Talk:Game updates/20090806

Yay

Yay they fixed SoS and tonics don't make noise :D Karate Jesus 22:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Lol i thought they were gonna nerf monks, and here they get a buff..Sloh Em Oshun 22:41, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Tonics no longer make a noise in outposts. thank you, I don't have to worry about hearing yeti's now. 24.233.254.51 22:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Lousy sin update, solid/meh everyone else.--99.230.145.201 22:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

A nice update, pity a lot of it comes too late in the game. Some of this stuff could have been done way earilier. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 22:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Could they at least keep some of the good things about it though? I'm getting tired of paying 1 plat for skills that USED to work, and now suck because anet deemed them "too powerful." Assassins dont assassinate anymore, rangers cant do very much except interrupt, and several skills are now useless because of anet. I'm cool with nerfing skills that require it, but thing like "sharpen daggers" need to be left alone. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:71.22.222.249 (talk).

This game needs a constant balance, be it buffing or nerfing. Also, yeah... Melandru's Shot was very uncalled for! You might not noticed, but Rangers have other options. And wtf? Sharpen Daggers was good? The only use it had was with Crit-Barrage or Crit-Scythe. Titani Ertan 20:02, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

That's because you're bad. Stop being bad, learn to play, understand game mechanics, and you may start to understand why this update really failed, instead of why you think it failed. And actually, for the most part, it wasn't half-bad. —Jette 20:03, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

well, you misunderstand. THIS update isnt the problem. I'm unhappy about sharpen daggers, but it's a side issue. My main issue is that the skills are becoming more and more underpowered and I'm not enjoying GW as much as I used to because air magic spikers cant spike, assassins, again, dont assassinate, rangers really dont have much more purpose than a mobile interrupt, and the game overall has lost a lot of it's fun because now no skill does any real damage. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:71.22.222.249 (talk).

First, sign.

Second, LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. I'm done. Titani Ertan 20:14, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I understand perfectly: you are bad and do not understand balance. Read some articles, find a guild, learn to play. It's really not as hard as it seems if you put your mind to it. —Jette 20:22, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I too am pleased about the tonic noise fix - I was so annoyed by 2 or more yeti's screaming at each other whilst trying to focus on trade channel and trade pages. Gosh darn those were annoying as heck. Now to quiet down and tone down the unending and single use firework crates. I will deliberately switch districts to avoid the several minutes of distracting annoyance. Ye they are cool looking (the first time) and all, but #1 they don't change, #2 TOO LENGTHY, #3 Always the same predictable animation and always the same loud noise. Yes i could turn down the SoundFX, but that leaves me with, how to turn off the firework animation and still see everything else that's going on? And can i program it so that when I enter a town, I can press one or two buttons to accomplish this? That way when I leave outpost, or town I can press a couple buttons (hotkeys if you will) and be back to normal.

Anet has too much focus on GW2 and not enough focus on GW1. But what would one expect? Why waste resources on a game that a lot of people will continue to want to play- because they don't want to look like a charr, norn, or preying mantis? I enjoy the glitter of the game most of all. I enjoy working toward getting that special armor and mixing/matching it to make my character stand out from the crowd. I like the changing style options for my characters, and would like to see the sequel do a better job producing classy outfits, armor, and weapons. Poor Dervish, you unlock the forgemaster and instead of a new outfit design, all you get are pointy balls dangling from a chain at groin level. And why bother collecting dozens and dozens of obbys for an elementalist body suit.

Skill nerfs and buffs: Dear A/Net, not all PVP is the same! Something that is excessive in arenas doesn't mean nerfing it for a competitive pvp mission makes it a good idea. But when splitting the game only by PvE and PvP, you are left with several issues. Teams comprised of 8 players, or 6 or 4 (imho) are going to have skill issues, and throw in random parties vs. synced or pre-made parties and the skill issues are even more poignant. I just don't want the game to come down to how fast i have to press the buttons on my computer as opposed to outhinking my opponent (and still being fairly quick on the keyboard.) But when I've got a side bar with 10-15 "stacking hits" via 4-6 skills, whilst my dead body glows a new shade of necro well green, I wonder how come I can't dish out that much damage from so many different attack skills on my skill bar. Maybe Jette has a good point- but in my opinion a good guild doesn't typically want noob players. So you work your way up, to better guilds ( much like world of warcraft ) until you hit your peak ability and then try your best to enjoy the game from then on. I wish they would try to take two random teams and at least balance the player types on each of those teams. Skills aside, sin for sin/ monk for monk, etc. (assuming their are the players available in the que to do that.) 67.166.140.31 14:20, 4 October 2009 (UTC)cecil 14:24, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Mel shot needed not a nerf. Was bad enough already. -1337cshacker --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:12.105.212.249 (talk).

Buggy Update

→ moved from Talk:Game updates

is it just me, or are a few of the skills not showing up as changed? namely Jagged Strike and Golden Phoenix Strike. 24.182.202.169 22:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it just me, or did A.net yet again miss what's really wrong and just made more Power Creep? Titani Ertan 22:51, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it just me or do people complain no matter what happens? 76.84.34.210 22:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it just me, or does A.net give free chunks of HP with no downside to D/x and x/D? Is it just me, or is Assassins now minimally half able to do what they shouldn't do? Is it just me, or was any of the problems fixed? Is it just me, or does A.net introduce more Power Creep and less tactic with every update? Titani Ertan 22:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

ANET crazy buffed comfort animal :D 98.23.4.67 22:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Chunks of HP they need when they are not using forms or any stupid gimmick build. And what shouldn't assassins do? Stay in the middle of many enemies? THAT'S what assassins do in PvE. The only thing is that they shouldn't be able to do it for very long periods of time in PvP. But in PvE what else would they do? Go back behind the rest of the party and wait until their skills reload? That's not for PvE. It's better to have skills that heal and give block than anything like Permanent Shadow Form, so those changes are welcomed. And Shadow Form should change sooner or later. MithTalk 15:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What's funny is that my assassin was perfectly good at surviving/annihilating enemies before they could even draw a breath to shout "Lol Asuran Scan!" BEFORE this update. Now I'm pretty sure my assassin will be drilling holes through the core of the planet and exploding the moon, restructuring it, then exploding it again. Remember the Dead Scar in WoW? That's me, playing EOTN on my sin before August 6th. Gods bless video games.

Lol Mo/D

PvP is going to be fun against Vow of Piety monks :/ Karate Jesus 22:46, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

PvE only change-read the dev update--98.109.81.49 22:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Nvm, thinkin Conviction--98.109.81.49 22:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Gogo boonprot w/ ZB. 71.146.64.188 23:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Tested on The Isle of Nameless and Vow of Piety isn't renewing itself when an ench ends on me. 83.131.40.231 23:25, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Because anet has apes as coders -1337cshacker

Sand Storm not working

Just tested as E/D at great temple, doesnt deal dmg :/

Do you mean Sand Shards? If so, that works fine. <>96.8.185.183 23:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Is it untyped damage or earth dmg? If it's untyped, lol. Karate Jesus 23:19, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Right now there's a bug that won't let sand shard's sandstorm get created if your character is using a skill with an activation time. ~Shard 23:21, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Like if it ends mid-cast? Because I got it to trigger with Black Mantis Thrust and Signet of Pious Light. <>Sparky, the Tainted 23:28, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

It also does not ignore armor (I'm assuming it deals earth damage). <>Sparky, the Tainted 23:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Characters who just finished activating a skill (pious light or attack skills) are no longer activating skills. ~Shard 23:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

There is no bug with Sand Shards. An anomaly maybe (that it doesn't ignore armor), but no bug. It always triggers the damage, whether it's while activating a skill or not. <>Sparky, the Tainted 00:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

[1], tbh. Karate Jesus 00:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Why would an Earth skill that creates a sandstorm ignore armor? Not an anomaly. ~Shard 01:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Because the skill formerly dealt armor ignoring damage, the damage type is unspecified, earth magic is more related to armor ignoring damage than the other lines and sandstorms give nothing on your armor. Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 01:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) For some reason, after testing it, it does it's stated damage to 60-70 armored enemies (even in HM). After that, it's downhill though. Karate Jesus 01:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

So your reasoning for expecting this skill to ignore armor is because a completely different skill with the same name did? ~Shard 01:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You reduce where there's more. Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 01:21, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess you could look at it either way. You're seeing it from a "the description says so" point of view, and I'm seeing it from a "sandstorms in real life don't deal holy damage" point of view. ~Shard 01:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

shard that is stupid. --Cursed Angel 01:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, RL sandstorms are quite "armor" penetrating. Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 01:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

There are a lot of things on this page. Which "that" are you referring to?

@Noc, not if you wear goggles and a mask. ~Shard 01:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

real life logic doesn't apply to video games. if a skill does what the description say; it's not a bug, if the skill does not follow the description; it's a bug. go figure about dancing daggers. oh wait. --Cursed Angel 01:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

i.e Meteor shower, those meteors are way too small. Should be able to VQ all 54/33/34/15 areas with one cast imo. --Sam6555 02:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I replaced the meteor texture with an awesomeface. --Jette 07:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

ss or it never happened -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

CA, obviously, you have no idea what flavor is or why games that have it are successful. ~Shard 22:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Golden Phoenix Strike

The txt in game says 0 dmg to adjacent foes, and thats actually what it does! Need another minor update fast!Ryguy9 23:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Jungle strike also deals no damage to adjacent foes. <>Sparky, the Tainted 23:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Updated the page with the in game description Rolain1 01:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It was all ready noted in the Guild Wars Wiki notes --Riddle 01:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No damage is not the same as zero damage! Ɲoɕʈɋɽɕɧ 01:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

But they didn't even deal 0 damage (no numbers appeared), they did no damage. Even if GPS had scaled, it would have had as much effect as Jungle Strike did. <>Sparky, the Tainted 16:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Jagged Strike

Isn't 1/2 in game, wat. Frosty 23:02, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

ups nerfd --Super Igor flame my shove sin bar! 23:10, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Shroud of Distress and Gold Phoenix are also wrong.--Wingsy 23:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Winter's Embrace

Hehe very nice snaring skill now... 86.140.247.214 23:21, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Use with Chilling Winds--Underwood 02:19, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Lava Arrows

Nice that they removed the distance requirment on the skill. I was using this on my ele in PvE but was annoyed that it was half distance. Kudos Anet. --Dominator Matrix 23:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Might actually be slightly useful now. Good synergy with Mark of Rodgort, anyway. 86.27.93.107 11:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It's only worth taking if you have rodgorts. Else it's just Flare. --BlueNovember 14:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Vow of Piety

Doesn't renew :/ Frosty 23:40, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Its on enchantment end, if its still not working feel free to add it to the wiki notes :/. --Dominator Matrix 23:43, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Vow of Piety only renews if you remove the enchantment yourself. Letting enchantments end naturally or get removed by a foe will not renew Vow of Piety. I also believe that if the enchantment ends itself (like triggering Reversal of Fortune or using an attack skill with Sand Shards) it will renew. (Not tested with RoF) <>Sparky, the Tainted 23:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Can we have the old version back, the one that was actually useful? Racthoh 07:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but how is this not useful? Karate Jesus 08:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

In PvE I was quite fond of the heal on a D/N throwing out orders, giving a dervish some armor and three pips of regeneration isn't impressive with some of the PvE skills we have nowadays. For PvP, well sure it's useful but I don't understand why they'd hit the recharge on Dwayna's Touch when E/Ds are an issue then turn around and give them a skill with +24 AL and a few pips of regeneration while also giving easy access to the Sentry's Insignia. Racthoh 08:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(Just for reference, the old functionality was ""For 20 seconds, whenever you lose an enchantment, 1 ally in the area is healed for 5...41 Health."" ...personally, I never picked it up but I'm considering it now) --ilr 11:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You guys should stop insinuating that Racthoh doesn't know how to PvE. It makes you look really dumb. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Ofc he knows how to PvE, but he's just being a bit butthurt over the not so important "nerf" to the D/N orders. Not to mention the build works just as fine as before. 89.172.61.181 01:01, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Define 'working as fine as it did before' when you've lost an enchantment to Arcane Zeal, an enchantment for Mystic Healing, a three second hit to Dwayna's Touch, and completely lost a source of healing altogether. Sorry if I come off a little butt hurt that a legitimate, not game ruining build is hit while crap like Shadowform remains untouched. I'll just stick with a necro primary for orders from now on, although I have to remove Masochism from that bar because it's just another skill to fuel Discord and minions since apparently those two builds were really underpowered and needed buffing. Racthoh 01:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Use a different enchant? 89.172.61.181 01:35, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

We're talking about Blood/Wind/Mysticism here, the number of actually useful skills are slim. Finding a skill that replaces all of the functionalities of Vow of Piety just isn't possible. At best you're looking at something like Blood Renewal which is hardly a worthy substitute. The healing strength has been reduced enough to the point where you might as well not bother. Sure you can just stick another enchantment on there so the build can continue to pump out orders just fine but then that's all it's really doing. The healing from Vow of Piety may not have been that significant but enough to the point where I'd rather run a N/Rt or N/Mo and give myself a stronger skill set to work with. Racthoh 01:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Main healing out of that build was/is coming from Mystic Healing. Having another ench to power it is more than enough even if the ench itself isn't brilliant. A N/Mo or N/Rt wouldn't have the same uninterupted spamming power of a D/N. Blood Renewal is one, Featherfoot Grace is an option as well, conditions are common and having them expire 50% faster is useful, especially in a H/H team where, if you're outside of the Luxon/Kurzick areas, cond removal is not that plentiful (and when you're there those Prot monks are just a failure to bring anyways, since other than having a bazillion cond removals which completely waste their energy, they're crud). Also good for running between targets for Dwayna's Touch. Grenth's Fingers is a long lasting enchant with an ok-ish end effect, as is Aura of Thorns, which is decent and lasts long even with no points in Earth. 89.172.61.181 02:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

A self condition removal in PvE on a character that could care less about conditions is a wasted slot. Trying to find another decent enchantment to power the other skills on the bar isn't worth it, in the same vein that loading a bar with signets to power Symbolic Strike isn't a good idea. In a physical heavy setup (where you want the Order of Pain and Dark Fury) there is a much greater chance that Vow of Piety's end effect would trigger on the D/N as the majority of the party is out of its range. With a hero running the build you can just flag him back depending on the player character's profession. With two hits to the skills the build used to red bar itself there is a heavier reliance on outside healing to clean up the sacrifice damage. This was the benefit of running the D/N; physical support, healing support, incredible self-sufficient. You could really appreciate that character in Hard Mode four man zones as it was capable of keeping the party afloat. Now I'd rather continue running a N/Rt with Cultist's Fervor, allowing me to invest less into Soul Reaping and more into Channeling Magic (Splinter Weapon) and Restoration (Life, Protective Was Kaolai). More offense but less defense and self-sufficiency. Racthoh 05:11, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Either way, I'm still using the D/N, true it might be bad for 4 person areas now, but in 6 or 8 where you can put in another healer it's fine (even with henchie healers, and with a friends hero it's absolutely np). And tbh in 4 person I never even used the full Paragon build, necros were always better since the extra targets they create draw away enough attention (and give you back the numbers superiority) so that anything going on the party members is more than taken care of by TntF/SY and a N/Rt defense. 83.131.41.164 12:07, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

WTB live testers.

and how many of these skills are bugged?24.233.254.51 23:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

seriously it's been a couple of months since there was an update without a lot of bugs or unresolved issues. -.-' Where's the QA team? --Johnny Rodrigues 23:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I bet/hope there's something wrong in (almost) all of them. Sorry Anet, i won't come back until you fix perma :D (5th week offline and still not even thinking about playing). - J.P.Talk 00:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Fix Perma? How is it broken? 81.106.16.151 01:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

"I'M INVINCIBLE!" --Riddle 01:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Other than that, I think he may be on about SF nerf I'm unsure if so, I laughed, there are other ways of farming than perma 81.106.16.151 02:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

They've officially stated that SC nerfs are coming and you're still crying? No fucking comment

My main problem with perma is that it takes away all the challenge from the game. You don't find too many teams to do some of the hard areas nowdays that are doable as perma. I don't, or it's hard and hours of wait. Dungeons are the first that comes to mind. And ofcourse they say they'll do something about it. But when (and if), that's another story. Wouldn't be the first time... - J.P.Talk 04:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok it's a good thing they've officially declared an imminent nerf huh? You have permission to stop talking about it unless you're like the people who are still ranting about Ursan or Item Dupes, satan can have you then.

