Talk:Game updates/20070410

m'kay, it;s offical. anet hates soul reaping, apparently. --Honorable Sarah 20:53, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * But they love SS! :D --[[image:Goteki-45.jpg]] Goteki-45  21:03, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Im fine with them lowering the cost of some of the most popular Necro skills at this point, so i cant complain anymore.-- Thelordofblah 22:28, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * The first time they change SS since beta, and they only make it better. --Curse You 22:29, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * I just noticed that, with this update, there are only two 25 energy and two 15 energy Necromancer Elites left. --Curse You 22:35, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

They might want to fix the bottom of the chat, and the bottom of the game window, because the flickers are driving me crazy <.< &mdash; Poki#3, 22:09, 10 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Really? Was that introduced in an update? I just happened to change my monitor over the weekend and I thought it was that, I was going to connect up my old monitor, I'm crazy enough as it is! --Xasxas256 22:13, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * The flickering line was introduced in one of the more recent updates, but not everyone has it. I only see it in fullscreen and only until I zone (unless I window and go fullscreen again). It's really bugging me as well. --[[image:Goteki-45.jpg]] Goteki-45  22:32, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Yup, same for my girlfriend: flickering line at top of screen during loading screen in full screen mode. Wicked enough that I do not have the problem - despite the very same hardware and software on my PC. T.T.H. 03:03, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Wow, just wow...a "balance" of nothing but nerfs, except for Necros, who've already been screwed... Arshay Duskbrow 22:55, 10 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Err, how were necros screwed? Yes, the change to SR is obnoxious, but I can still play my necromancer just fine, he's hardly "screwed". Likewise, when playing without friends I generally bring Olias as a MM and he certainly is managing to cope just fine. The change sucks, yes, but it doesn't render them worthless in any capacity. High Soul Reaper is STILL better energy management than most things. Let's say you have 10 SR, that's 10 energy gained every 5 seconds as long as you have things dying. Other choices-Mantra of Recall at 12 Inspiration gets something like 22 back every 20 seconds. At 12 blood, OoB gives 18 back every 15 seconds. At 0 E Storage GoLE gives you a net gain of 15 energy every 30 seconds, at 12 E Storage it gives a gain of 31 energy every 30 seconds. SR is hardly worthless, and necros are hardly screwed. DKS01 23:21, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * the counter-argument is that corpses only sprout at the end of a battle, and some (boss) battles, not at all, where as mantra is useful reguardless of death toll --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 23:31, 10 April 2007 (CDT)


 * True, Mantra is useful at anytime, but since when do corpses only sprout at the end of the battle? Typically, something dies, and you move to the next target. Sure, you may get the enemies to clump up so they get nuked and die all at once, but that's not as common as it once was...from my experience, there's generally a rather stready stream of corpses. DKS01 23:37, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * i was being figurative. nothing ever dies at the first skill, but mantra can be timed to return at the first skill. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 23:38, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * I still find SR a bit more efficient than Mantra though. Assuming a necro you max at 12 inspiration and so with correct timing, you get 22 energy back around the time you make your first kill, then you recast it, spending 10 of that 22 energy(so you really only gain 12), then you wait 20 seconds before you can get it back again. With 12+1 SR, you can get 13 energy back after the first kill, then can get another 13 back 5 seconds later, and then another 13 back, and so on. Plus, Soul Reaping can't be interrupted, blacked out, diversioned, or disabled with Signet of Humility, and doesn't take up your elite slot either. MoR is useful, but I still find even a toned down weaker SR more useful. YMMV of course, just speaking from my play experience. DKS01 23:48, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Sarah said "nothing ever dies at the first skill, but mantra can be timed to return at the first skill." You didn't get energy from SR any faster previously than you get now. The first death is still the same and so is the first energy gain. It's the kills after that which were nerfed. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (gem / talk) 06:03, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * I know what Sarah said, that's what I replied to. You can time Mantra to return at the first skill, but then you dink around for 21 seconds(1 second cast time+20 second duration) before you get anything from it a second time. And I didn't say you get energy faster from SR now than before, just that you get energy from SR faster than you get it from MoR. DKS01 06:58, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * my point was that the uneven flow of SR was counterbalanced by it's large spikes, now it's just a slower, conditional Mantra. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 20:35, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

BoA Sins
Just got a K in an A. I don't play PvP, so tell me. Was it needed? This update made my (PvE) Assassin very, very, very sad :( &mdash; Poki#3, 21:04, 10 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Well you can argue about whether the change was needed or not, but the truth is, about 95% of the assassins you'd find in PvP brought BoA. ANet has a long history of weakening skills that become so common that you almost never see a build without them(especially in regards to PvP). And between making this basically useless AND weakening Black Spider Strike(which annoys me more, as I use this skill in 2 non-BoA builds), it looks like ANet really does want people playing a sin other than the usual BoA one. I admit though, I figured they'd nerf Shadow Prison harder before changing BoA... DKS01 23:28, 10 April 2007 (CDT)


