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Guild Wars 1

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,646
Pathfinder: Wrath
Some easy-to-implement ideas on how to rejuvenate pre-Searing and make it more competitive/challenging -

1. Remove the xp when killing Vanguard mobs and increase the quest reward xp instead. Farming the Hamnett bandits being the fastest and most efficient way to LDoA is a bit lame and anti-fun/challenge/competition. This way, you actually have to do the quests and it wouldn't take 2 days to get LDoA on a new character.

2. In light of not having any xp on kill anymore, scale the Vanguard quests to the highest level character and not the lowest. That means you can't just pay-to-win to a Legendary Survivor anymore (i.e. have a second account with a lvl 10 character to downscale the quests for you). Not that there are a bajillion Legendary Survivors in pre out there, but still, people should be incentivized to do the challenging content.

3. Activate the PvP arena for lvl 10+ characters. Self-explanatory. It would be amazing to have pre-Searing PvP tournaments with unique skins. iirc, having an arena in pre was the initial idea, but they removed it because they didn't want to overwhelm new players. This wouldn't be the case when it requires lvl 10+ since you can't "accidentally" get to lvl 10 in pre.

4. Remove bonus items from pre with the exception of the imp. Self-explanatory. They are too powerful for pre and it ruins the economy for their weapon types.

5. Maybe do a balance pass (separate PvP and PvE balance obviously) for skills to buff some severely underused or borderline pointless skills and nerf some overly good ones (namely Firestorm and *maybe* the ranger pet). Some preliminary ideas from my own gameplay:

a) Obviously fix Power Shot, it's a straight up DPS reduction on top of costing energy. Or replace this skill with something else, there are two other bow attacks in pre.

b) I'd straight up remove the energy cost on Imagined Burden because its only applications in pre PvE would be as fodder for Shatter Delusion or to trigger Soul Barb damage.

c) Speaking of Soul Barbs, there are two problems with it in current meta. The energy cost is way too high and Curses is a bad attribute in pre due to its other spell, Faintheartedness, not being extremely useful either. I'd drop its energy cost to 5 and make it trigger itself on application.

d) Reduce Faintheartedness energy cost to 5 and improve its scaling with Curses. It's already a shaky spell in general, but it not only requires too much investment in Curses for its health degen to matter it also costs 10 energy on top. By improving Soul Barbs and Faintheartedness, a hex-based Necro/Mesmer might actually become a meta build.

e) Replace Sever Artery with Barberous Slice for warriors and add another Hammer skill to the roster. Bleeding just isn't very good in pre, but it combines well with Gash, so Barberous Slice would be a great skill to use instead without losing that interaction. Hammers don't have a straight up damage skill and hammers aren't very viable in pre because of it.

f) Do *something* about Smiting Prayers skills. Either increase the damage across the board or reduce the cooldowns (but not too much).

Those are all the bad/weird skills in pre if you ask me. The other skills people cite as bad (Conjure Phantasm, Vampiric Touch, Blinding Flash, Retribution) aren't that bad imo, just require specific investment or are situational, some of them are going to improve by implementing the changes above too.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,646
Pathfinder: Wrath
Yeah, I know, but there isn't a good Core/Prophecies (or even Factions) replacement. Seeking Blade is the only viable one, but it has to be blocked to inflict bleeding, which isn't good in pre. And does anyone care if it's a Nightfall skill at this point? ANet haven't updated the game in 12 years.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,881
f) Do *something* about Smiting Prayers skills. Either increase the damage across the board or reduce the cooldowns (but not too much).
Smiting Prayers really needs a Dervish style rework (and the whole "holy damage deals double vs undead" thing probably also needs to go because it's likely to cause SP to always be left underpowered in general out of fear of making it too strong vs a relatively niche enemy), ideally into a line of self-buffing skills meant for Monk melee builds. If we were talking about a hypothetical skill rebalance. Which won't happen, of course.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,646
Pathfinder: Wrath
Smiting Prayers have some usage in post-Searing PvE, 55 Monk comes to mind and some other builds, but yeah in general they are a bit weak. Ironically, ANet did add a melee monk skill 4 years ago, Judgement Strike, but it scales off of Divine Favor for some reason and I'm not sure if someone has found a good build for it, it seems like a weaker version of other skills.
 
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,881
Smiting Prayers have some usage in post-Searing PvE, 55 Monk comes to mind and some other builds, but yeah in general they are a bit weak. Ironically, ANet did add a melee monk skill 4 years ago, Judgement Strike, but it scales off of Divine Favor for some reason and I'm not sure if someone has found a good build for it, it seems like a weaker version of other skills.

Prot Spirit based farming builds got nerfed a while back, in particular the change to Spell Breaker and Holy Wrath; while those did affect 600/Smite more than solo 55hp, 600/Smite was the much better build.
Judgment Strike's problem is that it's just one attack (and not even a particularly good one); it doesn't synergize with anything the way, say, Soul Taker synergizes with Dark Aura to achieve a high damage output that outweighs the caster's squishiness. With Judgment Strike you just end up with a weaker Earth Shaker monk.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,646
Pathfinder: Wrath
So, after having played the Necro/Monk build a while and having died to some of the highest level Vanguard quests there have been some reiterations to the build I'm using. This is my Charr run build and this is my Vanguard quest build (which I'll still probably reiterate on). Even then, I'm not entirely sure some Vanguard quests can be done without the imp (i.e. at lvl 20) because the damage is lacking just a tiny little bit to kill the mobs that actively heal themselves (so Utini and Charr annihilation might be out of the question, perhaps even Countess Nadya). Reversal of Fortune is worse than I thought it's going to be, both during Charr runs and Vanguard quests. If you are playing a primary Monk with high Protection Prayers and Divine Favor and you are healing someone else, then it's great, but it's not good in such an active build as mine. Healing Breeze is better even without any investment in Healing Prayers because I already have +9 regen from Blood Renewal and Life Siphon, so it's just covering crucial cracks in regen, especially when either Life Siphon or BR aren't online for some reason. Shielding Hands makes it so you barely take any damage during Charr runs because most of the damage comes in "shotgun" style of a lot of tiny damages from a bunch of sources. Chaots aren't as scary as people make them out to be, maybe specifically in this build. Retribution is bad in Charr runs because they don't do enough damage for it to count, but it's crucial in Vanguard quests where a lot of mobs Frenzy and kill themselves on it + Symbol of Wrath.

Having said that, I see why people downscale the Vanguard quests with a character from another account when going for survivor. You really have to play without any mistakes during the Vanguard quests and even then it's not guaranteed you won't die to RNG or some spike from somewhere. Implementing my idea of no downscaling and no mob kill xp might prevent the vast majority of builds, perhaps even classes, from achieving the two higher survivor titles solo.
 
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Maxie

Wholesome Chungus
Patron
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 13, 2021
Messages
8,032
Location
Warszawa, PL
rJS2xU7.jpeg
ah yes im something of a factions enjoyer mysel
 

Dr1f7

Scholar
Joined
Jan 25, 2022
Messages
1,479
anyone play this with reshade?
i made a preset that looks real nice with this game but it makes the game crash randomly
which is really fucking bad if you're in a mission lol
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
15,145
Cynn, not Devona. Rightmost I don't know either. I checked and none of the factions monk henchmen have that hairstyle. Not sure why you wouldn't use Nika or Vizu for the hot cantha chick option.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,646
Pathfinder: Wrath
All the hot chicks are necromancers. Maybe the NekRomantik movies were onto something.
 

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