User talk:Isaiah Cartwright/Izzy Talk Archive 3

Next skill balance timing?

Any idea when the next significant skill balance is coming? I assume it's got to be at least a couple of weeks before GWEN comes out to allow the effects to be judged before the meta goes crazy again.

Also, can I just take the opportunity to say that although there is still a definite issue with hexes, the balance of the rest of the game is much better than at any time since Nightfall came out. Obviously that's not going to stop people (including myself) complaining loudly about the things that could still use some work, but overall I'd say gg on the current state of the game. Errr 14:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Well I normally do them after AT's and I plan on doing one soon, often it's a week after AT's so I'm sure you could make an Educated guess :D ~Izzy @-'---- 00:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleted Skills

I did some sleuthing through various websites a long time ago and found a link to a couple of deleted mesmer skills[1]. There are obvious reasons why skills like unnatural signet were deleted, I'm not even sure what BAMPH! does, let alone if was ever intended to be a mesmer skill. My question is why were some mesmer skills deleted namely: Mantra of celerity and confusion, and insight on what skills like BAMPH! and Dissapear did. Jigoku 00:15, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

You forgot to mention Mirror of Delusions (was it the name ?) which would basically make the next hex you cast AoE. Miss Velvetine 00:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

^ Exsqueeze me?! A skill to influence hex area? :O --Redfeather 04:17, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Mainly those where skills that technically where not possible at the time, systems have changed and some of those could be possible now, but just haven't been redone. BAMPH is a dev tool we use to test with, as it lets us complete maps quickly so we can test our content. ~Izzy @-'---- 00:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! :D Jigoku 01:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

So what exactly does BAMPH! do? Allow you to instantly teleport to different areas of the map I assume? I wouldn't mind a "You be the Dev!" weekend for that, hehe... -- Jioruji Derako.> 02:56, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Probably the 999 damage skill as shown in the GW:EN gameplay videos at E3. --Kale Ironfist 03:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I think skills like Confusion are very interesting and actually would be an interesting hex. The effect of confusion seems like one which is novel and makes for interesting gameplay. However, I think by making it a percentage chance to damage any target, based on its attribute, confusion would be an excellent skill. Also, where did you find this stuff? Could you show us any more of this? I understand a lot of this stuff might be things that aren't ready to be revealed to the public, but it still provides a very interesting insight into the dev's world, which I think we would all appreciate. Samcobra 03:16, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I assume BAMPH! is the teleportation thing, given that unless it's a HUGE coincidence it's very similar to the sound effect for Nightcrawler's teleporting in X-Men. Capcom 20:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The sound effect of "bamph" could easily be construed as an impact sound. Thus, the 999 DMG skill possibility. Counciler 04:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

If you didn't delete Mirror of Delusions, mesmer wouldn’t complain about ss being a necro skill.

I believe it was deleted early on because it was overpowered at least that's what I've heard.

I forgot to mention it was an elite skill and costed 25 energy if my memory is right.Miss Velvetine 00:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I concur, Confusion whould have been awesome skill. The one that would propably give PvE mesmers edge (confusion on boss ...) Zweistein 09:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Disappear would be weird and overpowered (possibly)...as you could sue that when shadow form went down lol. Confusion would mean a war/derv spike from half a map away....gvg would be gayer than ever. Have 5 Dervish/Mesmers, lod/sod, and a flagger...the derv messes could spike and gank from wayyyy away.-Cheese

Confusion only allows you to hit anything in range and also it's a hex spell so you wouldn't be able to put it on yourself and as far as I can tell from the skill description you attack anything in the area at random Jigoku 13:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Oops I seriously misread that lol. So you could attack your allies? Kinda awkward, tking in gw, anyone? Worse than unyielding aura:D. Would be really good agaisnt AoM's thouugh cause scythe hits aoe. Mimic is stupid...you could easily time it with another person...Arcane Mimicry + mimic + arcane echo = up to 4 of one skill, 5 if you count echo. as for unnatural sig...who would wanna kill a spirit easily staffed to death with a 60 second disable? I thought it was for binding rituals, whihc lasted forever back then, right?-Cheese

Hero Skill AI (General)

I'm noticing that I have to pick skillbars for my heroes extremely carefully as they are only capable of using a small subset of skills effectively. I'd like to see more options for specifying how certain skills are to be used, along with a couple of general behavior options. Basically I'm interested in specifying a couple of parameters for skills by right clicking on each skill, certain subsets would have applicable parameters, ie:

Target-ally skills could use an option to select either "Use skill: Only on self, or: On any ally."

Offensive skills: "Skill Use: Offensive / Defensive" - seeing a caster hero charge into battle to use frozen burst makes kitteh cry.

I'd also love to see a general behavior option for any hero, "Target minions with healing skills: yes / no" - I'm pretty sick of my monk heroes draining their energy reserves between fights, or better yet - infusing a minion during a fight. --Pork soldier 02:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

That would be a nice option. Also I hate hero AI with monks. I wanted to test how good they were with their prot bars so i took my team of 4 with 2 monk heros an ele hero and myself (A Sin). After 5 mins, we all died. They had dismiss condition in their bars and they also had cheap 5e skills. Another think i notice with their AI is they like to use prot spirit on people that sac health outside of combat like MMs. Be nice to have it set to if they are losing a certain amount of health per second. Now that i think about it, idk if this is Izzy's job.... --71.184.113.36 21:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

They also don't use some skills at all e.g. Blood is power--Killer of Good 01:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)\

Mine use BiP rather effectively. --Deathwing 23:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

However on the flip side...they are incredibly good at other things and as we all know it is ruining the current PvP meta. --ChronicinabilitY 21:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

AI on Hero sins is abysmal, even with lots of available enrgy, they will sometimes refuse to use their attack skills altogether, and most of the time will only use skills when they can make sure of some secondary effect, like using moebius strike on enemies with less than half health or Shattering assault on only enemies with enchantments, in spite of the fact that these skills have short recharges and do enough damage in their own right to warrant using them. Also, if you give them a hex or enchantment, they will only use it when the hex in itself has a use, not as a means to an ends when using "Golden" or "Black" skills. --Ckal Ktak 15:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Conjure Dirt

As someone whose first character was an elementalist and loved playing an earth ele, I was just wondering if we'll ever see a 'conjure dirt' skill to go with the flame / frost / lightning skills for the other lines. Long ago, I was led to believe that a conjure for the earth line would be too overpowered, so I figured this would be perfect for the PvE only skills when they were announced. (In other words, *hint* *hint*, just a reminder in case it slipped your mind.) -- Tometheus (talk) 18:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC) (Who has loved playing his PvE mesmer for 2 years, even if noone else does. Thank you. Although the mes. is disappointed she won't get to add a EotN Elite Skill Hunter title to her Legendary Skill Hunter title track.)

The main reason we didn't do this is the earth line is a defensive line it wasn't meant to have the extra offense of a conjure, also when we first made conjures earth damage didn't exist we just used blunt damage for all earth spells. ~Izzy @-'---- 18:29, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see a Conjure "Dirt". It wouldn't fit the Earth magic line but it would be a nice addition and open up quite a few options. A Conjure warrior with Grasping Earth would have a lot of field control and a lot of damage, then you could also put it onto a SP assassin if SP gets nerfed. All in all, i think Conjure "Dirt" + Grasping Earth equals a good thing :D Anti Oath 05:25, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Armor of Earth + Conjure Dirt + Shadow Prison + [Sin Attacks] = uber. 69.137.78.92 15:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Just how would a conjure add anything into the above combos unless the sin is using an Ebon weapon? Dargon 15:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Heavily armored, passive damage boosted, shadow stepping, snaring, SP Assassin, double dual-attacking (Quad-Attack!) :P Anti Oath 18:25, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I can also see a derv running around with conjure dirt and ebon dust aura...leaving conjure dirt would help in keeping the derv with an ebon scythe from being too overpowered.Killer Revan 03:38, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I see melandru going around spamming amenities with +17 from conjure. no thanks, no conjure dirt --82.55.170.223 02:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Dosent Ebon Dust Aura Reak of a conjure spell?? you just had to find it.

conjure earth sounds better :p 28 August 2007 (UTC)

<- to all those worrying about how overpowered it'd be, the OP seems to be suggesting it be a PvE only skill, it really wouldnt be all that bad in that case imho...--Midnight08 05:31, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Skill balance changes

Hi Izzy, could you please add your signature to the talk pages where you post the Skill Tweaks 07/26/07? By this way everybody knows that the change is official. Thank you! poke | talk 23:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I did on most of them, I might have forgotten a few :(. ~Izzy @-'---- 18:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

"Surprise me!" skill suggestion

"Eureka!" Signet, core, profession: none, attribute: unlinked, activation: 2s, recharge: 30s.

"For 20 seconds Eureka Signet is replaced by a randomly chosen non-elite skill you know (not already equiped)."

I don't know, just a fun wild idea I had when I woke up this morning. :) Crystalion 02:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

The chances of you having the attribute for it are very low. Also, it would bring a huge luck factor into the game, and we don't need that. Imagine you are in a GvG, your team is much stronger than the enemy. They cannot overcome your powerful signet of mystic wrath spike, since you and your allies are all armored to the teeth with protective enchantments. Then suddenly they use this skill and get Chillblains, run out and strip all your enchantments, kill you all, then go straight for your lord and kill him before you res. Now you've lost a GvG because the game has a retarded luck skill that enables shitty teams to beat good teams for absolutely no reason. 69.137.78.92 11:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention that the chances are determined by stuff like how many elite skills you know. --Santax (talk · contribs) 11:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone considered making this a PvE only skill? Why is it every time an innovative skill is suggested with the possibility of being unbalanced in PvP, people always assume it cannot be implemented because their precious HA teams might be affected. God that irks me.... /endrant

Anyways, yes I fully support this idea for a skill.Counciler 04:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Unbalanced in pvp? lol who the hell would bring such a bad skill - theres no room on anyones bar for a joke skill like that nor would it influence anything. It would never be used except in BYOBKenshin 00:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You could have just 2 elites unlocked :P Have MoR and Echo on a mesmer MoR build, then use Eurika, and you either have MoR again (This could be pretty much any elite) or an Echo, to get 4X the amout of Diversions :D Anti Oath 03:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Premade Builds

I've been thinking for a while that the premade builds were really good for the game and we need them back. I've seen too many new players in RA running hopeless builds because they don't have anything unlocked and nothing to start from. Also, I'm trying to get some friends into GW, but they don't care for the PvE. I decided to try and get some faction and unlock some stuff for them, but I am having some trouble because I don't have good enough equipment or skills to do much. It's going to take a while to get my friends into GW at this rate... Please bring back the premades. --TimeToGetIntense 06:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Eh, just start a PvE character, get a few basic skills unlocked. Should be able to win some in RA, or just get faction in AB. Enough to make a few decent builds. Don't PvP characters start with like 5-6 skills anyway? But yeah, make a PvE character, run em through the game and buy them some skills. Premade builds would require an interface change, or character creation change. I don't think that is the field Izzy works in. At least make them decent though. No Paladin warriors and crap. Rangers with Quickening Zephyr. I'm in favor of bringing Premades back though. --Deathwing 06:16, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I do too. It would deffinately decrease the amount of bad builds that come in because i constantly see people with Lighting surge Lighting strike and orb and attunement as their only skills. Be nice if they actually had full WELL EXPLAINED bars to start out pvp with. Then we dont have to deal with as many tanks or just plain crap builds.

