Warning: Wall of text ahead!
Hello everyone! This is my second post on the forums, despite reading from a variety of subforums for quite a while.
I’ve decided to finally post as, with the incoming (June 23rd) changes, I’ve come to notice a few glaring inconsistencies design-wise. While some are justifiable (“to fit the theme of the skill more”, “to make it actually feel like a Trap”), some cross-class comparisons have arisen that I cannot help but notice, and cringe at.
For clarity purpose, I am a PvE player (Elementalist/Ranger being my favorite classes) who enjoys occasional sPvP and WvW; a “casual” player as some might say. Yet, seeing as how ArenaNet is trying to make the game simpler on many levels for “us casuals”, my opinion IS biased. However, as a student in 3D animation and game design, I will try to be as objective as I can towards this game I love.
Without further ado, here is the first one I have noticed. All skill facts are copy/pasted from the forum post “June 23 Specialization Changes”:
Assigning TYPES to utility skills which lacked one
Elementalist vs Necromancer:
E:
Ether Renewal: This ability is now a Cantrip. The recharge of this ability has been increased from 15 seconds to 18.
N:
Consume Conditions: This skill is now considered a corruption skill and applies 10 stacks of vulnerability to you for 4 seconds after use. Increased recharge to 30 seconds.
First up is the shared cooldown increase of these skills. That part is obviously for balance purpose when coupling with their associated traits. Therefore, it is, in my eyes, completely justified.
Second, though, is a problem with the nature of the skill types being applied unequally; Cantrips are (wiki quote) “Defensive charms which activate instantly”, whereas Corruption skills apply a condition on you when using it.
As both skills are healing skills which affect conditions, I can assume they will be treated on almost equal footing. Ether Renewal’s weakness is it’s cast time, while Consume Conditions’ weakness is its recharge time when compared to Ether Renewal.
Wether those weaknesses are equivalent, I will leave that to theory crafters, but they feel balanced enough pre-changes.
Yet Consume Conditions is being changed to add 10% damage received for 4 seconds after cast, lowering its usefulness as a healing skill drastically, for the sake of making it an actual “Corruption” skill.
Ether Renewal, on the other hand, simply becomes a “Cantrip”, without sharing its characteristic of being Instant-Cast. While in this skill’s case it would be a pretty significant buff for it to simply cast instantly completely, in the case of Consume Conditions, it hasn’t been said that the heal amount will be adjusted to compensate, leading me to think there is No Compensation At All.
Why wasn’t Ether Renewal CHANGED, like Guardians’ Tomes or Mesmers’ Moa Transform, into a different skill with the same ideas behind it?
Idea I had while writing this, ignore if you wish:
Casting the Ether Renewal (instant-cast, to fit with the Cantrip theme) could give an Effect/Charm that negates the next few conditions received while also clearing a few conditions already applied on you.
While I am not against a general “Nerf” to make the game actually harder, for a leading sPvP class (eles) to receive Neutral changes while Necromancers, one of the most underrepresented classes in high-level sPvP, get, in this case, the very short end of the stick, irritates me slightly.
Without calling names, I’d say the Devs, while agreeing to give utility skills a type, haven’t consulted each other in how exactly it should be handled. As a matter of fact, I LOVE the fact that Consume Conditions, becoming a Corruption, gives you a condition after its use. Why? Because it fits the theme (As the developers have mentioned they WANTED the skills to become) of the skill type.
While 10 vulnerability stacks feel a bit over-hyped in that direction, it simply feels like some developers wanted the skills to stay the exact same, while others decided to change them more drastically.
Which of these two choices is the best? I couldn’t say! Yet I feel it SHOULD all go in the same direction. Even if that means changing all affected skills, or keeping them all. All or nothing.
Uniformity, for a lack of better word, is what, according to me, should be the basis of the changes; Logical, equal changes.
I appreciate the time anyone has spent reading this wall of text, and would love feedback/bashing on what I’ve written!