I loved Ursan. Atleast it had a chance to fail! And as Ursan, you play as a team, as Perma does it's job alone in almost all areas in the game... Actually... if Anet would change the Ursan back as it was, i could live with perma as it is now. - J.P.Talk 11:18, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

have you actually played SF speed clears? Go to UW. Speed clears require all 8 team mates to have a very good grasp on what they're doing and they fail a good percent of the time. It also helps if everyone knows what the other jobs entail. Whereas ursan was just a giant wrecking ball.

I still don't understand why 600/smite is usually ignored in these topics, *cough* dungeon clearer, kurzick FFF, luxon FFF(not sure on that one because im kurzick), and only requires mashing your 1 (SB) and ocaisionally 2(prot spirit) 3(SoA) and 4(spell breaker). Whereas SF is regularly pressing 1-2-3 then 4-5-6-7-8...Ok i think ive defeated my arguement. Haru 14:10, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

It's okay, I have a strong habit of owning myself too. Ryuu - talk 15:00, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

@unsigned, an official statement by ANet doesn't really mean much. I'd put the problems caused by SF up there with the magnitude of the problems caused by, say, ritspike... which took, what, six months to nerf? SF farming has been around longer than that, iirc, and it's actually been buffed during that time (I don't think ritspike was ever buffed). Of course, it's also been fail-nerfed a few times... which is more than could be said for ritspike. Also, I don't recall ANet ever admitting that ritspike was a problem before they nerfed it... which shows some sort of improvement, I guess. Overall, though, if ANet is going to maintain their (incredibly dumb) stance of allowing solo/duo/trio farming in any form, instead of forcing a team to work together for money in a team game, putting faith in their statements of intending to nerf said farming is incredibly foolish. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:45, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm...people say that Sf removes challenge, have you ever been to dolomore shrine, its 600 monks that are running dungeons and removed all challenges, people are looking for runners, not teams, SF only effective used for farming, while as a team play, there is 90% failure chance with pugs ..i.e inexperienced players, 600/smites are actually running dungeons and missions and spoiling the fun.115.64.157.4 08:45, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Uh, no. Idiots not knowing how to play doesn't make the problem any less significant, as the easiest (and obvious) way around that is to simply find people that do know how to play. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 14:55, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

How bout I toss a story from a couple days ago out there, I had a superb kathandrax group from my alliance conisisting of 2 monks, 3 sins (myself being one of them), 2 warriors, and one clueless idiot who could go ranger or sin. I was told at first i was to perma run to it then we were going to battle our way through, me tanking or something. What do I get 5 second later? Mr clueless going QZ ranger and the monks setting up 600/Smite. I felt cheated of the great team setup we had that could've cleared with bucketloads more fun. Haru 22:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Which clearly shows that SF is balanced, since the monsters can counter it with the tards on your team. --Riddle 22:13, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

That group sounds far from superb, what with the whole unable to communicate ever thing. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 06:33, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Well it could have just been my hearing loss that contributed to me failing...but lazy excuses for just 600/Smiting it sucked. Haru 18:47, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

You pretty much lost excuses when you said that SF can be bucketloads of fun. I think I lost IQ from typing that sentence. Titani Ertan 19:11, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Did I say SF was fun now? I mentioned tanking while my team killed things after I run to the dungeon. Then maybe I wouldn't have just been rolling my face on the keyboard spamming random comments with boredom as the 600 sat mashing his 1 key. Haru 21:58, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Ele PvE mobs

...the ones that spam Chain/Invoke Lightning or EbonHawk are going to be hell on wheels now. --ilr 23:50, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

no. --Cursed Angel 23:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

learn to daze -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 04:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What, because the poor monsters with insane amounts of energy won't be exhausted? LOL 76.188.221.120 05:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Seriously

I have never seen more than 1 broken (literally not OP) per update, 3 already and I guess more are broken at this rate. Also, way to fix the Mind Blast bars good joke. Frosty 23:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

You haven't been around very long, have you?~>Sins WDB 18:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Tonics

Thanks for whacking the noises. 218.214.126.215 00:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The yetis noises gave me a headache. Good fix on arenanet's part. :) --Johnny Rodrigues 00:35, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Finally Shopping in Kamadan without the 'rraarr roar moo ah ah ah slurp poof woof ding'. Finally i can stop putting my sound on mute and i can know when i recieve a pm from a buyer. Alellujah Praise the Dwayna Balthazar Grenth or whatever

die Yeti! Diiiieeee! Jonny10 07:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Pets :)

Okay, now my already good build has gotten better... only problem: what to fill the free slot with? It is about time they did that with Comfort Animal, freeing up a slot and also makes it more practical to take a pet out. Hopefully this will drop the single use meat shield mentality. LynxRavenRaide 00:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This is probably the only thing I like about this update. The rest of it is so imba, it's ridiculous. Karate Jesus 00:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The rest I didn't even read after I read this one :D And I've the same problem, what to use that free skill slot on! --Lady Rhonwyn 08:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Before this update, all pet builds were automatically bad. There was no "good pet build." Now though, they may actually be viable for PvE use.

Naw there were good pet builds, trouble is they suffered compared to non pet builds... taking 2 extra slots just to bring a pet caused huge problems to your overall damage output... Now I could almost see warrior bringing along a pet in a spare slot jsut to be a meat sheild or to cause a little extra free damage... MrPaladin talk 16:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Wait, how can there be good pet builds when "taking 2 extra slots just to bring a pet caused huge problems to your overall damage output"? Did you even think before you typed? "Good" in GW is relative. If the pet can't bring amounts of damage and utility up with the warriors, the ranger needs to change his build. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Bad < Good < Great... there were good pet builds for PvE but nothing I couldn't outdo with other builds... I stopped using pets when you could no longer use their copses except in an IWAY build MrPaladin talk 17:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

See, when you want to be successful, it just goes bad < meh < good. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:43, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I miss barrage/pet teams. t_t 99.246.175.151 18:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Poisoned Heart

It's still an enchantment spell, but it doesn't enchant you. Can someone test if this triggers Mysticism? <>Sparky, the Tainted 00:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Tested, it does not trigger Mysticism. This update was very careless on Anet's part...

Animate Stygian Horror

o ok --Jette 01:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

More gayness in HA is always welcome. 83.131.40.231 02:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

too bad its pve only QQ--Underwood 02:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

too bad its fuckin not - Wuhy 03:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Why is it under PvE only changes then?--Underwood 03:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

ur blind - Wuhy 11:54, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

lolno poisoned heart iconfail - Wuhy 13:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

2nd update today?

→ moved from Talk:Game updates

I am being told to close and reopen GW again for the second time today, is there two updates? ---Thizzzguy 6 August 2009 7:07PT

Fixing bugs from update #1--Pyron Sy 02:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Go find the ones they fixed! --Antioch 02:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

P-bite was fixed. personn5 02:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Same with Vow. ~~000.00.00.00~~ 02:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Lawl nabnet.... -1337cshacker

rofl

" Divine Boon: decreased Energy loss to 1; now only provides healing when you cast Protection Prayers or Divine Prayers spells. " LOLWUT? descriptionfail - Wuhy 03:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

it means when u cast a spell on someone u lose one energy but that ally gets healed--Hubbard The Dervish 03:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

A divine favor or protection spell--Hubbard The Dervish 03:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, that's what it means, but it's called divine Favor, not Divine Prayers. --Jette 03:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

fixed ig. "cast a protection prayer or a divine favour spell" Effin NPA's YOU 03:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

do not fix it, anet wrote divine prayers too, add a note - Wuhy 11:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Was "Divine Prayers" used in the in game description after the first update and corrected to "Divine Favor" in the second update? If so, it can be noted in the Guild Wars Wiki notes sections. --Silver Edge 19:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Only

16 damage difference between Invoke Lightning and Chain Lightning at 16 Air Magic now, and they do exactly the same thing. Wut? --smøni 04:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What's your point? Eles aren't the only profession that have had bad elites for a long time. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 04:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Just that they made Chain and Invoke pretty much identical twins, I think Invoke needs to hit another foe or two to justify it being elite now. --smøni 04:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Shadow Prison Dark Prison being elite doesn't justify overpowering a skill because of its nonelite counterpart -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 04:35, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd expect an elite to be more powerful than it's nonelite friend, which is why it's elite in the first place. 16 damage between elite and non elite makes me wonder why invoke is elite. I never noticed that similarity between the prisons before. 33% additonal slow down seems a bit meh, especially for pve. --smøni 04:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You expect too much.--Riddle 04:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I forgot this game didn't follow logic. --smøni 04:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Uh, 33% slow is not "meh". Did you miss the part where SP sins dominated PvP because people couldn't move before they died? But my main point is that you shouldn't say "invoke is barely better than chain, so buff invoke", but rather "invoke is barely better than chain, so look over both and decide why". We don't need even more fucking damage on casters, especially the ones that toss out huge amounts of melee hate at the same time. This is why Lingering Curse, Pain of Disenchant, and etc are/were problems with necromancers (besides the whole "hexes are terribly designed" thing). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 05:10, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure I've never used those Prison skills on my sin as they've never seemed that great. I don't take much of an interest in pvp so I don't know what's OP in it or what gets abused. Yeah, maybe saying basically make Invoke OP as Chain is pretty much the same as it now was daft. I see that decreasing the damage or increasing the recharge time of Chain would make sense rather than to have Invoke hit another foe. But yeah, the similarity between Invoke and Chain does need to be questioned in my opinion. --smøni 05:22, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Holy crap, someone I raged at has a brain. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 05:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Today's your lucky day! --smøni 05:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not like Invoke's actually that great, though (although I'm not sure how much of an impact the cut recharge will have). Maybe they could just remove the Exhaustion from it altogether (with an Attunement it's not going to be a problem much of the time anyway so that's only a minor buff) then nerf Chain a little (maybe slightly less damage or ~12 recharge?). 86.27.93.107 11:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Never said it was, but that's not a reason to superbuff it either. The exhaustion can probably go, though, because no one uses ele skills without attunements. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Isn't PVE easy enough already?

→ moved from Talk:Game updates

What is the reason PVE skills are getting extreme buffs all the time? Before all this PVE was patheticly easy already, this is just ruining the experience for first time players just so some people can have an easier time farming to no point. It just seems like a really big waste of time. I mean, just look at this. SniperFox 10:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Just nerf everything to the point of unusable and cancel years of power creep (Y) ---Chaos- 12:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

To a degree, yes, but there are also several skills that were quite underpowered for pve being put on equal ground with the rest, finally. 76.84.34.210 14:09, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No matter the kind of the game, there will always be people that find it hard and people that find it easy. The thing is, that being able to bring many different things to have fun with is more important than being the game hard or easy. I see no fun in bringing always the very same build everywhere because it's what everyone asks for. That's why unused skills get buffed to be usable and give people more choices. Now I can bring Winter's Embrace to deal better with those pesky Runners in Moddok Crevice. MithTalk 15:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You can also bring a cripshot ranger. Just because it's an option doesn't make it good. Also, as I will continue to rant, GW is more "pathetically easy" than "challenging" - it's not "some people find it easy, some people find it hard, and I'm a social so that's automatically ok", it's more "retards find the game challenging, everyone else got bored and moved on".

@IP: How on earth were things like Seed of Life, Masochism, and Conviction underpowered? Isn't it a little more important to nerf things like TNTF, SY, Brawling, EBSoH, GDW, and UA? What benefit did this update have for PvE? Let's see.