I concur - and stress the well-explained part. Some of the descriptions of the old builds were just plain wrong in places (they'd list improper amounts of healing at the build's level of tactics or whatnot). And starting PvPers shouldn't have to forge all the way through prophecies PvE to play a shock axe bar. -Auron 11:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Incidentally, does anyone know where I can find an archive of the premade builds? They seem to have been lost in the move from GuildWiki to PvXWiki. --Santax (talk · contribs) 11:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict)PvP'ers don't have to do any PvE in order to obtain their skills. Faction is very easy to aquire and 10k can give you any complete bar you want. If the player is TOTALLY PvP based and not PvE based at all, then they would purchase a PvP edition of the game, therefore not requiring any unlocking. The only thing i can think that PvP players require PvE for is gold for Guild Halls should they not be a HA guild. Personally i think that maybe 10 or 20 reward points should be able to be exchanged for a Sigil, this would keep PvP totally seperate. I'm not saying these premade builds are a bad thing, just that the ideas of PvPers HAVING to go through the campaigns is totally wrong. --ChronicinabilitY 11:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

They did get archived somewhere... at least one person backed those up into Userspace. Simply a matter of finding them...

After a quick search for the word "premade" on GuildWiki, turns out Soqed Hozi kept a full backup. He's got a full archive at the link. -- Jioruji Derako.> 11:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If someone has enough faction to unlock any given bar, then they wouldn't be using those premades - the premades were useful because they came with skills. The crappy bars each class starts with now can't even be called bars. Plague signet? Lightning Surge? C'mon, get real. Those are terribad starter elites. -Auron 11:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm more directing this to the very new players interested in pvp. They are NOT going to get the pvp pack im sure(At least not all of them) and im pretty sure that they want a starter bar (Not like giving them Meta bars like Sf and things like that, just basic ez to run bars). It would be kinda hard to pick which bars you can put up there but I think it would be worth it.

Giving guilds that rank top in a special ATS (or any other idea that hands out "premade build creation" to good guilds) the possibility to create those premades would both breeze more life into the GvG ladder. Plus, you would not have to design them yourself ;-) --Xeeron 14:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I miss them too :( ~Izzy @-'---- 18:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Why were they taken out? Do you think you can get them back in? --TimeToGetIntense 00:26, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

For a number of reasons, mainly just to reduce the confusion of creating a new character, and to clean up a number of other issues that went into place, Id still really like to have some official build templates that you download, to help new players, and if you don't have the skills on the offical ones, it works just like the old Templates worked. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:19, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed -- the game absolutely needs a system to encourage new players to adopt PvP. Think about all the stuff you take for granted -- subtle things, like how to use weaponswaps -- and imagine a new player trying to get a handle on those, plus all 239847298347234789 skills (most of which are horribad and just confuse the poor newbie), plus the basics of movement, energy balance, etc. The tutorial in the Battle Isles is nice, but really needs to be expanded and more comprehensive. Part of that involves premade characters -- giving someone five skills and a res sig is an insult. Whatever happened to the premades from the make-a-premade contest? --72.211.155.160 16:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The best thing about the premade builds was that new players could play a good bar without having to go unlock everything first, that was a great way to get people in to pvp. Offering semi-official templates is a good idea but still requires people to unlock skills first. --Tankity Tank 19:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Izzy was saying if you don't have them unlocked in PvP, the official templates would still work. Just need to make those skills work like the current premade bar you start with; none of the skills are unlocked, you just have them. -- Jioruji Derako.> 22:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, he was - my bad. --Tankity Tank 22:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Sealed Play Cards

Youre the man that goes over skills, so youre the man i should ask. I was wondering why there was no Sealed Play Cards for nightfall(or GW:EN). With the latest update to the fansite kit i hopen it would finally be added but no :( ~ Kurd 15:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm I thought they did them, I'll ask around. ~Izzy @-'---- 18:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks a lot ~ Kurd 10:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The current ones also need to be updated with the new skill effect, last time I checked. Kite 05:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I just hammered out all the rankings for these hopefully they will go up soon. I'm also looking at redoing all the Ranking for all the cards at some point and making things a bit more balanced I crank this stuff out in my spare time so it's normally done a bit fast and it could really use some more thought. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Cluttered

This discussion plag is getting pretty long, what would you think of having this page branch off into other ones like the over/underpowered skills? Example: Overpowered Skills
Underpowered Skills
Skill Suggestions
PvP
PvE
...
... --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Anti Oath .

Me thinks it's just about time to archive the page again. :D -- Jioruji Derako.> 02:49, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I archived some probably need to do a bit more. ~Izzy @-'---- 18:34, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Izzy - see above

Hey Iz, there has been an ongoing "discussion" about Sins recently and i'm sure most of us would like to hear your take on the current and future assassin. Hopefully that will help to keep this continuous back and forth discussion down. (also please look at the Over and Underpowered assassin skill discussion and the "Regarding balance and Hero Battles" discussions for more of the current discussion. Thx--Midnight08 18:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Leave him alone for a while, hes busy with GW:EN ~ Kurd 18:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually this week I'll be focusing on skill balance as I plan on doing a skill balance patch here soon, I'm feeling pretty good about the GW:EN skills for a bit and I'll come back to them after I get this update out the door. ~Izzy @-'---- 18:46, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Assassin is pretty limited right now if you do plan to nerf the sp sin build you shouldd expand the overall class because for now the sp build is just about all the assn has--DVDA 21:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Random Arenas

Are there any plans for adding some new maps, taking some out (Crags), adding some new game types to RA (Relic run :D/mini AB), and setting a time limit on games (Like after 2 mins everyone starts getting degened and each minute after 2 more degen is applied? Also, for some reason Brawler's Pit makes my computer freeze, and I have no other problems anywhere else in the game :( Anti Oath 01:40, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

VoDish mechanism would be nice, but adding relic runs and AB.. why? I would stop playing RA if it ceased to be RA any more :-/ — Skuld 15:22, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

ooo auto-ban people who leave before the timer even starts. that would be great! no, but really there should be some penalty for that. I can hardly ever even find a group because of this. Im in the euro servers btw. --Lou-Saydus 19:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The leavers issue in RA is mainly caused by the uneven distribution of monks. I frequently go 6 games without a monk, then get 2 (or 3!) in my team, which isn't much better. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always assumed that the game tries to share out the monks evenly between teams in RA, but it does it imperfectly because monks don't join at a steady rate. I think you should increase the delay while groups are formed to give the system a better chance of sharing out one monk per team. I would much rather wait an extra 30 secs if my chances of getting a monk doubled. Errr 10:25, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

And rename it to Unrandom Arenas while you're at it. It's supposed to promote self sufficiency and skill, not winning because you have a monk. 220.101.136.85 10:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Self-sufficiency?! You actually believe that the gateway form of PvP is INTENDED to promote a style of play that fails completely in every other form of PvP? I'm guessing you like promoting your own skill in RA on an earth tank or a mending wammo - amirite? ^^ Errr 11:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The only thing that RA teaches you is that Monks win the game, and people are selfish assholes. --Deathwing 11:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Eh, the only thing RA teaches you right now is that it's important to go to international districts and join > leave > join > leave > join > leave until your team is perfect and you've got an improved chance at a glad point. RA teaches that you give yourself every advantage possible with zero regard for anything that might get trampled in the process --Pork soldier 05:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the RA party composition could be improved by making the selection routine try to avoid having more than one of the same Primary profession in a team, unless there is a shortage of players available to select from. Also I would like to see a separate title tracks for RA and TA.ernie 0:20, 4 August (UTC)

Incidentally I think the "VoD" idea is probably not good. It will only encourage people to run more defensive builds with a load of self-healing (and probably running skills). I'd rather have games decided by kill count after say 15 minutes. Errr 09:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just kind of thinking that AB style cap points would be nice because it would allow teams to beat super defensive builds, which would probley become popular if VoD mechanics were added. But the down side of this is that it would probley be to hard for a random team to pull off efficiently, and just give a team that quits to get a guild RA group a lot of advantage. ( i suppose a voice chat could be added like Dungeon Runners just got) Anti Oath 03:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Well what is really needed is a limit to how long matches can last. We all have had those 45 min matches :P (5 min matches ftw) Anti Oath 03:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

1 Hours and 40 minutes was my longest, 2 of each team had left and we had 2 Rits (both resto) and they had a monk and a Wammo. We had quite a fun chat along with sync dancing etc. But after it probably wan't the best couple of hours play i've had! (Memorable though!) --ChronicinabilitY 03:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

This probably isn't izzys concern, but if they are going to do anything to RA, they should punish leavers. It takes 5 "enter mission"s to just get a full team. Shard

The problem with just punishing leavers, is it creates a real mixed message, we only reward you for being on a good team, but we punish you for trying to find a good team. This is the main reason we look into different things we can do. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:26, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

It is called RANDOM Arena, not FINDING GOOD TEAM Arena. If you want to find a good team, you go to Team Arena. If you want a quick random team, you go to Random Arena. Serial Leaving shouldn't be considered valid. It screws over 3-7 other people. People who willingly ruin 3 to 7 other peoples fun just so they can get a title quicker shouldn't be overlooked as trying to find a good team. Sorry, that is just screwed up thinking : / Edit: So using this theory, scammers are fine since they are just trying to get gold for Sweet Tooth and Drunkard title? Reward people for being rich but punish people for trying to get rich. --Deathwing 21:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I liked how the Gladatior title/points change looked when the description was changed. One of the big problems is that you only get rewarded for winning 10 games in a row, so of course many people will leave until they get a perfect team. I think allowing the gain of Gladiator Points in RA was a mistake from the beginning. Many people including myself play RA just for the sake of messing around with skills and having fun. Glad points have degraded this aspect quite a bit, imo. But now it's too late to take them out obviously. Anyway, I think rewards for individual wins would help a lot. I don't like the idea of trying to punish people for leaving because sometimes you know your team is going to lose, like when you get some guy without armor or when your team wipes and you know it's over. --TimeToGetIntense 01:35, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

