Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,734
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.
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.
