User talk:Isaiah Cartwright/Overpowered Skills/Assassin/Archive 2

Expose Defenses

As any half decent assassin bar can really hurt and leave you degening to death with <25% health, there aren't many counters other than blocking attacks. In GvG it can make quite a nasty spike, obvious, but still nasty. In RA or AB you're just dead unless you have a really organised team (hahahahaha) or a specific counter. Maestro Ed 15:01, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

See Here. Already discussed and nerfed. --ChronicinabilitY 15:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It's still being run as much as before. SP spike wasn't really fazed by the nerf to it or BSS, they just use Zealous daggers instead of Vampiric now and have to wait 5 seconds IF the target's capable of blocking. Just make it only work as the only hex and it's fixed, or make it disable non-attack skills for a couple seconds. Riotgear 03:23, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

If they restrict its effectiveness based on the presence of other hexes, I think it should only check for other Assassin hexes. Making it incompatible with all hexes is overkill. -- Gordon Ecker 06:12, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I think a 15E cost would reflect the value of the skill. It may sound unrelated, but Backfire is 15E and which of these two Hexes delivers consistent high damage on a regular basis? Expose Defenses is still as good or better than many elites so it shouldn't work efficiently with Shadow Prison at all. --arredondo 15:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Skills are meant to work efficiently with eachother. A skill shouldn't be considered for elite if it works well with other elites, the skill should be considered for elite status when it works very well without elites in the build and seems to pick up the slack for the missing elite. ‽-(eronth) I give up 17:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Give it a secondary effect, but make the block useless when hexed with something else, ala shadowy burden.--Atlas Oranos 09:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The Effect isn't that good to give it a hex stacking nerf. -20 armor and a 25% snare is a great effect. Unblockable is not THAT amazing, you can still be blinded, hexed, knocked down, interupted, and disabled. I think it has been hurt enough. I'm not going to use it again...too long a recharge now. If they made it 10 again and 15 energy would that be enough? Cuz right now I would never use it for Non SP bars. (=0 look at that, SP still would use expose while everything else loses a very strong skill)--72.74.237.104 04:35, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

How does the 25s recharge affect its use with Shadow Prison in any significant way? You cast ED and cover it immediately from removal with SP and then unload the combo just like before. When Shadow Prison recharges 20s later, you only have to wait four seconds for Expose Defenses to also be ready again (.75s ED aftercast + .25s SP activation = 1s of ED recharge). How is that a significant change? All the change does is make it last too long for non SP builds to use ED regularly. A 15E cost for this skill with the old recharge would've been better IMHO, along with a 15E cost for SP. --arredondo 18:01, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That four seconds is still four seconds where you virtually can't do anything against an enemy that blocks, most other sin bars can at least try something. --Ckal Ktak 07:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I would only bother with 15 energy on Sp if it returned me to my original point after a certain amount of time, it's not that good.--Atlas Oranos 22:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Only nubs run this anymore...so stop fighting over the bad skills, and nerf charm animal damn it! Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 07:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be nerfed at all, because Assassins suffer the most against blocking techniques. The whole reason Assassins have effective unblockable techniques is because their chain attacks are stopped dead if a foe blocks the first or second attack in a chain. Assassins need this ability to counter blocking techniques in consideration. There are alternate ways to defend against unblockable attacks, and pretending their isn't makes this arguement wholely invalid. Price of Failure, Reckless Haste, Spirit of Failure, Blind. All abilities which cause missing override unblockable effects and cause the foe to miss anyway. There is also reversal spells, Vampiric weapon, the list just goes on and on.

Failure to diversify your defense is a weakness which should be punished, if your expecting every build to be defeated by Aegis than your not offering sound intention, and if you think that Expose Defense should become unreasonable to use than your also dreaming. It is a 10 energy skill on a profession which will require significant energy afterwards to actually continue with thier attack, they are naturally vulnerable due to their defense, and even further lacking in defensive skills with one more used to improve offense, wile it normally requires 2 to 5 attack skills to muster those indominable blows your so afraid of, and it is in a 4th attribute since it does not cover the daggers attacks, the critical strikes power or even the restoration skills they will likely need and use, forcing a 4 attribute split in investment.