OK 2 things i have to ask; 1) why not just replace the person who leaves until the timer leaves, then you got ur full team but he gets to leave to a good group, after the timer starts though that stops. 2) ok wth why do I always lose on win 9. is there some mechanic in the game that picks the team that has won 9 times too? --72.74.237.104 03:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Skill Balances

I know a skill balance is coming soon, but why does it take so long? I would rather see 5 skills changed every week, then a list of 40 skills every 1...5...6 month. :( Anti Oath 03:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

it takes a lot of time and energy from a lot of people to make changes happen, and you never know the balance of something if your changing it so often. We've been going with a 1-2 month balance cycle which I think is pretty fast, in the end the longer between cycles the better analysis's you get on whats wrong, but the longer you have to go before it's fixed. It's a trade off and we are always adjusting it. I think the main problem is we needed to schedule faster cycle times after every release, and then slowly increase the cycle times as things get more balanced. ~Izzy @-'---- 03:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. The reason for slow skill balances, the way I see it, are these: It takes 20minutes of work to balance 10 skills properly (for someone who plays the game and has a feeling for it). So that's one, time investment. The other reason is that having a small set of *playable* skills is newbie-friendly and also makes the job of balancer easier. Considering how many newbies there are in GW at this point, I think it's safe to dismiss that option. It's a strategy game for Pete's sake, it's not Tic-Tac-Toe! Now, you say the reason is "we need to wait to see skill effects from last skill balance". OK. No one asks for frequent skill balancing of same 15 skills (as has been happening last few updates). There are 500+ skills which have never been touched (to my knowledge, and im playing since the beginning), and these skills are known to be.. well, bad, or, mildly put, thrashy and useless. I'm not even asking for these currently-useless skills to be viable in top GvG. Just viable *somewhere* in PvP (because PvE is useless to consider in skill balances as they like overpowered skills and if some is underpowered no one cares it's still better than what monsters have; plus, give them PvE-only skills like "Signet - All non-boss monsters drop dead instantly", with instant recharge - they will love it). I never complain about skills which are only useful in RA, or even AB (unless they are fun-breaking like Paradoxed Shadow Form). I complain about useless skills like Protective Bond, Attacker's Insight and 500 more of them in the same group. There is absolutely no excuse why these skills aren't balanced faster, and the argument of "it would increase game comlexity" does not hold water either. If someone is new to PvP, he will lose to a better player even with his Searing Flames, a skill specially designed for 'Im new and dont know anything about the game but i want massive firepower that requires zero strategy'-players. Servant of Kali 13:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got a question too: are you also involved in GW2's skills? Because at the moment, you're the only portal into A.Net's realm of skill balances, and no doubt you have help in that department but we don't see them (which is fine IMO). To keep GW1 alive while GW2 operates, I wonder if you will keep doing that, or whether someone else will take over eventually.

Yes I'm also working on GW2 skills, and design. As far as I know I'll be handling both but could change. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Say for instance that GW2 won't attract a lot of GW1 players and GW1 will remain (very?) popular (for instance the GvG capabilities of GW1 will be far superior to GW2 (hypothetically)), what will A.Net's response be? After all, I think it'll hurt A.Net to have to keep two games active. (Hurt might be a too big a word though.) And to keep GW1 active, skill balances have to be worked on. It's just something I'm wondering about. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 07:27, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't really know how we would act in the future, but I do know we like to support the games our fans are playing, I guess well just have to see how it all falls into place. I'll do what I can to keep everything balanced. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Izzy, why can't we get skill balances more often? No I'm not talking about a large list of skills with random buffs to one or two skills out there. How many HA games do you have to observe to understand that the Ritspike is broken? How many HvH games do you have to endure to find out that SP is the only thing played? Does it take years to understand that Avatar of Melandru is a BROKEN skill that needs to be fixed, QUICKLY? The community is dying for skill balances and sometimes we'd just like to see quicker skill balances that DIRECTLY address the issues. Don't worry about buffing/nerfing slightly OP/UP skills, get back to where GW used to be with weekly updates that addressed core issues. Rant over. Living Parasite 06:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

If you do that there will very rarely be a Balance at all. Just a different overpowered build each week, which would each in turn get nerfed, until almost everything was pretty useless. Theres a reason it takes a while and thats cbecause it's a skill BALANCE not a just a skill NERF! --ChronicinabilitY 16:25, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Well this is always been a corny example but why stop using it now, basically when you adjust the volume on something you have to turn the nob you normally go too high then too low and you make a lot of little adjustments, but each time you make an adjustment you pause for longer and evaluate how loud it is. This is how things work for Skill balance, the closer things are to balance the longer in between each balance change it will take to know what is and isn't balanced, now in the past we've waited to long to balance some times, and currently we are moving forward with once every 1 or 2 months, it's been working out rather well in my opinion. If we go too fast your game just feels too fluid and you never get to feel like you discovered something because by the time you have, it's changed. You end up nerfing too much and never having a good meta, so in between each balance update we are listening for that perfect balance and when ever the sound peaks up and my ears start to bleed I know I better fix something quick :) ~Izzy @-'---- 05:47, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I was just glad when they started making broad skill adjustments, because they were quite needed. I feel the problem is that we are not getting effective skill balances, particularly defining and deviding profession roles. I think the bulk of the skill balancing started when Factions was introduced, where Ritualist and Assassin had to be rehashed repeatedly because they did not fit the roles properly, and did not operate well as alternatives to existing roles. They still don't, and I feel we are getting even further away from balance with the addition of Nightfall roles.

It is natural that reducing the number of useful unique effects limits the amount of balancing neccessary, effectively focusing the needs adjustment to common features which are easier to monitor, but I don't think this does anything to improve the games play. By reducing the amount of legitimate options available in the game, you effectivly make the game less diverse, and make it less involving, interesting, and the characters less unique. It is these branching differences in gameplay that make the game rich with diversity, and draw more enjoyment from many ways to play, for players with different interests and likes.

The disturbing trend I see with skill balancing is that skills are never really balanced, they are trimmed, if simple abilities emerge which give some players a dominant advantage, it is trimmed away and less opportunities exist, makes it easier to control overpowered abilities, but inevitably it just draws the spectrum of abilities to a smaller pool, making the game less enjoyable. I really feel that balancing should revolve around counters, not nerfs, to each ability or strategy, counters need to be developed to overcome them, an I enphasize overcome. There should be a counter to that ability, as well as a counter to that counter, as well as plenty of alternatives. With great diversity and a large circle of advantages and disadvantages, strategy plays a bigger role in gameplay. Players must watch for AoE because it is actually effective, players must bring effective remedies in case of conditions, hex removal in case of hexes, enchantment removal incase of enchantment, blocking because of attacking, and so on, and must compromise because of limitation.

I'm really not interested in how balanced you can get the game, because in the end, it would be perfectly balanced if everyone had the same one ability and had to compete specifically in strategy and talent. What I expect is for a variety of abilities to be viable and fair, the primary objective should be fun, not balance, balance has always be a condition for fun, not a primary objective. Some very simple issues are things like Assassin lack of shadowstep use, Elementist lack of DoT radius and AoE recharge, And Paragons lack of chant and shout effect. I find it particularly disturbing that most of Paragons shouts no longer effect allies, only party members. This is a skill which requires proximity, and that means coordination between the user and the receivers, and it also suffers threat of AoE because of that proximity. Instead of developing the counters for Shouts, they have been nerfed to near worthlessness, when it is the counters which should be improved, and now paragons fall out of not only power, but use as well, is that balance? If the AoE and DoT spread and frequency was higher, Shout intensive builds would be much more risky, The AoE advantage lies in the opponents failure to diverge, and by using shout intensive builds it forces them together causing liability, but this whole dimention of play is bypassed, since DoT effects are not wide enough, Shouts are shortend, weakend, and useless with allies even though it already requires proximty, along with their existing recharge which is not adjusted in favor in light of their alterations.

This so called balancing Anet had done all this time really hasn't improved the game IMO, it only forces players to change builds in PvP, wile making PvP and PvE simultaniously less enjoyable every time one more ability goes out of play. I've been studying, discussing and suggesting on these things for as long as the game has been out, and I'm frankly tired of the quality of balancing that has been added, it really means nothing to me that there are less overpowered builds if skills, abilities and even whole professions are knocked out of the competition just to keep PvP fresh. Anet really needs to develop balance that promotes use of more of the abilities, more of the techniques, and much more frequency for many abilities, I really don't care how balanced you can get it by breaking skills with broad nerfs which reduce abilities in several dimentions with no compensation, that isn't balance it is actually just supression. I'd like to detail dynamic and enjoyable ways to adjust abilities on a broad scale, with lots of build power revolution which would create a circle of checks and balances, but if Anet is simply going to suppress the majority of skills and even whole types of abilities just to make it easier, wile dotting at personal favorites, than I see no point, GW needs a revolution in opportunity, and it starts by creating real balance with a circle of advantages and disadvantages, not broad supression of most abilities wile toying with popular builds. Just give me a little bit of interest and I will take the time to discuss broad adjustments to make the game more dynamic, I can't really spend much time designing improvements if it is just going to be overlooked.--BahamutKaiser 17:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Talk page policies

As a sysop, it's my duty to point out to you that straight removal of comments (such as [2]) is against the GWW:USER policy section regarding talk pages (namely, other users' comments should not be removed). It is not a requirement to sign comments (although innately, comments are tied to a given user due to the page's History). Typically, if a comment is unsigned someone would simply use the {{unsigned}} template to add an indication of who posted it. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

From a technical point of view it's not difficult to protect this page so that only registered users can edit it. But from a policy point of view someone's talk page isn't normally the kind of thing we normally protect. Normally pages are only protected to prevent highly visible vandalism (e.g. the Main Page and the things included on it are protected), pages can be temporarily protected when revert warring is occurring and some legal stuff (e.g. Guild Wars Wiki:GNU Free Documentation License) is protected. There's no precedent of partially protecting an Anet staff member's user page and I don't really like the idea myself, it's against the spirit of a wikiness and there's a large amount of anon IP edits to this page and few are "harmful" anyway, it seems unnecessary to me. But given what happened, I thought I'd throw it out there. --Xasxas256 00:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I suggested protecting this page from anon user's from the start, and i still think its a good idea ~ Kurd 10:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that protecting the page from anon edits will be that helpful to prevent vandalism. After all, the registration process that then should be used is as easy to use as posting anonymous for people who really want to wreak havoc.

