Trip Down Memory Lane: The Day Guild Wars Died - the 11/10/05 patch

It was fortunate for me to be playing in the early afternoon hours of that Thursday. I was going through Sactum Cay with a very nice PUG and was lucky enough to pick up a max damage gold axe 15>50 of weakness. We finished the mission after 2 tries because we spent too much time on the bonus and failed to protect the Vizer. The second time, we passed the mission with flying colors. This was, of course, pre update.

Later that night, since I had friday off, I logged on again, hoping to do the Riverside Province bonus. The launcher app. kicked off, and began to download an update. No biggy. However, after the PUG was created and the mission started, we noticed something was dreadfully wrong. Our group was 2 w/mo, 1 mo/n, 2 e/me, and 1 r/n. We came with the usual stratagy of tanks, nukers, pullers and healer. Both of the eles. were fire nukers, including myself. The tanks drew aggro and we proceeded to kill. The other ele. cast firestorm while I pummeled away with flare and fireball. The enemies broke their attack on the tanks and proceeded to scatter in all directions. It came straight to the back lines towards the "soft" targets. No biggy. At the time we thought it was a small glitch. So we used local AOE attacks and fended them off. We proceeded to the second watch tower. Drew, pummeled and once again, the enemies broke aggro. This time, there were a lot more White Mantle, and no matter how hard the tanks tried to draw aggro back, it wouldn't work. All the casters and healers died, the ranger too, and the tanks eventually were beaten into submission by the likes of 9 Justiculars. They even tried to flee, but the enemy always found them.

Then it was a slow realization that this was the doing of the new patch. I warped myself to Lions Arch and saw that much of the chatter was about how the 11/10 patch broke the game. I listened some more and found that the AI had been "improved" to flee the area of an AOE attack. Flee when the spell is in the process of being cast, not when the attack is actually hitting them. Not being completely pursuaded that Anet would do something so stupid, i went to Henge of Denravi and decided to fight my way to Maguuma Stade. I picked my usual group of henchies; Stefan, Little Thom, Alesia, Claude, and Orion. I also though, might as well farm along the way too. So I begin to attack all the groups. To my suprise, they all run away as soon as Orion casts Firestorm (cause we all know its his favorite thing). All the monsters flee from the area and just scatter.

I log out, and head to guildwarsguru to check up on what the heck is going on with the game via their forums. There was a thread titled Guild Wars Game Update 11/10 discussion. About 100 posts were made in the thread. I post my thoughts and read other people's thoughts. This patch was made to kill off farming. But as collateral damage, they nerfed the entire ele. class.

For those of you who do not know, farming is going into an area and killing everything in it in order to get drops. Drops can be sold for profit so you get a bunch of money.

A common build for farming is known as the "invinci-monk." Thats been nerfed, but its still effective enough to use. Basically, the build uses a spell that makes it so that you cannot take more than 10% damage from your total HP at any time. Then you cast an upkeep spell which damages those around you every time you cast a spell. So one can stand there all day healing themselves while doing massive damage to those around you. But since this new update, if you use a AOE or local AOE spell, the monsters run way. This makes farming impossible for the invinci-monk. Granted, there are other ways to do it, but it just takes longer to do it.

Many people use this game as a stress relief from the day just to have some fun and to kill some creatures. But apparently many other people have been complaining to Anet that the PvE aspect of the game is too easy. Tank draws aggro, nuker casts firestorm/meteor shower on the enemeies and they all die. And now when they nerf the game, many many more people complain that it is now too hard. For those of you unfamiliar with the "nerf stick" try diablo II. They nerfed that game into nothingness. People found great builds that were in the bounds of the rule, but people complained they were too strong and it got nerfed. Then other builds are found and they are complained upon too, and thus nerfed. The cycle goes on.

Back to the thread on GWG. When I began to write my post, there were roughly 130 posts on the thead. When I submitted my post 3 minutes later, my post was #170 something. I left, played some CS because I was angry with the game, came back 15 mins later, checked the thread, post #450. Took a shower, came back 30 mins later, post #1000 something. Clearly this was something to talk about.

This Friday, 11/11, another patch was released. On the official GW website, the patch was labeled "Improved enemy and henchment AI when in an AOE attack". Now instead of runnning away while the spell is being cast, the enemy stays in the attack for x seconds, then runs away. More true to how a human plays. But the damage has already been done. I know many people who have deleted their characters because they are "useless" after the patch. Many people still think the patch nerfs the ele. and smitting monk classes too much.

While I haven't played much since the 11/11 patch, I find it playable only if you have a decent PUG. If you play with henchmen, the game becomes significantly harder.

Moral of the story: stop nerfing everything, and play the game the way it was made to be played. There is no such thing as perfect balance, people will always tip the scale.. ie. IWAY, invinci-monk... the list goes on.