it down after Guild Wars 2 is released would be PR disaster. Server costs will go down over time as player activity declines, and bandwidth, computing power and storage space get cheaper. If it starts losing money, there are other options, such as putting ad banners on the login and character select screens like Blizzard does on battle.net, or releasing the server software and allowing private servers. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 03:54, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

@Lena: You've missed the point completely, this was never about gold, gold was just a poor excuse by Anet for their laziness. All this griping is about faction and how they screwed those of us over who don't share their views of what's the best way of collecting it. Now I could live having no reward for the past missions but taking away my only decent means of acquiring faction AND refusing to give me anything in return with a bullshit excuse like "inflation", that's simply just a step over the line. And the Live Team is not a "courtesy", they're getting paid. By us. Keneth 14:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

If any of you actually knew about economics then you would understand something, that inflation occurs naturally. I ran some figures and while the amount of gold one player with 8 of the 10 classes could amount is a little under 100k on average for all three campaigns. However with the aggregate amount of gold in the game would mean nothing after about a month as the surge of cash would not continue. The negative effect this would have caused would have actually been meaningless with regard to other game issues, such as how many players duped items and were never banned, retaining their cash. If the guild wars economy is based upon the players, then logic follows that it would naturally fix itself. Of course they could have made it retroactive and offered only 1/4th of the reward per each book for a month or so then change it later, that would have made more sense in terms of the in-game economy. By the way, when I say economy I mean the consumption and exchange of virtual goods, not whatever else you thought "Economy" ment. Oh and killing HFFF was a good move since the implementation of the new vanquish rewards because HFFF was mindless and seeing people cry about losing it means they cry about having to actually do something substantiation to get a reward. 68.47.192.6 02:28, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Ignore "Uchiha Lena". He/She has flawlessly displayed their ingenuity and intelligence, unable to make it through one sentence without spitting out "QQ" -- as if it means something -- then proceeded to garnish the display with his/her own brand of hyper-ventilated, teary-eyed e-rage that had no real correlation to the topic of the latest in-game mechanics. Holding shift and double tapping the q key only takes you so far. If you want people to honestly listen to you and take heed of what you want to say, put some effort into it. Better yet, if you want people to shut up, close your browser and go smoke a cigarette you psuedo-cool trash. You won't have to read this "crying and bitching" and we won't have to be bothered by you pretending to be authority. ON A WIKI TALK PAGE. WHERE CRYING AND BITCHING IS EXPECTED.

I'm detecting a hellish amount of hate in this topic, I feel every new process is faster than HFFFing (Excluding AB, which is betchslap slow). Nikdanbro 15:27, 11 December 2008 (UTC) << Check out the Extraxi Project while you're at it!

ROFL INFLATION!!!!!! Congrats to ANet, you pulled a fast one.

I have to give ANet credit. You guys pulled a fast one that fooled 95% of the guild wars community, which either haven't finished high school, or failed it. You see, inflation is only an issue in the real world because of fixed income (there's no fixed income in Guild Wars), credit (there's no credit in Guild Wars), and currency exchange (trading in-game gold for anything outside of guild wars is strictly prohibited). This does not exist in Guild Wars, so feel free to take a few days and churn out another excuse, while I laugh at how easy it was to poke holes in your backward reasoning. 99.140.191.82 12:25, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

It's probably much less than 95%, because you would be surprised many people have decent knowledge about economics.Pika Fan 12:48, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Give em some credit- thought it might not be true inflation in the economic sense of the word, a sudden influx of cash might push up prices for a bit, one of the main problems with true economic inflation. I'm not saying that is what might have happened here, but keep in mind that MMOeconomics != real world economics. Ashes Of Doom 12:58, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Income of most players if pretty much at a fixed hourly wage, plus or minus some rare random drops that have something of value. We're not including farmers, who's income does depend on the drops. But we're including runners who often run at fixed prices. So at least on that point, ANet might win the argument. -- Alaris 15:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

While not really related to game design, ANets understanding of inflation is better than the OP's. Claiming that inflation is only an issue because of fixed income is nonsense. --Xeeron 15:44, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

"In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. The term "inflation" once referred to increases in the money supply (monetary inflation); however, economic debates about the relationship between money supply and price levels have led to its primary use today in describing price inflation. Inflation can also be described as a decline in the real value of money—a loss of purchasing power.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services." - Although Tyria might not have some of the real world causes of inflation, it certainly can see inflation, at least according to the wikipedia definition. Ashes Of Doom 19:42, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

What is stopping them from removing the CAUSE of the inflation? -=-Koda Kumi 20:42, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

If they wanted to fix this problem they should have sunk the legacy ecto barons and ALL duped items/dupers immediately. Where we are today with some items costing in excess of 5000+ ectoplasm (with plenty of available buyers(!)) is a direct result of unchecked questionable gameplay activity. 98.219.48.111 20:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Mostly? Players. Do you remember how much they cried when "ursan + permaSF + 50k favor" flooded the market with ectos? Think how much they would cry if they were to lose their ectos altogether XD.--Fighterdoken 20:47, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

98.219, can you even back up what you said? I've never seen anything cost anywhere near 5000+ ectos, and I doubt that they even exist, or that there are *plenty* of buyers for those prices. In fact, I think only the miniature frog could sell for those prices, and possibly the mini polar bear. That's it. -- Alaris 22:22, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

A good friend of mine (but also a rich b*stard) recently sold a mini Island Guardian for 2500e, I'll ask him whats worth 5000e next time I see him. Its gonna be a minipet, but I'm sure its more than just the polar bear. Ashes Of Doom 23:46, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

What am I, in court? Some of the first Eternals that showed up (for the oh so important bragging rights) claimed easily that much in equivalent value and this was before the UW permasin rush, the actual total was the rough equivalent at the time of ~78mil or ~15,000e. There is no doubt in my mind if an undedicated Kanaxai or undedicated Panda went on the block it would come damn close to 5000e considering a dedicated Panda just went for ~3600e. The next closest contender (same thread) Island Guardian went for a paltry 3000e, so yes these prices are real, yes they have mutiple willing high end bidders, and yes obviously I can "back up what I said". I'm no poor bum as a multimillionaire myself made the hard way but I can't touch 15+ mil in ecto. The problem is, was, and has always been the ecto barons and the dupers...its just that simple. You have the top 5% of the playerbase manipulating 95% of the games entire flow of cash and reserve currency. Among those the armbraces which should have all been erased instead of being allowed to disseminate into other forms of wealth and now a valuable commodity for the Hall of Monuments. If you want to debate the virtues of Ventari after having read this that's a whole different topic but the archives and the content therein speaks for itself and certainly doesn't make me a liar, though it could shed doubt on a third party auctioneer system. 98.219.48.111 23:55, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