 * is any skills rebalance really needed? i think the last world shaking abuse was back in prophecies. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 21:06, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

BoA is fine Stevo101 21:07, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * BoA is not fine when it's encouraging the one skillbar. What ArenaNet has done is try to encourage NON SP-BoA Assassins to play. --Kale Ironfist 21:08, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * i've always disagreed with anet nerfing one skill. they should strengthen the counterskill. --Honorable Sarah [[image:Honorable_Icon.gif]] 21:10, 10 April 2007 (CDT)
 * BoA was never the problem, The problem was the damned popularity that the shadow prison + hex offhand combo that came up, BoA was a handy IaS buff that came with nightfall that now has been damaged for regular use by non meta builds. I think the only thing that should of been nerfed is the elite, more then the cost increase that hardly did anything. That would of discouraged the use of it by about every assassin in game but still allowed the other skills to be used under normal situations.--Sefre  [[Image:Sefresig.jpg|15px|]] 22:25, 10 April 2007 (CDT)

First thing I thought when I saw the warrior updates was "bye bye BoA sins". Pretty major ouch there. --Armond Warblade (talk) 00:26, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * TBH though its a skill designed for use by warrior primaries, hence the Strength attribute line --SK [[Image:Assassin-icon-small.png]] 03:44, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Tiger Stance, Flail.. zzz &mdash; Skuld 05:44, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * SHHH!!! Be very quiet, they read this crap.  You keep posting all the IAS skills with any base duration over 2 seconds and my warrior might as well spam Dolyak Signet at zero strength.  Queen Schmuck 05:56, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Both work, Tiger Stance would be my choice though. Sure, it ends if an attack misses, but if an attack misses your chain is already screwed so oh well. Flail requires you to dink around on something to build up adrenaline before unleashing the spike though, adding a somewhat small, although not totally non-existent, inconvenience. DKS01 07:05, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Necro skill costs down - bad bad bad
I do believe that I posted exactly that as "Ways not to fix soul reaping nerf". The problem becomes this: as necros now no longer large energy benefit from their SR, they were just not as useable as before (say what you want, but it is true, there are no longer as efficient, so no point arguing that). Since ANet woke up to that fact that "hey, we kinda just pissed 1/3 of our (loyal and paying) customers off, we need to fix it.", they created this update.

Now, the reason lowering the costs of all necro spells to put them more in line with normal caster's standard +4 energy gain (soul reaping may indeed get nerfed again, as it is definitely not stopping Spiritway, barely affected it) is, is that the other classes now are nearly as good at being a necro, and infact, better sans the lose of 4 attrib points (13-16).
 * An elementalist can spam her necro spells for a long time without worry of no energy. You can spam a lot of necro skills with 80 energy and 4 regen, escpcially since they are now even cheaper.  In PvE, the delay between encounters will fill their energy back up.  A PvP E/N will probably not be an issue other than novelty seen rarely.
 * A mesmer can spam blood/curses faster, way faster, than any current necro can ever hope to, making an opposing Mesmer about the only way to shut them down. Mesmer's also have some of the best energy management skills.  I see this as one of the next FotM things in PvP.  The Really Sad Thing&trade; about this is that, to fix the mesmer builds that will show up, ANet will instead inscrease casting time of necro direct damage and curse skills (making necros really unusable).
 * All of the recent changes to necros are doing nothing but helping Rt MMs (I think they are now way better MM than a necro is, though with higher health lower damage minions). I doubt you will see any Rt/N MMs in PvP, as they are still having way to much fun as N/Rt spirit spamming.  Expect more nerfs on minion levels and possible a nerf to Death Magic (less minions controlled).
 * Touch Rangers, can't think of how this has changed them at all.
 * We might have a weird Dervish curses/blood build that takes advantage of mobile hard to kill self healing toon, but I don't think would be worth it.
 * Like the dervish, there might be some weird specialty Assassin build that works.
 * } If you use a Monk as a MM, you have no/bad energy management, no primary attribute that helps being the MM, and being monk primary for buffed heal area is not worth it. Very doubtful this will be seen except by people that are confused at what makes the monk primary good.  Being a monk primary and pinging your MM/SS/SV skills in a PvE or PvP party is likely to get you kicked in less than 1 second, and with good reason.
 * Besides toucher, you are insane. Please check into local sanitarium.
 * You are insane. Please check into local sanitarium.

Basically, all of the recent necro updates have hurt the necro. Reducing the cost of the -high for a reason- necro skills just made being necro primary less appealing while using necro skills.