If I was a seasoned pro I would slap a insulting "learn to play" logo on this discussion, but since I am just rationalizing, this really makes no sense, and if you can recognize all the other defensive alternatives as well as explain to me how it is unfair for Assassin to compensate for their attack chain dependancy, than I might think otherwise.--BahamutKaiser 19:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggesting a more "diverse defense" reminds me of the people that defended Avatar of Grenth (let's all use weapon spells, lawl). I'd say I'm in favor of nerfs towards any ability that further allows the Assassin class to be playable by complete idiots, but Expose would probably be dead by now if BLS and Shadow Prison would get their long-overdue nerfbat bludgeonings. Drop Expose's recharge, make it only work as the only hex, and it becomes an interesting skill without injecting further brainlessness into the Assassin profession. Riotgear 18:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Your shrewd remark actually controdicts itself, your trying to illegitimize my interest by stating it is just as bad as Grenths enchantment removal advantage, wile in actuality, the use of abilities which bypass defense are an alternative to stripping enchantments and stances to overcome block, it's a fairly ignorant statement, and I would be a little more educated before making disguised insults. If it works as the only hex than it is removed from team builds which utlize any other hexes, without a secondary effect it is totally worthless in many build situations, other hexes which are single hex conditional have additional effects if no other hexes are active, not completely worthless if other hexes are applied.

With such strong hex removal being excersised in the meta game already, it actually is rather silly to construde that Expose Defense is entirely goes unhindered, unlike weapon spells, bindings or shouts which arn't viable defenses against enchantment removal because monotinous metagame thinkers didn't want to compete against that either, and so your analogy is also grossly inaccurate. This is exactly the kind of mindset which is ruining the game one ability at a time, because they don't want to put up with effective defenses from new features, new offenses from new features are also penalized, and because new offenses are penalized, other defenses are nerfed, and only what whiny players are used to and comfortable is useful.

A strategy game is designed to have weaknesses and alternatives to every skill and build, and use of alternatives like Blind and Hex removal are not new or difficult to produce, and they are vastly more common and easy to produce than before. It is just petty dislike and stuborness which keeps players from revolving thing defense with new and effective strategies that makes this as well as most effective builds "overpowered". And if Anet would stop catering to this poor gameplay, and improve alternatives and counters instead of stripping away anything that poor players can't adjust to, than it would be a better game. I hear alot of deriding statements about how newbish it is to have a working counter for a common defense, all just to disguise their own failure and weakness in gameplay which does not evolve to meet the threat with the many available alternatives, because that is the way a strategy game is ment to work.--BahamutKaiser 14:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The fact that people are bringing "strong hex removal" just to get past the fact that Shadow Prison is consistently also serving as a cover for whatever was cast before it should be a sign that there's a problem. The fact that people are bringing the otherwise-dubious Reverse Hex is another, and shows that these things are so overpowered (or at least what they're being used to fuel is so overpowered) that they're willing to pay 10e just to get rid of it immediately. While Expose is mostly out of the meta right now, it's kind of ridiculous to call it balanced even now when comparing to, oh, Fox's Promise, Unseen Fury, Way of the Fox, Guided Weapon, or Guiding Hands, all of which have significantly higher drawbacks.

BLIND removal is even easier, the only way it is "easy to produce" is with Mingson. People are simply bringing it because other counters, for varying reasons, are being repeatedly rendered less effective as builds become more and more centric around forcing Assassin spikes to succeed (i.e. Razah). Riotgear 16:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Often times when something isn't balanced, it isn't the skill that isn't balanced it is the counters. And as you said, many of these counters are ineffective, so they are overlooked. Overlooked skill which are easy to overcome are obviously in demand for change, so instead of attacking the skill which is taking advantage of the lack of counter effectiveness, it is better to address two concerns at once, by making a counter skill useful, and balancing an advangtagious skill with a counter, instead of trying to nerf the advantage.

By taking on a policy of nerfing anything outside of the easily balanced features in the game, you arn't actually fixing the game, your just reducing the abilities the game actually utlizies. It is like saying your going to address the population problem by removing some of the population, when you realize that the diversity of abilities and richness of gameplay determine the quality of strategy actually being utilized, and set that as the priority, you realize that removing and neutralizing the features are not acceptable actions, and accomidating them with appropriate and actual balance, with counter weight on the opposite end, is the actual solution for the issue.

Now you can argue all day long about how you think the diversity of actions in the game should be reduced and neutralized so that a simple form of balance is derived from lack of abilities instead of balancing a diversity of abilities, if that is what you think, we will never agree, and that is simple a preferance. All I can say in defense to that is that this is a strategy game, and that is what a strategy game should be providing, simple high punch beats middle punch type combat systems are for action oriented games, and wile a healthy medium is relavent, I think the game needs more options not less, because the current metagame fosters to many dominante niche builds which have counters, yet are not viable because of system of supressed skills.