5%? I'd say thats rather a lot. Bearing in mind 5 million games were sold, I'd say that there are probably about 500,000 people playing who could be considered active. Of those, there are only a few thousand (if that) who are making these massive trades. Thats less than 1%, much more in line with real world economics. Ashes Of Doom 00:08, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Its pedantry anyways but I'll concede the point at 1% though it could be 0.001% and we would still have the same problem due to its legacy. What is your standard for rich anyways? 1 million, 5, 10? I'd be willing to bet a significant cross section of those active accounts, probably in the 10-15% range, are at least millionaires now. Tonics and high end weapons sell for prices that just a year and a half ago would be unheard of for the casual GW player and that says more to me about where things are at than a retro on a couple books. 98.219.48.111 00:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

just to add that alot of people are making alot of money through the zaishen predicitions through the trade of Zkeys, although admittedly thats more the movement of assets from one player to another player, rather than the creation of new money. Although i suppose zkeys themselves could almost be considered to be a new emerging currency as their worth seems to be more stable than that of ectos. Just for an example, I have one main account and 3 mule accounts, all 4 make predictions. I get on average between 100-150 points per account per month, meaning that im averaging roughly 500 points a month. As each point is worth about 1k each thats a 1/2 mil right there and thats without me even doing anything. Now i know other players who have many more mule accounts than that, as i have some friends with about 10 accounts who ae routinely making 2-ish million a month from predicitions and have been since zkeys were introduced. Thus its helping consolidate alot of the wealth into the hands of the people who have more accounts. Also from these lump sums and through wise investments, you can easily make massive profits at the high end of the market, as people seem more willing to barter and you seem more likely to get a bargain or at least thats what its been like in my experiance. -- Salome 00:43, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

In response to the original poster, inflation's an issue in any game which allows direct or indirect player to player trading. See Wikipedia's mudlation and gold sink articles for details. Koda Kumi, what do you mean by "removing the cause of inflation"? If you're referring to botting and gold selling, it's impossible to develop a perfect bot detection algorithm, they can never keep up with the botters, merely pick off the slower ones. If you're referring to drastically reducing vendor trash prices, gold drops and gold rewards from repeatable quests, IMO that would be a bad idea, as it would also make it harder for new players to earn the money needed to craft prestige armour and max crafted weapons. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

WOW! Those last 4 comments on the dev update page are LAME! I thought as I was reading them, this just sounds like lazy lol.Well, After almost 4 years of hardcore playing I have just quit.I dont mean just now, but I have quit back in August. I just cant stand the constant changes they are makeing, every weekend it feels like what are they gonna screw up this week. They havent helped the economy in fact its worsened over the years.Everything in the game is so devalued its pointless, there is really nothing to work for anymore, nothing to earn, nothing to make one feel special once accomplished.Really the only thing left that remotely hard to get is Tormented stuff, of which only a couple are cool.My thing was solo farming loved it, it was my thing, they have nerfed any solo farming into non exsistance I worked hard to get the suff I have in game. I worked hard for my Elite armors and my rare weapons, all for nothing because they are handing them out on a silver platter now. I got my luxon armor when Jade and amber were 3k each, Black dye was 17k, Ecto was 17k, Superior Vigor was 52k, when you got these drops it made you feel special, that warm fuzzy. Same was for rare weapon drops, like perfect Fellblades, or for god sakes Victos Battle axe lol, now its all worthless. Just another drop. not even worth standing around selling. Stuff is too easy for everyone to get now days. The game used to be based on knowledge and skill, now its just becomeing generic and even. Even the crappiest players can go do everything now. Instead of rewarding people for greatness, they now reward people for being average. Perfect example is HA, Used to count for something, who controlled favor of the gods, now it has no meaning really, Hey we won this time. I have gone, and I will be playing Perfect world international untill GW 2. I hope its not going to be based on this average casual player program where being average is rewarded and being great really means nothing. It makes me so sad when I think back to what GW was and what it has become now. sorry forgot to sign 75.136.142.17 17:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I hardly consider the ultra-high bids for ultra-rare items a concern for the general population. There are 146 island guardians, 146 Pandas, and that's not counting the ones that might have been deleted. I don't think it's reasonable to say that those items should be within economic reach of regular players. -- Alaris 18:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Keeping things 'rare' always collide with keeping things 'fair'. My answer for that is time. Things should be rare first, then, after enough time has passed, fair. The fastest ones, the most skilled ones and the ones that support Anet by getting preOrders and CEs it get things first, and then others see them having them for a long time. Once the trend has passed, the stuff is made accessible for everyone... for a reasonable price, of course (either in-game things or the GW shop). The problem with this is that more rare stuff must be added once in a while, to take the place of the old stuff... somehow, that's how Birthday presents work, and I doubt nobody would argue about how fair they are. Going back to the inflation thing, they can make queries and get statistics. I'm not telling that they can be absolutely right, but al we can do is guess, while they can actually see the real data. MithTalk 19:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I've always objected to adding super-rare once-off limited edition region-specific items to the game (any game). I live in a country where none of the promotional minis were ever available. It's hardly fair to distrubute those, because these things do enter the economy and do in fact affect it. The Pandas and Island Guardians are so incredibly rare that even if I started farming now and would continue to do so for a year without eating or sleeping, I would most likely still not be able to afford one. The other rare minis are a little more available, but still overall outrageously pricy. It leads to people in certain regions having a benefit over people in other areas (even if only an X number is distributed by lottery it's an advantage over those who could not enter in the first place) and that already leads to negative impact on the economy.

Items like these are responsible for a fundamentally broken economy. Even Obsidian Armour and Tormented Weapons have contributed to it, in part. The moment a game introduces a super high-end item, it is bound to increase inflation. Why? Because whoever gets it can demand whatever the hell they feel like. This in turn will lead people to farm more in order to earn more gold in the hopes of getting this super-expensive item, which in turn leads to other items getting pricier because people have even more to spend. Once inflation gets going, it is also a better environment for bot companies to focus on such a game. The result is even more inflation. Downward spiral anyone?

ANet has a history of nerfing ways to make money, yet fails to tackle problems that really affect inflation. Case in point: bots were left to abuse HFFF for nigh on two years. A few players and bot companies reaped the rewards, the rest of the playerbase had to watch prices rise and the economy going down the drain even further. In contrast, the Shadow Form builds that were available to people so they could farm the Underworld were made useless in less than two months, while these were far less easy to bot. Ecto was finally getting to a more reasonable price, but ANet chose to act against this deflation and implemented UW changes that once again caused its price to rise.

ANet claims to be concerned about the economy and the apparent inflation, but most of their actions contradict their words. More rare items and more farm build nerfs do nothing to stabilise the economy, they have only ever imbalanced it further. Why have they made armour available that costs a whopping 105 and on top of the rest of the cost if they don't want us to be able to obtain it in a reasonable timeframe? Don't get me wrong, I have three sets of it now, but it took a lot of farming to get. Even with at 3 per piece it would still be immensely costly to get- especially with more and more farm runs going the way of the dodo. I find it insulting to see ANet taking a condescending attitude about the recent update by telling us we can't get something we deserve to get, because they want to protect the economy. ANet, you have a history of failing in this perspective. It is a slap in every honest player's face to say what's been said, and it's no surprise people have taken offense. If you're concerned about inflation, the first step is to ask yourself why people are trying to make so much money in the first place. -- Elv 21:31, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Well said. BenderRodriguez 03:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Quick look in any encyclopedia would save us all tedious and repetitive explanations about just Why increase in money supply effectively devalues the currency. Biz 20:39, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Inflation is a term used in real economics. In real economics, every individual entity controls part of the economy. In Guild Wars, bad game developers do.

If you've been playing for a long time, maybe some of you might remember when they reset material and dye prices.