This has nothing to do with how nerfy SR was. Do not post about that. SR was nerfed. There is no question about it in any way (nerf - made less effective), and it doesn't appear to be coming back. This is entirely about how ANet is moving the meta towards not using necro as primary, because there are now 2 other classes that can do the job just as well (if not better), and one that can come very close. Queen Schmuck 03:19, 11 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Agreed. To seriously make the Soul Reaping changes reasonable for PvE necros, they'd have to reduce the cost of just about every 10+ energy necro spell, which, as pointed out, just makes necro secondary that much more attractive. I henched Glint with my necro last night, with a blood build, and while I was successful, it was largely due to good planning of heroes and henchmen; I myself did very little. I expected to not be much use against Glint, but my inability to accomplish much of anything on the way to Glint was quite depressing. The biggest problem with the SR nerf is that everyone in PvE uses AoE, so enemies all die around the same time. A fight that used to provide me with 6*13 energy, much of it wasted, now provides me with 2*13 energy. I used to be able to unload in every fight, because I knew the last spurt of deaths would fill me back up for the next fight, but that's no longer the case. Which leaves me the question: why am I dumping 94 attribute points into a primary attribute if I could get better energy returns from a secondary class' energy management? And if a secondary class can do better, why have a primary attribute at all? --Shattered Self 07:53, 11 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Completely agree with the both of you. >.> –Ichigo724[[Image:Ichigo-signature.jpg]] 08:11, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * How would SR help against Glint anyway? There isn't anything dying there all the time unless your partymemebers are dying, in which case you don't really stand a chance anyway. :P --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (gem / talk) 11:52, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * Soul Reaping vs. Glint. Easy.  Let something die next to Glint.  Spam Signet of Sorrow until Glint gives you bonus.  Queen Schmuck 02:27, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Look... Before the "nerf", SR was more powerful than it needed to be in order for a necro to be effective. The amount of energy you gain from SR now, is perfectly fine to be as effective as you need to be. You may argue this, but it's simply true. SR was not nerfed, SR was balanced. God, I sound like an Anet fanboy :s   12:17, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * We were talking about select few necro skill costs going down being bad for necro class in general, but good for Me, E, and Rt. You are talking about SR nerf..  Queen Schmuck 02:27, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

I thought they would put SR back after the player outcry, but I was wrong. I've gone from LAWL to sympathetic, back to LAWL again. Honestly, Rit MMs should be exploding in PVE right about now. Hey, maybe the Devs will read my guide on Guru, and implement some of my suggestions. Like making the Minion Cap icon USEFUL. Click to cycle through your minions. Come on, all it would take is a line of code, and a few minutes of testing! I swear! Don't make me beg. Another of my dream concepts is a customized RPG-style "Make Your Own Minion" option. Tweak their levels, Energy cost, conditions, damage type, anything. But it'll never see play. *Sigh.*

Also, I wonder if I could possibly make a GW-style Minion Master/Bomber in Hellgate:London... BarGamer 00:18, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Skill templates
Actually, they can still be. It's just that from time to time, when new skills show up, ANet forgets to "Mask" them from being viewed in the template window. They masked the recent Hard Mode / EotN monster skills, but who knows. There might be a leek later :P I think the note should be changed, or removed. &mdash; Poki#3, 15:10, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Crash bug...
My monk is now officially unuseable.

I just finished Moddok Crevice (Mission). It then proceeded to tell me that my driver failed. I can't log on to my monk because every time I do it tries to load Wehhan Terraces and crashes again. My video card should not be crashing like this! (Granted, it's not an up to date video card, but that's *never* been a problem before.) Argh! I want my Razah! And I want to 55 stuff!

--Armond Warblade (talk) 18:56, 11 April 2007 (CDT)


 * We noticed with Kalomeli when NF came out that she couldn't play most areas after Moddok Crevice mission with her old laptop. The game crashed (due to the video card) when trying to enter most areas in Vabbi and Desolation, although "only" 90% of the time. I think it has something to do with some sort of über cool graphic features that some randmoly spawning mosters have. Or maby it is something else. Neverthless, we are lucky that she got a new comp soon so we could actually continue to play the game. It's a shame that ANet has partially forgotten their great ideals about wanting everyone to be able to play. Shes computer wasn't that ols, so I guess a lot of ppl are having problems like this with NF. --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (gem / talk) 19:35, 11 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Try setting graphics to low, all the extra stuff off, then log onto your monk? –Ichigo724[[Image:Ichigo-signature.jpg]] 21:51, 11 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Didn't help with Kalomelis laptop. Sadly... --[[Image:Gem-icon-sm.png]] (gem / talk) 01:47, 12 April 2007 (CDT)


 * Did you try forcing the game to use DirectX8? Run a diag? Disabling shaders? --84-175 (talk) 02:31, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

I haven't played since Apr 9, and haven't even done an -image. Have the sound problems (distortion, left/right swing incorrectly) actually been fixed? Queen Schmuck 02:27, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Hero Battles
Yay! I can finally access the Hero Battles area! --Tometheus 20:10, 11 April 2007 (CDT)
 * You weren't missing much IMHO. Queen Schmuck 02:27, 12 April 2007 (CDT)