And the fact that related skills are not competative with an effective skill does not justify the nerfing of a skill. Whether a skill is effective enough or not is souly determined by what the needs and abilities of a build or profession are, and whether or not other skills are comparable is an issue of their own, those should also be determined by the need of the build or profession. Obviously if other skills are not competing, than they should be improved, because that is what the profession needs. This is like trying to Nerf SF because all of the other fire spells available are not as effective, yet all the other fire spells are not good enough, and nerfing SF just because other fire skills are weaker would bring SF to an ineffective level with them, naturally SF should be balanced based on the power an Elementist deserves to wield, and how well it's status and counters balance out, wile the other fire spells need to be adjusted to suit the ability neccessary for an Elementist.

With such flawed rationalization, I cannot recognizing your opinion. Unless you can demonstrate the legitimate concerns of balance, instead of the petty bias and inaccurate relations between skill effectiveness depending on alternate skill effectiveness instead of actual Character value, you cannot support your interests. Things like Way of the Fox are in the underpowered section already for a reason, and wile I haven't had time to remark on them because of my business schedule, it is already clear that making a relation to an underpowered skill as a balance justification isn't rational. Feel free to debate this further, but at least try to rationalize your interests properly instead of making innaccurate comparisons wile denying solid explainations.--BahamutKaiser 23:06, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

When did I say that "diversity of actions in the game should be reduced?" If something is overpowered, then it effectively removes competing options simply by existing, which means removing it makes alternatives viable, CREATING diversity, not reducing it.

"Become unblockable" skills have been kept at bay for a reason, because readily-available block cutters essentially become "I Win" buttons against a mechanic specifically designed to break attack chains and force melee to change targets. On a class designed 100% around ordered attack chains on a single target, that makes its availability even more obnoxious.

If the solution is to "buff counters," then what exactly would your solution have been to pre-nerf Expose? More cheap blinds?

Please name some of these "suppressed counters." Riotgear 04:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It can easily be seen from this Quote, "Suggesting a more "diverse defense" reminds me of the people that defended Avatar of Grenth (let's all use weapon spells, lawl).", that you ridicule and overlook alternate abilities and diverse strategy. In fact, it is the development and circulation of more skills that makes the strategy more diverse. By removing anything you remove diversity, and very seldom does a skill even need to be nerfed. By removing a skill or breaking a build which has an advantage, you do not increase the amount of abilities being utilized in the game, you only reduce the amount of abilities available to preserve a smaller more common pool, that isn't diversity, it is limitation. The simple fact is, a revolving series of nerfs causes most skills to be unbalanced, other skills and builds which would put up a powerful opposition to most "overpowered" skills are underdeveloped or perviously nerfed, and it leaves more and more skills useless due to suppression instead of opposition and counters.

There are already very effective blind options in the game, Elementist in particular can continuously blind multiple foes, even without an elite, giving them the ability to check physical attackers 1 for 2. There are many other blind options, as well as several miss based hexes, and even AoE blinding and miss based hexes as well. What's the counter to Avatar of Grenth?, Air Nuker... very simple. And don't bother trying to introduce party combinations, because it works both ways, one for one, the Air Nuker can continously and frequently apply blind to a melee based attacker and basically negate all of their physical damage, wile dishing out massive amounts of damage, weakness, attack interrupt, and none of that even requires an elite option.

It is painstakingly obvious that unreasonable nerfs and underpowered skills are being propogated when Paragon skills like Incoming are next to worthless for normal use, as well as most of their shouts and chants being limited to party only when they already require earshot proximity. For a Group to excersise shouts on eachother they would have to practice nearby proximity for all members to effect everyone with shouts and chants. Why is a Paragons skills fiercly limited?, is it because Paragon synergy is to high? Paragons have next to no solo value, it only makes sense that they have unparallelled group value, and breaking their balance of power is nothing short of a failure to balance, prime skills like Incoming are nearly useless, and even if the effect cannot have an acceptable duration, the skill should have had an effect change. The real options where to develop the counters enough to totally dominate their prime prey, the fact that a skills and builds made to counter the use and effect of Shouts and Chants were not effective enough to stop them is an obvious sign that the counters were not powerful or useful enough, yet the shouts where crippled instead so Paragons group based abilities are only moderate in a group, and next to worthless otherwise.

