November 10 update

[WarBlade]

I went for a spin around GF with Kronin last night after work and my oh my was I ever in for a shock. I soon realized that the Stone Summit had woken up to the gradual damage release area effect spell Chaos Storm and were racing off out of the area after only a couple of seconds.

WTF?

There's definitely some degree of living, breathing player emulation in that, but there are also those times when one of my characters gets one of those spells dropped on his/her head and I check the damage, shrug and just weather it.

So I checked guildwars.com this morning . . .

• Improved the character name and guild name entry dialogs.
  
• Improved AI so that henchmen and monsters can now detect and flee from area-effect damage spells.
  
• Improved AI so that monsters will eventually stop chasing fleeing players.
  
• Slightly reduced the power of the Doppelganger creature.
  
• Fixed a bug which could cause certain animated ground cover to not be animated.
  
• Fixed a bug which could cause two copies of Gwen to appear in pre-searing Ascalon.
  
• Fixed a bug with certain enemies not attacking players in the Gates of Kryta mission.
  
• Fixed an exploit which could allow players to create PvP characters with invalid armor. Thanks to Derek Ravenclaw for reporting this.
  

I must say it was a bizarre game. Enemies were running off and dragging Devona almost to the edge of the compass, henchmen were rushing all over the place, combats were drawn out into crazy cat and mouse fights with no clear victor until someone got spiked hard enough to finally fall, Bone Minions were a killer - They'd just pop up and dart all the henchies who were busy doing laps.

Hmm. Okay, so some simple AI adjustments and I'm looking at revising the build of two of my characters! Now that NPCs 'know' to run from Maelstroms, do you think that any of the friendly ranged ones would wake up and converge when I drop a Healing Spring? Nah . . .

*sigh*

I'll drop this one into the "Nice idea, but needs work" basket.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Well, at least they're doing something about the horrid ai that currently exists, unlike most other companies. It's a good idea in concept, they just need to create a maximum for how far the monsters are allowed to run.

[Green_Gloom]

And Orion/Cynn still spams Firestorm, right?

How many damage ticks, on average, does it take before a mob tries to flee?

Do mobs flee from Meteor Shower too?

[Zed-F]

Makes me glad I went with Air for my primary Ele. Of course that in part was because I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on a superior fire rune. Maybe those prices will come down a bit now. This actually hurts my Ranger more than my Ele; looks like I will need to sub Incendiary Bonds in for Firestorm, or something.

As far as dodging Maelstrom goes, with water you already have some good tools for preventing just such an occurrance. If you're using an Elemental Attunement build, just precede Maelstrom with Deep Freeze, for instance.

I wonder if this will lead to alternate tactics for things like Firestorm, for instance to use it at level 0+ to deny a bit of ground to the AIs. Can be used to clear a choke point, or prevent AI wars from meleeing, etc. Hopefully the knockdown on Meteor Shower will still make it hard for the AI to avoid it, but if not... expect to see more use of instant spells like Rodgort's Invocation, Fireball, and Incendiary Bonds, and an overall reduction in Fire's offensive potential, for good or for ill. I don't expect PuGs will be interested in adopting tactics designed to keep the mobs within a DOT AoE's radius...

[KingOfPain]

I like the change! It made the game more challenging and tactic oriented - yet more "loopholes", aka tactics to exploit.

It is too early to tell how long PuGs will take to (or even realize the need to) come up with new team tactics. I doubt most people who don't DoT-AoE would even notice the change, unless they follow up on update notes. In the end, a good team of alert players can still adjust to different scenarios without being fully aware of game mechanics. Misty Wildchild R/E went after the Riverside mission with a PuG last night and succeeded in grabbing the bonus as well. The kicker was 2 of the team dropped off from the beginning so there were only the four of us, Misty, 2 wars and a monk. We were tight, there was no death for the leading war and only one death (you guessed it, in the middle of [size=2]casting Troll Unguent)[/size] for Misty through this one of the hardest of missions.

My Thunderclap build (Thin Air) might just become the next uber build

Stock up on Sup Air runes, post some half baked ideas on TC (team) build on a couple of popular boards, monitor chat for "wtb sup air rune" and make a bundle

While I am at it I might as well predict Demi Maul E/W to be the next most demanded nuker build for UW and FoW. After all, dem earth gals do the most damage, as long as there is energy to spare

KoP

[WarBlade]

And Orion/Cynn still spams Firestorm, right?

How many damage ticks, on average, does it take before a mob tries to flee?

They finish their attack, maybe finish two and then scarper. Sometimes they hit a wall and come running back, other times they just keep running. I've seen Devona dragged almost to the edge of the compass chasing after something . . . waking up a couple of mobs in the process that chased her all the way back to the group.

I like the change! It made the game more challenging and tactic oriented - yet more "loopholes", aka tactics to exploit.

Initially I was intrigued when I realized what was happening. Now I'm beginning to dislike it. One one hand it's sad to see certain kinds of spells relegated to being a monster scarer. Look at Maelstrom: Used to be damage and interrupt, now acts as a 25 energy, fatigue inducing monster to dish out a couple of pathetic damage hits. It's not worth using anymore. Even a Mind Freeze-then-Maelstrom combo looks like a high-cost second fiddle to some of the cheaper one-hit hexes.

On another hand it's also frustrating to see a move to 'de-stupidize' the AI turn things into something even more stupid. Devona I mentioned. What about the level 24 monster at 80% life who runs screaming from a character with 1 life point left when the spell is a zero Domination-investment Chaos Storm?

It is too early to tell how long PuGs will take to (or even realize the need to) come up with new team tactics. I doubt most people who don't DoT-AoE would even notice the change, unless they follow up on update notes.