Also 5 million sales is not the same as 5 million accounts. Let's say 2/3 of the people who have played GW have all 4 chapters. That means 2/3 * players * 4 + 1/3 * players = 5000000.

It comes out to only 1.7 million accounts. Now subtract gold selling accounts. Ups now only 1 million legit accounts. Now subtract the amount of people who quit, based on how populated towns used to be during special events, I'd say for each chapter sale, someone quits. Now we're down to about 300,000 people who still play more than once a month. 2/3 of those people are active enough to farm. of 200,000 active players, how many do you think buy gold? (nobody farms 3600 ectos to buy a mini panda, they bought the money) ~Shard 22:38, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with that last statement about buying the money. I have a good friend who has been building up his cash supply by high-end trading for well over a year. Pretty much it works like this: Start with 100k or so that you farmed. Wait around in kamadan and buy a mini or tormented weapon for about 80% what it's worth. Sell it the next day for 110% of what it's worth. Repeat for a year, with more and more valuable items. He made 1000e profit on his sale of an Island Guardian last week. Ashes Of Doom 23:11, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

My guildies rake in some pretty odscene amounts of money form ecto price flux when TRP get added. — Wolf 23:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

In this game, devalued currency stays devalued for oh, about a week. If ANet had any grasp of economics, and actually gave a damn about this game's economics, they wouldn't have left ursan unchecked for so long, and SF reverted from oblivion. They nerfed SF, and what did they do? People cried and whined, and got SF back. SF has a negative impact on the economy. Therefore, all we have to do is bitch and cry enough until ANet gives us our retroactive storybooks and BAM - reparations. Next time you want to pretend you have ANY grasp on economics and make wild claims like ANet knows more about it than I do, you might actually want to stop playing Magic: The Faggering, stop watching faggy movies like Twilight, stop jerking off to elves from WoW, and educate yourself. 99.140.199.211 02:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

loltwilightfails. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.71.236.47 (talk).

I "backed up" my point though Alaris just like you asked for. I don't think those miniatures should be available to the general public either, and that was never the point. 99.140 made more sense in that one post than half the drivel on this entire page's discussion section and he probably didn't get a fancy NPC either...go figure. 98.219.48.111 03:22, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Really? He made sense? And here I was thinking they'd name a troll boss after him. I would hardly think that throwing insults about counts as making a valid point... -.-* -- Elv 09:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

He said the exact same thing you did Elv he just didn't write a short novel in the process, take it as comedy that's what I did. You know I'll never understand the forums and wikis. It seems like the actives here like to spend a significant portion of their lives patrolling recent changes and talking about playing the game while arguing stupid minutia than actually playing the game they paid real money for...it truly boggles the mind! 98.219.48.111 17:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

For the record, he did support his point that there are highly rich GW players that will play tons of gold for highly-rare items. Wow, what a surprise. But I stand by my point that this has not much to do with the actual economic situation of the player population base. Injecting lots of gold at once will make almost no difference to the ultra-rich, but could seriously mess up the economy for the rest of us. -- Alaris 18:39, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Dear IP(s?), just because I may agree with someone's overall viewpoint does not mean I agree with the way it is phrased. I know from experience that people are generally more inclined to take you seriously if you make your point politely and without throwing insults around. (I tried taking it as comedy, hence the snarkiness, but even so in my book random insults don't exactly count as the epitome of wit.) Most wikians like to elaborate on their opinions and thoughts, because usually the elaboration is what ends up lending weight to the points made. You may not be impressed with our little novels, but other people are similarly unimpressed with unconstructive insults like those posted above. Dismissing well-thought out posts as drivel (without clarifying why they are drivel) is similarly unconstructive.

We do actually play the game. You're welcome to look at my (fairly outdated) character pages and see if you can't figure out how much or how little time I've spent in the actual game. Now to get back on topic before I write another novel, I agree with Alaris that for the ultra-rich more gold in the economy wouldn't really make a difference. I also agree that for the people among us who don't have mules full of stashes of ecto, injecting a lot of gold into the economy would have quite some impact. I'm just not sure if this would necessarily be a bad impact, because, as I said before, the economy is messed up as it is and I don't have access to the data that would help me determine if the impact would be bad or good. I just don't think that "it's bad for the economy" was a reasonable argument for ANet to make, given their track record. -- Elv 21:07, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Well said Elv. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we should start flinging mud. *flings mud when Elv is not looking* Don't look at me, 98 did it. -- Alaris 22:24, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Elv, You got me all wrong, I'm not the other IP and I don't have a problem with you. You'll notice I said "entire page's discussion section" not "Elv's post". I'm sorry you couldn't recognize my attempt to bring a little levity into things but you have to admit you write some exceptionally long responses that while not devoid of valuable content are also not the most terse. 99.140 had a funny post, if you guys just laughed at it rather than taking it personally or treating it like vandalism you'd be better off for it...isn't this supposed to be entertainment and not a job? I love the implication about proxying the discussion section but trust me... "winning" this argument with two people I will never meet just isn't that important to me.

Absolutely no one would argue a huge influx of gold would have no effect on the economy but the recent form of wealth consolidation/generation is also bad. Didn't you wonder why ecto prices spiked after the first 50% SF nerf or why UW passage scrolls spiked (this backfired) before the 16k minute reset or most recently Amber/Jade just to name a few? The big movers knew they could buy it all up cheap and then easily double their profits in a matter of minutes just dumping items back into the merchants until the price crashes. Ecto had an incredible +~2.5k/ea profit margin just for updating a patch. Your typical 12y/o GW player doesn't have the financial resources or common sense to understand that they can, with clever investing, manipulate merchant goods to massive profitability in GW but the very wealthy do its all a part of buy low-sell high. This wealth that was created never went away and that's in large part the reason the ultra-high end has skyrocketed in raw trading power. Ecto was never allowed to properly self correct in value or quantity so the same 50 ecto you had a minute ago suddenly became 40% more valuable because of absolutely nothing you did but let the game update. 99.140 can see this too, it no longer has anything to do with supply/demand its entirely based on its agreed value of ~5k as a reserve currency.

Its obvious we aren't going to agree on this point Alaris and more importantly it's moot since Anet isn't on board. My problem with you is that you took it upon yourself to imply I was a liar right off the bat. I'm fine with that since I proved you didn't know what you were talking about but if you want to talk about flinging mud maybe you shouldn't lead by example. 98.219.48.111 02:14, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd like us all to take a second and remember that Anet has ALL the data. They know the trends of the game, how much gold players are spending on average, all of it. Us players are not privy to that data, so no matter how right you look according to your own knowledge and logic, there can very well be (and probably is) atleast one little piece of data that trows a colossal wrench in all your conclusions. I work for a polling company and with all kinds of similar data. We think we have a general trend set,a nd then we factor in oen tiny, seeminly minor and insignificant piece of data and it turns out completely different. Shard, Anet IS monitoring the Economy, as EVERYTHING in an MMO is logged, and pulling up that data and pulling a trend out of it is not too hard. We've done data analysis for game devs before that just had too much data, and not enough time/resources to crunch it all. Even in a game like Halo 3, online servers log EVERYTHING. — Wolf 05:15, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

keep in mind that even if the surver moniters everything, it [A] doesnt mean that it is being charted, graphed, and turned into substantial information and [B] doesnt mean that ANET is actually doing shit... 98.199.243.39 05:26, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Pulling that data and turning into some readable and comprehendable form is pretty easy. and doesn't take all that long. Our process is rather elaborate, and in the end, is a simple data-base inquary. And whne you have easy data at your finger tips, why wouldn;t you be using it? — Wolf 18:27, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