1. Assassins are somewhat unblockable, assuming the AI isn't carrying condition removal (and you've not traded a fire ele/channeling necro/SS/something of that nature for a bsurge [which is dumb, don't try it]) and have slightly more spammable damage. Unfortunately, the real problem - the fact that they're super squishy and don't, to make up for it, do huge amounts of damage, even with PvE skills, or bring any real form of utility or knockdown you can't get better with a warrior - wasn't addressed at all.
   1. Defense-wise, Shroud of Distress is terrible, crit agi/crit def both take time and aftercast to get up which means less time being in melee range which means drastically reduced damage output, and SY is clunky on everything compared to an imbagon.
   2. Offense-wise, the only really viable PvE build that got an update was MS/DB, which got a little extra AoE off of GPS. (I could be wrong here, as I've not played with bad characters in quite a while, but I only recall assassins having three real builds - MS/DB, SF, and ymlad/ebas/gdw, which can be used by any profession.)
2. Paraway's dervish was changed around a bit (vow and touch), but touch was bad anyway because ANet still hasn't figured out how to get the AI to not use touch skills on targets farther than 10 feet away and vow... quite honestly, the build mitigates so much damage that no one cares because it either doesn't matter or you'd be bringing another healer and could fill that slot with utility of some form.
3. Ebon Hawk was finally un-stupidified, although this is mostly a PvP change.
4. Air eles are going to pretend they can do damage now, which just makes for more bad players playing more bad builds.
5. Slippery Ground and Winter's Embrace are now decent snares if for some reason you absolutely have to have an ele snaring (your hammer warrior and ranger are both terrible maybe?).
6. Boon was changed! This is actually a really nice sign, as it might end up with some of the good monk builds back in play. But in reference to PvE, this is probably still not enough to come anywhere close to the UA monk and its instant sunspear res every 10 seconds (though if I needed a second monk, I probably wouldn't pass up a boon prot).
7. Shielding Hands is slightly nicer, though once again ANet failed to understand that the PvP problem isn't that monks don't heal enough but rather that melee does way too much damage.
8. Poisoned Heart is now a bad version of Apply Poison for warriors, which was bad in the first place. Owell.
9. Finale is significantly less insane, but the motigon hero (with imbagon obviously) is still pretty insane, so it doesn't make a huge difference.
10. Conviction is a better skill for bad dervishes now. It was a solid skill before - if you couldn't trust your monks - and now it's definitely a good skill - again if you can't trust your monks.
11. Seed of Life is even more insane. I remember way back when ANet actually cared about it being overpowered in PvE and nuked it from "completely insane" to "mostly insane" (of course, they did nothing about paragons at the time). Now it's edging back towards the former.
12. Masochism is now the MM skill of choice, instead of the orders skill of choice, and lets you animate Stygian Horrors.
13. Pets may well be a viable way to deal damage as a ranger. Unfortunately, you have to give up all the utility that is your duty as a midliner, but hey, no one cared if that monk healed, did they? (Also, I doubt they'll be anywhere near as good as an earthshaker warrior.)

And, of course, the update came with a healthy number of bugs, which is par for the course at this point.

Please also explain to me how skills that were updated this month were "put on the same level, finally" as things such as Splinter, GDW, TNTF, order pain, or any of a number of other not-trash-for-PvE skills, instead of put at the same level as skills such as shock arrow, bsurge, deathly swarm, defile/desecrate enchants, or any other terrible-for-PvE skills.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:25, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Of course, it could be that there are other reasons to play the game besides "challenge". -- Hong 16:27, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Like what? I was under the impression that games were played for fun, and what fun is there with no challenge? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Like, oh, exploration, storyline, the thrill of gratuitous violence, puzzle solving, title accumulation, skill accumulation, socialising, ... you know, all the reasons people indulge in computer games. And saying that there is "no challenge" only means that you have played the game for long enough that you have burnt out on it. Perhaps you are indeed better off playing something else. -- Hong 16:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Also people just don't seem to think about how the changes affect the mobs as well. -- Wyn talk 16:35, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I've played for longer than six months, so the storyline doesn't appeal to me anymore. I personally don't find it fun grinding through campaigns for the third or fourth time. I don't know about you guys; maybe you do find that fun? Gratuitous violence, puzzle solving, and socialization can all be done - and have been done - better in other games. Exploration I'll grant you can be interesting the first few times, and it's not something I've done before, but it's not like there's a huge number of out of the way surprises - most of the cool stuff is in the way, and so you see it while doing primary quests. Title accumulation is grind - WoW does that far better (you actually get benefits for grinding your titles!). And Wyn, no we don't think about how the changes affect the enemy AI - mostly because it doesn't matter when you can daze anything important and tntf/sy everything else down to ~12 damage tops. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe this is where that "played for long enough that you have burnt out on it" comes in. And accumulating shiny bits is a pursuit that can and is commonly done for its own sake, WoW notwithstanding. -- Hong 17:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

So it's ok to be burnt out after six months of playing because I don't suck? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What, you've been whinging about Guild Wars for THREE AND A HALF YEARS? And it might also be opportune to note the "first time players" comment in the OP above. -- Hong 17:07, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Anet 2005 : ok TBH Fuck gear,fuck leveling,fuck Pvewars we are going to create a PvP game where skill will matter.Anet GWFC : God,To see Guildwars at a such a competitive level,its like a dream. Anet Nightfall : Guys,This game is to slow,we need to add 100 dps on all characters.(AND WHAT ABOUT DW EVERY 3 SECONDS LOL,yh that will speed up killing).Anet Now : A PvE game isn't that bad ?,Also Pls check this out Lilondra *poke* 17:11, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, I do not think that the steady elaboration of the PvE side of GW is an accident. Your point is...? -- Hong 17:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I've not been playing for four years, but yes, I've been trying to get ANet to fix their game (via a steady movement from suggesting to bitching) since about six months after I started playing. Also, the game isn't any better or worse if you're a first time player or have been playing since beta, so it doesn't really matter about first time players (actually, ANet's business model seems to be one with huge turnover - get new players in, get them to buy all the campaigns, get them to spend as much money as possible and recommend the game to as many people as possible, and then get them off the servers to drop costs because they're too stupid to implement a monthly fee). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:23, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No, I would say that the game in its latest iterations (NF, GWEN) is better than its original version, at least for PvE. The areas are far better designed (if I never have to see a swarm of 1000 ice imps again, or a group of 10 centaurs including 4 monks, it'll be too soon), the plots are more coherent, the henchies have better skillsets, and the heroes make solo adventuring enjoyable rather than something you do as a last resort if other humans aren't around. Of course, this does assume that solo gaming is something you want to encourage or at least facilitate. Since I'm happy to do as much of GW solo as possible, I'm in this category.

Naturally, if you are a diehard PvPer who resents the shift of focus, or a diehard MMOgamer who has group play as a fundamental part of their philosophy, you may disagree. But the fact that they've managed to keep the formula going for this long, while retaining visibility in the marketplace, suggests there's something to it. -- Hong 17:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Why do people keep ranting about this stuff? I mean, we already know it's a problem!

Well, yes, the reason people rant is because it is a problem and it remains a problem. Most of the rants about skill balance are actually supported by a lot of empirical evidence and competitive game-play experience. They don't rant because they want to, they don't just magically conjure the arguments out of thin air. They actually thought about the problem, and since they like the game, but those problems ruin the fun for a lot of players, they rant about it. You also have to realize that if someone is ignorant enough to ask to buff an imbalanced skill or ask for more imbalanced skills, people that hate those imbalanced skills will obviously react. ^ Read it Lilondra *poke* 17:35, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

See, that "competitive" bit in there, that is your issue. A first time player (which is what the OP was talking about) is, these days, not likely to be getting into GW for competitive play. Heck, I wonder if competitive gamers ever really were the majority of GW players. -- Hong 17:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

All it suggests is that people are dumb and will keep playing GW because "it's free" (which it's actually not, but that's another topic for another day). As a solo player, I can blow through those imps with only minor annoyances - it's called abusing PvE skills and heroes. Basically what they did with GWEN and NF was make the PvE more cohesive and less blindingly frustrating, and then they decided they'd make it less blindingly frustrating by adding PvE-only skills. But the two together simply make PvE pathetic. It's like their design teams couldn't communicate at all. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:37, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No, they make PvE pathetic to someone who has been playing GW for years and has a certain expectation of how things should work. To a first time player (which is what the OP was talking about), there are no such expectations nor knowledge on how things should work together. Figuring out which combos work, and which don't, is part of what's involved in mastering the game. And please don't trot out the line that everything works in PvE. It may do so, but some things will definitely work with less frustration involved than others.

As for people being dumb: plenty of other games have sunk without trace. Attributing this game's continuing presence to nothing but exploiting the dumbness of people sounds more like sour grapes to me. -- Hong 17:51, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I thought the OP was talking about PvE in general, and then first time players as an aside. Also, just because GW hasn't sunk without a trace doesn't mean it's not exploiting dumb people (like every company everywhere does, really). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

(reset indent) I see what you did there. You just denied actual commercial success as a valid point of argumentation when talking about a commercial product. The fact remains that there are a whole lot more PvE gamers than dedicated PvPers out there, so it's hardly surprising that GW should have evolved to try to capture more of them. And as for PvE in general... maybe some areas are easier now than before for some players, but that's a far cry from stating that as a universal truth. Not everyone plays an imbagon; hell, I have trouble even finding paragon chars sometimes amid all the warriors and eles. Not everyone plays a perma sin or knows how to abuse Soul Reaping. You may say that this means they're dumb. I say that not everyone is as dedicated to 100% efficiency and optimality as others. Everyone has a cheesiness threshold, and if you're not a competitive gamer, then there's nothing compelling you to step over that threshold. -- Hong 18:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Since when does the majority of players decide the design of a game ? Lilondra *poke* 18:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

When you want them to buy a product that you are selling, of course. And I assume you meant "influence", not "decide". -- Hong 18:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm fine with people not playing for 100% efficiency (I don't do it myself because it requires paying attention and 85% efficiency is enough to get the job done fast). I'm not fine with people saying "LOL I R ELE SO I R NUEK WIF WRROR SKILLS" (it's happened, actually :/).

All areas of PvE are easier now than before the introduction of PvE skills. I don't get what about PvE skills limits them to only being useful in some areas.

Not everyone plays well, either. I had a warrior try to get into my FoW HM group last week with eight sword attack skills and atts of 9 str/11 sword. What's your point about finding <insert class here>?

The way the commercial world works is someone makes something and then sells it for more. Obviously the buyers are dumb for spending more than they should on the product. See [2].

If the bads decide how to balance a game, the game balance becomes bad and people leave because they don't want to play a boring game anymore (generally one they made boring themselves).

Also, how the hell do you fail at abusing soul reaping? All you have to do is put points in it and keep up with the group.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:14, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I was talking about the changes in this update to skills in general, not PvE-only ones or the entire philosophy behind PvE skills. Derv defences got buffed, for example; this is good for derv players, but also good for derv monsters.

If you are ranting about general crappiness of players, then 1) the solution is to play alone or with friends; and 2) is hardly a problem limited to GW. Neither of these has anything to do with PvE-only skills,

The Soul Reaping reference is more to do with bringing builds like Discordway or Sabway, rather than just running... well, any non-necro team.

The "bads" have not got to balance a game, if by "bads" you mean the guy who didn't max out his Sword attrib (the horror!). They just happen to make up a part of the gaming populace, and if that gaming populace happens to be able to exert influence on the direction of the game's evolution, then they might also indirectly have some influence as well. This is at least two times removed from actually being able to balance the game, vague complaints about unidentified third parties notwithstanding.

Finally, you seem to be setting up an opposition between "goods" and "bads", with the "good" people supposedly being at risk of driven away. Well, if by "good" you mean competitive gamers, who treat balance as the sole driving principle behind game design and exploit any cheese they can find to blow through the game, then... so be it. If this isn't the game they want, then they are always free to find something else that better suits their desires. -- Hong 18:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I stopped reading when I realized that trying to make a sealed deck build was more interesting than debating with someone who doesn't even realize that 9 str/11 sword isn't even close to using all the attributes. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 19:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Tch. The issue is not that 9 Str/11 Sword is or isn't close to using all attrib points. The issue is that 11 Sword will get you pretty decent Sword attacks anyway, even if you might be able to get a few more points of damage. The fact that you have fixated about ONE POINT OF SWORDSMANSHIP is an indicator that you are, indeed more concerned about optimality and efficiency than you believe. -- Hong 07:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) For some reason, I think I have seen this discussion once. So, here it goes again:

1. In a game, whatever you do, whether it's Exploring, vanquishing, doing missions etc., you are doing a Challenge. If there is a start and a goal and a requirement, by definition, it's a Challenge. When you universally, in any way, like lowering the requirement or giving you extra abilities in order to make the goal easily reachable, you are making the entire game easier. If the extra abilities is Skills, then people who want to complete the goal faster and easier rely on that Ability(ies)/Skill(s). Refer to that ability buff as a Cheat: when you use a Cheat, you obviously get bad at the game as you take a shortcut and you don't feel the consequences of your mistakes.
2. It doesn't matter if you're a freshman or 13th grader. If a teacher is horrible, that teacher is horrible all around. I personally took a break from GW just before Factions got released, and got back some time after EotN, and I really felt the changes. And the changes are real. I couldn't GvG or HA anymore, as the entire system changed. Anyway, a friend of mine started playing fresh around the time I restarted playing, and he told me that something is wrong once we both started doing PvP and not-"beginner" PvE. It's the small things that make the change, and if you find that small things, you can't ignore them any more.
3. So what if the majority of players are PvE? At the end, PvP is all that's left of a mediocre to good MMORPG. Once you finish PvE, there is nothing left to be done. PvP is a constant change, as it's like PvE, but the mobs differ and use "tactics". I will come to that later on if I don't forget.
4. I know why you think EotN and NF are better than Prophecies or Factions. They are easier. Prophecies was a challenging game, and it was frustrating. It required you to be good at the game and know what you're doing in order to advance. Like any RPG is supposed to include. In an RPG, can you get to the last boss with the starter weapon? Can you advance in the game without honing your skill? Can you defeat a monster in the last area if you don't know basic tactics like dodging, blocking, hide&attack etc? EotN and NF were specifically desgined to be easier, they were desgined to give people a fast paced game. This ruined the game in many ways.
5. A diehard PvP player loves a change of focus. That's the only way PvP progresses and becomes interesting and fascinating, through the changes. But if you give people Ion Cannons against Blaster Rifles, somethings not right. The formula for GW changed, as it was a PvP game and now it's a PvE game.
6. When you give people free wins, they lose their sense of Competition. When they lose, they don't know why. The people who are given Rick'Roll builds to don't need the thing called Competition: it's the boring win that matters more than the planning and tactic. When you make Uncompetitive Rick'Roll Players VERSUS Uncompetitibe Rick'Roll Players, this is what you get: Build Wars.
7. You don't need to be playing Guild Wars for years to know that some skills are overpowered. A.net gives insane powers to people who use certain skills, and you see that when you think to yourself "where am I going wrong? Is it a modification with my Bow? Or is it my skills?". Of course, the latter is right. People experience that when they play PvE and PvP. It's frustrating to all sides: the Rick'Rollers who get killed if they act really, really stupid and the not-gimmicky/Rick'Roller get defeated by morons. How often was someone that used a gimmicky build found out to be someone completley stupid, like someone who swore at you for mistakes he had made many times, and how many times have someone who didn't use a gimmicky build swore at you for mistakes he had made many times?
8. People use the 100% efficiency because if they don't, they either get stuck because of the PvE Power Creep or they lose in the PvP Power Creep.
   

