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WARNING: The material on this page is for entertainment purposes. It is intended to be satirical, and though it may be based on actual things or events, should not be taken completely seriously.

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Developer Update - May 2009 PvE and PvP Skill Balances - 21 May 2009

The major goals for this update are to address nothing, ignore community feedback, adjust some skills to remove them from the game, and provide some minor buffs to skills people will never ever use.

In GvG, we have continued to see extremely versatile spike builds dominating, probably because we keep nerfing them and refuse to change the problems. These builds are able to split, be defensive, and output high damage spikes while still having many of the tools needed to counter other build types. They could do it all, and do it all a bit too well. We've targeted certain key skills skills that have nothing to do with those builds to tone down their ability to do high damage spikes and shut down other build types. We've also reduced the effectiveness of party healing (where did this happen?) as well as nerfing PnH to still-godly status to slightly encourage Build Wars in the format. As always, we seek to reward tactical use of skills make pvp require the least amount of active brain cells possible, and some skills have been adjusted to help encourage this.

Reducing Spike Effectiveness

Fast Cast Mesmer/Elementalists have been used to devastating effect in PvP on numerous occasions throughout the history of Guild Wars competitive play. By coupling the Mesmer primary, Fast Casting, with the Elementalist's high-damage spells, players are able to work around the typically high cast times used to counterbalance the high damage of Elementalist spells. Layer on top of that the utility that Elementalists and Mesmers bring as midliners, and you have a character that is both deadly and difficult to counter. We finally realized this after only four years. This character plays a key role in the versatile GvG builds we are trying to address with this update.

Mirror of Ice was used to further boost the damage of water spikes, which were already made more powerful by using Fast Casting to throw out multiple spike skills in quick succession. We've pulled an Anet and reduced the number of viable secondary options in the game instead of balancing this skill.

Steam was too good at having an 8 second blind, so we removed its conditional bonus damage to make it less valuable for spike builds.

Hunter’s Shot has been far too effective at both spiking and quickly spreading multiple conditions, mainly because of its low cast time and ability to cause conditions (duh), so we’ve reworked the skill into something no player would ever use. Rangers can not use this to stack with poison or cover up other, more impactful conditions like Cripple or Daze. In conjunction with the Hunter’s Shot rework, we’ve adjusted Melandru’s Shot to function as an Elite version of Hunter’s shot. We've turned elites into clones of bad nonelites before, and we liked it, so we assume our players will like it as well.

Keen Arrow was providing too much damage when Forked Arrow was used instead, making Rangers a key part of overpowered spike builds, so this skill's conditional damage was reduced.

Strength of Honor is another skill which allowed defensive characters to easily boost their team's offensive capabilities without much of a drawback, because we have provided too many undercosted skills which do too much or actually give you energy for free. Instead of changing this problem, we removed a well-balanced skill from the game. By stacking this with other damage adds, it could produce overpowered spikes a bit too easily. Instead of preventing said stacking, we nerfed around the problem yet again.

Encouraging Tactics

When an element of randomness is involved, it is more difficult to predetermine a strategy of attack or retreat. That unpredictability in the Shadow Step aspects of Heart of Shadow and Viper's Defense made the skills a little less tactical than we'd like. Changing the Shadow Step on these skills to behave in a consistent way allows them to be used more strategically, since you'll be able to predict where you'll end up and plan your strategy accordingly. Shadow stepping encourages fun, interesting, and tactical gameplay.

As both energy management and a heal, Foul Feast was too good. With its low recharge, there wasn't any reason to not use it whenever it recharged. We increased the recharge to slow down the ability to spam it as well as make people consider the most effective use of the spell for their combat strategy, like still spamming it on its recharge.

Encouraging Pressure

With its new functionality, Peace and Harmony was too good at shutting out hex- and condition-based builds by permanently maintaining the enchantment with the use of a 40/40 weapon set. We've decreased the duration and increased the recharge so that permanently maintaining it is no longer possible. This is intended to make pressure builds a little more viable, and to keep hexway broken as shit.

Despite numerous options for party healing, Protective Was Kaolai had become the obvious choice for party heals and was used in most builds. We've raised the recharge to make other party-healing options (which happen to be all monk skills) more viable and reduce the overall ability to negate pressure builds with strong party healing. In response to this change, we've adjusted the healing reduction on Lingering Curse to prevent it from becoming a problem in an environment where party heals are already less effective. Haahaha. This one doesn't need humor - it's already hilarious.

General Playbalance Changes

Unlike other Shadow Step skills, Shadow Fang did not have an after-cast delay, so we've corrected that in keeping with the other skills of this type which we still haven't banned from pvp.

Illusionary Weaponry’s energy cost was unnecessarily high for a skill that is complete garbage anyway. People wouldn't run it if it was free.

• Strength of Honor (PvE Only): increased damage to 5..25.

PvE is balanced. That's why a pvp/e split exists for this skill.

Aegis has long been a concern in the balance of competitive play and has seen numerous adjustments over the years. It has continued to be a problem because of both the overpowered nature of Aegis's basic functionality and the ability of teams to work around attempts to balance this skill by bringing multiple copies. Now, instead of only granting you partial invulnerability to physical damage, it makes the person you target immune to every single thing in the game for a duration equal to Claim Resource's activation time.

After changing Warrior's Endurance to be a skill last year, we have observed had everyone complaining about a trend towards Warriors using only one weapon type over their other options. We've changed the skill back to a stance to encourage a more diverse spread of viable builds in all three weapon types associated with Warriors, without nerfing scythes.

PvE Skills

Updates to PvE Skills are targeted at improving underused skills.

Faction Skills

Elemental Lord has been given additional functionality similar to Aura of Restoration to make it easier to never need energy ever.

Summon Spirits' recharge was unnecessarily high, since the skill is balanced around other factors, so we are ignoring those factors and changing the recharge.