For example, ANet was recently in a situation where they had to decide whether or not to make the books retroactive, which they probably knew would upset many players. Let's make some assumptions, that I think are reasonable. (1) Whey they said that they observed the effects of introducing the MOX reward on the economy, that they actually measured it from their databases. (2) That based on the MOX info, and possibly other such events, they could predict how the economy would be affected by retroactive books. (3) That looking at the predictions, it looked like the type of thing people would be upset about. Really upset. Just look at how people react when ecto prices go up or down a bit, and amplify that by a lot more. Upset. If ectos shot up 10x in prices overnight, players would ragequit that ANet is favoring the rich ecto-stashing hacks that now will make massive profits. (4) That ANet has a far better database to work with than we do. (5) That people who make guesstimates here are too often relying on impressions rather than actual data that they collected. (6) That even for the people here who collected data, their datasets will be far less detailed than ANet's. (7) That players have lots to gain with the income, so there's vested interest. (8) That ANet has everything to gain by making players happy, so there's vested interest as well, but also biased towards giving the retroactive rewards. -- Alaris 18:55, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

In the end, they chose the lesser of the two evils. And like I said earlier, They have ALL the data, we have around 2% each, maybe 25% collectively. — Wolf 19:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Although I didn't read everything in this thread I need to say the inflation point really is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in GW history. Since the introduction of ZKeys the game economy is totally ruined because now there is an entirely new, virtually endless source of high level loot. There was absolutely no reward for playing PvP until the Zaishen chest emerged. Given the fact I do > 100p worth of Zaishen Keys a week while only playing a few hours, not to mention the free amount of money I get every month from betting in Xunlai tournament (> 80 points = > 12 Keys = > 80p) ... Before ZKeys was introduced I had about 20p by playing endless hours in PvE and now I have more than 1000p [sic!] cash (plus several 1000p [sic!] worth in equipment) although I'm buying every week stuff that costs 100p+xe. Meanwhile there is nothing left I even want to buy, because I already have everthing I ever found interesting. If I buy something for 100g, I will give the seller 1p because I'm too lazy to enter three digits. In fact, for me, personally, game economy was totally destroyed by ZKeys. To my personal advantage, I have to admit, although it's a bit boring to just buy anything the game has to offer in an instant. Thus: telling the players an extra 60p would have been a problem to the economy while playing PvP for approx. 1 hour results in a Zkeys equivalent of 5p loot (because I wouldn't get 5p for it if it wouldn't be worth almost 5p loot + a small charge for the title effect) is plain ridiculous. --82.83.53.156 10:20, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't start using logic now, people in this thread don't like it. You're just supposed to agree with ANet and jump on the excuse train, CHOO CHOOOOOOOOO!! -Auron 10:35, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, the Zaishen keys do not add to inflation. They do not add more gold to the economy, they do the opposite by adding more items of value to the economy. If anything, the Zaishen keys cause deflation, and they at least make gold change hands without creating new gold. It's the opposite with rewarding players with gold, something that does add more of the currency and so may cause inflation.

Items becoming cheaper is the expected result (deflation). Given how Guild Wars theorically tries to avoid grind (as seen on the latest update to the titles, that theorically would have lessened the grind title), players being able to buy most things without having to grind a lot in order to do so only makes sense.

(And there was a big reward for playing PvP before the Zaishen keys - the tournaments used to give real life money. The Zaishen keys were added as a "consolation prize" of sorts after the cash awards were removed from the PvP championships.) Erasculio 10:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Inflation or deflation in the way we use the terms here is just a matter of the POV. Adding 10p in the purse of every player or adding high end loot in the inventory of each player is basically the same. It's so easy you don't need any twisted logic... there's a difference between the langauge analysis of "inflation" and "deflation" and the effective outcomings of giving loot and/or money to the players for free.

I know many players don't understand the mechanics of ZKeys and think they are - at least partially - a gold sink. But that's bull. Every ZKey adds 5p to the game. Every single one. Either in money or in loot worth the same amount of p. Having more money or more loot in the game means "inflation" (i.e. deflation from another PoV) in both cases. If you have more money in the game, things will be worth less even if costing the same, because the average player has to pay less percentage of his total income for it. If there is more loot, things will be worth less either, because prices will go down. In both cases things will be worth less and that's what is commonly called "inflation" in a game economy (although it should be called "deflation" in real-life-economics).

As I wrote in my post above, my personal game income has suddenly changed from approx. 10-20p per month to several 400p-500p per month. Where do you think this money comes from if not from inflation/deflation? --82.83.53.156 11:12, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Zaishen Keys do not add 5 platinum to the game. They are an object that some players are willing to spend 5 platinum (that already exists in the game) for. That is a huge difference. In order to turn it into gold and actually add instant gold into the game, one must use the keys on the chest and then throw the proceeds to a merchant or other suitable NPC traders after salvaging. Lockpick sales are about as high as the resulting gold can get and skill tomes can represent a savings of 1 platinum. -- WarBlade 11:22, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Zkeys add money to the game that didn't exist before - I can trade zkeys for things directly. I'm not transferring gold anymore, I'm basically giving the guy balth faction and reward points for armbraces and rare minipets.

And if you think that giving people zkeys (for free) that they can trade for rare items isn't inserting money into the game, consider this. Why are people willing to spend money on zkeys in the first place? Because you get 1000k+ tonics from them - tonics, I might add, that simply appear in the game in reward for balth faction or RPs. -Auron 11:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Like WarBlade said, the gold is not being added to the economy. Someone who pays 1000k for Zaishen keys or for a tonic is not creating new gold out of nothing, it's gold the person already had. Gold changing hands doesn't really cause inflation.

Like the IP said, the end result is that items are worth less (gold is still valuable, though, given how prices are going down). With items being worth less, all players may buy more with the gold they have, reducing the need for farming (in other words, grinding) to get stuff. This leads to players grinding less and so playing less...

...Which IMO is great. Arena Net could just add tons of time sinks so people are always playing Guild Wars (and they already did), but people would then complain (as they have already done) since that goes against GW's philosophy of having little grind. Less people playing the game also has little impact on Arena Net - we are not paying a monthly fee, Arena Net does not lose money if we are not always there.

Someone above complained how the people who grind don't get that many more rewards than the average player. That's IMO intended, as part of the game's design (despite some recent bad decisions regarding this), so the current situation of the economy makes sense. It's bad for the sellers, but it's good for the buyers.

Not that Arena Net couldn't have tried to just give players the faction points without giving gold for the books, but anyway... GW is (very) far from being perfect, but I don't think the current economy is a bad thing. Erasculio 11:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Sry, Erasculio, but you still don't get it. There is no difference between adding a thing worth 5p or adding 5p directly to the game, as Auron said. There is no such thing as "getting 5p" for a thing from a Zchest, because after any transfer BOTH 5 Platin and the thing are still in the game. In the end you added 5p to the game, no matter what. You don't need an MBA from Harvard to grasp the concept. Every single ZKey adds 5p to game, because - in average - you get loot worth 5p from it. There is absolutely no point where the 5p that the key added to the game will vanish. There are just 2 possible cases:

Case A: If I sell the key, I will get 5p and someone else will get 5p of loot, resulting in a total of 5p added to the game.