Much love and hate, best regards from Pettie Bears (or is it Petty Bears?) and Soda Pops, Snappy the Turtle. (EDIT:) Check here. Titani Ertan 01:06, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

1. Being able to finish the storylines with anything is a feature, not a bug. There is more to the game than challenge. Now being able to finish the storylines in hard mode, or the elite missions/dungeons, with anything would be a bug. However, whinging about skill changes to the contrary, I have not seen any indication that people will be able to take literally anything into this scenario and still come out on top. Just look at the talk pages for some of the more notorious missions (Dzagonur Bastion, Eternal Grove, Gate of Madness, etc) and you will see that plenty of people still find that the challenge exists.
2. You seem to have mistaken a game -- a recreational pursuit -- for a character-building experience. People do not play games to be "taught" stuff. They play to have fun. It is true that some people have fun by being made to do homework, but they tend to have too much free time.
3. You are entirely correct that after finishing PvE, there is nothing more to do than PvP. This is why the GW Live team exists, to ensure a continuing stream of more content on the PvE as well as the PvP side. If someone who enjoys PvE runs out of things to do, they will leave. They will not magically start playing PvP just so they can continue indulging in the pleasure of clicking on the Guild Wars icon every day.
4. Nonsense. If fighting swarms of ice imps is a symptom of good design, then so is fighting teams of 8 SF eles in PvP. Gimmicks exist in PvE just as they do in PvP, and it's a sign of how the designers learned their craft and ditched these gimmicks that the levels are so much better in the later instalments. And big mobs of homogeneous enemies is just one factor; you can add monsters with huge patrol paths that make vanquishing a chore, or storylines that don't make sense, or henchies with crappy builds, and so on.
5. But, but, you were just saying that PvP is a constant change, as it's like PvE, but the mobs differ and use "tactics". However, apparently, constant change is now something that PvPers need to be given to them, rather than coming up with it themselves. In any case, you are correct that GW's focus is now on PvE rather than PvP. For some reason, though, you say that like it's a negative thing.
6. This would be where that "play for more reasons besides challenge" bit comes in.
7. What is this "versus" bit of which you speak? You make it sound as if competitive gaming was somehow a very important thing in Guild Wars PvE.
8. You seem to be confused. I thought you were complaining that people who don't use optimal builds and strategy can still win. And now you state that people use optimal builds and strategy because otherwise they can't win.

-- Hong 07:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Prophecies was far easier than Factions and Nightfall. There is a very simple reason for that: most of Prophecies has been made for low level characters, so you can actually outlevel your opponents; so if you keep losing to some enemies, just grind those last levels and suddenly you will have a level 20 character playing in an area made for levels 14, 17, or 19, making the game easier than it was meant to be. Just one of the many flaws Prophecies had (and in other hand, if you look through some GW forums you can probably still find very old discussions about how Factions was too difficult, with the beginning of Kainent City being too hard on new players, and some complains about how the double damage bosses were a sure way to have a party wipe).

Nightfall was also harder than Prophecies simply because the enemies were given a better AI; while at release the Prophecies enemies didn't even run from AoE (you could cast Firestorm and those Charr would just sit still and burn), at release the Nightfall enemies would kite very well. So well, in fact, that players kept complaining about it; one player on GWO kept repeating over and over how he and his heroes would be stuck running in circles behind the (perfectly predictable) AI, as if that were a sign of Arena Net's failure (as opposed to that player's own issues). Later such difficulty was nerfed, unfortunatelly.

I agree with Armond. PvE has been made way too easy now; while it's important to have choices, making it so nearly anything works just invites players to rush blindly through the game and begin asking for more and more. Erasculio 01:45, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

No, Prophecies at release was harder to complete than Factions and Nightfall. There are several posts I can recall on various forums about how insanely difficult it was to do Thunderhead Keep and the Ring of Fire missions with just henchmen. This was, of course, by design: the henchies were there to fill out the gaps, when actual players weren't available, not to function as a complete party. And when it comes to vanquishing, Proph maps are all gigantic mazes, which make it hard to track down elusive mobs; and several also feature massive swarms of homogeneous enemies. You also get far more snaring and healing by the monsters than in the later games; while this does increase the difficulty somewhat, it adds hugely to the frustration factor. (Note that I didn't mention Rotscale who as a one-off boss is a perfectly fine challenge, if somewhat tedious to kill.)

I will believe PvE is too easy when I see the stereotypical Frenzy/Healsig/Mending warrior boasting about how they vanquished Tyria without a sweat. Until then, this sounds just like more of the generic whinging that accompanies any change to an established system. -- Hong 07:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Not really. You could see complains about specific missions after the release of every new chapter, be it Thunderhead Keep in Prophecies, Vizunah Square in Factions (there's an old topic on GWO called "Vizunah Square: another THK?") or Gates of Madness in Nightfall. All those became easy later thanks to how players have simply learned to play, without Arena Net having to reduce the difficulty in them (as opposed to, for example, the Domain of Anguish, that has had its difficulty reduced). The large number of homogeneous enemies in Prophecies are actually easier to defeat than groups of balanced enemies (and are one of the signs of how the PvE in Prophecies had a worse design than in the later games), given how one counter defeats the entire group.

And ironically, this section is more complaining about an "established system" than about changes. PvE has been too easy for a long time now, leading people to skip through most of the content in the game and demand repetitive tasks because they rush through most of the content and then learn there's nothing left for them to do. That's why so much grind was introduced into Guild Wars; because playing the game without grinding is now so easy it may be done within a few days. Erasculio 12:53, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You will find that there were many people who gave up on GW because the Ring of Fire missions were too hard. Of course, you won't find them on Guru or GWO, which is where your viewpoint is incomplete. And you don't really think that people skip through most of the content because the game is "too easy", do you? If the game was magically made harder, do you think you wouldn't still get people wanting to be run through to Droks, or Sanctum Cay, or wherever? People skip through the content because they've seen the story before, and they just want to get to the part where they can buy max armour or green end-of-game items or access elite areas. You deal with running being an issue by adding more content, not by tweaking difficulty.

Assuming you're not just talking about runners: you will find demands for more content in any game around, to keep people hooked longer. Fallout 3 had DLC six months after release. Mass Effect is copping flak for only having one DLC pack. And so on. Making the game artificially hard to complete does not compensate for lack of content, it merely delays the recognition of such -- and that only works until people actually finish the game, and realise that that's all there is. After 4 years, GW is past the point where it can pretend that making stuff hard to do is the same as having more stuff to do. In fact, making the game too had just serves to discourage replaying it: if you know that finishing area X or mission Y was a royal pain in the butt, and doing it was a chore rather than a pleasure, then there's no incentive to do it again. I certainly know that having done Dzagonur Bastion HM for the Guardian title once, I'm in no hurry to do it again whether with this char or another.

The issue with the big homogeneous mobs is not so much that they are difficult (although you seem to think that everyone can counter, say, ice imps with equal ease, which is definitely not the case), as that they are annoying. A lot of game designers seem to conflate the two, and it's to Anet's credit that they recognised that you can have hard stuff that doesn't also make you want to punch the designers. -- Hong 13:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem here is that the hard parts aren't hard, and they're getting easier all the time. There are players who have beaten the hardest areas in the game on Hard Mode with a group of only mesmers or dervishes or monks without PvE skills or consumables or permaforms just to say they have. A lot of the areas that you're talking about making easier were explicitly designed to be really fucking hard in order to offer these players an actual challenge. And you want them to be made easier so the bad players, people who were never intended to be able to clear these areas without becoming better at the game in the first place, can beat them without bothering to improve. Why do you think you should be able to beat these areas if you don't have the skill required? --71.56.252.139 14:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Because Hard Mode is now a substitute for extra content. It may not be the best substitute possible (as noted above), but it'll do to keep people occupied until GW2 rolls around. As for the 3133t of the 3133t who want to be challenged or they'll, I don't know, go off and play Aion or something: that's what the 3133t areas are for. DoA, Slaver's, FOW, UW, Urgoz, etc. You do in fact see a more finely-grained progression in difficulty than NM/HM in the later games, with missions that are marked "elite", and I'm sure that's not a coincidence.

As for not having the skill required: I will bet money that the first time someone goes into a HM area with the same builds they used to finish NM, and without exhaustive prepping from the wiki or forums, 9 times out of 10 they will get wiped in minutes. Yes, that goes even with fancy stuff like PvE skills, consumables and so on. No matter what whingers say, Hard Mode, for someone who's only ever done normal, is just that: hard. What the fancy stuff does is make the adjustment process more accessible, so that people who wouldn't otherwise have bothered with HM, and might have quit the game because of that, can now give it a go. This is a good thing, because it keeps people playing, even if it might cheese off some diehards who don't appreciate how the young'uns don't have to walk through the snow, uphill, both ways, to complete HM. -- Hong 15:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue arises when people never take the "training wheels" off - something "designed to facilitate the adjustment process" becomes an outright crutch under the current circumstances, and instead of making "adjustment" easier, they just make the whole damned thing perpetually easy.

Section Break

You're making the same bad argument someone made about gimmick builds being okay in HA:

• "Running gimmicks helps people get to r3 so they can get real groups. It also teaches these people the maps and objectives. Gimmicks are okay because they help new players!"

The whole argument just goes out the window when you see people forming r8++ IWAY teams, or, in your case, DoA Cryways with imbagons. Raine - talk 18:00, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

And you'll notice that they have in fact nerfed Ursan, Cry and Shadow Form (albeit not enough to eliminate permas in the last case). Further, Cryway, imbagons and permas represent the absolute top of the broken-ness hierarchy, and I will again bet money that the vast majority of GW players never use these, at least not on a regular basis. Simply put, if you are not regularly trying to "beat" the game, as a truly competitive gamer would, there's no reason to resort to cheese.

That said, however, the fact that powerful skills exist (in general) kind of proves my point. When you are playing NM, you will never use Cry, imbagons etc because it's simply unnecessary. When you come to HM, you'll find that it is, well, hard. Therefore, you have to adjust what you bring, and how you play. So what do you want? Do you want the stereotypical Frenzy/Healsig/Mending wammo to continue frenzy/sigging his way through HM? Or do you want him to actually adjust his build to the circumstances? -- Hong 04:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Nerfing things is only important to those who think there are problems. And it's common sense that what you think is not at all what is true, because a) we don't know anything at all and b) nothing is true.

Imbagons aren't common? Are we playing the same GW? I got screamed at so badly because I ran Soldier's Fury and not an Imbagon, anywhere starting Yohlon Haven. I have ran an Imbagon twice and left it because it wasn't fun. Cryway is a build used not in general PvE: it's for "High-End" like The Deep, Urgoz etc. Permas are all around you; and yes, the only use they have is for grinding, but that doesn't mean Money Form isn't overpowered/broken. And let me break the news for you: the majority of GW does use those builds, because they make up for their lazyness. And another news breaker: people don't want/try to beat the game; you beat it once, and you don't want to beat it again. You only try to either make new ways to defeat the game or find Easter Eggs.

What you said in your second section proves our point strongly. You are making Hard Mode easier. And you do use Cryway and that stuff in NM. When you try to do Hard Mode without those overpowered skills, it isn't Hard Mode: it's just foes on steroids, or as described wonderfully: "Foes on steroids with overpowered skills fighting players with overpowered skills" — cba to find out. Now, for my point: When I go Hard Mode with my hero build, that I have tested before and logically should work (something around the lines of "SY!" Barrage-UA Party Prot-Healer-Fire Ele with random henchies), I do HM, I crawl through it. And then, a guildie told me "Let's vanquish Joko's Domain!". I instantly replied "it's a hard vanquish, y'know" and he told me "don't worry!". We went double discord. For some reason, the only DP we had was on my friend because his heroes and me lingered behind and he exploded, but other than that, it went flawlessly.

So tell me, how come? Because I playtested by team build beforehand in NM, and it worked along very greatly. My team had a balance of damage, healing and protection as every team build should. Titani Ertan 23:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Correct, imbagons aren't common. Count up how many paragon characters there are in GW. Now count up how many characters there are of every other class. I don't know about you, but I regularly see wars, eles, monks, and others outnumbering paragons by some margin. It may be that paragons are now pressured into playing imbagons because of a certain mindset that is exemplified by some persons in this thread; however, I see no evidence that everyone is suddenly playing paragons just because it's easier to win the game that way.

Your point about Joko's Domain is... what, exactly? That stuff like double Discord and Cryway is good? And just when was that in dispute? The point is that not everyone runs double Discord and Cryway, and ESPECIALLY not when playing solo (which is what most people do, most of the time). Similarly, I don't know about you, but "foes on steroids with overpowered skills" certain sounds a lot like "hard" to me. If you have never faced such foes before, then when you start facing them, you will certainly have to adjust your game. Why, you even said it yourself: when you used your team build in NM, it worked fine, but when you tried it in HM, it was... HARD. It is strange how things tend to work out like that. -- Hong 06:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

"The elite areas and Hard Mode are supposed to be for the good players."

Okay.

"People only run [the super gimmicky things] in the elite areas and Hard Mode."

What's your argument, again? Raine - talk 00:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, no. Hard Mode is a substitute for extra content. It is indeed harder than NM, and so forces a certain change in playstyle and the abandonment of sub-par builds, but otherwise, everyone should eventually be able to do it. The 3133t areas are for the good players. They should require good reflexes, tactical smarts and experience, and only the most efficient builds. If that phrase "the most efficient builds" tends in practice to devolve down to 1-2 gimmicky solutions, then there might be a problem for those areas. It is not an indication that PvE is "too easy" as per the OP.