But that is just the beginning, another natural counter to grouped foes has always been in the game, AoE and DoT damage. The ability to deal significant damage to a group with AoE abilities has always relied on the foes failure to diverge and the users ability to take advantage of clustered targets. Because these skills are highly taxed with massive energy costs, poor and reduced AoE, and most of all, poor duration and recharge times makes the vast majority of AoE and Dot abilities moderately effective in situational use. This is simular to the use of interrupts, the use of AoE damage is only advantagious if used in situations where foes fail to diverge, or attempt to benifit from small area buffs. There are already more than enough counters available for spell casting, and they are already more effective against elementist skills since they have ample casting time to interrupt, yet players and Anet were not willing to accept group possitioning as a valuable playing skill, and instead limited and reduced all of Elementist AoE and DoT skills across the board. With strong use of these techniques, party builds which excersise shout proximity would be devistated by AoE bombardment, but the output isn't effective enough to match it, and instead of fixing the age old problem, the Paragon is Broken.

To match Elementist output, Mesmers interrupt skills could have also increased in frequency, putting both of these originally neglected professions back in prime use a long time ago, it isn't til recent revolutions in Elementist attacks that they were even able to put out reasonable amounts of damage, yet even now, the vast majority of their skills have not been balanced fairly, and the small pool of skills does not ensure general Elementist AoE is will naturally oppose Paragons group techniques.

But hey, Paragons group techniques were ment to be countered by the profession introduced along with it, Dervish..... again, because Anet decided to omit the value of character positioning and cluster risk, the Dervishs given weapon, the Scythe, which requires two hands to operate a slow and high damage fluctuation attack, to even have a significant amount of Touch AoE damage. It only hits additional foes if they are standing directly on top of eachother, which is a suckers failure to control their character, and offers very little in the realm of fighting multiple foes, at once and capitolizing on normally grouped foes, which was its primary design..... And does anyone find it obvious that the profession designed right beside it didn't function acceptably when it's counterpart was initially nerfed?, no, all the frequent compeaters are all trying to preserve retro mechanics so the builds and parties they are used to running will be effective, instead of trying to evolve into a higher state of strategy.

It has taken all the way til Nightfall before Elementist and Assassin even started getting the attention they needed to be competative, yet we are only seeing remote changes to a few skills to offer some effective builds, wile not addressing the overall need to reevaluate how these professions should contribute. And I don't even want to approach the Ritualist discussion, because it was never developed at any point. It was ment to be the one and only alternative healer in the game, yet it grossly fails to provide enough effect to compete with Monk.

The chain of undeveloped options and abilities, and revolving nerfs has crippled the vast majority of gameplay and useful skill options. Almost every nerf grossly contributes to a series of related imbalances due to its relation. The problem is that there is not a clear and present system of advantages and disadvantage between many of the skills and their opposition and counters, leaving all sorts of unchecked builds and an endless list of undeveloped skills. The problem will not be fixed by breaking, nerfing, and removing even more skills, when the progression needs to be in the opposite direction, by developing more skill and counter options, not less. A system of advantages and disadvantages needs to be developed for all of the skills types, and most of the skills to be part of useful builds instead of further suppressing more skills so the handful of simple and common builds can thrive. And the fact that a majority PvPer bias may disagree is little sign of what players want, because in actuallity, a larger more diverse group of players would participate if a larger diversity of skills and builds and strategy types were available and effective. It isn't about what a select few people cling to, it is about creating a competative arena for a variety of skills, builds, strategies, and ultimately, more players, to find an opportunity in the games competative side.

Since the perservance of PvE difficulty has been washed out by many overdone PvE skills made available for greater PvE escalation, it means nothing that many of these AoE and group based advantages will see a significant improved value, especially since it is obvious that we are not subject to PvE equality anyway.

Serious failures to balance with nerfs are obvious, as skills get totally removed from play. That isn't balance, because the skill isn't strong enough to be compeatative, if it was balanced, it would still be in use, obviously. Poor attempts to balance with nerfs often leave skills with far to little duration, far to much recharge time, far to weak an effect or AoE, and often far too much cost. It is important to notice that no matter how broken a skill is perceived, putting higher costs which are out of the professions reasonable use range are not acceptable balance options. This can easily be seen in Ritualist, who has no passive energy management, and poor energy management options, yet their defensive spirits are as expensive as they get, and Anet even tried to introduce elementist exclusive cost, exhaustion to some offensive spirits, knowing that exhaustion is ment to limit elementist powerful spells on other professions, wile Ritualist already has disfunctional costs.

