Major skill update now added to Guild Wars
by Lesley Smith 
May 22nd 2009 at 1:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Guild Wars, Game mechanics, Patches, PvP, News items, PvE, Free-to-play
Guild Wars fans are in for a treat with the announcement of a whole host of PvP and PvE skill updates designed to balance gameplay which have just been added to the game. ArenaNet have posted a nice explanation of what this latest update is trying to achieve:"The major goals for this update are to address the power of certain spike builds, make pressure builds a more viable option, adjust some skills to encourage tactical use, and provide some buffs to underused skills. In GvG, we have continued to see extremely versatile spike builds dominating; they are able to split, be defensive, and output high damage spikes while still having many of the tools needed to counter other build types. They could do it all, and do it all a bit too well. We've targeted certain key skills to tone down these builds' ability to do high damage spikes and shut down other build types."
You can find the full run down of the changes here.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Box said on 2:11PM 5-22-2009
8 days later... While I understand that it may take a day or two more to write about the updates here 8 days seems a bit... too much. Apart from that the update was mildly hilarious. My favorite update was the one to Illusionary Weaponry, honestly what were they thinking? That making it 5 energy would somehow make it good? It does bad damage, is susceptible to the overly common enchantment removal, it makes you unable to use +damage skills or inflict deep wound or such, it's a close combat skill revolving around doing damage for a profession revolving around ranged shutdown through hexes. Making it cost 5 energy didn't solve any problem, it was just another of those skill updates that make you wonder if the people "balancing" the game do the updates when they are high or if they are just completely oblivious to what balance is...
A lot of fun nerfs such as the one to Aegis and SoH that effectively just are attempts to remove skills from the game to make balancing easier. Pretty sad that there were no major updates to bad skills but I suppose the balancers already got too much a problem trying keep the game "balanced"...
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Jack said on 3:08PM 5-22-2009
boring and the only thing we see of guild wars 2 is a crappy logo...
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MasterSaji said on 5:32PM 5-22-2009
"Major" is not exactly the terms to be used here, it's just a "normal" skill update compared to others in the past. And by "normal," I of course mean lame and pvp-oriented.
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Cithrax said on 5:43PM 5-22-2009
I dunno, this wasn't too bad of an update. They'll get around to broken skills later. In the meantime, the game is pretty nicely balanced. Not perfect, but nice.
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Metroid said on 6:46PM 5-22-2009
I agree, compared to alot of Anet's updates, this one has been pretty good. It seems to have done a fine job of moving most of the faceroll builds out of the meta.
Andrew M. said on 9:57PM 5-22-2009
I'm curious why this is suddenly covered as a major thing... Guild Wars gets these skill updates all the time :/
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