Is this clear? -- Hong 06:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Stop being bad. Actually, let me amend that statement: stop having no clue about what you are talking about. That's worse than being bad. --Jette 07:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

See, if you'd just said "lolpve", that would have wasted far fewer syllables. -- Hong 07:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm not at risk of running anytime soon. --Jette 09:26, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Run, little Jette! Run! Or something. -- Hong 09:29, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

There was supposed to be an "out" somewhere in there. --Jette 09:34, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You're outing yourself now? o.O <-- I think I did that smiley right. I'm still learning all these funky 21st century dialects. -- Hong 09:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Wow. After all what we said, the 1001 reasons and examples of why PvE has become so easy, and you didn't even give a logical counter to it, besides "Hard Mode is replacing content". So, can you explain: "Imbagons aren't common? Are we playing the same GW? I got screamed at so badly because I ran Soldier's Fury and not an Imbagon, anywhere starting Yohlon Haven. I have ran an Imbagon twice and left it because it wasn't fun. Cryway is a build used not in general PvE: it's for "High-End" like The Deep, Urgoz etc. Permas are all around you; and yes, the only use they have is for grinding, but that doesn't mean Money Form isn't overpowered/broken." — Titani and "The issue arises when people never take the "training wheels" off" — unsigned, "You could see complains about specific missions after the release of every new chapter, be it Thunderhead Keep in Prophecies, Vizunah Square in Factions (there's an old topic on GWO called "Vizunah Square: another THK?") or Gates of Madness in Nightfall. All those became easy later thanks to how players have simply learned to play, without Arena Net having to reduce the difficulty in them (as opposed to, for example, the Domain of Anguish, that has had its difficulty reduced)." — Erasculio. Best regards, Snappy the Turtle (I should make that my signature) Titani Ertan 09:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Of course, you'll note that I never denied PvE was easy (under the right circumstances). I simply said that PvE was not too easy. Notice the difference.

1. Just because you have experienced people screaming at you to play an imbagon does not mean imbagons are common. It means that if you have a paragon char, there is an expectation that you will play an imbagon. For imbagons to be common, it would be necessary for paragons to be common. This is not the case, ergo imbagons are not common, even though they may form the majority of paragon builds actually being used (which I also doubt, since not every paragon player is doing or interested in "winning" HM either).
2. Exactly, Cryway (and perma) is not used in general PvE. Therefore, bringing it up in an undifferentiated thread about PvE is irrelevant. Now if you want to complain that it makes the elite areas meaningless, then you might have a point. However, you will then have to accept that this is an issue relevant only to the hardcore.
3. Vizunah and THK became easy if 1) you had the patience to figure out the tricks; and 2) were willing to group with other players so as to avoid the shortfalls of the henchies. You will find that there were plenty of people who never bothered. Of course, these people will not be found on Guru or GWO. And Prophecies certainly is objectively easier now compared to release, because they dumbed down the AI following the release of HM.
4. "Too easy" is a subjective call based on a certain philosophy of what GW ought to be, based on its design as it might have been 4 years ago. If a week is a long time in politics, 4 years is an eternity in videogaming. If you want HM to be the pinnacle of challenge, and nothing more, then it certainly is too easy. But there is nothing that says such a philosophy must hold, certainly not after 4 years of evolution of the game. In fact, I'd say that it's abundantly clear that Anet have moved away from that philosophy, since if general HM was indeed the pinnacle, there would be no need for areas like DoA, Slavers, etc.

Is this clear? -- Hong 11:48, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Define your "too easy". That should be interesting. Is "too easy" when anyone can do an Elite area, even if they don't know the basics of positioning? Is it "too easy" that when I decide to do one of the hardest vanquishes in the game, I can just smack a code and rick'roll it? Titani Ertan 11:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, the one who should define "too easy" is the person who made the original comment. But if you must, I'll just note that any definition that mentions elite areas in a thread about general PvE is rather missing the point. As for taking double Discordway into Joko's Domain: that's with another player, rather than heroes/henchies alone. Taking henchies as opposed to another player would very likely have resulted in a slog, as you had been expecting. The majority of hours logged in GW appears, as far as I can tell, to be lone players doing stuff with H/H; any definition of "too easy" would have to use that as a baseline.

And all that aside, I know that you certainly do need to be better at the game in HM than NM. I'm talking about things like pulling, kiting, aggro control, watching the compass, interrupting/protting/damage mitigation rather than simply powerhealing, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the classes, and so on. Even if you use broken stuff like Cryway, for instance, knowing how to coordinate the spike is pretty important, as is avoiding tangling with the monster ball. Are these skills too basic, to the point where they're barely worthy of being called such? Maybe, according to the hardcore; but you can certainly do a large part of NM without them. If HM demands more of the player, then it's doing its job. -- Hong 12:15, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You see, challenging isn't what Hard Mode is. When me and my guildie took double Discord, it was super easy. When I took Discord alone, it was easy.

Let's see... theres a game called Bionic Commander. You play someone with a bionic arm that kicks ass and stuff. Anyway, I pretty much Rick'Rolled the first chapters of the game because I used the 2 most powerful attacks: Death From Above and throwing rocks. When I got to some boss, I got creamed, because there was nothing I could throw, and Death From Above didn't work on him. Anyway, I deleted my save and started fresh, and this time I practiced on other moves. Before I noticed, I destroyed that boss when I slided on a bar and sprayed him, whilst dodging stuff. I finished the game because even though it was a challenging game, I was able to finish it because I had the skill required. But when I tried to get my way using the most powerful attacks all the time, I got stuck where skill mattered.

It's not the case in Hard Mode. I met people with no brain that told me that Ride the Lightning causes Exhaustion on the foe you use it on, but they had Legendery Vanquisher and I Have Many Leather Bound Books. You see, you don't need skill to use Sabway or Discordway or that crap. You only need your most powerful attacks, and this time, there is no boss that Death From Above doesn't effect. There is nothing that practically tells you "get a brain or get out". There's only half assed rewards. Titani Ertan 12:41, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1. The fact that you found vanquishing Joko's Domain with Discord to be "easy" is simply an indication that you are sufficiently familiar with HM that it has become second nature. Congratulations, you have won the game. Needless to say, this experience of yours is unlikely to be replicated by anyone who hasn't similarly familiarised themselves with HM. Evidence for this can be found in various comments here and in other places about how hard things like Joko's are; and yes, some of them were also using Discord.
2. The game design philosophy whereby bosses require completely different tactics to the rest of the game tends to be savaged quite a bit. This makes it seem like you need "skill", but really, you just need to memorise another set of moves for one part of the game. The only "skill" that you displayed was the persistence necessary to start over again when it became clear that the game had led you astray.
3. There certainly is skill needed to use Sabway and Discordway, although that may not always be apparent. The first times I tried my hand at vanquishing, I was wiping on a regular basis. More recently, however, I finished Poisoned Outcrops and killed Droajam without any wipes or consumables, and only a couple of deaths along the way (when fighting that big undead boss mob in the middle). I didn't use any skills that I didn't have access to the first time, nor had any of my title ranks increased. It is simply the added familiarity with HM that let me do the job more efficiently.
4. More generally, though, it is a feature, not a bug, that there's nothing that tells you "get a brain or get out". Because you have to get better at the game, but not THAT much better, more people are encouraged to give HM a go, which serves to keep them playing until GW2 comes out.
5. "Half-assed" rewards? Gee, I thought the rewards (if you mean titles) were completely imaginary. It's all about pretending to be elves dwarves, after all. -- Hong 12:58, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1. "Sufficiently familier with HM"? Me? The only time I vanquish is either when I need a time killer or when I find the name of the area is cool. Joko's Domain has a cool name, and I heard it was hard, so I took the most lol build: Discordway. And sorry, I meant before that "When I took Discord alone, it was too easy".
2. In the specific situation of Bionic Commander, that boss wasn't the grind another set of move, it was a warning sign saying "duuuddeee, for real?". And even if I didn't die from that boss, I would have been torn apart from the ape like mobs that followed. Man, they hit hard, and the 2 powerful attacks don't have the same effect on them. I would be evaporated by their gianty lasery thingy. I had to make new tactics to defeat them, learn how to use more attacks, learn to use the glide and spray that I used on the boss. Besides, the missile launcher can be very pew pew when used on Laserz Poweredz Monkeyz.
3. Yeah... the skills you need to use with Sabway and Discordway is to get your build right. That's all. And you can find that build right in the Discordway page, or get another build from Copy Pasta Wiki.
4. I never said it is a bug. I just said it's stupid. Why should someone finish the campaign if he doesn't know what luring, dodging, hit&run? That isn't a feature, that's stupidity. And ohhhh nooo!!!! people need a brain!!!! NOOO!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!
5. Where's me hoard? Titani Ertan 14:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

1. Well, as I said before: congratulations, you have won the game. Clearly there is nothing more that Guild Wars can offer you. Perhaps you should take this as a sign that you should find the challenge that you seek in other games.
2. No, you can most certainly still die with Sab and Discordway. People can and do have trouble with areas like Lornar's Pass, or Joko (your own experience notwithstanding), or Anvil Rock, or Sparkfly Swamp (a trick to that area is to raise as many minions as you can before fighting Mobrin, but these aren't things that will be obvious to everyone). It's still possible to get overwhelmed by sheer numbers if you get careless in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now perhaps you will attribute this to the failings of the players involved rather than any weaknesses in the builds, and that would indeed be the point.
3. You don't need a brain to play videogames. You just need money. Such is life in a capitalist society.

-- Hong 15:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Now what's your point? I'm an awesome Titan? I know that already. Titani Ertan 15:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Section Break 2

So, what, he's conquered GW because he's smart enough to go to PvX? He obviously has no real skill involving HM, as demonstrated - he just knew where to find Discordway. Doesn't that say something about the build or the game? The fact that people fail with discordway in (insert area here) just shows that they're either too retarded to be allowed on the internet or too retarded to say "HAY GUISE WE DIED TO X LET'S TAKE Y COUNTER THIS TIME". -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

A little from column A, a little from column B. --Jette 16:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I think you have miscalibrated your retardation meter. What you call retarded, I call the general state of the playerbase at large. It's a common experience among the hardcore that, having spent so much time among those with 3133t skillz, they tend to feel rather discombobulated when dealing with those not as dedicated as they. -- Hong 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The general state of the playerbase at large is mostly retardation ("OH HEY HERE'S A SHINY THING I THINK I'LL STAND IN IT", "OH HEY HERE'S A SKILL I BROUGHT AN INTERRUPT FOR LET'S IGNORE IT COMPLETELY FOR THE ENTIRE MISSION", "OH HEY I WAS TOLD THIS PLACE IS FULL OF MELEE SO I'LL BRING SS AND NOT ENFEEBLING BLOOD BECAUSE THAT'LL REDUCE THE DAMAGE I DO", etc). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

As some French d00d said, "Hell is other people". Now, was there a point to that, or were you just happy to see me? -- Hong 17:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not "elitism" or "I'm so gud at gaem and everyone else sucks because they don't spend 30+ hours/week", it's about sucking at common sense. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, this is not a problem limited to GW. So now you know: every game has to balance the demands of the casuals and the hardcore. But personally, I'd have linked this one instead. -- Hong 17:59, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Wait a second. You completely ignored my post. My claim was that it doesn't matter if you're casual or hardcore, because success comes via common sense. You then proceeded to claim that the problem was balancing the needs of the casual and hardcore, which doesn't address my claim at all. (The needs of the hardcore are more content, the needs of the casual are cheaper subscription fees.) -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Casual and hardcore are such useful labels. They can mean anything we want them to mean. I was using "hardcore" as shorthand to refer to the competitive hardcore, those who want as much challenge as they can get out of the hard areas of the game. Casual in this context refers to, well, everyone else. In this context, what the two sets of gamers want is indeed in conflict; one set wants things like HM to be exclusive, so that only those who enjoy pitting themselves against the toughest enemies will be able to survive there. The other wants HM to be a challenge but not an extremely hard one, that can be experienced as part of the general process of playing through the game. This should have been clear by now.

As for cheaper subscription fees: GW has none! So what exactly do you mean by that? -- Hong 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I mean that GW is casual-friendly, obviously.

Once again, casual vs hardcore doesn't matter at this point. Those who have common sense and use it find the game super-easy, and those who don't find it super-hard because they're that terrible. Please stop digressing from the point. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Also of note...

"I'll just note that any definition that mentions elite areas in a thread about general PvE is rather missing the point."

So, what, we should rebalance GW around Maguuma? We should rebalance WoW around the Barrens, or Naxx, or any of the other outdated content? We should balance GW around the zones leading to the dungeons? The entire PvE discussion, at this point (outside of bug reports) tends to focus on the important areas: Elite missions and dungeons. That's because they're, y'know, important, while the leveling areas aren't. Do you understand why the leveling areas aren't important? I honestly have to ask this.

The "levelling areas" concept doesn't really exist in GW post-Prophecies, for starters. You can be level 20 in Cantha within an hour, and for 3/4 of NF you should be max level. For another, the vanquisher and guardian titles involve those "levelling areas", if by that you mean everything outside the DoA/Urgoz/etc, and they require more time and effort than completing the storylines in the first place. Doing the elites is not the only endpoint for the GW experience. -- Hong 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I get it. You were just lawyering a specific point instead of talking about the spirit of the thing ("the hard parts of gw, including vanquishing, dungeons, elite areas, fow/uw, and doa = general pve", not "only urgoz and the deep = general pve"). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That was the spirit of the thing. This focus on only DoA or Slaver's tends to lose sight of how most people will not go anywhere near those areas, and likely never intend to do so. GW isn't like WoW, which has an ever-increasing level cap and actual new content to go with it. -- Hong 17:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't mean the game designers shouldn't focus on them. If you want a challenge, you go to the hard areas - period, end of subject. If you want to dick around without paying attention or actually playing, you can load whatever skills you want and go somewhere else. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That may indeed have been the design philosophy when HM was introduced, but I don't think it's operating any more. -- Hong 17:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't see that as a problem? You just said "The design philosophy may have been for people to have fun, but that was when HM was introduced, and I don't think that's what's happening now." -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, because the real problem for GW is a lack of a continuing stream of new content. This new GW Live Krewe might fix that, but in the meantime, what's happened is that HM has evolved to become a de facto content substitute: when you're done with NM, you do HM. Accommodating that is better than the alternative of having people abandon the game altogether because they've run out of things to do. -- Hong 17:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That won't solve the problem of the content being so piss-easy that an insane number of people have already decided they won't even bother with it because it's not fun. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

By "insane" I suspect you mean "a small number" (at least relatively speaking), since not that many gamers are really 100% driven by the drive for challenge. Or they won't bother with it, because they've already finished it and you only really need one Legendary Vanquisher title. -- Hong 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

How many people have tried GW and quit? A pretty huge amount. New content would theoretically bring them back - if it were actually interesting instead of just faceroll. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

---

Armond says (8:40 AM): this guy is trying to convince people that thk is hard if you don't know the "tricks"

Dejh says (8:40 AM): pve can be hard?