Case B: If I use the Chest, I will get loot worth in average 5p. I may sell this for 5p, resulting in a total of 5p added to the game.

There is no gold sink in GW (except consumables, but they are negligable), and there is for sure no sink for zkeys. Any ZKey adds 5p to the game TBH. --82.83.53.156 12:23, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Case A and B don't work. The "average loot" is just several hundred gold and nowhere near the 5 platinum that you believe it to be. You'll only add that gold into the game by passing off the loot to NPC's and they don't subscribe to things like desirability of skins. -- WarBlade 13:32, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

The average cash I get pet hour it's 2k. It has been always 2k. For that amount you must pick everything, though. Those that discard white drops are losing a lot of cash even if they get most of their cash by farming and trading. MithTalk 16:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

With the 50 zkeys I used to get rank 1 zaishen, I got one drop from the chest worth more than 2k - a celestial compass that I sold for roughly 175k. If I had sold all 50 zkeys, I would have had 250k, but in using them, I only ended up with maybe 200k worth of drops, and that only because I was lucky. If the average loot from the zchest was worth 5k, people wouldn't sell the keys - they'd just use them, because they'd get the same amount of money and progress toward the title. ¬ Wizårdbõÿ777(talk) 18:07, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

So: Giving 60 platinum to a Legendary Guardian is too much? Then what about getting the same amount of money in LESS THAN A HOUR by UWSC? Shadow form asassins invunerable to most/all damage (except shock and whirlwind but that's negated by Dark Escape+Feigned Neutrality), and an SS N/Rt nuker with one Vales Shadow form assassin doing the Vale quests. Consistency? Borotvaltgandalf 07:32, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Research economics. The wealth gained form UWSC is mostly in the form of goods rather than currency. An influx of currency and an influx of goods have opposite effects. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:02, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Economics are a hard concept to grasp for some people as some have demonstrated on this page. I met a guy once, who actually thought that adding higher rewards for farming would improve the economy of the game, rather than destroy it. Most of the time, it comes from people trying to use micro economic thinking on macro economic principals.87.210.150.58 12:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Same happens with those that want 'big' prices. It's a basic principle that a lot of low-price transactions are way better than a few high-price ones. MithTalk 13:32, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

12/11/08 Update Notes

Holy....crap....seriously? 24.26.253.105 01:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

This has to be a joke.70.19.163.117

Nope its all win, minus the game breaking changes to aspenwood, would be fine if the 4 luxon wars were not there 68.47.192.6 02:01, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Aww poor Kurzies, might actually have to play now instead of just protting up Gunther for the entire match. Anon-e-mouse 02:34, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

LOL at the above, also not great update generally with some decent skill changes some bad ones, needs other skills adressed, the FA change is a joke Divine 02:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I say GG to anet for breaking the only two ways for Kurz to keep Lux from steam-rolling through extremely weak NPCs. I guess they really just want us all to play JQ. I don't even need to login to know that there are exactly 0 people on the Kurz side of FA right now. --24.255.48.167 03:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice user name Anon-e-mouse <:).Now instead of 7 kurzicks in one side and a lone ranger destroying the turtle on the other, Kurzicks now have to actually divide up and play with more team effort. Kurzicks can still win the match, but not as abusive as before.--Wealedout 03:55, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

/agreed. I have yet to try it, but thank god they recognized how easy it was for Kurzicks to win. --Riddle 14:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I like how Aura of the Lich was horribly nerfed. Yay for no more minion masters in AB. 219.88.198.82 10:14, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you high? Aotl can make an insant army then you get +1 death magic so for someone running 16 death they can start raising 19+ minions to add to there 1 skill army raiser.

Shadow Form (PvE)

I am perfectly fine with them changing this to slow down farming, but what about those who only use it to run? Need to find a way to balance it without hurting those who arent abusing it to make fast cash. For example. Duration and recharge back to the way they were before this nerf but if add "If you attack or cast a spell that targets a foe then Shadow Forms Duration drops by 1/4th" Or something similar. Brian78wa 02:51, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

And you think that people who run don't abuse shadow form?

I used it myself to run my perma to Amatz Basin, It was a walk in the park for most of the time, which in my opinion, should be nerfed. Runners as well as farmers. This new update of the skill is a great step forward, although the duration should be dropped even more. I don't think that GW is made to have close to invincible players, it is an unfair advantage to non-assassin players. 82.176.174.199 09:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

SF sins are NOT invincable and people need to quit thinking this. There are alot of things that can hurt even kill SF. Amatz Basin was nerfed on its own so if people still want to waste time in there with SF thats there choice. And runners do not abuse SF to the extent that farmers do. Runners arent driving ecto prices down to 5k farmers are.(And really they arent even doing it its the people selling to trader that are).

The problem with SF is that you're invincible against the monsters you farm. Shadow Form has more areas where that rule applies than any other farming build. It's too versatile for it's own good. 145.94.74.23 09:38, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Once again, what about the runners? SF was pretty much the only reason Sins could compete with Dervs, and now that it's nerfed to hell like this, I'm quite pissed about having to make another character or re-rune my armor and work with a sub-standard build. 24.8.116.77 16:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Seeing how attempts have been made to make running impossible in every campaign beyond the first, I think you can deduce how ArenaNet feels about running. Running and farming are not the basis of the game, they're side products, and they shouldn't be taken into account except when they interfere with the main gameplay. 145.94.74.23 22:12, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Again SF is NOT invincible if they were NOTHING could kill them. The main reason for the nerf was UW farming just add sig of disenchant to the dreamriders and be done with it. And as far as them not liking running. Proph still remains runnable to almost everything they even made the main run easier when they changed chilbains. So lets leave SF alone for running please.Brian78wa 02:51, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

ANet has not made running impossible, and has not even attempted it. It would be easy to make 55 and 600 builds not usable. Or to make perma not perma. But clearly, ANet has decided to make running and farming challenging, and to adjust rewards so that farming doesn't end up being the only viable way to make money. -- Alaris 14:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes they have Alaris. You can't run from the Marketplace to the Unwaking Waters, and you can't run from Yohlon Haven to Gate of Anguish. 145.94.74.23 16:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You can run missions and dungeons. Granted, it's not as easy as in Prophecies, but to be honest, they've also added skills and monsters in the Droks run to make it harder, but not impossible. They've made CoF harder to run, but not impossible. They've slowed SF, but not make it impossible. They've put a few roadblocks, so you have to do some missions. But they're trying to find a balance between allowing it and not. -- Alaris 16:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Anet made running easy for everyone. That in turn made the runs not so profitable. I remember when you could get 5K, some times 8K for a Drok's run. I see multiple people running Tyria for tips now days. Just the other day I started a new Tyria character and paid 6K total for a run to Beacon's, to Drok's, to Sanctum Cay, to Granite Citadel, and through the Crystal Desert. Running isn't a profitable enterprise unless you literally make a career out of it. Honestly, you'd probably make more money running the game with a new character. Personally, I love 5K ecto's, makes FoW cheaper...Gothica 06:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Lol, Warriors

Every update they get screwed a little harder... 217.234.231.197 05:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Hammer Rangers>Hammer Warrs in every way now. Other than longer KD, but w/ ESmas+HBash it dont matter. ~~ frvwfr2 (talk · contributions) 11:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

You do realize that those Rangers can't use Rampage as One alongside the elite right? Just checking...145.94.74.23 22:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Forget RaO, Just use Run As One and use 2 energy protectors strike as an IAS. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.71.229.206 (talk).

