HOLY CRAP! IT'S a SKILL BALANCE!

*faint*

Okay, let's see what we got. Not the dirvish update, but some interesting stuff nonetheless.

Update - Friday, November 12, 2010

Skill Balance

For more information on these changes, please see the Developer Updates page.

Assassin

* Black Mantis Thrust Black Mantis Thrust: increased activation time to 1 second; increased recharge to 6 seconds.

* Leaping Mantis Sting Leaping Mantis Sting: decreased activation time to 1/2 second.

Elementalist

* Mirror of Ice Mirror of Ice: increased recharge to 45 seconds.

Mesmer

* Empathy (PvP) Empathy (PvP): decreased damage to 15...45.

* Visions of Regret Visions of Regret: split for PvP; retains original functionality.

* Visions of Regret (PvP) Visions of Regret (PvP): decreased unconditional damage to 10...30; decreased conditional damage to 5...40; increased recharge to 30 seconds.

Monk

* Heal Party Heal Party: split for PvP; retains original functionality.

* Heal Party (PvP) Heal Party (PvP): increased recharge to 20 seconds; decreased casting time to 1 second.

* Healing Burst Healing Burst: changed functionality to: "Target ally is healed for 5...130. All party members in earshot of your target gain Health equal to the Divine Favor bonus from this spell. Your Smiting Prayers are disabled for 20 seconds."

Necromancer

* Barbed Signet Barbed Signet: split for PvP; changed to apply Bleeding with Necromancer skills.

* Barbed Signet (PvP) Barbed Signet (PvP): removed casting time; removed Health sacrifice; reduced recharge to 4 seconds; changed functionality to: "You suffer from Bleeding for 6 seconds. The next Necromancer skill that targets a foe causes Bleeding for 2...16 seconds."

* Faintheartedness Faintheartedness: decreased duration to 3...16.

* Spoil Victor Spoil Victor: split for PvP; retains original functionality.

* Spoil Victor (PvP) Spoil Victor (PvP): decreased Health loss to 15...75.

Ritualist

* Gaze of Fury (PvP) Gaze of Fury (PvP): this skill now targets only allied spirits.

* Recuperation (PvP) Recuperation (PvP): removed the 75% Health cap.

* Signet of Binding Signet of Binding: changed attribute to Spawning Power; increased casting time to 2 seconds; added the following functionality: "50% failure chance with Spawning Power 4 or less."

Warrior

* "Coward!" "Coward!": added recharge of 2 seconds.

* Enraging Charge Enraging Charge: changed functionality to: "For 5...15 seconds, you move 25% faster. Enraging Charge ends when you successfully strike a target, at which point you gain 0...3 strikes of adrenaline if you hit with a melee attack."

* Overbearing Smash Overbearing Smash: removed unblockable property.

NPC Updates

* Divinus Tutela [Healing Henchman] no longer uses Heal Party or Healer's Boon, he now uses Heal Party (PvP) and Healing Burst.

* Tannaros [Punishing Henchman] no longer uses Visions of Regret, he now uses Visions of Regret (PvP).

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a text bug that caused Tannaros [Punishing Henchman] to list Empathy when he was using Empathy (PvP).

* Fixed a bug that caused white lines in the Raiment of the Lich costume.|||Okay, comments.

Black mantis thrust, the activation time of 1 second means it's now somewhat inturruptable?so to compensate, they give leaping mantis the speed decrease.

go fig.

Mirror of ice.

Okay, whatever. Does anyone even USE this outside of pvp?

Heal party.

I guess anet is tired of non monks being monks. HEY! ELementalists as monks!

What a concept! HAAA... er... wait...

Barbed signet.

Truthfully, I wouldn't have been sad at all if they hadn't split this. Only mobs use this in pve pretty much. Necro bombers need to keep things the way they are in JQ.

Faintheartedness.

THANK YOU. Just wish this could have been rolled out a month ago in dealing with Bone pits.

Gaze of Fury.

WHAT?

...okay... WHY?

Recoup.

Okay. this is cool.

Signet of Binding.

Okay, fine. CHanges are good, but does it actually WORK?

Last I remember, if you tried taking over an opposing passive spirit, the advantage would still stick with the side who cast it. (as in, recoup cast by aflicted rit, use sig of bind, turn spirit to your side, aflicted still get +3 regen, your side doesn't)



Coward.

Oh HELL YES!

Nothing like getting coward spam in FA just trying to get past the turtle death squad.|||Dervish QQ incoming in 3... 2... 1...

That aside, I really can't say much for the skill update mainly because I don't PvP. Healing burst seems really interesting though.|||Not much in it for PvE really, all I can see that matters slightly is:


Quote:








Ritualist

* Signet of Binding Signet of Binding: changed attribute to Spawning Power; increased casting time to 2 seconds; added the following functionality: "50% failure chance with Spawning Power 4 or less."




Because it screws over the WiK WoH WM Priests a bit.|||Dervish QQ !!!!|||New build just kicked in.

Some bug fix about misbehavior of Zealous Vow.


Quote:








Dervish QQ !!!!




Party time? |||It''s not a skill balance.... it's waste of time.|||Barbed Signet PvE buff is nice. I had missed being able to spam Necrosis with it.|||What was the problem with Gaze? Spirits in PvP aren't exactly the tits to begin with, can someone fill me in?|||Update #2 - Friday, November 12, 2010

Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug that caused Zealous Vow to behave incorrectly.

I dunno. For gaze, it can insta kill an opponents spirits, and put an opposing spirit right in the middle of them. That I thought, was one of the main advantages of it.

I don't think anyone really considers AB or FA to be 'real' pvp, so it must be something to do with either GVG situations, or HoH crap.



Oh duh... devy notes. http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/de...l_balances.php

Heal party and healing burst, wanted to nerf what they considered over powered healing, but then they give more power to the elite for monks.

whatev.

Recoup was given the rebuff because pressure builds are back again.



Sig of binding and Spirit of Fury:

Signet of Binding acted as a hard counter to Ritualist party healing options and had little play to it when put on Rangers or Warriors who could easily push forward to activate it. By placing it in Spawning Power, it should be a riskier tactical option for the Ritualist runner instead of a skill which promotes constant back-and-forth ownership changes of a spirit. During testing, we found that Gaze of Fury was easy to slot in for Rangers at low spec and that it also easily neutralized Ritualist spirits. We've changed this skill to work on allied spirits, so that it cannot be used to kill off enemy spirits, although it can still be used to create new spirits from older ones.

I figgured sig of binding was changed because of non rits using it.

And again, non rits were the reason for changing fury, which was nuking of other side's spirits and placing your own in.



You know... one of these days they're going to do a pve nerf of sig of spirits so everyone and their dog can't just up and use it to solo everything. But I expect that'll happen when we see the dirv update, so...

don't worry about it.

Coward:

Fast assassin attacks, in addition to double strikes, allow Assassins to chain knockdowns on foes by recharging Coward while the enemy is knocked down from a previous Coward. Increasing the adrenaline cost of this skill would only make it less viable on Warriors who cannot build adrenaline as quickly, so we added a recharge to prevent Assassins from chaining this skill by using fast attacks.

Yeah... I've seen that a couple times, assassin comes up, slams coward, does two auto attacks, and then spams it soon as you try to move. Kind of ironic that someone who's stabbing you in the back is calling YOU the coward for trying to get away.

You know, I would actually like to see them go back and unbuff some of the mesmer skills. Not everything needs to be degen, and especially they don't need the degen to be time and amount based on how high your stat is.

Getting slammed by a half an hour lasting crip anguish in HM is seriously friggin annoying, not to mention the dozen other degen based skills.