Not too early to tell at all I'm afraid. I will now proceed to paraphrase three common statements I repeatedly read on my return from my first run through Grenth's Footprint after the update:
- "The nuker is dead"
- "You can't farm anymore?"
- "The Air spiker is really powerful now."

Oh how they cried and bleated - It was wonderful! 8) Having said that, I'm also re-speccing characters myself due to the same frustrations these kids are moaning about.

I predict that revised tactics are already common although the cries will likely continue for a few days yet.




UPDATE: I've done some more testing and have looked at other skill selections that I don't have.

Kronin: Chaos Storm bombed. While I can use it to chase off attackers that use is limited to such aplications as removing body blockers and with a 2 second cast time, enemy interrupts etc. tends to fail anyway. Ditched in favour of Backfire.

Ice Blade: Surprisingly his old usual damage setup (Maelstrom-->Ice Spikes-->Water Trident is still fairly effective. The Maelstrom hits and the Ice Spikes slow, then the trident knocks the enemy down hopefully before they leave the area effect. If I reverse the attack order of Ice Spikes and Water Trident then the trident comes in too soon and hits before the monsters try to run, thus not getting the knock down. Damn. I need a 1 second cast time spell to separate out the the Water Trident. But then I'd lose the area effect of Ice Spikes. Decisions, decisions.

- Maelstrom-->Shard Storm-->Water Trident = perfectly timed, but smaller yield. It seems to be a viable option in getting Maelstrom to work if you can stomach the reduction in area attack power.
- Deep Freeze-->Maelstrom = 50 cost half-arsed attempt to get Maelstrom working and isn't that great. Knockdown looks to be far more effective than the 66% slowdown.

And this brings up another point about this update: I'd rather be out killing stuff and taking their gold than popping out, experimenting, popping back, respeccing, popping out . . . to get the cast times balanced to make skills useful.

Looking at the fire spells Lava Font starts looking more useful considering that with five seconds on the timer much of it's damage will be done before the monsters run. Hey, that rhymes. Meteor KD looks attractive too.

[Zed-F]

There have been some posts over on GWOnline.net that have suggested improvements to the way this is being handled, and there seems reason to believe that the developers are paying attention. The mobs apparently used to run from single-hit AoE damage as well, when the patch was first applied, but this has since been fixed to only affect DOT AoE damage sources. Anyway, stay tuned for more changes in the next while, as I expect this is only the first in a series of AI tweaks that will be forthcoming. Hopefully with a few more kicks at this particular can, the end result will be a net improvement.

Oh, and KoP:

My Thunderclap build (Thin Air) might just become the next uber build

You're too late, this is already a popular build for PvP play.

[Lurker Wyrm]

The reason Thunderclap was so popular in PvP was because you could keep it going without any energy, so anyone with a lightning damage weapon could keep you knocked down indefinitely. It's since been fixed and use of the 'clap has dwindled.

I'm having some mixed feelings about this update though... I wind up having to chase monsters forever, and a lot of times they run back to other monsters, causing more aggro that I don't need, unless I let the monster just run away, in which case they wind up back at full health and I've gotten nowhere. In normal situations that's no big deal, but when doing the titan quests, it gets a bit annoying. And also, quite a few times I've seen Alesia still stand in the middle of a Maelstrom and try to heal away rather than running out first.

I have noticed, however, that monsters won't flee from Choking Gas, so I'm still able to use that effectively.

[KingOfPain]

I think the Thunderclap bug was only a short period between 2 updates. It was fixed promptly.

TC build still works if it is build like Thin Air, with his ~120 energy. Thin can definitely maintain the whole TC duration and still have as much energy left as a normal ele at the end of TC. But that is a caster build which relys on the tank to do the actual damage while Thin keeps the mob down. More ideal situation is if the tank carrys a light weapon to trigger knock down, and leave Thin to cast other spells. Having the tank trigger KD, with a shocking sword or axe, is actually more effective but somewhat more energy consuming for Thin. More effective becaue it leaves Thin to cast other spells, and just as importantly, keeps the mob knocked down and useless (more frequently) due to faster attack rates of sword/axe at 1.33 vs anythiing else at 1.75, thus demanding more energy from Thin in the same time frame.

I can't find anywhere that list standard KD duration but I am assuming it is at or around 1 second since Aftershock has a .75 cast time. Monsters in the mob affected with TC has a window of .33 seconds to complete an action, which mean they are useless 99% of the time.

BTW, TC is a nasty skill to take to UW, a big no no. Dem Aataxe retarget after being knocked down and will leave the fully aggro'd tank to search for chew toys.

A melee TC build is workable too. I only realized Demi E/W was probably a better choice for an all-in-one package after I experimented with Thin ;p
Demi is at a transitional stage atm, gethering her skills and items.


KoP

[Lurker Wyrm]

Now that they don't run from non-dot-aoe skills, I can see Fireball, Rod's Invoc., Phoenix, etc. becoming more popular than they already were.

I can't find anywhere that list standard KD duration but I am assuming it is at or around 1 second since Aftershock has a .75 cast time. Monsters in the mob affected with TC has a window of .33 seconds to complete an action, which mean they are useless 99% of the time.

Unless it's otherwise stated, the KD time is indeed 1 second. Gale is 3 seconds, Backbreaker is 4, don't remember at the moment whether there are other longer timed kds. If you're a warrior, you can get yourself a set of Stonefist/skin Gauntlets and the KDs will last 2 seconds, but they won't have any effect on the longer duration KDs (i.e. Backbreaker is still 4).