Strike as One

That's fucking stupid, if I want to have my pet run to my target i'll open his screen click guard and then set him to my target, gg elite slot saved. 217.120.228.192 09:30, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It causes bleeding and crippling, 2 things that were hard to apply reliably for a Beast Master. The pet shadow step is just a bonus, that can come in handy once in a while. 145.94.74.23 21:50, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Ray of Judgment

"Ray of Judgment was undesirable by almost all standards previously. We've changed it into an elite version of Symbol of Wrath, making it targetable and adding Burning with each pulse. This is a PvE-oriented change that we hope will find some fun applications in solo and smite Monk builds. "

Why not just split the skill and buff it for PvE? Solo's won't use it, Shield of Judgment is better. ANet has deliberately killed smite builds, so whoever runs one is really clueless about how ineffective they are, and if they do, Shield of Judgment is still better. In the end, on the desirability level (-10 to 10) this skill was about a -8, and is now about a -7. It still sucks. --Riddle 13:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It has it's uses in Hard Mode, because of it's armor ignoring properties. Reversal of Damage can help take the pressure off your main healers too. 145.94.74.23 21:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

In HM, monsters would be out after the second pulse if not sooner >.< --Riddle 01:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

And it made Urgoz's Warren a bitch. 98.207.210.93 01:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Then combine it with an Earthquake from a teammate. 145.94.74.23 16:08, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Fevered Dreams

"Fevered Dreams' condition-spreading function never caught on, mostly because it was both Elite and completely susceptible to hex removal. Now, players can wait until a target has multiple conditions and use this to add immediate Daze while still getting the hex effect (potentially spreading Daze through the ranks like wildfire)"

The condition-spreading function never caught on because of the skill spreading only _NEW_ conditions. Therefore, anyone who wanted to use this skill had to wait for a condition to end before reapplying it, which rendered this skill unusable.

Right now, the skill works still the same, with the exception of applying daze for a very short time to and only to the target, so practically nothing of what I quoted above from the dev notes holds true. If you do what they suggest and wait until a target has stacked up 2+ conditions to apply the hex, it gets worse and you get nothing - no spreading effect, no daze - you even lose the ability to spread the already applied conditions until they wear off. In any other case, you may get the spreading effect, however in no case it works on the dazed condition applied by the skill itself.

If you'd really want to make this skill viable, just remove the "new" condition for conditions to get spread. I'm aware of the recursion problem which might occur when two targets with this hex are in range of each other. However, this could easily be solved by only spreading conditions with a duration longer than that of the corresponding condition already in effect. -- Sai 14:23, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The skill looks like it can be used by NPC's (like mandragors do) to good extend but requires too much coordination to be worth it for humans. Just adding daze will not fix that. Koda Kumi talk 15:54, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

This is kind of overpowered in places in HM with mandragors now. was trying to do Frostmaw's the other day. Could deal with wurms but couldn't outkill the spiking mandragors on level 3/4. Screwed 3 hours >.> ( but might be nice in pvp I see ) --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 17:45, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a joke, right?

I was finally getting ready to accept that HFFF is gone and that I would have to get my faction through the amazingly tedious Amatz farm and now this? Is Anet intentionally trying to cripple every meaningful way of farming faction for those of us who have already done everything in Cantha OVER 9000 times? Because it looks to me like they just want to see us scream in frustration by nerfing stuff that doesn't need fixing. Wish someone had told me a year ago this shit storm was coming, that way I might have actually got something out of the updates besides being forced into tedious grinding.

At least they finally decided to somewhat fix Avatar of Grenth, not that it ammounts to much after all this time. Keneth 14:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

The rewards for the Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood and Alliance Battles were raised to match the faction-per-minute that HFFF used to have. So you can still farm at the same speed you used to do. Just not any faster than that. 145.94.74.23 21:53, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

And they buffed Urgoz. UUUURRRRGGGGOOOZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LODFFF FTW 98.207.210.93 01:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

You're missing the point, competitive missions take time, effort, and you are forced to deal with people that piss you off (i.e. everyone in my case). HFFF was simple, efficient, and fast, they decided to nerf it without asking anyone for their opinion first which frankly blows, if they're doing it for us, we should be entitled to one. But it's gone, screw it, not like it's the first thing they decided to scrap just to suit their fancy. So along comes Amatz Basin, it's not the ideal way to farm faction, it's tedious and boring but you decide to roll with it anyway and just when you start to think that it might not be all bad, they decide it might be a good idea to obliterate that too. I'm glad that they decided to introduce new ways of farming faction but for god's sake, don't force me into doing something just because you feel like it, I want the benefit of being able to choose how I play my game. If you like vanquishing and challenge missions, that's cool, for me it was fun the first time, it was fun the second time, it was alright the third time, but now it's just EXTREMELY tedious and I simply don't feel like wasting my time and effort on it with so little incentive. So yeah, if these last updates were supposed to reduce the grind for faction, they have failed completely on an epic scale for anyone who's already been through the game (which frankly after more than 3 years is just about everyone), all they've managed to do is turn it from effortless grinding into painfully tedious grinding which has left me with no desire whatsoever to acquire this title now. 89.212.184.23 01:59, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

You're missing the point, competitive missions take time, effort you do realize what you just wrote, don't you? I don't even have to read your comment at all, your first sentence says enough. You're just lazy. 145.94.74.23 09:36, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Most of the time there are either people who have never been in the area before. Especially for the Deep, that is a pain in the ass and will certainly require you to restart a few times. Sometimes there is also a jackass or two who aggro everything / ignore warnings / leave in the middle of the instance, which can be distastrous in these long instancs. Also, do not troll. Koda Kumi talk 11:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Of course I'm lazy, and I'm also short on time and tired of repeating the same shit over and over again. HFFF was acceptable because it took no brain power to do, I could spend half an hour being a zombie and then spend the rest of my time playing the game. Now I gotta spend half an hour busting my own balls doing something I don't like for the same (or marginally higher) ammount of faction and when I'm done I don't feel like playing anymore because I'm already too fed up with everything. So forgive me if I don't see how this was a change for the better, from my perspective, it's just a forced change for the worse. Keneth 15:59, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

You know... vanquishing with H/H is not hard, and reaps relatively healthy amounts of faction not to mention gold. It means you may actually have to play the game but isn't that the point? -- Wyn 22:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

If Anet thinks vanquishing is playing the game, they need to spend more time outside of the PvP world they seem to be so focused on, but I guess that is where the money is, given how much they focus on it. I agree with the OP 100% and there is no chance I'm going to be doing the Deep as a HFFF replacement. Getting faction will be something I do as a last resort at this point, rather than something that I didn't even think about having to do. Oh yeah, thanks again ANet for dumping all that 1/2 useless faction in my account, I'm sure it would have been really really hard to do each in consecutive weeks. 68.231.149.19 23:15, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I am having such a good time at my PC over here. It's better than the movies and it doesn't cost a thing. I'd love to hear your responses to this...:D Allegiance faction, stands for how much fame you have gotten amongst a people, right? Now, picture this: some guys are famous for bashing the enemy. Others are famous for their deeds in legendary stories. Again others are known for the amount of monsters they defeated in the homeland, making it safer for that people. And then there's a small group, who tell others to run for them. The people praised them for their time and effort, until they learned that they didn't actually do anything. Who would praise someone who just let others run for him? The titles are meant to show that you have actually done stuff. SO QUIT COMPLAINING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO THINGS IN A VIDEO GAME. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THINGS, RENT A MOVIE! 145.94.74.23 22:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

After the change in values for the skills, getting them maxed it's not as important as it was before. So, from now on, anytime anyone finds a way to get points at an excessive speed compared with the rest, either the rest get buffed or the excessive one crippled. And since fixing one thing it's usually faster and easier, there you are. MithTalk 20:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you fix things first?