May I also state that these three pages are getting rather large... any idea how we could assist you with that Izzy? --  (CoRrRan / talk) 11:08, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

A lot of sub-categories :P Least Izzy is getting more feedback than he knows what to do with now :P --Deathwing 11:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Would definitely need a lot of sub-categories lol. The Underpowered/Overpowered could potentially be split by profession (if it keeps going as it is, about 90% of the skills in the game will appear on one page or another, and i can easily see some ending up on both!), or like regroup 2-3 together per page. As for the main page, maybe something like 'Bugs, General skill balance feedback, Off-topic (which might be the page itself)'. This 'wiki page' is pretty much ending like a full forum right now. Patccmoi 15:52, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

lol who cares — Skuld 16:40, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Skuld doesn't ~ Kurd 23:35, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I just want to say thank you again to everyone who helps me with this page, I love chatting with everyone, and all the improvements everyone does to my page really helps me do that <3. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:42, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

leads & offhands

I think promoting lead attacks wouldn't be a bad idea atm, as they're getting skipped a lot more than used. Now, why not allow offhands that don't require a lead but something else to follow lead attacks without filling their requirement. For example, black spider strike could follow a jagged strike without the target being hexed, but a hex+bss would still be the same effect. In my opinion, this would promote lead attacks while retaining existing builds. –Ichigo724 17:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Way to not read the previous sections. There's been oodles and oodles of discussion on this topic above and in the Underpowered Skills section. --Tensei 18:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Way to assume I didn't? The talk up there and in the underpowered sections don't mention what I'm suggesting at all. They're talking how leads aren't worthwile and how just requirement->offhand->dual is superior. I wanted to start a new paragraph as the others are suggesting buffing leads and/or lead requiring offhands. –Ichigo724 20:08, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Well if I'm understanding this correctly, you're suggesting that the straight-to-offhand skills should be chained with lead attacks as well as their special condition (hex, enchant, or KDd)? That offers absolutely no reason to bring the weak lead attacks that exist and people would still bring the current SP sins and the occasional Moebius sins. It will encourage a few outliers but it will all come back to the same thing: offhand-dual-offhand-dual is superior to any currently existing option for assassin (cuz' the rest suck.) --Tensei 14:57, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

It's imo a less drastic change than most suggested things and would still somewhat promote lead attacks more. :/ –Ichigo724 18:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

The only way to promote lead attacks is to make lead attack shadowstep skills. Make all lead attacks shadowstep you to the target and do the lead. Then MAYBE some would get used. --Deathwing 19:12, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah this is something I need to do, I've been thinking of some different ways to do it, but a lot of them are scary and I just haven't had the time to experiment with it as much as I wanted to, I think there are a bunch of improvements I could make to new skills and some good skills coming in GW:EN that could help. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

There are a hand full of ways to boost the effectivness of leads and normal off-hands if you get creative. The normal attack speed of all unmodded attacks on dagger is still 1.33 right? (it's been a wile since I looked), if the speed of all lead attacks was increased to 1/2 than they would execute an attack faster and allow damage to be unleashed faster. The idea of a lead is like a jab which opens up a combo, so it makes sense for it to be fast. Likewise, the speed of all lead following off-hand attacks can be increased to 1 second, giving it 25% more attack speed allows the attack to come off faster. By doing this a normal lead and off hand can be shot off in nearly the same amount of time as a single hex or enchantment primed off-hand, basically eclipsing the damage done over a shorter period of time. This would decrease the amount of time neccessary to execute combos, and make Assassins attacks skill combos more threatening.--BahamutKaiser 20:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Skill sections

The page is getting too long for some people to handel so I am breaking it up. Where do you want the Underpowered ???? Skills? Done25 18:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

It's better if Izzy can archive himself, or if he specifically makes a request for someone to archive, since it's his own talk page. I've reverted for now. - anja 19:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

See my edit in underpowered for why this needs to be done. --Midnight08 19:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

And like I said on my page. Who knows when Izzy will see it? Done25

The next time he has time to check the page, I assume. I just want to see a "go for it" from Izzy, as I think it's impolite to just do the changes without asking first. It is his personal talk page, not an official forum. - anja 19:27, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Just a note, as I've just made quite a few changes to Izzy's pages, and I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea - I did ask Izzy for permission first. :) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 23:39, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for doing it, Aiiane :) - anja 23:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Aiiane my lack of wiki skills makes for non sexy pages :D I appreciate the help, this talk page seems to have gotten larger then I ever expected it too. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

20 Energy skills and Leadership shields

I'm curious about the balance reasons behind the absence of Leadership shields and skills with Energy costs of 20. I'm guessing the lack of Leadership shields is likely due to the energy management provided by Leadership, but I can't figure out why skills can cost 5, 10, 15 or 25 Energy, but not 20. -- Gordon Ecker 05:43, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Fibonacci Numbers. 1,1,2,3,5. Ignore the first 1. So you get 1,2,3,5. Multiply them by 5. You get 5,10,15,25. I highly doubt that is why it is like it is, but it works out like that. --Deathwing 06:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

1,2,3,4,5

The reason behind 20e skills is we didn't want there to be too many buckets, and for some reason we just went with 25 over 20, in early development there where 40e skills Rodgorts Invocation, Deep Freeze, and Earthquake, where all 40e and radar wide. That didn't last very long, but after lots of tweaks we ended up with 5, 10, 15 and 25. We always mock James and tell him he hates the number 20. But thats the main reason, he and I have talked over maybe making all 25e skills 20 as we've always had a hard time getting 25e skills to be worth their cost, but we've never formalized it into a proposal. As for Leadership shields, it was a matter of balance we wanted to force people into other attribute lines for their defense. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:35, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm surprised I didn't notice the fibonacci pattern, the 40e alpha askills explain everything. -- Gordon Ecker 00:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Can someone explain to me the relavence Fibonacci Numbers has on how much a skill should cost given its use and effect? What I don't understand is how we went from 40e skills which covered the radar to 25e skills with exhaustion which disables 10 energy for 4 times as long and most don't even affect more than nearby foes. I think the debilitating costs of alot of spells and the disfunctionality of spells which don't work reasonably with the energy available on a given profession make no sense. I almost fell out of my chair when I saw exhaustion being placed on Ritualist. Having 20 energy skills allows us to have a cost reasonable for spells which should not have damage alterations or recharge alterations, but need to cost more than 15 energy and less than 25. The whole idea that cost should jump from 15, to 25, and than 25 plus 10 in exhaustion just doesn't make a great deal of sense to me, exhaustion is 4 times as costly as normal energy costs. The whole system of costs in energy, exhaustion, and more than anything else, recharge times, is very disfunctional IMO, the costs attached to many elementist skills simply arn't reasonable. I think the entire system of costs and recharge needs to be reevaluated by how effective they are, and stop penalizing AoE damage for it's potential effect when it is a benifit of strategy.--BahamutKaiser 20:21, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Cape Trims

Not really skill related but as it says on your user page that you give out the cape trims I was wondering when cape trims for July season are going to be given out?--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:87.194.104.90 .

Yeah thats my fault I'll give them out Monday sorry about that. ~Izzy @-'---- 19:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

REMOVE

Hey Izzy shouldnt this skill be removed? --Pablo24 00:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Way of the mantis? Anti Oath 01:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Cripple all moving foes if you use a crappy lead attack? (Leaping Mantis Sting) --Deathwing 01:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it's Way of the Lotus Done25

I think it's a duplicate they wanted to delete but they forgot it--Pablo24 01:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

How'd you get that screen shot? --72.194.109.3 05:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

We have a lot of skills that are marked REMOVE, when ever we retire a skill thats what we mark it. As long as the only way you can see it is by checking your dat then it's fine. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:14, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Ether Phantom Bug

I'm not sure where to put this, but for a while now I haven't seen Ether Phantom cause an enemy to lose the energy amount described when this hex is removed prematurely. Can anyone try it out? Just shatter it with Shatter Delusions and see. Maybe this skill isn't very popular and nobody has noticed, or perhaps my game is glitched and it's not showing the energy loss of the target. Here is a video of Ether Phantom being applied then removed to show no energy loss. Then I use Energy Tap to show that energy loss can occur on the target. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA3v-HxSjbY --Redfeather 06:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello, I just found out from other mesmer players that Ether Phantom doesn't display the energy loss to the caster, but it is displaying it for the target. It's probably very tricky to make it display for the caster too because of how it works? --Redfeather 19:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

None of the energy denial skills show it for the caster. Dunno if it's technically difficult to show it or what, but I don't think it really matters. --TimeToGetIntense 06:48, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Is Ebon Dust Aura broken?

This skill has been broken for me for a few weeks now. At first I doubted myself, but then I tested it and found out I was not blinding anyone. I put a note in the updates notes on the wiki (both wikis) but I'm not sure if it got people's attention. So, here are a couple of screen shots:

In both cases I am using the scythe I called, once without Staggering Force and once with it. As you can see, there's no brown down arrow on my target. Can you look into this? Thanks. --Karlos 10:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nvm. I forgot it was attack skills. :( I'll go find those notes I put in both wikis. :) --Karlos 11:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Np, I've done that more then once myself lol. ~Izzy @-'---- 21:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Skill Balance

Just wondering, when can we expect it to happen? I cant seem to find any info on a new one.--Atlas Oranos 11:05, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

See the top of the page, under the heading Izzy Status. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 11:44, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh wow.... sorry, I usually check the bottom first >.>.--Atlas Oranos 18:02, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarification

On GuildWiki, it's stated that bosses have +3 regen. On GWW, it says +2. I did my own testing which came up inconclusive. Could we get a dev statement on what it is, if only for those of us who are curious? (Like what the monuments of Nahlah and Dahlah are). Ayumbhara 07:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Find a boss, bleed it and see if health just stops regenerating then its +3, if it slowly drains then its +2 Biz 10:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I used Phantom Pain at 16 Illusion, which causes -3 degen. Even when a boss used Life Siphon at low Blood on me, causing +1 regen, the boss still seemed to suffer degen. Ayumbhara 17:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The level of regen with natural resistance varies, problably with creature level. Formual unknown. Both 1 and 5 has been observed. Backsword 21:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

I was asking around but still never got a good answer lol I don't work on monsters much but I'll keep bugging the monster guys to clarify this :D ~Izzy @-'---- 05:32, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

09-08-2007

In the note above that looks like September 8 2007 to some of us, maybe change that to 09 Aug 2007 for clarification?--Midnight08 21:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah i put that there, i dunno how to write it, in europe they write DD-MM-YYY and other parts of the world they write MM-DD-YYY, so i picked out the one izzy used ~ Kurd 21:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I've always prefer DD-MM-YYYY but most people in US use MM-DD-YYYY, *Sigh* just makes no sense almost as much as the English System of measurement, and don't even get me started on that one, I think I dislike it even more then English :D. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:31, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Lol yea, the military person in me made my suggstion for DD MMM YYYY, its readable and generally acceptable to all as with the month spelled theres little room for mistakes... Im american and i agree that 90% of the stuff we do makes no sense, but still wanted some way to make it hard to confuse this. --Midnight08 07:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Soldier's Stance

← moved to User_talk:Isaiah_Cartwright/Underpowered_Skills/Warrior

Old Prophecies skill nuances

Sorry about using such vocabulary just to describe skills. I can't think of another word to describe the old Prophecies skills. Just so no one has to go to webster/dictionary.com (and I had to go check if I was right when the word popped into my head), a nuance is something that shows subtle distinction. We can see that the old Prophecies skills are kind of outdated and distinct from Factions, Nightfall, and the upcoming GW:EN skills, but not necessarily obsolete. I commented about this on the underpowered ele skills under Ether Renewal, but I think it's more appropriate to put it on Izzy's page. When you read Proph skill descriptions, you'll notice some things that you don't see in newer skills and you'll notice that things you see in newer skills aren't to be found.