All of that basically comes full circle to this, Expose Defense is a skill to help Assassin compensate for their attack combo risk. Assassin is not an energy heavy profession even if their skill use and primary revolve around energy use, and having skills outside of reasonable energy capacity is not balance, it is suppression. Assassins need these types of skills, and making them disfunctionally expensive or inoperable just because players refuse to utilize a wealth of alternate defense options and counters, or because of other related weaknesses in undeveloped skills does not benifit gameplay for the Assassin, or the competition as a whole. This is less reasonable than breaking all of Ritualists Defensive options just because they weren't developed properly, and Expose Defense is far from a broken skill, if it needs any adjustment at all.--BahamutKaiser 04:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Are we playing the same game? Elementalists can continually blind multiple foes without an elite? The only way they can continuously blind foes without their elite doing it is if there elite is helping them afford it. I asked you to name a few things, so name them. Elementalists are not one of them unless they are specifically running either b-surge support or full-time blindbot. The other blind options suck, and will continue to suck because cheap blinds (i.e. pre-nerf blinding surge) make it too easy to completely gimp melee. What miss hex do you propose using? Blurred?

Saying "Paragons should have unparalleled group value" is simply an indication that you don't care about actual balance. Nobody deserves to be overpowered in any regard because of their weakness in something else, that simply creates two problems instead of one.

AOE is not a valid counter to Paragons because the AOE is much smaller than earshot. It is extremely easy to navigate around AOE and still be within earshot range of anyone that matters. Paragons are called "uncounterable" because you can't really counter the permanent IAS and shouts with any skill that isn't utterly useless against teams without a Paragon.

Revolving nerfs limits options? News flash: Before the first round of nerfs after Nightfall, everyone ran Eurospike. Before the round of nerfs to channeling, every other HA team was Ritspike. Until SP spike gets a nerf or HB undergoes a major format change, practically everyone in HB is either going to be running a monk or Assassin. Overpowered crap limits options, nerfs are there to remove the overpowered crap so more options become viable.

Expose does not deserve to be viable for that reason, it eliminates a very large array of counters from the table, and isn't reasonably counterable by itself because it's covered instantly.

As for skills staying in use if they are "balanced," some skills are just so terrible from the design stage that they CAN'T really be made viable with anything short of a total overhaul, and aren't going to see use outside of gimmicks focused on their use. Augury of Death, for example, is useless to an Assassin because it interrupts them mid-combo, so now it's just a DW bomb. How would you make that viable? Scorpion Wire is another "WTF" skill. How would you make Discord useful in anything other than spike gimmicks with 6 copies of Enfeeble and P-bond? How would you make Incoming useful without the constant Incoming chains that showed up at first?

Some skills don't really deserve to be viable because they make the game significantly more brainless. A game is not competitive when bad players can perform almost as well as good players because idiot-proofing skills like Avatar of Melandru, Shadow Prison, and Rampage as One remove a huge amount of the complexity from their tasks. Expose Defenses is one such skill: Why work around block when you can just press the "half of the ways you could prevent me from spiking you no longer work" button, cover it a quarter-second later with Shadow Prison, and mash buttons. Riotgear 06:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why a complete rework is off the table. -- Gordon Ecker 07:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Only working as the only hex would fix it. 25-sec recharge = "situationally overpowered" = needs more work. Riotgear 17:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Even mentioning this skill is epic. Readem Warning: Ignore this User if at all possible. 05:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, how is Expose affecting you O.o...are you running Guardian or some other lame ass minor RA prot? Use SB the minute you see prison, and you will be fine. The only sins that are any sort of threat, are the shock HotO sins, and or the crazy mo/db sins. Even then... Readem Warning: Ignore this User if at all possible. 07:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Calling Guardian a "lame ass minor RA prot" just shows how little you actually know. --ChronicinabilitY 21:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It is. Until SB/PS, RoF, Aegis, Return, Shield Bash, Balanced (before meta shift), Mending Touch, DS/SD, SoD, and kiting no longer exist; I will never run Guardian outside of RA/TA. Even SoA, which I dislike using post-nerf (exception being a Smite Mes where all minor prots own face), is better then Guardian. Tbh, if you get owned by post-nerfed Expose, plx uninstall now. Do this not only for your well being, but mine as well. Readem Warning: Ignore this User if at all possible. 23:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Without an elite an Elementist can run blinds for 10 energy, on a 70-90 energy pool, that is quite alot, and discribing the use of an energy elite without recognizing the ability to pump out devistating damage between blinding in the same build is simply propoganda, with abilities like Lightning Orb, Lightning Hammer, and Lightning Javalin it is easy to mix maximum damage output with complete melee shutdown.