Fixing skills is pointless if the game is so bugged it's pointless to use them. Why didn't you fix syncing first? There are countless people asking for it for months and months and months now. Why should I use any of the new skills when all I meet is synced teams in RA that cannot be beaten no matter what. --82.83.50.92 17:02, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Cultist's Fervor translation

Translation of the dev-speak about the nerf: We're sick of Fervor Bombers (aka Tribute to Doomspike) spamming Blinding Powder to quickly sac themselves to death with Cultist's Fervor. We didn't want to destroy bombing builds completely, just remove the trivial, massively abused CM versions. --Falseprophet 17:32, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey! I invented Tribute to Doomspike, btw xD. My... only build that ever got vetted great so far... and I had to archive it under a minute after I put the "Great" tag on it. !@#$%!-- 01:14, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Blood spike nerf

Just curious as to why there was a need to nerf blood spike. Are there really that many bloodspikers in the elite ranks? Are blodspikers flooding PvP? Or do they just irritate some of the guys who run cookie cutter builds? Another questions, how does a skill or build qualify as overpowered? How ever you answer that question, I doubt bloodspike qualifies. Anf if you somehow thinkn bloodspike is over powered how come I don't see more of em? In over 1000 HB matches I have only ever come up against one guy running a blood spike build other than me. Wanna guess how many cookie cutter sins I seen? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:206.125.128.108 (talk).

LolHB. err, I mean, it wasn't nerfed for HB, bspike was ridiculously overrun in GvG, so much that people were getting well under top 200 if not top 100 with bspike. --Riddle 02:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

With this change, casting repeatedly will not have much more effect than casting a spell every 10 seconds, encouraging Necromancers to use as many spells as possible during its duration. Uhm, yes, I really do want this but some weird update increased the recharge times of the most basic blood magic skills so I am not able to do what you expect me to do. Given that Bloodspikepressure is considered to be potentially over-powered why not rethink Although the motivation for these changes is based on PvP balance, we do not believe these changes will have a significant impact on PvE play? Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 03:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Updates by Arenanet?

I really liked to play this game with different chars, but i don´t understand why spells have to be changed all the time. The benefits in using different builds for quests, farming, running and so is the great challange in this game. All players can make the characters they want and use each characters benefit. When cummunity makes changes to builds, they loose some players every time, and i can understand why. I don´t know who test those changes, but i think the developers didn´t think of lagtime from servers/internet when they write about weaponswap and similar stuff.

Instead of making anoing changes (this exclude bugs and so) use your free time to finish GWII and plz stop screwing players with changes to builds.

Well, thx for your comments on this, i don´t know why players always think other persons are mental handicaped if they are against changes (guess it´s a bug in normal evolution). I think it´s possible to have a opinion and really don´t mind changes, but in this case i don´t agree with Anet. If they want to make game harder, the changes should be made in damage and speels on the beasts.

Regards Steen Juhl aka Sivard

Look, if you want static game, go play something else. Like.. I dunno, a game with 10 overpowered skills and the rest unused. That's pretty much almost any game out there. Guild wars was NEVER like that, and never intended to be like that. So what exactly is your problem? Inability to adapt? Unwillingness to change? Life is change. If you don't want to change, history overruns you. As simple as that. And the reason why Guild Wars became so popular and is still popular is - change. New things added, old things changed. If you dont understand the word "balance" and "players like to be able to use all skills without feeling handicapped when using some" then I'm afraid no one will be able to explain to you what's the point of ANet skill changes. ANet isn't losing players over skill changes. They lose players over not making skill changes. You see, a mass loyal to ANet is the one that plays Guild Wars for what it is. Players who leave because of skill changes don't want Guild Wars, they want better WoW or Diablo or something. These players like to have 10 overpowered skills which never get changed, so they can play the game in a mindnumbing mindless zombie way. Good luck with that, we don't want it here. So let me repeat it: ANet never liked farming nor encouraged it, so don't complain about it. And they always worked on the skill balance, so don't complain. It's what makes the game FRESH and GOOD. I know this isn't good for mentally handicapped people who would prefer to do 1 repetitive action with 1 skill all the time, but why people like these would buy Guild Wars is beyond me. Servant of Kali 10:55, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

What an ignorant ass you are Servant of Kali. Who the hell are you to tell him to go play another game just because he expresses an opinion you don't agree with? And get real, GW doesn't have 10 overpowered skills and the rest unused? What about CoP and SF? You can't get into a team doing elite areas without one of those two skills on your bar. 217.234.252.96 12:05, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed... after the last update we are NOW stuck with just 10 overpowered skills. Before that we had like 20 OP skills. --82.83.61.78 20:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

For start, I'm someone who can sign messages. Who am I to tell him anything? I'm myself, thank you very much. If you're the one who thinks all oppinions are equal, then you shuttup ok? Don't be a hypocrit and tell me to shuttup while you're talking. Be a man. That being said, I'm not the one who thinks all oppinions are equal - I think most are worthless. Obviously, I'm not a hypocrit so here I believe my oppinion is better otherwise I wouldn't say anything. So who am I? I am a Guild Wars player, who plays the game for what it is. When I drive a car I don't complain it's not an airplane. This person here is growing potatoes and complains for lack of watermelons. So obviously I have told him that he's crazy. And I am going to use this opportunity to tell the same to you. Not only that, but you lack intellectual skills. Who am I to say that? I'm a very smart person. Shocking? Oh yes, I need to be humble because that's popular. Or I need to be really dumb because that's popular too, and trendy. No one feels threatened by dumb people. Well I'm neither humble nor dumb. Now, that being said,I have no idea of what overpowered skills you are talking about and how that is relevant here. The guy complained abour skill balances in general. That's entirely different thing. And people who complain that overpowered and underpowered skills exist, lack, as I said, intellectual capacity. Because no person with sufficient mental capacity will complain that in game with so many skills and so many areas some skills are somewhere overpowered and some underpowered. Nor will such a person complain about ANet not working on that will full force, since these are not Olympics, it's a game. Thank you for reading. I have no doubt that I will get a reply I will disagree with, so pardon me for not visiting this thread again. Sincerely yours, Servant of Kali 00:48, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

