Well, a new patch will be going into WAR soon, and my class, the Witch Elf, is going to be one of the hardest hit. Some of the highlights include:
* Shadow Prowler: This ability will now always be interrupted when the player is attacked.
Balance Changes:
* Kiss of Betrayal: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.
* Kiss of Agony: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.
* Kiss of Death: This ability will now deal Corporeal Damage.
* Kisses will no longer be able to activate off a thrown dagger.
* Vehement Blades: This ability has had its damage contribution from stats reduced.
* Enfeebling Strike: This ability has had its damage contribution from stats reduced.
* Treacherous Assault: This ability has had its damage contribution from stats reduced.
* Masterful Treachery: This ability’s bonus to damage has been lowered.
* Sharpened Edge: This ability has had its armor debuff removed. This has been replaced with a self buff that will deal damage back to your enemy whenever they block or parry your attacks.
* Pierce Armor: This ability has had its additional armor debuff removed. This has been replaced with a self buff that will increase your Weapon Skill.
Now, how badly this is going to affect my game play, I’m not sure. The bottom line is that now all anyone has to do is AE nearby and I’ll be knocked out of stealth, my kisses will not do nearly as much damage, my armor piercing ability is reduced, and my biggest stealth assaults have been reduced. I’m far from a min-maxer with gameplay; I can’t tell you percentages or ratios of how often something procs or how much damage it does based on xyz set of cirumstances. I’m very much a “casual” player, and therein lies the problem.
The people screaming to high heaven that Witch Elves were overpowered are still going to be finding that the hardcore, min-max gamers who play that class, who already have amazing gear and huge renown rank aren’t going to be slowed down much at all. Those are the people who they hate in RvR–the ones who are so good at their class that they can burn down an enemy in minimal time and walk away laughing. It’s the average players like me, with average gear and average renown rank at 40, though, who are going to take the hit.
I’m not going to complain over-much, because I know that with some creative thinking and some adjustments, I can learn to deal with the changes and hopefully not have it affect my enjoyment of my class. However, I’m at a bit of a lowpoint in as far as RvR goes because my experiences there have been nothing but dealing with an Order zerg in ORvR and frighteningly organized Order premades in scenarios. I spend many fights completely disabled for 7 seconds, by which time, the fight is over. In the meantime, Caliga and I can both attack a 40 Bright Wizard, who only has a 32 Archmage healing him, hit the BW with our silence (Cal’s is 5 seconds, mine is 3, and no, they don’t stack), and not be able to touch the guy. We don’t suck, nor do we need to L2P. Something is wrong when that sort of thing is happening. I don’t know what the answer is, but I don’t think it makes sense that a cloth-wearing magic-flinger shouldn’t be able to take out a group of melee dps when all the melee dps are hitting him.
I find myself not feeling overly excited about logging into WAR these days. I do hope some changes will come soon to bring back some of the fun, but I’m not counting on it.