Armond says (8:40 AM): I linked him the part where I asked gaile if I macro'd it because fradigit and I found taking a shit to be more interesting than thk and let the heroes kill stuff

Dejh says (8:40 AM): are the 'tricks' attacking and healing?

Same goes for Vizunah. (Names changed to protect the super guilty.)

Tch. I did not say that THK is hard if you don't know the tricks. I said that THK WAS hard when Proph was released, due to smarter AI, crappy henchies, and suicidal Jalis. The AI has now been dumbed down, and the henchies have been supplemented with heroes, thus making THK a much more benign experience. -- Hong 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I never said otherwise. You're also the only one who seems to think THK was a challenge at release. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Hardly. There's threads dating back to 2005 about the craziness that was trying to keep Jalis alive with only henchmen (only two monk henchies, neither of whom had hex/condition removal, and crappy hench builds all round). But THK was only one mission; you had the same problem with the Ring of Fire missions, which were super hard unless you teamed up with other players. Which might well have been the intent, of course. -- Hong 17:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

And no one ever thought to bring player monks (or monk secondaries)? Why is it ok to require multiple people with brains for the ring of fire missions but not THK? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It's true that most of the problems can be circumvented by teaming up with other players. But that's sort of the point as well -- Proph at release wasn't very solo-friendly, despite the facade of allowing solo play via henchies. It's only in the more recent iterations that GW solo play has really become more interesting and taken center stage in the design process. -- Hong 17:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Wait, you're bitching that Guild Wars requires you to play with other people? -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm happy that Guild Wars now delivers on the promise of not having to play with other people. I fail to see why this is so controversial. WoW is pretty solo-friendly, for example, and owes much of its success to that; and Anet have always been at pains not to call GW an MMORPG (that they insist on calling it a CORPG is beside the point). Again, I suspect that it's always been the case that most people, most of the time, play solo. The game is simply recognising that fact rather than forcing them to do stuff they don't want to do, simply to finish the storylines. -- Hong 17:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

...You don't have a clue what you're talking about. WoW is solo-friendly? Sure, for the super unimportant stuff (leveling and dailies for the most part, which - surprise - go a bunch faster if you take a friend). Go ahead and solo Ulduar or Colosseum in 25-man version, tell me how far you get. Hell, try soloing Trial of the Crusader or SSC and let me know how you do. The fact that ANet insists on calling GW a CORPG is exactly the point - it's a cooperative online role-playing game. Cooperative assumes other people. I don't know how you managed to claim otherwise without being ignorant of the definition of CORPG. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Ahem. CORPG doesn't stand for cooperative, it stands for competitive. And the fact that you call everything in WoW other than the raids to be the "unimportant" stuff is rather telling, not to mention begging the question. -- Hong 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Ups! You're correct and I'm wrong, except it turns out that - once again - this shows that GW is mostly a PvP game, with the PvE just tacked on the side. And hey, guess what - it's kinda hard to do 8v8 PvP (again, what the game was designed from the ground up for) without cooperating with seven other people. So I guess the competitive gameplay also assumes other people (outside HB, which as everyone knows is a shit format that shouldn't have been introduced). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

---

Armond says (8:43 AM): As for taking double Discordway into Joko's Domain: that's with another player, rather than heroes/henchies alone. Taking henchies as opposed to another player would very likely have resulted in a slog, as you had been expecting.

Armond says (8:43 AM): oman

Armond says (8:43 AM): gw is supposed to be easy with two people but not one

Armond says (8:43 AM): it all makes sense now

Dejh says (8:44 AM): I think the last time I had trouble in PvE was when we were doing HM eternal grove, and half our team hadn't pve'd in months

Armond says (8:44 AM): I THINK THE LAST TIME WE HAD TROUBLE IN PVE WAS WHEN PIE AND FRADIGIT DIDN'T HEAL THE FUCKING GRYPHONS

---

Armond says (8:50 AM): There certainly is skill needed to use Sabway and Discordway, although that may not always be apparent.

Armond says (8:50 AM): looooooooool

Dejh says (8:51 AM): ...

Armond says (8:51 AM): The fact that you found vanquishing Joko's Domain with Discord to be "easy" is simply an indication that you are sufficiently familiar with HM that it has become second nature. Congratulations, you have won the game. Needless to say, this experience of yours is unlikely to be replicated by anyone who hasn't similarly familiarised themselves with HM.

Armond says (8:51 AM): <big><big><big>LOOOOOOOL

Armond says (8:52 AM): so where's my reward for using not-bullshit builds to conquer HM

Dejh says (8:52 AM): where is this? o_O

Armond says (8:52 AM): since I'm obviously so familiar with it

Let's expand on that last point for a second. GW doesn't reward you for not abusing all the broken shit; the rewards are simply for completing the goal, not for not making the goal an actual challenge.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

That point is part of what convinced me that not only was it perfectly okay to pirate music and software, but that it was stupid & evil not to do so. --Jette 16:35, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Naturally. You seem to be under the impression that I said anything to the contrary. Tell me where this occurred. -- Hong 16:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't see this as a (glaring) problem? Doing it right, anet should take notes. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:44, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Not really, no. Is it a problem? Yes; from a design principle point of view, there shouldn't be degenerate solutions that render big parts of the game trivial to complete. Is it a critical problem that renders the game worthless and unplayable? Hardly, because it's entirely possible to play and enjoy the game without resrting to those solutions. From what I see, there are still plenty of people doing the game in NM, or in HM using non-broken builds. It's because HM isn't so tough as to demand stuff like Discord/Sab/Cryway all the time, that you can get lax and still complete the area at the end of the day. Of course, the people I'm talking about are also unlikely to regularly read and post to Guru or GWO, do the Zquests 8 times per day, get involved in inter-guild drama, or otherwise indulge in the pastimes of the hardcore. -- Hong 17:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Casual players are faggots. Okay? Not joking. They are. Most "casual" people in general are faggots, mind you, but that's beside the point. Furthermore, you're delusional. I want you to try assembling a group in the ToA that isn't a retarded gay speedway gimmick without calling on *any* of your friends or guildies. Try it. I dare you. I double dare you, motherfucker. --Jette 17:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

They may be faggots, but they have money. Such is life in a capitalist society. As for ToA: see above re undue focus on elite areas. -- Hong 17:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Ragging on capitalism does not help to prove your point, it only proves that people are stupid and deserve to be exploited. It is entirely possible to balance the game and make money, in fact, it could be quite easily argued that keeping the game balanced would increase sales. Look at Magic and Starcraft. Both huge, more famous than GW, perfectly balanced (well, actually, fuck everything after Invasion block, tbh, but you know what I mean), and far more successful. It is not necessary to exploit dumbshits if you actually have a good product. --Jette 17:16, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, if we were starting from a clean sheet, it might be possible to (re)design GW to avoid some of the weirder bits of cruft that have popped up in the 4 years since release. But we are not starting from a clean sheet, and legacy issues always make things interesting. And Starcraft hasn't had any content updates for the last, what, 5 years? It's always easy to maintain balance in a frozen product. And it's interesting that you compare GW to competitive games, when it's far from clear that a majority of the playerbase has ever been competitive gamers. But let's roll with it. I wonder how the comparison would go if you were to talk about, oh, Fury for instance. -- Hong 17:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Who cares how "easy" it is to maintain balance? Starcraft is balanced to the point of not needing updates - that's an impressive feat, and certainly one GW is far away from reaching. Also, GW was designed "from the ground up" for PvP - the fact that it's slipped into a PvE game (and a shitty one at that, due in no small part to the enormous lack of content) is simply a design failure. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:43, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It may or may not be a design failure (as far as I'm concerned, it's a great thing), but it's also a fact of life. It doesn't look likely to change any time soon either. -- Hong 17:52, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I really fucking hope I'm getting hardcore trolled here. --Jette 17:55, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Hardcore? Casual, kthx. -- Hong 18:00, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Please, stop being terrible. :/ -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

It would appear you have also miscalibrated your terribleness gauge. It happens. -- Hong 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Is trolling really all you're capable of at this point? Try responding to the video link, or my comments about maintaining balance. The less of a challenge it is to maintain game balance the better, as it means it's more likely to be done right. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 18:47, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Response: Quit. All problems solved. You can go spray your semen on the wow wikis instead while those of us who don't have any problems enjoy our time here. You get OMG EPIC LOTS OF CONTENT [big] LOOOOOL and we get one less griefing idiot.

Although he has a point that PvE is too easy, well for me anyway, I just continue to play with setting my own challenges. Like How much can I aggro before my party members start to get freaked out. :p It doesnt take alot to be honest, just walking forward not luring with a longbow is enough these days. "OMG dude can you stop rushing?!?!" The rewards for being 'better' (sort of) than the rest in PvE are nearly nothing. There isn't anything really challenging, other than a few elite missions, or there are not enough people to find who don't want to play something silly. (Im glad my guild/alliance does lol). The Zaishen quests should've been that in my opinion, but Anet is too nice to people to let the mayority of people who don't want to play hardcore, also get their share. Maybe they should make extra rewards to Zaishen quests, where it says that you can only use 5 skills on every party member, or cannot use PvE skills, or something original other than.. "Do it in HM with the bonus" /snore. I personally like that idea, people get rewards, adjusted to their skill level Casual players still can do HM and get a fairly good reward. Handicap Mode could be a nice option. :p Ofcourse it's not really new content..... but yea that would be asking a tiny bit too much in my opinion. Ofcourse "the mayority" of casual players would start griefing themselves once things get too hard. Slightly sad if you ask me. Anet is doing a good job, keeping the mayority happy, they just might need to lay the bar a little higher for those few loyal people that want to push it farther. Otherwise I just do it myself. PUGs FTW :p But ofcourse if you are one of those people who think everyone playing casual in the game are retards, (usually adressed as PUGs are stupid etc etc) well then the problem lies with yourself, not the game lol. (213.17.21.103 21:20, 27 September 2009 (UTC))

Section Break 3

"Shroud of Distress is terrible" stop right there, turn around, walk, you've left the building

"Herp de derp, herpity derpity derp."

Noted. --71.56.252.139 13:10, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

4chan says hi and they want their idiots back

more img boards. fapchan.org,7chan.org, 12chan.org.--64.191.52.245 12:24, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

pick one and leave

Hello Hong. You will find that there were many people who gave up on GW because the Ring of Fire missions were too hard. Of course, you won't find them on Guru or GWO, which is where your viewpoint is incomplete.

The moment you said that, it pretty much told me your arguments hold no water, or any content worth reading whatsoever. Good day to you.

Pika Fan 18:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Er... and? -- Hong 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

well im sorry if im missing the point here but ive always been under the impression that PvP was the competative and the "Challenging" part of GW and that PvE was the casual 15 mins of killing AI controled monsters in your spare time? and to be honest all this useless ranting is just a waste of space beacause you can tell within the first handfull of posts that none of your opinions are going to change so whats the point? --Azreal of Skyrim 22:02, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

ive always been under the impression that PvP was the competative and the "Challenging" part of GW and that PvE was the casual 15 mins of killing AI controled monsters in your spare time?

You were wrong. ArenaNet intended for bad players to be able to easily farm both pve and pvp with overpowered, untested builds and skills. Since bad players make up for over 90% of the player base, that makes arenanet popular (but it doesn't make them money - if you're playing, they already have that.) Why they continue to make shitty updates without any forethought is beyond the comprehension of most rational people. ~Shard 06:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

"all this useless ranting is just a waste of space because you can tell within the first handfull of posts that none of your opinions are going to change so whats the point?" — Azreal of skyrim The point is to convince the other side that you are either more well backed up or to completley convince him of my/our opinions and/or convince the ones reading this. Titani Ertan 06:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The point is to convince everyone that all you really have is an opinion, or that you're stupid. "PvP is so bad, it will never change, Anet is dumb and doesn't listen to me, but I'm gonna stay here and debate it anyway." Also Pikafan has no place in "good arguments" or "content worth reading" either so, wat?

tl;dr

→ moved from Talk:Game updates

^---Chaos- 14:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Illusion of Pain

• "After 10 seconds, that foe is healed for 45..150."
• "to make it more useful against characters with hex removal" - dev update.

It heals when removed by hex removal, so both description and dev update is wrong, bug? --Cursed Angel 11:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. :p --Super Igor flame my shove sin bar! 11:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I am

so making a pet ranger for pve. :> --Super Igor flame my shove sin bar! 11:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

what else can you do with it... - Wuhy 13:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

play with a build.--64.191.52.245 12:16, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Paragon the clown class

Another paragon nerf. This is getting comic. The shittiest class of GW, played by a total of 4 people (3 of them are testers for the nerfs) keeps getting beaten up with every new update!

lol. If you haven't a clue why paragons are the most overpowered class in the game, you really shouldn't be playing GW PvE (as I'm 90% sure you don't PvP at all). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 15:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. But that picture did make me giggle. <>Sparky, the Tainted 16:03, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I enjoy playing paragon PVP, especially RA, TA and HB, my para just shines there, than for PVE my para has a lot more than 5 builds, and they never rely on a single non-paragon skill. Zaqwsx 16:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Those aren't PvP, and there are excessively few builds in all of GW that use only skills from their primary profession and don't suck. Paragons have none. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 16:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Your entire argument here actually centers around a single A Kurzick/Luxon Warrior PvE-only Skill. Every other attempt at a Paragon build which DOESN'T contain that key ingredient to the infamous "Imbagon" will get you laughed out of any serious mission area. --ilr 22:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to assume you played a bar with 0 Spear Mastery, 14 Motivation, 13 Leadership, with 7 shouts/chants triggering Finale of Restoration. In which case you're providing random, often unnecessary heals (read, overhealing) when you could be filling both an offensive and defensive role to the party. Pump some points into Spear Mastery and stop playing half a Paragon. Racthoh 16:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Since targeted healing is rare done by any paragon skills (except the echos) the only healing you can consistantly do as a para is the party wide healspams... so lets take that option away as well... lets kill motivation all together since all it does is overheal... MrPaladin talk 17:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

What's a shade of gray, Paladin?