My first example is number caps, like those found in Enraged Lunge, Mystic Sandstorm, and Signet of Deadly Corruption. I think this is a good mechanic that they came up with to keep skills from being too strong. Sadly, some of the old skills that were too powerful before caps were nerfed into uselessness. Ether Renewal as I mentioned earlier wouldn't be so bad if they restored it to its old stats but introduced a cap on energy gain. "Victory is Mine!" is also a shadow of its former self, but would be better if a cap had been added rather than changing it to single target. You also see an absence in caps that nobody complains about, but probably would have caps if they were made in post-Factions. Dwayna's Kiss example. But you don't have to worry about that, Izzy. =D

Another thing you don't see in non-core/Prophecies skills is the "failure clause". I don't really mind that you abandoned that concept, it was mostly pointless/random, but if you had kept it, then you'd be able to make more skills like Oath Shot, skills that have a strong effect but are pretty much unlinked, but limited to the primary profession by chance of failure. By the way, I noticed that with the latest update, Plague Sending no longer has that random failure chance, so now there's fewer skills that have failure chance.

Many core/Prophecies skills also say too much. You don't see post-Factions skills over-explaining things, except in the case of Teinai's Crystals which is a duplicate of a Prophecies skill. What do I mean by "over-explaining"? Well, take Remedy Signet, there's a straight-to-the-point skill. Now look at Mend Condition, Mend Ailment, Restore Condition, and Purge Conditions. Wow, that's a lot of words! Other skills explain what the condition they cause does. Eviscerate, Dismember, and Rotting Flesh are a few. The first two don't even fully explain it, they leave out the healing reduction of deep wound too. Other skills talk about "negative conditions", but all conditions are negative. Crystal Wave and its duplicate. There are other skills like Obsidian Flame where what is implied is explained. It's not like armor ignoring mesmer/monk/necro skills have to say they ignore armor. If there's no damage type, it's implied that it's armor ignoring, which means, Izzy, you might need to check for some clerical errors. *cough* Savannah Heat *cough*

So anyway, these are some distinctions of Prophecies skills. I think some of the older, underpowered skills could be buffed if a cap was introduced to them. I don't really care much about the "failure clause". Finally, lots of old skill descriptions have these remnants of the past that should be removed to make things more consistent. Which brings up another consistency issue, what about those attack skills that say "additional # damage" and those that say "+# damage"? Well, that's for another day. --Heelz 02:16, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Consistency in the skill description's something that irks me (Axe Rake and Axe Twist for example) but as long as the description is unambiguous, I don't mind. Even within attack skills, you have things like "This attack strikes for +1...32...40 damage if it hits", "If this attack hits, you strike for +5...17...20 damage", "If this attack hits, target foe takes +14...19...20 damage" and all. But you know you're dealing extra, armor-ignoring damage, so there's no harm done. Though I'd agree it'd look more professional if the descriptions were standardized, it's certainly not a high priority for ArenaNet. Heck I'd do it for them if they wanted me to. ~Seef II <☎|→> 03:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

New stuff

I know you're probably really busy right now (test weekends do that ;) ), but could we possibly make /Skill Suggestions? I have a few neat ideas for some skills, and even though they probably won't make it into GW:EN (I'm willing to bet you lot aren't going to rewrite the core server coding stuff to allow for a dual elemental storm spell ;) ), I thought I might want to mention them for GW2, etc. If you'd rather we hold off for a bit, that's cool, and if you'd rather not get a subpage that's likely to be about a billion times longer than any other page on the wiki, that's cool as well. Thanks! Armond 06:33, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah sure keep in mind there isn't going to be too many new skills in GW. ~Izzy @-'---- 08:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be fun. I have seen some fun skill suggestions for GW2 on the forums. One was a necromancer resurrection spell that is a maintained enchantment. The rez'd player suffers huge health degen, but does a small percantage of life stealing with each attack. Like they were a blood thirsty zombie. lol --Redfeather 00:17, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Guild Hall changes

Why can't guilds change their halls for free? I can understand why you'd want to have a fairly high initial charge for setting up your first hall, but I don't understand why you need to spend 20k+ (or win halls) to change it after that. It's fine if you're in a good HA guild, or if you love farming in PvE, but it's pretty annoying for pure GvG guilds. The trend over time seems to have been towards decoupling the various parts of the game so you don't get penalised if you only want to play one format, so the sigil system seems like a bit of an anomaly. Any chance of changing it? Errr 14:05, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Alternative cost: 50K balthfaction? ~ Kurd 14:08, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Paying for a new GH isn't such a problem for me ^^ I get the cash quick anyway ----InfestedHydralisk 14:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The faction idea is interesting but I still can't see why there should be a cost of any kind. Why would you want to discourage guilds from changing hall frequently? Infested, glad to hear it, and thanks for widening the topic to cover your farming skillz, which I'm sure everyone was dying to hear about. Errr 14:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

What about making guildhalls cost 100-200 victory tokens? As an additional payment option ofc. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:GoldenAvenger .

What about PvE? :S --Santax (talk · contribs) 15:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh, guild halls costing 100-200 tournament tokens wouldn't be a bad idea at all. I've got 500 of the things in storage with nothing really to spend them on. I don't do Hero Battle tourneys often enough to use em, and all the Guild Battle ATS I'm in are payed for by someone else. I'm really hoping to see other things made purchasable via Tournament Tokens. -Auron 15:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't it take ages before you can buy a GH then via Tournament Tokens? :S ----InfestedHydralisk 15:35, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Tourny Tokens are easy to get. I think there should definately ne more things you can use them on. I also think that maybe you should be able to trade 25 for a Reward Point or something like that. Give people something to get past UAX please!--ChronicinabilitY 15:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

(to IH) No. Considering that several people would be willing to pitch in for a new hall, the 100-200 tokens wouldn't have to come from one person, and since I've gotten a huge amount of tokens from just my sparing PvP these last months, 100-200 wouldn't be too steep a price at all.

And yeah, I agree with Chronicinability's suggestion. Tournament Tokens should be tradable for... flames of balthazar or something. Having to do ATS to get reward points to spend on golden flames is a royal waste, seeing as you have to be UAX before really investing in tournament tokens to begin with. -Auron 15:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I really like the idea of buying guildhalls with ~100k faction. However, I don't think that buying flames of balthazar is a good idea. If you could buy flames with faction then you'd effectively have stored faction, which robs fame/glad/champ title holders of one of their benefits. --Tankity Tank 03:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Greater Benefits for Primary Professions using their Primary Skills?

I proposed this before along side another change, but it was overlooked for the most part, but since I did get some support for the idea, and some support to resubmit it as a separate suggestion, here it is.

Why not adjust the scaling on skills so that the greater benefits come from having above a 12 in the attributes? The skills would still be just as viable for someone who has that class as a second profession, but would better reward the primary classes that use their primary skills, as they alone would be able to reach the higher ranks of the attributes.

Doesn't it make more sense that someone of a primary class can achieve better results from using a skill meant for their profession, than someone who only has that profession as a secondary? Shouldn't a Necro be better with Necro skills than a Mesmer? Chances are, if you are going to be playing a Curses Necro or a Blood Necro, you'll be putting more than 12 in the primary attribute you're going to focus on, right? So if that's the case, then why not get more for doing so? Here's an example...
Power Shot - It does 10-26 damage (from a 0 to a 16) and at an attribute level of 4 it gives +14, at 8 it gives +18, at 12 it gives +22, and at 16 it gives +26. Basically it goes up a point for each point you put in to the attribute, which means that a Ranger with a 12 is just as good a marksman as an Elementalist with a 12... which seems a little wrong, given a Ranger likely grows up training with a bow and it is their primary weapon. My suggestion would be to give a slightly smaller starting bonus damage and rank it like this instead...

Attribute - 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Damage - 08 10 10 11 12 13 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 23 24 25 26

...since chances are if you have a more than a 9 in marksmanship, you'll have above a 12... so why not make it pay off more for the primary class? You can even keep the same maximum damage, just adjust it to give better benefits to players with a greater than 12 in the attribute associated with the skill.

Sure, there are the skills for the primary attributes of each profession that a secondary cannot pump up because he doesn't have access to that attribute, but in many cases like with Soul Reaping, Energy Storage, Fast Casting, etc. the skill for those attributes are severely limited in number, and not as greatly missed when making a build with skills for your secondary profession.

It won't really change much for people who are just trying to meat their weapon's requirement but not get extra damage from the skills based on that weapon, but it would reward the people who wish to 'master' that weapon by having more than a 12 in the attribute. ~ J.Kougar 21:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

No. -FireFox File:Firefoxav.png 22:10, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Neat idea. I approve. However, to simulate true mastery, I propose keeping the "low end" of the range (0-12, so that the descriptions in-game don't randomly become off) the same, and upping the "high end" (13+). Thus, Power Shot would be 10...22 for 0-12, then 13+ might be something like 24, 25, 26, 28. The disadvantage (depending on your point of view; I'm actually neutral on it) of this is that it doesn't punish "gimmick" builds that go E/R and use a bow. Your original idea would do so. (Edit conflict: Don't be a spoilsport, Firefox. :P) Armond 22:14, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with hindering the gimmick builds now is there? Didn't think so. Thanks for your comments and feedback.  :) ~ J.Kougar 08:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Uhhh, your like mastering it depending on your attribute ----InfestedHydralisk 22:40, 12 August 2007 (UTC) Read it wrong, and no it's still no good idea ----InfestedHydralisk 00:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it would be feasible to implement. -- Gordon Ecker 00:01, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Why not? It's just an adjusting of the damage per point, isn't it? ~ J.Kougar 08:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It's not that simple, right now, all green numbers use a smooth linear progression (before rounding) based on the 0 and 15 values. A skill with +8 damage at rank 0 and +25 at rank 15 will always have the following progression ...

