Guild Wars 2

I understand that online games are always evolving and items often get tweaked. But completely changing what an item does?

“the data showed us that Maintenance Oils were worse than Sharpening Stones for power DPS, so we threw out their concept and repurposed them as the Utility category for support builds”

If your data determined that the Oils were under-performing then buff them. If you wanted to add a new Utility that was geared to the support build then by all means, create a new Utility.

Take another look at your data and you will also see that the price of Oils has plummeted. What a fine indicator of the value the community places on this “repurposed” Utility. Some of us liked them and spent a fair amount to build up a stockpile.

I suspect that most people use Sharpening Stones and so probably didn’t even notice this small change but I happen to be one of the few that used the Oils. If they had changed the +Power boost on Sharpening Stones to +Healing then I bet a whole lot of people would have noticed.

Yeah it’s pretty pointless now. The extra boon duration is ridiculous. It was a choice of power (stones) and precision (oils). Simple and effective. Who the hell will choose a couple of boon duration percent, lol… This will mean they are far more useless than before. All oils become worthless over night, mission accomplished Anet.

Is there a utility that increases precision now?

Medicarejunkie.6032:

Is there a utility that increases precision now?

scribing utility..

Hehe, I crafted 250 Furious Maintenance oils yesterday.

now they are worthless to me

raykor.6723:

“the data showed us that Maintenance Oils were worse than Sharpening Stones for power DPS, so we threw out their concept and repurposed them as the Utility category for support builds”

DPS isn’t everything -.-
Oils were fine as they were. I optimized several of my builds around the use of Furious Maintenance Oil – not because of the Ferocity but because of Vita. Now the oil – that I spent a lot of gold on to craft – is kittening useless to me.

raykor.6723:

If your data determined that the Oils were under-performing then buff them. If you wanted to add a new Utility that was geared to the support build then by all means, create a new Utility.

Why have two power-utilities around? One is always going to be superior to the other flat out.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Medicarejunkie.6032:

Is there a utility that increases precision now?

scribing utility..

::price checks writ of accuracy:: oh…ohhohoho…no

Assuming that this was removed due to new armor sets that will be arriving with PoF and this pushed something over an edge of some sort.

The change made sense. There was too much overlap between sharpening stones and oils. Does it suck that some players lost a lot of money? Yes. But making them very distinctive is ultimately a good move, otherwise there wouldn’t even be a point in having different types of utilities.

I preferred the precision over power because of my choice of sigils and traits, but this change doesn’t really bother me.

All utility items got toned down to a point where they’re of negligible usefulness. Except for some of the really expensive scribing ones.

OriOri.8724:

The change made sense. There was too much overlap between sharpening stones and oils. Does it suck that some players lost a lot of money? Yes. But making them very distinctive is ultimately a good move, otherwise there wouldn’t even be a point in having different types of utilities.

I saw that in the notes, but oil precision, stone power, not sure I saw the overlap. For power builds it came down to what stat needed the buff in the build. These didn’t fit the same niche. Hence why I think there is something we aren’t seeing yet, but its only been a night so might be missing another change that offsets this.

I do think that we will see a new utility type with PoF as well. Just a hunch, but I do think its coming.

The expansion may or may not bring new utility items but that is just speculation at this point. And it doesn’t justify the loss players experienced from having an item completed changed after they had spent time and coin on acquiring them.

ANET’s explanation for changing oils is very specific. It was not the best choice for power DPS builds. Well there are plenty of runes, sigils, and foods that are not the best but some players still manage to make them work.

Also, the best choice is always the most expensive. I like sharpening stones but saved them for specific content and used the less expensive oils during more casual play.

To be clear, I fully realize that this is not really that big of a problem. We always adapt. But I just can’t understand their thinking. There are thousands of items in this game that have almost no value and never get used. Oils—while admittedly not the best—were being used by enough people that they demanded a consistently decent price.

I love the idea of a new support utility but why did it have to come at the expense of the only affordable precision utility?

raykor.6723:

I love the idea of a new support utility but why did it have to come at the expense of the only affordable precision utility?

I think that is the crux of it, why not introduce a new one versus re-purpose. The trend is usually an adjustment versus full replace which is what this situation out of the normal.

To me, it is more of a bad planning.
In the beginning, people already questioned why is boon and conditions not in numeric value like ferocity. Now, they talk about streamlining and standandizing it, then why not make it so in the beginning? Why ignore what people questioned? Why only do it 2 years later when the changes can be done in the first year?

Look at the introductions of the utility, they suddenly thought is a good idea to categorize the type to specific type of conversion. Why didn’t they do that in the beginning? Are the contents all made for the sake of adding something without considerations to balance?