Try running a bar that's half motivation superheals, half spear mastery superdamage. You might be surprised. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:04, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yer I did go overboard... but when ya spec into your spear your gonna either reduce those super heals (motivation) to not being worth while or reduce your energy return (leadership) to use them.... now if other people in your party want to pick up the slack to help heal thats super... but usually you have partys screaming for two healing monks (lol) because their builds are hyped up with 90% offence 0% defence and a res... MrPaladin talk 17:08, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I dunno if you get it. You can run 11+1 lead-10+1+1 motiv-10+1 spear and have some pretty awesome heals, and then your monks can be somewhat more bad while you spearchuck. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:13, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

A 14/10/10 spec drops about 20 health at most off of each heal assuming previously the bar was run with 14 Motivation as opposed to 14 Spear. An even smaller gap in the heals with Armond's spec. Traditionally classes will spec highly into an attribute to reach important breakpoints but the Paragon has very few skills with powerful enough effects to warrant such attribute distribution. Finale of Restoration is a very unreliable heal as whatever shouts/chants fill the bar are going to have different ending conditions. Personally when I play Monk I'd run LoD, Seed of Life, Heal Party, but not all three, and I'd also only run two spot heals top. Why a paragon, a midline class, would run more skills dedicated to healing than a backline character doesn't make any sense. Let's also not forget that those spot heals are used on demand, not randomly as the shouts/chants fall off or end prematurely. Racthoh 17:20, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

So we agree, for a pargon to bother healing... motivation needs buffs and not nerfs? MrPaladin talk 17:28, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

No. For paragons to be balanced at healing, they need nerfs. Currently their healing (and other utility, like SoP) is way too good and doesn't even need a whole lot of spec. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 17:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Motivation needs skill reworks. Basically every skill is some version of heal x amount if y, or restore x energy if y, with the odd skill here and there breaking from the mold. Racthoh 17:53, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I can count the number of times I did GvG on my two hands and even I knew that Finale of Restoration was gonna get this nerf. It was painfully obvious to anyone with half a brain that used observer in the last month. Aevar talk contribs 17:10, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Illusion of Pain & Confusing Images

Great buff :) --Soulforged 16:05, 7 August 2009 (UTC) (forgot to log)

It that... a joke? I don't get it. Titani Ertan 20:41, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Not a joke at all, go check these skills, they are much better than what they were before --Soulforged 20:45, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually they're not really. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 20:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Illusion of Pain is pretty nice can cause alot of troubles if you know how to use it right, while confusing images is quite cool (although i'd take Arcane Conundrum if i want to slow down a caster) but sometimes it might help against signets/self healing skills etc. They are fun skills to use :) --Soulforged 20:51, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

In a best-case scenario, illusion is out-healed and confusing is bad. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 21:07, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Not if you don't let it end/get removed, and confusing images ain't that bad you can maintain it (with MoP) which is still quite useful --Soulforged 21:18, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

How do you prevent the enemy from removing a hex that will nearly always be on top? Also, confusing images' effect is bad, end of story. Use Distracting Shot or Diversion. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 22:50, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Armond, he never mentioned high end PvP, both are pretty in aspenwood and PvE where OMG-DIVERSION-IS-THE-BEST-SKILL-AND-SHOULD-BE-ON-EVERY-BAR is shit. --Cursed Angel 00:03, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You cast it with a cheap cover hex and recast it again with it (MoP helps), about confusing images, how did you even compare it to diversion and dshot they're not even related to this skill, it doesn't make sense --Soulforged 01:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I compared a skill that reduces the number of casts a foe gets out in a certain period of time to two skills that do the same thing, only aren't limited to non-spell, non-attack skills (i.e. shit skills with the exception of, like, sig malice).

Also, lolpve. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 03:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I lied, it increases the cast time of chants. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 03:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I also came off as slightly dumb. I didn't count confusing images as affecting spells because there are much better ways of knocking out spell cast times (although dshot's power lies partially in its ability to knock out, say, Wounding Strike or an assassin's chain for a good while, which still makes it superior to confusing). -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 07:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

lolpve.. yet he never mentioned pvp at all, they're both better than before and dshot isn't halfway related. think before you throw yourself into every single discussion about balance or whether an update/skill is good or bad, because you do come off as slightly dumb. --Cursed Angel 12:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Ranged Bull's Strike

Expect more water eles in pvp soon Koda Kumi talk 16:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

After the initial "ZOMG SWEET BUFFS," KD eles will return to Mind Shock and the lower end pvp player base will realize the skill is wasted on their bar and that water trident would be better to run.~>Sins WDB 17:38, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah SG is nice but 20 recharge (is that what it is now?) is too much for it to be good. 86.26.103.165 20:04, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Armor of Sanctuary

• PvP Increase recharge to 12 please. Mo/W and Mo/A defenses have decent down times, hell even Mo/Es with KA have downtime with disenchant.
• PvE 1337N355 for 55.~>Sins WDB 17:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

This is for what and how then when for maybe it's to at next anyway.

just reduce weakness to 1...5...6 tbh - Wuhy 18:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

lower every number on every skill to 1

1% 1 0.25¼ 1. Wail of Doom. For 1 second, target foe's attributes are reduced to 0.

Sounds fun. Raine - talk 19:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

1% 1 1 1. Wail of Doom. For 1 second, target foe's attributes are reduced to 0. more like - Wuhy 20:32, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

1% 1 1 1 . Blinding Surge. Deal 1 damage and inflict Blind (1 second) on target foe and 1 foe within 1 earshot. 1% armor penetration. I see ship smoke on the horizon. Titani Ertan 20:47, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

It said "reduce to 1", not "change to 1"; numbers already below 1 wouldn't be affected. Raine - talk 22:43, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You're terrible. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 22:52, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

What is "1 earshot"?

XTH

So.....are we all forgetting about the XTH? I read somewhere that they had already figured out how many points we're supposed to receive, so why haven't we received them? 24.26.253.105 18:16, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

If you actually read anything, you would know that if you didn't recieve your points already, you won't get them until they fix the XTH. It's been said several times now. Drago 20:41, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

You're never getting points ever again from a XTH. Anet secretly nerfed it. This is confirmed don't worry about it because you'll get banned and assassinated, Anet has Asuran Scan. Put sixteen into shadow arts and maybe just maybe you can be on the spaceships too.

Lol x4. Anet killed XTH PUBLICLY because it was to buggy. Next. --64.42.210.161 22:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Xunlai Tournament House is no more, its sad... for some people, I am very, very happy about it, z keys will go back to normal price (5-5.5k). Which will do a little good for the (fuucked up) economy. Tiberium 14:36, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

'Normal price' is only what people make of it. --Arduin 21:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

+1

Meta is absurdly high damage + enchant stripping, obvious solution? Pointless buffs, one nerf. Your vision is astounding. --71.56.252.139 10:20, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

at least now my dervish has a skill related to dervishing, and my pet does 33% more damage and casts Barrage

No Tonic Sound

I know our yeti's annoyed a lot of people, but by making every tonic mute is not the solution for this problem. All the tonics should receive their sounds back, except the abominable tonics, they yeti's sound can be fixed, ANet has enough time. Tiberium 14:39, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

They could've just made it so that only the person with the tonic can hear it. --smøni 15:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

yes, this is the solution, now stop whining - Wuhy 20:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

crude and not effective but if I was them, i too would have taken a lazy solution.--64.191.52.245 12:14, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's not the first time they've been lazy. --Saberhagen (My Talk) 18:19, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow

→ moved from Talk:Game updates:August 2009

wow a lot of buffs even to some assassin skills. I like the upate to comfort animal as well70.131.34.165 22:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

yes the pet update makes so you might... and i say might very carefully, make pets good. but the assassin update to Pheonix Stike is soooooooo nice! GRRRRARG 22:56, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

I run a PvE tankmaster for my primary anyhow; basically the game just gave me a big wad of extra pwnage. Unfortunately, while "fixing" Comfort Animal, they've now introduced a "problem" with Heal as One - in that it doesn't do the same. (AUNTMOUSIE) 02:52, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

And Revive Animal is now completely useless in PvE. Not that it had much use otherwise but still.

AMAHGAHD

→ moved from Talk:Game updates:August 2009

Look @ Divine Boon. :O --Super Igor flame my shove sin bar! 22:58, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Golden Phoenix Strike

→ moved from Talk:Game updates:August 2009

Anyone else noticed the ingame description for Golden Phoenix Strike states: ...and all adjecent foes take 0 damage?

Why The Ongoing PvP Ranger Hate?

→ moved from Talk:Game updates:August 2009

I fail to understand why in 3 out of the last 4 updates, Ranger PvP skills took a major shot from the nerf bat??? You can't tell me that Rangers were THAT overpowered that they needed to be nerfed into two roles: interrupters, and degen spammers. It has been truly sad to see how Rangers have been treated in PvP while overpowered crap like RoJ remains untouched. /QQ mode off AnClar 05:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Bad idea to use RoJ in such an arguement...Unless you're in JQ that skill fails in PvP for anyone with a brain. Haru 16:29, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

AnClar, it's clear you have never done a GvG in your life. Do a few of those and you will quickly understand why rangers receive continuous weakenings. ~Shard 22:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me reword that first line Shard: "AnClar, it's clear you have never done PvP in your life." Titani Ertan 23:14, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

looks like shard, titani nor haru dont know why.--64.191.52.245 12:11, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Don't know why... his argument wasn't able to tingle the dirt on logic's shoe? Or don't know why you wrote this statement? I don't know the latter. Titani Ertan 17:46, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

LOL @ comments. Especially the supposedly clairvoyant Shard and Titani. Amazing how you think you know what I have or haven't done in my over 4 yrs on GW. You have your opinions, fine. FYI, as a casual player, I managed to attain r4 Hero, and r1 Glad. Yeah it ain't much, but so much for your comments on whether or not I've PvPed. And yeah, I don't GvG any more 'cause I don't have the time but I did a lot a couple of years ago, whatever. As for my viewpoint it ain't just mine, other peeps agree with me. But keep your 1337 attitude, it's yet another of the things that is finally making up my mind as to why to quit GW. I'm not going to waste my breath trying to carry on a reasoned, rational discussion, or even flaming you two. I have better things to do with my time.AnClar 19:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Rank doesn't say shit about skill, and I have R0 Hero and Glad, so me 1337ing over you doesn't catch here. As for our flame, look at what you said: "Oh no!!! An overpowered skill got nerfed, so I say that it didn't deserve it because the profession got nerfed before!!". In case you didn't realize yet, it doesn't matter if they nerf the profession repeatedly: if there is an overpowered skill, it is supposed to be nerfed. And if you did PvP, how can you say that Melandru's Shot didn't deserve the nerf, as blind as it was? See here and here and maybe even here. Titani Ertan 19:42, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Lol @ the idea of quantity of game updates over quality. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 20:02, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

"I fail to understand why in 3 out of the last 4 updates, Ranger PvP skills took a major shot from the nerf bat"

There is one possible way you can fail to understand why rangers are overpowered - and that reason is that you don't understand how pvp works.

"other peeps agree with me"

The whole world could agree with you and you'd still be wrong. ~Shard 22:50, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

fyi, titani has barely logged into GW in a fair few weeks, and has not logged a single minute GW time within last week. And he wasn't known for pvp prowess when he was on. He does however have a reputation as a fun to play with PvE ranger and sin....but that reputation is fading into history sadly. I think the nerfed skills mau have nerfed him. :( 94.173.47.130 15:52, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Of, course. Care to tell me which person in RIP are you? Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 15:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Well Jaime, I may not have been known in RIP for PvP, but that's because we never went too deep into PvP. HA and GvG used to be fun pre-Factions, but they're not as fun now. Nerfed skills have nothing to do with me leaving; it's A.net and their lack of gray cells. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 16:04, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

LAWL User:Kammy, Mel shot had no reason to be nerfed. Still works just the same wish an attribute or two higher marksman. QZ had no reason to be nerfed long ago. I can clear all ataxes hm in uw with r/rt spirit spam build but took much longer with qz/trap build. Face the fact anet is making no sense atm. If they would nerf anything a ranger can do make vamp touch/bite non-touch skills or negate the expertise effect. I still run it in RA if I want to be gay, but normally run magebane/savage/distract/troll/antidote/power drain/power spike/res to be leet.

Sharpen Daggers

→ moved from Talk:Game updates:August 2009

So why the change? Now I can't use the Bow or a Scythe with Sharpen Daggers and Way of the Master. Why, was it really that powerful in PvE?

Common sense. "Sharpen daggers", not bows or scythes. Thats why the change, imo. -- Wandering Traveler 02:02, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, rename to Sharpen Weapons and be done with it. Don't nerf a cool skill.

Assassins shouldn't even be in this game, you're lucky Anet hasn't removed them entirely. ~Shard 22:59, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

"assassins shouldn't even be in this game"

Yes...

"you're lucky ANet hasn't removed them entirely"

...and this is where we start moving into the realm of UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. --Jette 00:05, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

omg we have a lavender quote template?! Raine - talk 00:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I just made it last night. The 4chan quote template was for switching quotes, i.e. someone says "lol mesmer are yoosliss" gets changed to >I AM A HUGE FAGGOT PLZ RAPE MY FACE, the new one is for actual quoting. --Jette 00:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

you can also use fapchan.org.--64.191.52.245 12:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

"Baww assassins everyone listen to my ridiculous opinions - shard"

Is that lavender? Maybe I'm going colour blind but it looks more like turquoise/teal/dull murky light blue to me. Lavender is more purple. 86.26.103.165 20:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It was changed. See Template:Quote2's history. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 20:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

God it's in critical strikes, didn't they introduce WotM to allow assassins to expand into other proffesions weapons? I guess im stuck with 0 conditions crit barrage now. Haru 14:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

DarkAura + Masochism

Why has no one even mentioned this yet?? ...do I need to spell out what happens when you combine these with a spammable sac spell? ...PS: F&@# all you 600's, Discords, & anyone else who's gonna find more ways to abuse this. Where's my new Ranger and Paragon Imba Nukes? I'm sick of Mo/N's and N/Mo's having ALL of the Armor ignoring damage! --ilr 04:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

If Discord teams are saying the 3-4% adds up quickly I doubt there is anyway to abuse Masochism with Dark Fury. But yeah, I was thinking about it too using a team of N/Mos using Selfless Spirit and mashing something like Reversal of Fortune or Healing Whisper on each other. I imagine it would produce a similar effect to the odd Contagion + Foul Feast build that was being run in GvG a while back. Racthoh 04:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

So now, a Rat will take less damage than a human

Lolwut? -Swift Aura 04:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Ever tried stepping on a bug?? Imagine the bug just a little bigger. --Jette 04:21, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Scientiffic Fact: A hotdog with Rat in it will take twice as long to explode in a microwave --ilr 05:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

"random bullshit about rats"

What? Clearly one of us is retarded, as I'm making absolutely no sense out of any of that. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 04:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe he is referring to the fact that pets in PvE now take 33% less damage. --Jette 04:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

That was my initial understanding until I realized that a rat would have to be a pet for his conclusion to be accurate. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 05:18, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

It's just another way in which Guild Wars imitates D&D. It's a longstanding tradition in the latter that housecats and other small animals are more dangerous than humans.... -- Hong 05:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You've obviously never played a game of D&D in your life, or if you were, your GM is smoking so much crack. --Jette 05:29, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Heh. 3.5 rules -- Human lvl 1 commoner: AC 10, 2 hp, unarmed attack +0/1d3 dmg. Cat: AC 14, 2 hp, 2 claws +4/1 dmg + bite -1/1 dmg. It's true that this situation no longer holds in 4E, but that's a rather different paradigm at work. -- Hong 05:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Those are commoners. They exist to be slaughtered. They're not humans, they're redshirts. --Jette 05:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Nooo!!! I am not Peasant #53227! I am a FREE MAN!!!! -- Peasant #53227 05:48, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm still interested in where one can tame a rat, but sufficient lulz were provided. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 07:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Jahai Rat. --Jette 07:15, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I lol'd. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 07:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Welcome to two years ago

Shroud of Distress buggy?