Progression
Attribute +Damage	0 8 1 9 2 10 3 11 4 13 5 14 6 15 7 16 8 17 9 18 10 19 11 20 12 22 13 23 14 24 15 25 16 26 17 27 18 28 19 30 20 31 21 32

Title skills appear to work by multiplying and rounding a title rank to get a "virtual" attribute rank. The only skill effects which doesn't use linear progressions are the "50% chance of failure with <attribute> under N" effects. -- Gordon Ecker 09:14, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I highly doubt it, and I'll just leave it at that without getting offensive. --Deathwing 00:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

What is wrong with an Ele with 12 in bow getting the same benefit that a ranger with 12 in bow does? The ele doesn't get to use runes, doesn't get to use expertise, no +1 bow mask, etc.. An ele with a bow is already gimped, why would you want to gimp a bad build further? It seems to me that you don't understand how guildwars is balanced and I'm starting to think that you need to design your own game and not attempt to impose your design aesthetic on guildwars. --Tankity Tank 01:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

What I'm trying to say is that Izzy's talk page is not the place to ask for overarching game design changes. This sort of thing belongs on one of the fan forums in the suggestions section, not here. This isn't a skill balance change, it's a game design change. --Tankity Tank 01:32, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

These kinds of ideas, frankly, scare me. What you're proposing is nothing less than destroying the robustness and viability of GW's secondary profession system, to say nothing of diversity of play. Observe that you said here: My suggestion would be to give a slightly smaller starting bonus damage... In other words, you are proposing to nerf EVERY SKILL IN THE GAME. It would also obligate primary classes to have above a 12 in anything to be really effective. Are you going to nerf all Protection Prayers skills so that they're only any use at 13+? This is insane, and would completely rip apart the game. Runes, primary attributes, and the many attribute breakpoints that already exist at ranks 13+ have always ensured that a primary class does its job better than any other class. Arshay Duskbrow 01:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

There is one exception to that though. W/Mo's can out-heal monks. --Deathwing 03:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Fear my mending. That is all. (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 03:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Izzy's talk page isn't the place for game design suggestions, this belongs here: http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=19 or here: http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=172 --Tankity Tank 03:52, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

How so? This is all about skill balance and the changing of skill damage. Seems right at home here, but thanks for your opinion.  :) ~ J.Kougar 08:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Changes to specific skills are skill changes, changes to the design of all skills are design changes. What you're asking for is a change to the way all skills work, that's a fundamental design change. --Tankity Tank 10:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

The proposed sweeping rebalancing of the entire game is a good idea because... -Ensign 11:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's not balanced now... and the only way they can even try to balance it is by removing entire attribute lines or classes from play. Eventually after GW:EN when there are no more new skills added, it won't take long before they are all made useless with the current tactics and given there won't be another fresh supply again in six months or a year... there will be nothing left to play (except the Monk, which seem to be immune to balancing no matter how overpowered). ~ J.Kougar 20:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Exponential scaling is just sick =) Biz 11:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

because he feels that it's only taken 3 years to get the balance we have so far, so a drastic change requireing a few years to balance after wouldnt be a bad idea. :P --Midnight08 19:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, so far the way the game has been balanced hasn't worked. PvP balances destroy skills/classes for PvE, PvE balances leave PvP skills unbalanced... and the only way they can seem to 'balance' the skills is by eliminating entire attribute lines or even entire classes and only once they are unplayable do they reach something similar to balance. It seems people are more concerned with how to run the next gimmick build than actual balance, and skills that allow bots to farm are ignored while others that don't need changed get entirely reworked. Obviously the current system is flawed, so maybe a new one needs to be implemented before they are no more skills or classes left to play. ~ J.Kougar 19:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

So you're saying that you can balance the game better than the current employees at Arenanet. OK, so go apply for a job and stop trolling their talk pages. --Tankity Tank 20:17, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

No thanks, I'm interested in job security, and to be fully honest... I don't see them making money for much longer at the current rate/trend they've been down for the last year. Not everyone is as obsessive/stupid enough to purchase more than a half dozen accounts and furnish them with all the expansions and then buy more than a dozen character slots on top of that, like my fiance and I have. I could however balance skills better, but only because I'd put in a division between PvP and PvE skills, so a skill could be changed for one without affecting the other. They won't do that though. As for trolling... well, I'm inclined to think that your multiple copies of the same post to this discussion and my user page, are a far better example of trolling than anything I've posted... as are your comments such as the above one that don't at all contribute to the discussion and only drag the discussion off-topic as you have gotten me to do here, by responding to you. If you have nothing to contribute, ideas or suggestions, please don't respond. Thanks. ~ J.Kougar 20:44, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately you don't set terms on someone else's talk page. My suggestion to you is that you take your idea somewhere relevant, I'll leave it at that. --Tankity Tank 23:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

But this is a relevant discussion here... Izzy takes care of skill balances and tweaks, are you saying that adjusting how skills progress doesn't have anything to do with skills? If there's a better place on this wiki to discuss this, then point that out; it's not hard for someone to move s discussion over. There's no reason to argue about anything, simply point it out once, and be done with it. -- Jioruji Derako.> 23:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

<reset incident>

Ok, well I have to say that I actually DO like the idea of rewarding more for attributes above 12. Your linear scaling system simply an equation right? So can't you just add a few thingamajigs to make the equation reward more for 12+?. I am sure the boys and girls at ArenaNet can find a way to do it in a balanced fashion. Look, honestly I think this idea has some merit. While I do NOT like the idea of changing the numbers below 12, I do like the idea of changing them ABOVE 12. That is my opinion. Counciler 01:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Good point, and honestly, the only reason I offered up the idea of lowering the base numbers was to try and avoid dozens of people pointing fingers at me and saying that I wanted to over-power all the skills. Thought if I offered that as a trade-off it might make it more appealing, but it didn't. lol ~ J.Kougar 08:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The benefits you want = runes. Enough said. Saph 23:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

No. In fact, I dare say you didn't even read the idea fully. We said that WITH attributes already above 12, players don't get much more of a payout in skill efficiency than they do with those at 12. Please pay attention. Counciler 05:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. For investing in those runes and getting the higher stats, the current jump in skill performance is very miniscule in many cases. Fireball only goes up 7 points of damage from a 12 to a 13, Power Shot only goes up 1 point, Power Attack only goes up 2 points, Vampiric Gaze only goes up 2 points, heck even Word of Healing only goes up 6 points... so the rewards are quite small. Even with a 16 (which means you are using a Superior rune and losing 75 health) Power Attack only goes up 8 points in damage. That's kinda low, don't you think? ~ J.Kougar 08:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

It's convenient, and telling, that you only name skills with damage/healing breakpoints that are small by nature. There are plenty of skills with breakpoints such as number of attacks affected, number of foes, etc. that do make progression past 12 profitable if that's the effect you're looking for. Progression at 13+ is consistent with the lower ranks. You shouldn't expect greater increases past 13, and you don't need them either. You're just greedy for more power, and it's unnecessary. Arshay Duskbrow 09:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

In all honesty I just picked some skills randomly off the top of my head that I knew that most everyone would be familiar with, despite if they were widely used or not. The fact that coincidentally they were all skills with very low bonuses after 12 was chance, but just goes to show how many skills like that are out there and that do need a buff in that direction. As for just being greedy for power, well, I already addressed that but if you chose to ignore it or skip it then there is really little more that I can say to convince you otherwise. ~ J.Kougar 20:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so he named only skills that pay out poorly. Well DUH! If there are skills that already provide what we are looking for, why name them? If we HAD named them, you would be faulting us about how they don't need a buff! Furthermore, this is a game. For a game that we payed for, we can 'expect' and request whatever we damn well please. In addition, of COURSE we want more power for our characters! Isn't that what a buff provides?! If you have nothing productive to say towards the conversation, get out. Counciler 23:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That's funny...I could've sworn this was Izzy's talk page, not yours. You don't have the authority to order me anywhere. Better watch what you say. Arshay Duskbrow 01:04, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

And you have the authority to tell me what I should and should not expect and spout implied threats? Spare me. Counciler 01:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, you both have proved that you are very adamant in your opinions. Is all of the "dont threaten me" "dont tell me what to do and threaten me" really needed? Arshay is against it, Counciler is for it. --Deathwing 02:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Quite right; I apologize to everyone else. In any case, it will never happen, so I'm content. Arshay Duskbrow 02:21, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I got a bit out of hand with all that. I apologize. Counciler 04:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

A simpler way to buff skills for primary professions would be to buff runes and attribute headgear. I'm not saying that it should be done, I'm just saying that it would probably be simpler than changing the skill progressions from linear to exponential. -- Gordon Ecker 22:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I like that idea. Counciler 23:27, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

2/4/6 for attribute runes, now we are talking. --Deathwing 00:01, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Excellent idea, that would solve the issues and not require the skills to be changed.  :) ~ J.Kougar 20:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Minor compulsive point: the skill values scale linearly (based on a mathematical equation), so the incrementation would be something like 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2 instead of 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 4 like you have it listed. For example, Mending has an effect value of ((attribute+2)/5) +1), resulting in the progression 1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4.

There is really nothing wrong with having classA use classB skills. The problem lies more on the mechanics and skill power levels. When spiritway was popular, people ran healer's boon necros because they literally had an infinite energy pool to spam expensive healing spells. Lowering the effectiveness of the heals would have had minor results. I would love to see GW balanced as well as it used to be when it was prophecies only. Shard 10:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Well now that you have some feedback....

Planning on some new changes?--Atlas Oranos 21:57, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I went over some stuff today, I'll be getting it set up and released here soon : ) ~Izzy @-'---- 05:12, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Woot :D--Atlas Oranos 09:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Please tell me you will un-nerf BSS and nerf BLS instead as well as buff some unused assassin skills. :( Shendaar 20:18, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Another skill balance with GW:EN release?