The simple fact of it is that you cannot base the functionality of widespread redevelopment (and in many cases initial development) of skills on the function of existing effects, it is nonsense. When you add a system of new checks and balances they are all coherent to the additions, not dated versions, the whole idea that you can dispute a revolution of additions based on existing mechanics is juvenille, any advanced thinker can put things into context, realize that actual effects would dictate additional alterations, and that it would obviously take some work.

The issue is, that it is worth wile, and even neccessary. Catering to certain factions of interest and pursuit secludes the draw of the game to limited portions of consumers. By extending the variety of functions and strategies, larger pools of different kinds of players can find a role that they either enjoy, or excel at, and hopefully both. By limiting the number of options to a smaller pool of truthfully easier to produce effects, your not actually preserving anything but monotany, the whole point of additional content, especially as it pertains to PvP, is to refresh the game with even more ability types and related strategies, by protesting not only the original contents potential functions, but every new function, your not preserving diversity, your combating it.

The experience of GW could multiply exponetially with a handful of functional alternatives and widespread development of most skills, just like adding one new profession introduces the combination of every pervious profession as a secondary with that profession, and every pervious profession as a primary with a new one as a secondary. But I am not only talking about the additional variety and dynamic introduced by empowering more skill types and alternatives, I am also talking about the satisfaction of utilizing abilities which have the effect and use neccessary to be enjoyable, not just functional and diverse.

A complete rework is difficult for certain, or even a major one, but inevitably, the game will either increase in diversity and features or decline, there is not inbetween. Every once in a wile another combination of skills is practiced, and eventually disfunctional advantages are discovered, at which point Anet has to decide to reduce it or inprove the alternatives. Reducing it is easier, and breaking takes it out of the equation, but each of these options rely on one another, and systematically cutting down each ability effects everything else. It is more than obvious at this point that a fraction of the abilities are even functional, let alone balanced, so working toward reduction and leaping toward it by suppressing skill types is bringing the game to monotany. Why is it that there are so many meta builds and so little revolution of original builds?, because the vast majority of options have been suppressed and only a few of them work. Anet already realized the point a wile ago when they started a series of skill improvements instead of the gradual skill decline, but we are not getting attention on the skill types and interests which will make the professions enjoyable, and we are not getting counter and alternative development for anomalies instead of nerfs.

On the one hand, Anet strongly supports the development of dynamic gameplay and strategy, they literally PR for original content and intelegent, dynamic gameplay. On the other hand, there is alot of undeveloped features and skills in the game, and Anet has repeatedly taken on the easy route of reducing the options available in the game as a cheap way to perserve retro PvP interests and functions. This is really about whether Anet is going to stand for what they say they are and be a revolution by practicing it instead of preaching it. Since I haven't received a single rational explaination otherwise, it is really just fear and maybe resources that can truely hold them back, It really is time for GW to live up to all it can be instead of get by on what it needs to be, it may not be subscription, but it has gained the hopes of players like me, and I am still waiting for it to reach its real potential.--BahamutKaiser 02:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I wish I had the patience to read these gigantic posts...--Atlas Oranos 21:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

In a nutshell, he's expressing frustration with A-Net's resolve to play it safe in the balancing game. Instead of making all of the skills viable, they purposely keep some skills gimped by nerfing them to uselessness or leaving them weak yet unaddressed. Stale metas are allowed to go on because of this while it limits effective creativity due to a lot less useful skills available than advertised. Having a small pool of metas is easier to keep balanced, but overall it hurts the gaming experience because of a sheer lack of viable options to mix 'n match.

He recognizes the difficult juggling involved with balancing, especially in how a few changes here and there can cause a chain-reation that requires them to then re-adjust other skills that may have otherrwise been unbroken. However he thinks it would be a net positive if A-Net were more involved towards a major re-balancing project that involves all skills that are currently unusable, correcting any combos that are truly broken as they are revealed. --arredondo

OMG!!! Someone understands :P--BahamutKaiser 20:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

What did you think of ANets nerf(?) to "Watch Yourself!"? Done25 23:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Even Rigor Mortis at minimal spec is better on an assassin than this now. This skill, I believe, is now severely underpowered compared to the alternative. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Samcobra (talk).