Live Team PAX News

The good:
After so much time (since HM introduction?) of community asking and proving that some profs have serious problems, Anet finally understood and decided to act. Eles, Rangers, non-Imba Paragon expecially.

The bad:
Whenever Anet announce a upcoming skill change/prof buff, is time to pay attention.

As most of main Eles here, i don't know if be worried or happy. The only regret is that i've finished to do GWAMM on my Ele, so a good update would be kinda pointless personally.

HM changes sounds promising and scary at same time too....more WiK-like mobs (for AI/builds/AR) would be cool, but is still possible to see it become even easier and we can't know until we do not have any real info.

Second part of WoC is good. Just hoping isn't only "Exterminate those here and there" like part one.

The Elementalist update better make Swirling Aura actually useful. If not, they have failed dearly.

i do actually find it really interesting how dervish got a good overhaul, paragons can be useful but arent exactly priority to have in a team. Sins had a kind of look up and SF made them pro, then rits had a boost to finish off the cantha love.
As someone who has exhausted pve on their monk, it will be interesting to look at the rarely used skills such as smiting. A look into smiting will be good if it made other proffesions more likely to use these skills too.

Arent they supposed to do something with Mad King Thorn too?

How about people that just started playing? Looking forward to the day that I can actually recommend eles & rangers for the full game rather than just NM and PvP.

Hopefully there is more emphasis on the HM changes and less on buffing a handful of random ele skills to godlike levels (as mesmer update did for mesmers).

My hope is that the HM changes involve reducing monster armor and increasing their health accordingly. It's the armor that really makes eles suck compared to other professions.

The paragon rework should be interesting to see, though I don't know how they can avoid addressing the imba setup. Even if all the other build options are improved considerably, SY spam is still probably miles ahead in terms of effectiveness. It's just too damn good.

Honestly, I don't think that smiting needs help. The skills do have rather long recharges, but smiters are unique in that they get their full offensive output from only one attribute line because the primary does almost nothing for them. You have 100+ points to use however you want.

Rework for ranger and paragons AND smiters?? Win

Nerfing SY is always an option. I'm not kidding, its actually possible to nerf skills in this game, I heard about it being done once

Indeed, I don't really see the problem with smiting either. It could use a bit more variety (350 damage AoE armor ignoring holy nuke, or a more expensive, less damaging, and unspammable Discord replacement, which of these elites is better and why?), but its a pretty powerful attribute thanks to SoH + Smite Condition/Hex. If anything I would like to see smite get some better energy management in PvE. ATM its very energy heavy to the point that you can't spare anything for a useful secondary, and more heal/smite hybrids would also help them get into groups in the PvE world of today where full healing builds just aren't needed for 95% of the game.

Divine Favour DOES do nice things for smiters though. Smiter's Boon + DH/HD provides pretty good healing for the limited bar space they take up. Blessed Signet is somewhat nice for lots of SoHing as well.

*looks at mesmer and dervish updates*

What exactly are you worried about?





(This is obviously directed at people who are worried about eles getting nerfed into the ground, NOT at people who are worried that the updates will result in OP shenanigans).

This, basically. I primarily play my Monk as a smiter, and the biggest issue is that the line has basically no energy management at all (Monk in general is lacking in energy management), and you have to turn to a secondary for any help with that.

Definitely interested in what they're going to change, especially the HM changes.

To be honest, regardless of how much OP the dervishes were and have been in pvp with their update, I think they were very finely balanced for pve since their update's day one. I mean, they now stand out from other melee yet no one of those profs steal the show from the other; they now have a variety of builds that are viable and interesting to use; and you know they are strong and reliable when you see them, without being totally overpowered like mesmers, ritualists and necromancers are. The update even killed melee powercreep along with it (asura scan, that dwarf skill, scythe abuse).

Really, from a pve point-of-view, I consider the dervish update great.

And now they even have plans to tone down the armor-ignoring damage of mes, rits and necros someday. (It's on Robert's wiki page.)

So I believe we'll get a worthwhile update without excessive powercreep this time. For pve, of course. Pvp is another story, but with them now changing skills in small bursts instead of one giant and fully completed skill update, it might work better for pvp too, who knows.

I just want to point out that they are looking at doing the other profession changes--its not set in gold----and also remember just how long it took for them to actually DO the dervish change!
so dont get your hopes up any time soon!
(it could be years before you see them).

1. I'm going to agree with your guess that a fix to ridiculous monster armor levels is coming. That seems like the logical choice, especially if they're talking about eles.

2. A buff to monster health would create as many problems as it solves. Sure, it would offset the sudden easiness introduced by taking away the insane monster armor, but it would also (1) randomly buff/nerf skills the care about comparative health (Spoil Victor, the Envy and Victorious lines), (2) Nerf all %-max-health skills on monsters (PS, ProtBond, all skills with a sacrifice cost), (3) nerf all player builds that rely on spiking (sin, air ele, etc.), and (4) probably some other things I haven't even thought of.

3. The correct solution would be to give them WiK-style builds and better AI. Of course, we've been asking for that for years and widely given up hope that a-net has the sort of resources needed to do it.

I don't think there's any way to get me off a warrior secondary without nerfing SY, but if you gave me alternatives that could maintain SY, say, 75% of the time and also do meaningful damage/healing/mitigation of armor-ignoring-damage, in most situations I would probably stop dedicating half my bar to getting to 100% SY uptime.

[Edit: Also, a big buff to marksmanship might get me to consider P/R. (The most obvious first steps would be to remove the prep-removal on Barrage/Volley and increase the AoE to nearby.)]

Why do I get the feeling "changes to Hard Mode" means "so hard you'd almost be required to use consumables to vanquish Nahpui Quarter Explorable"?

If they wanted to making changes to Hard Mode, don't make it Sadist Mode.

^I wouldn't mind turning it into a "Sadist" Mode. :P Going through HM's so easy nowadays. But if that happened, I would demand an increase in reward (vanquishing and loot drops, everything else's fine)!

But the HM changes are probably just made to fit the poor elementalists in.

Would love an increased reward or alteration for VQing areas that involve WiK or WoC

This hypothetical Sadist Mode wouldn't necessarily need to be complicated. They could just add ridiculous environmental effects that pigeonhole players into using only the absolute most efficient builds imaginable. That's what HM was initially anyway.

What, permanent partywide -5 degen in Old Ascalon? Coming right up!

When HM was introduced most players were still getting used to using heroes and learning how they react to situations. It's not that HM was ever super difficult, it's that you are requiring players to actually build for areas...something they should have been doing all along. In response, some industrious players came up with faceroll 2+6 setups then 7 hero showed up. I love a challenge and I know you aren't really serious, but making HM more difficult to compensate for the OP crap they continue to give us is not the answer, nerfs are.

I hope they don't nerf Ether Renewal. Granted, while it MAY seem overpowered, I argue that it is not abused either. Heck, PuG elementalists don't even know about the existence of the skill!