User:Shard/SkillComparisons
A few days ago, I asked people to look over these skills and tell me what they thought about them. Here's the catch. These are not skills I made up - they are already in the game, but I have changed the effects. Here are the skills I typed, compared to their actual counterparts.
- Divine Fervor -
10 
1 
8 
- "(Healing Enchantment), For 20 seconds, target ally has +3 health regeneration and attacks 100% faster."
Faintheartedness - For the next 3...20...24 seconds, target foe attacks 50% slower, and that foe suffers -0...2...3 Health degeneration.
Some of the comments for this were:
- "Secondary profession abuse"
- "Obviously overpowered" and "Ridiculously overpowered"
- "Game-breaking"
- "It is a reverse Faint, which shows how powerful Faint is"
- Greater Boon -
10 1 20 - "(Elite, Healing) For 10 seconds, whenever an ally uses a skill, that party member is healed for 100 health."
Visions of Regret - For 10 seconds, target foe and adjacent foes take 20...80...95 damage whenever they use a skill. If they are under another mesmer hex, they take 15...39...45 damage instead.
Some comments:
- "could be awfully abused."
- "nullifies pressure-based builds on its own."
- "One [of these] would kill all pressure."
- Time Stop -
5 ¼ 15 - "(Elite, Fast Casting) Stop time for 4 seconds. You are the only character that can move, attack, and use skills."
Wail of Doom - For 1...3...4 seconds, all of target foe's attributes are set to 0.
- Obviously, mine has no life sac, but prevents movement. Not really the same, but the most broken elements are still there. Wail of doom removes a player from the game for 4 seconds, and time stop gives one player an extra 4 seconds of time. The following were said about this skill:
- "can be used to prevent every prottable spike in the game, or to spike with yourself without any risk."
- "would allow any warrior to kill their target with impunity while their enemies are unable to react"
These quotes made me smile, because that's exactly what WoD does now.
- Divine Shield -
5 1 4 - "(Elite, Divine Favor) Target ally gains 100 health. For 8 seconds, enchantments can't be removed from him/her."
Shattering Assault - Dual Attack. Must follow an off-hand attack. If it hits, you deal 5...41...50 damage and target foe loses one Enchantment. This attack cannot be blocked.
- Some differences. Mine does not require an offhand attack, nor is it touch ranged. However, it does effectively counter SA.
- Rend Hexes -
5 1 20 - "Remove 5 hexes from target ally."
Rend Enchantments - "Remove 5...8...9 enchantments from target foe. You lose 55...31...25 health for each monk enchantment removed this way."
- Some people said the following things about my version:
- "...nonelite version of Peace and Harmony"
- "so strong in its role that having a character carrying it is a no-brainer if the meta calls for it."
- Some others said it was fine. I wonder if this is because of how big of a problem hexes are, rather than this being overpowered.
- Mend Hex -
5 1 10 - "Remove a hex from target ally. For 20 seconds, that ally gains +3 health regeneration."
Rip Enchantment - "Remove 1 enchantment from target foe. If an enchantment was removed, that foe suffers from Bleeding for 5...21...25 seconds."
- Comments for this were:
- "This one actually is a good indication of how powerful hexes are"
- "I'd rather use Cure Hex." <--So would I
- "Increase cost and recharge, regen depends on if there are still more hexes"
- "it's way stronger than any other non-elite hex removals"
- Super Vigorous Spirit -
10 1 10 - "For 15 seconds, Whenever target ally attacks, that ally gains 50 health."
Empathy - "For 5...13...15 seconds, whenever target foe attacks, that foe takes 10...46...55 damage."
- This one's pretty straightforward. I forgot to add a duration to the original, but it was meant to be on par with empathy. Regardless, here's what people said:
- "Overpowered, negates any pressure to your frontline"
- sox11 told me to basically nerf every aspect of this skill.
- "Maybe if the duation was 3-5 seconds."
- "Broken version of current vigourous"
- GigaMending -
10 1 8 - "(Enchantment) For 10 seconds, target ally gains 30 health each second."
Illusion of Pain - "For 10 seconds, target foe has -3...9...10 Health degeneration and takes 3...9...10 damage each second. When Illusion of Pain ends, that foe is healed for 45...129...150."