Not that I didn't appreciate the recent skill balance, but when GW:EN comes out, there's gonna be a lot of new strong skills burying many forgotten skills. I would rather the old underpowered skills be buffed than the new ones nerfed into oblivion. Anyway, I'm just wondering if the GW:EN release, or maybe the week after the preview weekend, will have a skill balance for older skills. --Heelz 04:03, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I will most likely do a skill balance apon GW:EN release, and hopefully I'll set up one shortly after and have the updates be a little more often right at the start, and then slow down once things are more balanced. ~Izzy @-'---- 05:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah please do see if you can buff older ones rather than nerf new ones. I much prefer buffs over nerfs. Obviously. Counciler 06:25, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Inscriptions for Prophecies/Factions Equipment

Dear Izzy,

have you considered adding inscriptions to Prophecies/Factions weapons in the same way that you did to armor? I am asking this, because I find it really unfair that people in Prophecies/Factions have a far harder time to find usable equipment than Nightfall players have, simply because they cannot alter the stuff they find. In Tyria and Cantha, you have to be extremely lucky to find usable equipment. It is usually either a good req or a good mod, if it has something good in it at all (I half remember finding a wand requiring 1 primary and boosting another primary). Some people might not like it because their items suddenly become less valuable, but let's face it: Nightfall players can pry the useful stuff out of anything they find, and added to that they get free Treasures every month or so. Now tell me: does that seem fair to you?Nicky Silverstar 12:27, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Er...Isaiah is the main skill balancer. Somehow I don't see how that has anything to do with equipment and inscriptions...People have already talked on Gaile's page about this issue, it's on her archives. Erasculio 12:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Great idea, inappropriate place. But consider how long it took to figure out how to make insignias retroactive with armor. There's probably a lot more complications with weapons, or it wouldn't take this long. I wouldn't be surprised if they released it with GW:EN, though. (And yes, stuff that requires one primary and boosts another isn't that uncommon. I've gotten a strength shield that boosts divine favor, and possibly even one that boosts soul reaping.) I don't mean to complain, but the main thing about non-inscribable things that bugs me is that it becomes almost impossible to find good shields and offhands, as they have two variable mods instead of one... 90% of all gold offhands I've gotten have had only one mod, no joke. At least staffs now all have one variable mod, and a variable percent (which is FAR better than two variable mods, as you're much more likely to get a 20% out of a variable 10-20 than two max mods out of two variable mods). Armond 14:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I just thought that Izzy was the person to talk about anything. I mean, to me he is like mr. Anet himself. Nicky Silverstar 17:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Well it's something we debate about it's a a hard subject because there are a lot of weapons in the game that are valuable because of how hard they are too get and if we added inscriptions to all weapons in factions and prophecies we would greatly devalue those items, while I think it's something I'm highly in favor of, we have to solve that problem before we move forward. Technically it's not a hard problem it just takes some time, and time is something we always wishing we had more of ;). Also in genral I welcome any questions if I don't know the answer I'll gladly just say so. : ) ~Izzy @-'---- 05:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Metaphorically speaking, if you guys did convert Proph. and Factions weapons to inscribable, would you change all the existing weapons as well, or just change the drops? I'm curious what would happen to weapons with non-inscription mods on them, such as my axe with a +15% damage, -1 energy regeneration... if all weapons were changed to inscribable, would such weapons be left untouched, changed to a different inscription, or would those mods just become inscriptions? Asking purely out of curiosity... -- Jioruji Derako.> 05:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

But wouldn't devaluing these absurdly expensive items be good for the economy? The major demand for purchased gold stems from things like 15k armor and rare weapons that people want. The more things become simpler to acquire the less reason people will want to charge 100k + 790e on a single item. It just seems that it would help the economy if anything. Counciler 06:23, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

You would simply have to tweak the drop tables to increase the rarity of the 'rare' skins to compensate for everything becoming inscribable. There's nothing preventing valuable weapons with the inscription system (see Elemental Swords and Colossal Scimitars), they just need to be sufficiently rare drops. -Ensign 10:30, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

(reset)Personally, I think you'd be better off making all older weapons inscribable rather than leaving them untouched. Making them uninscribable will devaluate them even more compared to the new, inscribable versions. I have been looking for a 'perfect' earth magic celestial staff, but the chance that I find one (which is very rare) is better than the chance of finding someone who's selling it. Roughly translated, it is (nearly) impossible for me to get the item. I respect the fact that you don't want to devaluate items that people already have, but no inscriptions also has the downside of some items being impossible to get. Adding inscriptions will only hurt people who trade the items for cash. It won't hurt the people who use it, and it certainly won't hurt the people trying to get them, who are more numerous than the first group. I will keep thinking on it, and in the unlikely event that I should come up with an idea to balance the devaluating issue, I will be sure to pass it along to you.Nicky Silverstar 10:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I may have an idea how to counter the devaluation, though it may be difficult to implement. You could give all the uncustomized Factions/Prophecies weapons that are rare a Merchant value of let's say 80-90% of their 'real' value. That way players who spent a lot of money on their items, won't lose a lot of money, no matter what happens, wheter they stay the same price or drop.Nicky Silverstar 12:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

That would be quite bad, considering they introduced drop scaling just to prevent people from getting new gold out of merchants instead of selling what ever they got to players. Biz 08:54, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I just meant the items that were dropped before the change, just so those won't devaluate. That's all. Nicky Silverstar 09:59, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Still iscribtion slots will only make "rare" items more accessible not devalue them. Biz 10:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It would devalue them because you wouldn't have to get an r8 item with a 15^50 attached, the item could have any inscription. So an r8 15^50 dwarven axe (or whatever the current hot item is) that's worth millions suddenly is much easier to get - just find an r8 dwarven axe and add a 15^50. Accessible by definition is not ultra-rare and thus is not ultra valuable by virtue of scarcity.

Personally I'm all for making prophecies skins more accessible, this game isn't geared to support ridiculous materialism. However I also think that it'd be rude to take away the effort that some people have put into obtaining those ultra rare (and ultra valuable) items. --Tankity Tank 10:48, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Inscribable Crystalines are still worth millions never mind inscribtion, But a 13^50 req 9 purple one is something you would still pick your teeth after a good ecto stake =D Biz 13:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally I've felt that the inscription system needed to be implemented game-wide, since it first appeared in Nightfall... and there has been talk of it and request for it since... and still it's not been implemented. I fully support the idea. ~ J.Kougar 20:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion: Why not have the weapon smith be able to inscribe items? Charge 500 gold or something, and then the item can have an empty inscribe slot, allowing you to then put inscriptions in it.  :) That way, Guild Hall weapon smiths are more useful than just customizing weapons. (What's with that? 10,000 gold to just be able to customize gear?)

Separation?

Is it possible to create two different lines of the same skills, one for PvP and the other for PvE? That way when farming skills are nerfed, PvP doesn't get screwed over and when PvP skills are nerfed the PvEers don't get the bad end. Just a thought. Counciler 02:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That's stupid, if we would do that why not just play 2 different games. 69.137.78.47 04:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

How does that response even justify a retort? QFT please. Counciler 05:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Oi. Can we have a discussion here rather than an argument? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 05:02, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

No, no, anon is right here. We're playing one single game. Everyone should be held by the same leash. What you choose to do with your time on that leash is what makes Guild Wars and all of its myriad of skills such an interesting game to play and such a unique game as well. —ǥrɩɳsɧƿoɲ〚₮/ḉ〛 05:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

it is technical possible, but a lot of the time in the past we've nerfed things because we didn't like the way it played in PvE too, we often balance things and change the numbers on stuff because of PvE, it needs balance too : ), now it does suck when one side puts pressure on the other, and PvP normally wins out in that battle, but I think there are trades offs to splitting every skill up, the biggest being complexity. I don't think it's something we will do for GW1, but it's something we will take largely into consideration as we move forward with GW2 : ). ~Izzy @-'---- 05:07, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for posting Izzy! Glad to hear there is a chance that PvP nerfs wont affect PvE in GW2. And vice versa. Counciler 06:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Skills not working the same way in different areas is incredibly counter-intuitive. You'd need some huge advantages to compensate, and simply preserving which skills are the best in each area through balance changes doesn't even belong in that conversation. -Ensign 10:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Ensign, Izzy already said they are considering it for GW2, and I have what information I need. I appreciate your opinion, however I do not agree nor do I honestly need it. The fact that there is a chance for us not having to deal with PvP nerfs destroying PvE useful skills [and vice versa] in GW2 is all I needed to hear. Counciler 01:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Just to voice one more opinion about this issue, this is something I don't want to see as well. Not only it's counter intuitive, but it would also punish players who like to both PvE and PvP, and I believe that's the group of players Arena Net should be trying to focus the most. Besides, I'm not sure all players who suggest a separation understand what they are talking about - I believe some players don't understand the concept of PvE balance, so for them dividing PvE and PvP skills would mean that no PvE skill would never be nerfed - and we know that's not true, as PvE needs balance as well. Besides, PvE has been buffed thanks to PvP updates as much (or more) as it has been nerfed. Erasculio 01:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think you miss understood what I was saying, I don't think that is the correct answer would be to make two of the same skill and one be different in PvP vs PvE, I think Ensign hits the issue on the head there it would be very counter-intuitive. But PvP nerfs effecting PvE in such a negative way is a problem. There is two games there and it's hard when one hurts the other. I think we will look at different ways to solve this, and have different skills in PvP and PvE is an option, but even then they would be vastly different and probably end up being two separate skill pools or something like that. Now I don't think this is a good option or one we would really go with but we look at every problem as we move forward and will do our best to find the best solution we can. ~Izzy @-'---- 04:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Well whether my idea has merit or not, all I really care about is knowing that PvE won't be so affected by PvP nerfs in the future. AS long as we get that, I really couldn't care less how it's implemented. Counciler 05:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Jesus, you act like its the end of the world that a skill gets nerfed.--Atlas Oranos 09:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I know you love me, but you really don't have to call me Jesus. I suppose you can still worship me if you want though. Counciler 17:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

>.>--Atlas Oranos 03:40, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind what Izzy said too though : sometimes nerfs are also make because they don't like how skills work in PvE. Everytime there's a nerf to a skill, it seems like it's always blamed fully on PvP hurting PvE, except when it's a very obvious farming skill that never sees play in PvP. But it's also possible when skills like Searing Flames get nerfed that it's ALSO because it wasn't balanced in PvE compared to other options. Patccmoi 19:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Why is it nobody ever reads the original post fully? I specifically included PvE nerfs in my original question: That way when farming skills are nerfed, PvP doesn't get screwed over. Pay attention people. Counciler 21:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think you missed Patccmoi's point. PvE needs balance beyond "farming" - it needs balance just as PvP needs balance. Searing Flames, for example, was overpowered in PvP - and it was also overpowered in PvE, so it was likely going to be nerfed there as well despite the nerf thanks to PvP. This kind of nerf - balance nerfs, outside farming nerfs - happens and it needs to happen. The illusion that all nerfs are thanks to PvP or to farming is just that, an illusion. Erasculio 22:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