LOLWTFBBQURSTUPID! Orange Juice jist some self-righteous snob? It's funny because... well.. I'm me, too! :O NTY I (nor everyone else on this site.. who IS greater than you) shant ever be quieted by someone as dumb as yourself, Kali. No, I'm not threatened by you, either. I mean c'mon.. even your own SHADOW bullies you! Shocking? Oh yes! Oh, and go ahead and uninstall GWars while you're a head.. a d***head that is! LOL GGOMGROFLCOPTERSUNUB! --Ulterion 03:25, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what most of those letters stand for, but it was funny. I've found that people that say they are smart, aren't quite up to code. There is a Servant of Kali in every group (well, except for groups that have a doorman to stop that type of person from getting in). In response to Sivard's original question: Changes that ANet typically makes each week are easy to do. Fixing obscure bugs that aren't easily reproducible aren't easy. All the programmers that are good enough to do so are working on GW2. Think of it as a team of Servant of Kali's (without her rudeness) as the only people left working on GW . People that think they know it all but aren't wise enough the think outside themselves. So they balance what they see (PvP, PvE Farming) and, in their mind and comments, they minimize the damage done to other parts of the game. In the end they are probably doing their best to get to some goal. The problem is that the goal they are going for isn't attainable and 'normal' players are caught in the crossfire. 68.231.149.19 04:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Lol 217.234.246.117 11:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you should probably become more informed about the people you are talking about before you start talking about what level of skills they have. Linsey and the others on the GW live team are premier game developers. But I think this conversation that has already lead to 2 blocks for violations of GWW:NPA has probably gone far enough. -- Wyn 11:55, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Original poster fails badly. If a game has no updates, it may as well be offline, so I don't have to team up with the 95% of the community that are idiots, know nothing abut game balance, and run bad builds. Learn to adapt and don't ruin the game for the rest of us who actually know how to amke more builds than sway, RaO, and SF.

So the goal of this update was to bring underused elites into play right?

What about Amity? This skill has as far as I know never EVER seen use in a non joke build in pvp, pve, or well anywhere. It's hard to beat that in terms of underused. Make it targetable, reduce the duration, and recharge so you can keep it up 75% and it will still pale in comparison to the new Bsurge. Sure it's a hex, but with the stupid limitation of no damage it would still never get run. This skill is useless, not even plain skill worthy, let alone elite worthy. Kelvin Greyheart 02:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

They can't get all of them. The last large-scale buffing of weak elites was in the August 7th update, so I expect another one next spring. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 02:33, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Understandable, but how long has that skill been there? Sitting, calmly useless. Kelvin Greyheart 03:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Izzy said that not being able to attack is an unfun mechanic. However, for your typical warrior, blind does virtually the same thing. And, most blind sources can be maintained constantly barring constant condition removal or the new PnH. Currently, Amity is about as useful as a perma-blind warrior. --8765 06:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

IMO it would need a redesign like Symbols of Inspiration, Tease or Unyielding Aura. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 08:10, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

If you buff all, then only some of them will get used. If you buff some each quarter, then each one may have it's limelight. MithTalk 15:01, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

True, but as I said. Has that skill ever seen its limelight? It could be made into something niche, like If target is attacking that foe looses andrenaline for every andrenal skill, and then 5 energy for every energy attack. No idea on the balance of something like that, but it could be made interesting. Maybe not hugely popular but useful. Kelvin Greyheart 15:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, if ideas and alternatives for the skill is what you have, then you should go the Skill feedback section. More than one issue presented there has been fixed already. MithTalk 15:15, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

tbh they should quit re-working elites, gw would've been alot better with less than half of the skills it has now. imo these updates hurt pvp more than just letting these skills be dead, all theyre doing is adding skill-less power creep and fanservice, they don't even play gw and have idea how it affect pvp. why not make amity reduce damage to 0? or remove all conditions/hexes on a 5 energy 0.25¼ activation and 7 recharge for 5 seconds? compare that to Withdraw Hexes, so maybe we should buff withdraw hexes? no? why not buff everything to the level of these new buffed elites? is that what u want? --Cursed Angel 15:34, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, let's keep the metagame exactly the same, that way you won't have to think when you play. Just try and adapt to the new meta. If you're good (and you probably are) then that shouldn't be a problem. At the very least you'll be able to abuse things better than the average Joe. 145.94.74.23 16:06, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Too bad the meta is fucking boring. Too bad power creep has fucked it over. So if you like playing in a meta where nothing takes skill, nothing is fun and where the rank 1 guild gets owned by hexway because it's so bloody overpowered. Dark Morphon(contribs) 17:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see the match where that happened. 145.94.74.23 14:03, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

There's probably numerous of those matches. I shall try to find a screenshot. Dark Morphon(contribs) 13:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Try movie. Screenshots are easily manipulated, even without photoshopping. For example, the opponent may have been better players during that match. 145.94.74.23 23:06, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I always wanted to try a split build running a Monk with Pacifism. Just a matter of calling the melee target, and hoping there isn't hex removal. Easy way to neutralize a threat and focus on another one.Gothica 06:42, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

With the recent changes to Fort Aspenwood, we feel that the balance has shifted slightly in favor of the Kurzicks...

Ya think? This totally destroyed gameplay on the Luxon side, and then you ruined the bomber build that gave Luxons even the slightest edge... and you think it's slightly in favor of the Kurzicks? I don't think this update was enough, even. At least RoJ is usable there until you nerf it soon.-- 01:18, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I won several times in a row a few days ago. So it's not that bad. 145.94.74.23 14:04, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The bomber build was horrible. RoJ is only useful because of its use against bad AI. I've only played it once since the recent update, and I found the balance wasn't too horribly skewed there. --Riddle 14:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

They don't want to push things too far in the opposite direction. The changes to the turtle will keep bounder monks with Spellbreaker from keeping the front gate from falling for over half the match. This way, win or lose, we can at least get our points for taking down the gates. If it needs to be changed further, they'll do it after seeing the result of this change. Despite what some people say, ANet isn't stupid.--Ryan Galen 17:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

When are we getting our updates?!

So way long ago, we were told we were going to get account wide Hall of Monuments. So where is it?! Fuck the skill updates. Give us HoM or give us death! Oh, and while I'm at it, BRING GvG BACK! Colonel Hawk 05:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Seeing as it doesn't matter when it happens, as long as it happens before GW2 comes out, I fail to see why you would have the right to complain about it. 145.94.74.23 11:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It's probably not coming until at least the second half of 2009. Guess it's death for you, then. Erasculio 12:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

One reason why HoM matters is account hacking. Support are very good at getting you the account back, but they can't do anything if some hacker has deleted your characters. Once we get an account level HOM the achievements we've made will be safe for GW2. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Sadie2k (talk).

That would seem doubtful...I have seen no indication that an account wide display would continue to show for characters that are subsequently deleted. While it may be the case that they permanently store all achievements somewhere new and then check for only "new" achievements at each additional display event, it is much more likely that the game will just pull up the achievements from all characters whenever it is asked to display account wide. -- Inspired to ____ 16:24, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Only reason I'm assuming account wide would be safe is because everything else that is account wide is safe. Titles, unlocks, tourney reward points, faction. Sadie2k 00:59, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't the Treasure and Wisdom the only two made account wide? Biz 15:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Hero, champion, gladiator, commander, gamer, kurzick, luxon, lucky and unlucky have always been account wide. Sadie2k 19:09, 25 December 2008 (UTC)