- For those who don't yet know, 1 pip of degen = 2 damage per second (unprottable, obviously), so IoP at 10/10 ends up being 30 life lost per second. My version doesn't come with a drawback, but most of the time, neither does IoP.
- "this is a good example of how increasing numbers is not a good idea to fix a skill (and of how rediculous IoP is)"
- "Even without the "when it ends" clause, GigaMending is weaker than Illusion of Pain"
- "shouldn't heal for 300 health"
- "That's more healing than Spirit Light Weapon, on a non-elite. Ridiculous."
- "this is really overpowered. It negates way too much pressure."
- Mending Wave -
5 1 3 - "(Enchantment) Target ally and all adjacent allies are healed for 100 and gain another +100 max health for 15 seconds."
Wounding Strike - "If this attack hits, target foe suffers from Bleeding for 5...17...20 seconds. If you have other skills on your bar, target foe also suffers from a Deep Wound for 5...17...20 seconds."- "100 heal to all nearby allies each 4 seconds for 5 energy is just way too much."
- "cooldown 30, energy 10"
- Xinrae's Rage -
5 ¼ 3 - "(Elite Hex) After 1 second, steal 80 health from target foe."
Xinrae's Weapon - "For 8 seconds, the next time target ally takes damage from a foe that damage is limited to 5% of that ally's max Health and that ally steals up to 20...68...80 Health from that foe."
- Mine is identical, but without the damage reduction.
- Everyone pretty much said the same thing: It's xinrae's weapon. "Too much unprottable pressure"
- Lolraeg -
5 ¼ 15 - "(Spell) You gain 10 adrenaline."
- This one was stumping people who figured out my plan earlier. Positioning, like adrenaline, is a resource. Melee characters (who are supposed to do more damage than casters) want to minimize the distance between them and their opponents, and casters want to maximize it. Shadow stepping gives a melee character an unlimited amount of positioning with a single use, which they can then use to fuel their attacks. When used on someone who needs to get away from melee, it basically resets the melee's positioning to the lowest possible state (far away). Here are some things people said about skills that give you tons of resource at once:
- "too much addren. Maybe if it was 10-15 energy to punish low energy professions."
- "make it require 10 adrenaline!" <-equivalent of "25/90 it"
- "Kill it."
- Grace Healing -
10 2 30 - "(Spell) For 5 seconds, all party members are healed for 40 each second."
- This is just a partywide (instead of aoe) fire magic dps skill, so mine is considerably better.
- "That's too much, right? Could easily bring back a losing team on its own."
- "way too much passive healing"
- "Lame, passive skill. Overpowered."
- I win -
25 ¼ 0 - "Kill all enemies in this instance (PvE only)."
Shadow Form - "For as long as you are awake, enemies can't do damage."
- If you try to whine that this is not actually what Shadow Form does, I challenge you to read the skill description. Anyone who is even a half-competent SF tank can stop 100% of the damage coming in. This skill (and the two others that support it, depending on your build) single-handedly reduces pve mobs to sandbags with loot.
- Redeem -
10 1 2 - "(Elite) Each party member is healed for 120 health."
Searing Flames - "Target foe and all nearby foes are struck with Searing Flames. Foes already on fire when this Skill is cast are struck for 10...82...100 fire damage. Foes not already on fire begin Burning for 1...6...7 seconds."
- Yes, mine does 20 more healing than SF does damage. Big difference.
- "This one is completely broken too. Just pack energy management and stay in radar range."
- "120 health every 2 seconds? Umad?"
- "you dont think this is going to make people rage quit? Maybe if the energy cost was 25 and it caused exhaustion." <-I completely agree. 25 energy and exhaustion on Searing Flames, please.
Why did I do this?[edit]
I wanted to bring a new perspective to both players who have played the game for awhile, and to the developers, so they can see how outrageous they've let some of these skills become. When something broken stays in the game for years and years, it lowers the bar for everything else, and eventually, people think some of those skills are fine, simply because they've been there. When wail of doom was introduced, everyone was raging about it, but now, after nerfs that didn't change anything, people accept it as part of the game. Don't. A broken skill is a broken skill, no matter how long it has been left alone.