A great idea to include the HP regeneration, just seems implemented a bit badly.

Takes 3 to 5 seconds for the skill to figure out I have less than 50% health. By the time it does decide to kick in the regen, I'm already dead and on the ground.

Curious to know if these updates get playtested before release. Flipper 07:28, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

WoW has a similar thing - some classes gain additional attack power based on their armor, but to save server stress it only calculates the bonus when it checks the strength stat, which is only once every 20 seconds. Not likely to be changed as ANet likes its servers uncombusted.

Also, if 3-5 seconds of +8 health regen is the difference between life and death starting at 50% health, get better monks.

-- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 07:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Brave players are born from double digit health hardships. Racthoh 11:44, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Lolwat

Were they drunk or something? Epic update. Dark Morphon 10:39, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

They were high, too. They got a big baggy from Africa, where that stuff makes all people go topless. 82.81.125.42 10:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

You clearly don't know anything about original african tribe cultures. And what makes you think most drugs are from Africa? Like people don't produce those all around the world, legally or or not. Or are you one of those racist retards? - J.P.Talk 12:17, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually most drugs come from middle Asia and South America. 83.131.63.185 22:31, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

So I heard that the African stuff are the strongest. And see Texas: pretty much they are all high when they come back from Africa (or the "African Store"), and tops are dropped very often there. You can go topless there. Titani Ertan 22:35, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Topless covrette?! Raine - talk 21:02, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Boooooo

BOOO --99.243.162.52 22:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

You are two months early

Actually

Not a bad update, imo. This seems to be getting a lot of stick and yes, there are things that are maybe too much (Masochism (PvE), anyone?), but there's a lot of good too. Assassins get some AoE to make them better in large-scale settings (e.g. PvE & 8-man), something they've been lacking, Sand Shards and Winds are nice now (SS' low damage balances out it's excellent mechanic) and some languishing ele skills got some love. OK, there was a healthy helping of bugs, but overall I think this update was all right. 81.109.208.56 15:35, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

This is a "good update" is you make a Fast Paced game instead of a skill based game. A.net added more damage than was needed instead of making more utility, therefore making you need to have skill in order to kill a group of mobs. A "good update" now should be an update that at least touched current meta and made it a little bit less overpowered and not introducing new problems. Did this update tell something about meta? . Did this update introduce new problems? Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 15:45, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

PermaSF is the only "Meta" ... this update said nothing about the Meta. It didn't buff it, or nerf it. So I think your point got lost in translation and you should start over --ilr 20:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh yeah? Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 20:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

most of those are team builds or out of date... except for the assn ones ironically --ilr 19:30, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

OK you gotta see this in degrees. This maybe wasn't a good update, but it wasn't a bad one. Yes, there's the downside: Some OP things weren't changed and some skills were buffed mre than is strictly necessary with raw strength rather than skill-requiring usefulness. However, 'sins lacked AoE or pressure, which they got, dervs got some interesting stuff too, which they lacked, and pets in pve were made nice (if arguably overbuffed). Plus almost all of those ele changes were buffed, but not a single one is really OP. Yeah, Mesmers and maybe Rangers could use some more attention et.c. and SF needs to be changed et.c. but looking at this page there are reams of bad comments which I don't feel are truly deserved. 81.105.65.18 11:13, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

"'sins lacked AoE or pressure" Assassins got pressure. Assassins don't need more pressure; especially not AoE one. You see, when you take single target pressure and make it AoE pressure, problems arise.

"dervs got some interesting stuff" If by interesting, you mean "LOOOL lots of red barring on melee class LOOOL Mo/D LOOOL IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A DRAWBACK LOOOOOL", then yes, they got interesting skills.

"and pets in pve were made nice (if arguably overbuffed)." Pets in PvE got buffed. The difference between "buffed" and "made nice", is that "made nice"="viable option". What would you prefer? Taking a semi-warrior that doesn't anyway take too much damage as pressure isn't concentrated on him, or take Utility and Damage skills, making your chance of winning greater, and your attribute spread more peaceful? Pets are skill bar clugging. They require at least 1 skill, and to make good, at least 3 skills. Add a res, and you got 4 skills left. Attribute spreads matter: you lose ~10 damage per attack, and it makes a difference. Once again, the enormous difference between Blizzard and A.net shows: Blizzard knew this problem, even though in WoW you can have more than 8 skills, they made a Pet Skillbar, in which you have 3 (or 4, can't remember) pet skills. On your main bar, you just need 1 skill; the skill that allows you to have a pet.

It wasn't a good update, it wasn't a bad one. It was just a stupid update. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 11:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Pets are OPd as fack in PvP, and formerly underpowered as fack in PvE. Now they're only slightly underpowered. If they made it so you only needed one skill to bring it (check), it left a corpse (needs to be done) and could be effective while alive, people might bring them. For PvP, though, they really just need to be toned down or removed entirely. The ranger profession as a whole needs to be reworked, actually, but I really haven't the time. Or, y'know, ability to change the game. --Jette 12:53, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

"It was just a stupid update." Personally, I disagree.

Sins have always been supposed to be the single-target-ganking class... that made them OP in HB, for example, but poor in, say, HA (excepting certain builds) or PvE. ANet clearly saw this problem and took steps to remedy it (though maybe the overdid some things).

Pets are viable in PvP but weak in PvE. ANet saw this and buffed them in the latter but not the former.

As for derv skills, some are now more effective on Monks admittedly (and will probably wind up like Shield Bash and Warrior stances), but take Sand Storm. It creates an AoE exactly when and where you might want it instantly without the need for a teammate, but is tempered with poor damage (however the low cost and recharge make it easy to use). To my mind, that's a good thing. Winds of Disenchantment is likewise more useful now.

Now, however well (or badly) you think ANet have handled these things and however many things there are that they haven't handled (*cough*ShadowFormhexwayswayiwayetc*cough*), an update where ANet have made changes for which there is a clear and sensible rational seems not to be a "stupid" update, but rather a rational and sensible one. As always, more work is needed, but I don't think the update deserves all the bad press it's got (some of it maybe, but it deserves a little bit of praise too). 81.105.65.18 10:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) "Sins have always been supposed to be the single-target-ganking class... that made them OP in HB, for example, but poor in, say HA or PvE". Assassins are OP in HB do you know why? Because of Shadow Stepping: the ability to ignore any positioning left, abuse the lack of Z-axis, and simply land on your enemies face. Also, did you know something? The concept of HB isn't so well planned. BUT, I can praise it and say it is probably the only area in PvP that you need to bring a defensive and offensive build. Back to subject, Assassins aren't crappy in PvE. I find them very good, actually. They are probably the only profession in PvE that you need to think in order to operate properly (except for a few instances, of course). Assassins are bad in HA because they don't fit in the meta. The frontline either needs uber defense options or uber attack options. Assassins are in the middle; they're the glass cannon.

Yeah, A.net buffed pets. But not in a way to make them an option, which is what they should have done. Read my previous comment.

"As for derv skills,..."No no no. You didn't get my comment. A good example that I can give you is when I went with friends into an HM area (Old Ascalon). I was a monk, he was a Dervish, an Ele and another Monk (Smiting hybrid). Now, we all made it so our HP and armor were higher than the Dervish's, so that mobs will target him. I was heavy on enchants, and the Dervish never ran out of Health or Energy; infact, he was always extremley high on both. So, lets inspect: I with enough short enchantments kept a Dervish high on energy and Health, without him bringing one self heal, and he didn't have any bar clugging problems. So, imagine that, but without me? The dervish can ring enormous self heals, without any drawback.

No no no. This update fits the description "An A.net update". An update which buffed skills blindlessly, making balanced skills overpowered. An update which didn't hit any problem what so ever, and when they did touch an overpowered skill, instead of fixing the problem, they just asked the Magic 8 Ball what to do. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 12:14, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

OK OK, HB + Shadowstepping = broken, yeah, but regardless of that sins have always worked better in 4v4 than 8v8, and in PvE your target is often dead before you can get a chain off (unless it's a boss or something). Dervs do have great self-heal options, but if I imagine the situation you described without you there, I imagine a derv who'll be dying unless he cloggs up his own bar with heals. Besides, problems with mysticism etc were already here before this update, so just add that to the list of things it didn't fix rather than things it's broken (most of the derv changes didn't give "classic" dervs anything more OP than they already had). The point I was making was that while this update didn't deal with all the problems in the game, while it argueably overbuffed certain things, and while it hasn't buffed all the underpowered skills, it has given us some interesting new options, it's clear tried to address things that were problems, and it hasn't introduced loads of really OP things (I mean like PS and PnH). So yes there are things worth complaining about, but that's what's happened all over the rest of this massive page, so I wanted to point out the good aspects of the update in an attempt to temper that a little, that's all. 81.105.65.18 17:01, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

If you really wanted to point out the "good" things in this update (or any other), focus about changes that didn't buff balanced skills. Changes that didn't make an unviable options still underpowered. Changes that didn't deserve to be. And when you think about those changes, don't think of them "ohh goodie! moar power creep iz like good and Dervishes can now have Healing and Damage without bar compression!", think of them from many different views. That's what A.net failed to do repeatedly: look at an update from many different views. And whats more, they didn't learn from mistakes. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 18:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Gotta agree with that, Mysticism didn't get improved. Only Conviction & Piety really got buffed, and neither one of those is in Mysticism. A W/D still outdamages & out-tanks a Dervish and Dervishes still make lousy team support Primaries (even lousier now that Meditation got nerfed) --ilr 19:30, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

I lol'd something fierce at the idea of tanks and self-heals on non-split characters. Then I lol'd at the idea of splitting to take out base NPCs. ANet is hilarious. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 00:30, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I can sum all those arguments and more using this link: [3]. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 00:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, man. Can you imagine? That'd be great. The reason human society functions, the main reason people "get along" in day-to-day life, the reason anyone has ever gotten anything done throughout all of human history is because you can get your ass kicked. Most people are well-adjusted enough that even though they may look on in amusement or disgust at someone making an ass out of themselves, they won't bother to correct the situation other than with a harsh word or two. But there's always someone, always some ticked-off serial-killing violent-video-game-playing alcohol-imbibing porn-watching hooker-dismembering sumbitch having a bad day who just might knock your fucking teeth in. If there was some inherent restriction that prevented people from killing and maiming each other, society would collapse. As bad as everything on the TV looks when you see people starving and them prepubescents killing each other in Africa and the state of the slums, and the crime in the street and the drugs and all those losers on jerry springer; it's still better than living in an MMO. I'm telling you, if people couldn't viciously torture and murder each other the world would very quickly start to look like 4chan. --Jette 01:10, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I lol'd so hard. Titani Ertan {{Snappy the Turtle}} 01:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Lol 81.105.65.18 07:53, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Sway Ascent?

I really don't like coming here just to flame but seriously, WHAT is going on here? We've endured blood spike, teaseway, iway metas in the past 6 months just to see a new ridiculously overpowered sway meta dominate HA? I was looking forward to having one double fame weekend where most of the teams in HoH were balanced but nope, we had to get this craptastic update that should have been fixed the day after. Even Izzy recognized a few of his buffs were terrible and had them fixed the day after (e.g. first WoTA buff). This is pathetic and indefensible. It's so frustrating to see these roll-your-face-on-the-keyboard-as-fast-as-possible metagames time after time that are a direct result of hilariously bad skill buffs. Does anyone who alledgely play test updates before they go live actually play GW?

http://i28.tinypic.com/e5s7xz.jpg

^Yes indeed, one player slamming you with 29 attack skills (6 fox fangs, 2 leaping mantis, 2 exhausting, 8 jagged, 11 death blossom) in under 20 seconds screams balance. Really quite unbelievable. Zen` 01:55, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - welcome to guild wars, ANet's been unable to fix it for the past three years or so. I really, really wish they'd look at one of their obs bots every now and then instead of just letting it waste money and space. -- Armond Warblade{{Bacon}} 02:12, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, we know, 98% of the people who play this game are stupid and terrible. Apparently retards are ANet's new three years omg target market, which kinda makes me wonder why I got the game in the first place. --Jette 09:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Ironically, the old Wail of Doom would be pretty bad-ass against shitway teams, if it recharged three times faster when you use it on an assassin. Daggers are only imbalanced when the person using them is allowed to use his/her skills. --Jette 09:48, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

There are like two attack skills on the bar that are anything near interruptable. Raine - talk 17:01, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You didn't have to interrupt an attack skill, you just had to target them while they were attacking. It was an unconditional interrupt that also disabled skills for 8...18...20 seconds if the target was attacking. I'm not saying it would have been a valid counter to the build, mind you, but it's one of those skills that was really fun to build wars people with. --Jette 17:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Take a gander over at PvX. There's been an inrush of Build Wars anti-sway builds. I can't believe I'm saying this but.....GIVE US IZZY BACK NAO!!!!!111!!!63.225.219.237 18:24, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

HA isn't one fight against a shitway team, it's a bunch of fights against three or four teams over and over because they keep re-entering, one or two of which will be sway. That's why build warsing in HA doesn't work except for farming, which you ought not to be doing anyway (actually, I farm HA for the end chest :/ ) —Jette 05:55, 2 September 2009 (UTC)