And I think you missed mine. Those were examples. Not exceptions. I have played GW long enough to know that there are imbalance issues in PvE as well. And when have I EVER (no literally, I dare you to find a post with me saying that) that all nerfs are thanks to PvP or to farming? It would be an exercise in futility to try to list all the reasons and places for nerfs. Hance the reason why I did not. I listed two LIKELY places, one for PvP and one for PvE. Now I hate to be rude about this, but like I said before I really don't give a damn where the nerfs happen. As it stands now, it affects ALL aspects of the game, in both good AND bad ways. This is what I would like to see changed. And THAT is what Izzy suggested they were working on for GW2. Now PLEASE stop making it look like I am trying to say that only one place gets the bad end. That is not what I am saying, and I have explained my views. Counciler 23:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Farming nerfs are irrelevant to the discussion, loot scale has made farming nerfs obsolete. You can farm all day long and it doesn't really matter now. --Tankity Tank 00:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Not true, I go solo farming almost every day, and repeatedly get good drops. Hard Mode trapping solo in Stygian Veil, I've gotten tons of gemstones... farming bosses, I get green weapons every so often as well. And I get at least one gold weapon per run in Stygian Veil as well. The drop rate does get progressively worse over time, but just a few runs and you still have a good chance of getting stuff. -- Jioruji Derako.> 00:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you understand, it doesn't matter how much good loot you get currently. Farming nerfs were intended to reduce the rate of inflation (of gold) and make basic things (runes, materials) accessible to newer players. If you look at the prices of runes that approach worked very well, you can buy the game and kit yourself out with max armor and runes in a very reasonable period of time. What you can't do any more is farm all day and merch full inventories of crap drops for direct gold income, that was what drove gold inflation super high. What you'll see over time (and you can already see it in the prices of things) is that gold has more real value now compared to items. If you look at your gemstones the prices have probably fallen off pretty steadily since loot scaling started. That's not because there are more gemstones (gemstones get taken out of the game by people wanting armbraces or coffers) it's because the value of gold is steadily going up and driving the prices of items steadily down. (pay close attention to the hard to farm items, the ones that are super easy are always going to be really cheap, pick the highest value gemstone for this example - it should be steadily dropping over time)

Because inflation is kept in check by loot scaling there is no need to nerf farming skills just because they're used to farm. It's important to recognize that skills picked for farming may be overpowered in other contexts (pvp, pve, etc..) and they may can still be nerfed for other reasons, however, nerfing skills just because people power farm with them isn't really relevant any more.

On a tangential note now that loot scale is implemented and amateur farming isn't a threat to casual players ANet has changed it's stance on farming. Farming is an activity that keeps people playing (and buying) guild wars, those people are part of in-game social networks that keep large numbers of people playing. Basically farming is good business for ANet as long as it's not disruptive of other players (ie: pro gold farmers selling gold on ebay and driving inflation up). For all of those reasons I'm pretty sure you won't see any new farming based skill nerfs unless the skills expose some way for players to become extremely wealthy (in real gold, not items). </end> --Tankity Tank 01:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Well put Tankity. Again. Counciler 08:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Separating PvP and PvE skills is the worse thing you can do, because a lot of people play both game modes and that would make it too complicated. Skills should be balanced EXCLUSIVELY for PvP. If a skill is PvE oriented it should be made into PvE-only skill and I fully support the existence of overpowered PvE only skills in PvE (for instance, I'd make GWEN skill Farmer's Scythe into PvE only). PvE should be balanced by balancing zones and monsters. By giving monsters certain inherent weaknesses and strenghts, you buff and nerf skills for PvE without actually directly nerfing the skills. For instance, if every Char has inherent "takes 50 dmg when interrupted", that would make mesmer, ranger, and Dwarven Battle Stance (for instance) buffed for that PvE area, without messing the skills themselves. The worse thing for PvE is to truly balance skills. I don't know a SINGLE PvE-only player who wants balance in PvE. Instead, they want overpowered skills that will enable them to plow through enemy lines. None, not a single PvEr who demanded PvE skill balance actually thought about it for more than 30seconds. Do you really want to see Power Leak and Power Drain buffed in PvE? And SS, minions, monk spells, AoE spells nerfed? Do you really want to see Concussion Shot buffed and Barrage nerfed into Oblivion? Are you people actually that blind as not to see this? If skills were balanced for PvE, Izzy would have to nerf hit-space skills and buff skills which require skill. Considering the average skill of a PvEr, how many rage quits would happen in PvE? How many, if you told them "here, now you have balance; see, this skill is very strong but you just dont know how to use it properly, and on the other hand this skill is weak but it's easy to use it, so if you do you'll suck." Do you realize that some people don't play PvP because it's demanding and they just want a relaxing mindless PvE game, where they can hit Searing Flames over and over again and enemies drop like flies. I say give PvErs option to do that with powerful PvE skills etc. There are plenty of good solutions, but strict PvE balancing... dude... they scream and cry and whine when you nerf some Rt skill which rarely anyone used, and they threaten to ragequit the game. Balance (read: nerf) their favorite skills, and you're facing a rebellion. And this is not coming from a strict PvPer, I played PvE too even though admittedly I bought game for PvP and that's what I do because PvE is boring once you complete it. Servant of Kali 20:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Just to disagree with you, I'm a PvE only player and I want balance in PvE : D I think the game would be better, even the PvE game, if it were balanced, even if that meant nerfing what has to be nerfed. Erasculio 21:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

What's the point of PvE skill balance mind you? When you can balance monsters accordingly? If you give monsters insane enchant removal, you have nerfed enchantments without touching the skills themselves. If you give monsters 50% attack speed buff, you buffed Empathy and SS without even touching the skills. If you give monsters faster cast time, you buffed Backfire but nerfed spell interrupts. So what's the point of PvE skill balance? If there's any skill overpowered in PvE, you can easily nerf it by tweaking monsters. SS too powerful? How bout some hex removals which monsters never use? Really, there are a zillion of options to balance PvE without bothering with skills. Servant of Kali 22:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Modifying monsters has much farther-reaching and resounding effects than modifying a skill does. Case in point: Hard Mode. Heck, you even mention it yourself with your cast speed example above. What if Backfire is underpowered in PvE, but spell interrupts are fine? Should you make spell interrupts underpowered because you want to modify the monsters to make backfire more powerful? If the root cause is skills, why in all of tarnation would you start changing mobs to fix it? If your clothes washer is leaking and flooding your basement, do you redesign your basement to float on water, or do you fix the leak? (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 22:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

My IQ obviously fails me here. Explain to me how skill balance in PvE is supposed to look like, what areas will be a model for balancing (high end? or normal ones?), and then explain to me your vision of skill balance on the following skills: Power Flux, Searing Flames, Nine Tail Strike, Wither, SS. Servant of Kali 09:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Buffing monsters like that would be like a game-wide nerf of skills, though. More hex removal nerfs SS, but it also nerfs every other hex. Same goes for enchants. Increase attack speed? Yay Empathy, boo survival. That's like adding environmental effects to PvP, making all hexes cast slower, just to fix one hex that casts too fast. There is skill balance in PvE, and it does need to be addressed just like PvP skills. Paraway in PvP makes it less fun for opponents in PvP; Paraway in PvE makes it less fun for anyone trying to find a party with a non-Paragon character. -- Jioruji Derako.> 22:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Nerfs every other Hex? Oh yea, like any other hex is ever used in PvE, besides SS Empathy and WW on bosses. It's not like you're gonna pressure the mobs with their current setup, just plow through them. What you're asking for then, isn't a PvE skill balance, it's a complete redesign of PvE with yet-unknown working model and somehow I doubt that'll happen. A game which is a form of rock-paper-scissors cannot be balanced for PvE, at least I don't see how, since monsters can't pick their skills. So any skill balance turns into 1 overpowered template in zoneA to another overpowered template in zoneB. Servant of Kali 09:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

And adding a bit to the points above, another problem is who is going to go manually changing area by area, especially to consider newer skills. For example, have Prophecies areas been balanced to adjust to the current state of skills? No. If they had been changed after the release of Factions...Wouldn't they need a new balance now, given how much the skills have changed since then? I fear that's just too much work. I agree with Kali in that this is a way in which the game could be balanced, but I think skill balance, despite everything, is still less time consuming than changing all the PvE areas in the game from time to time so they're balanced. Even with Hard Mode, for example, I think Arena Net did more of a global change (changing all monsters in the same way everywhere) than an area-by-area change in order to make everything, well, balanced. Erasculio 22:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The thing is, balancing monsters and balancing skills is really just a different side of the coin. If you do a balance with skills, some skills will ALWAYS be overpowered in some PvE zones. So what will PvE balance bring? - the need to load templates region after region, and the skills you use will always be overpowered whenever you encounter monsters using different set of skills in different environment. At least in PvP things are trying to be balanced with GvG in mind, but it scales nicely to other arenas in most cases (not perfectly ofc). How should the skills be balanced in PvE? For high-end areas? For normal areas? For what? Servant of Kali 09:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

You are right, but I think the lack of something fixed against which to have balance is actually a good thing, not a bad one. I see balance in PvE as all professions being equally useful to a party, and all skills being equally useful for a profession, but I don't think that's possible everywhere - as in, I doubt it would be possible that in all areas of the game all skills are equally useful for a profession. Instead, I think it's easier to reach a state in which a profession is more useful here, a skill is more useful there, and so on. For example, in Prophecies, Minion Masters are very powerful in some areas, but are weak (ok, not weak, but for argument's sake let's say weak : D) in others, filled with corpless undead. Right now, I think a limited set of skills are overpowered everywhere (Spiteful Spirit, Searing Flames, and so on) - with a combination of skill balance and monster balance, I think it would be possible to make different skill groups more useful in different areas, so everything is useful somewhere, even if less useful somewhere else. For example, one area with high armored enemies that are strong against damage that does not ignore armor but are weak against hexes (which would then have to be balanced so Backfire is as useful as Spiteful Spirit, for example), and so on. The idea would be to make some skills more useful than others in some situations, at the same time the skills more useful are broad enough in scope to allow players to be creative with what they are using. Erasculio 14:25, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I havent read all of this,but I made a thread like this on GWO and the responses were similar. Somebody came up with the idea of making skills in PvE do more for instance. Lightning orb does 10...30dmg does 10+extra damage to plant type monsters.EdgeBomber 18:13, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, imagine, GWOers requested skills do more dmg in PvE. I'm sure we would see lvl50 monsters soon after that. Not that I care, I said it before - if it was up to me I'd make a skill: "Armageddon: Signet. All enemies in radar range DIE." I'm sure many would be delighted. Don't ask me what's the point in having annihilation skills in PvE, and no challenge, but eh..Servant of Kali 23:22, 30 August 2007 (UTC) (Aiiane - talk - contribs) 19:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)