The design team has a preview of the upcoming skill balance changes, including balancing key skills separately for PvP and PvE, which you can read here.

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Interesting development .. splitting the stats of skills has effectively created pvp and pve versions of the same skill. This will be a great boon to PvE players who have felt the heat from skill changes due to PvP balancing, plus now the dev team can focus on truly balancing PvP without worrying about breaking PvE .. everybody's happy

I'm actually concerned about this update. Guild Wars is a confusing game because there are so many different skills. While I know there are players who can get into the whole "Magic: The Gathering" type of game play, I usually found it annoying.

Looking at the Elementalist Fire line, it must get frustrating to think of 50 different ways to say "Nuke". And when I really think about it, why does an Elementalist need so many choices?

Does my skill bar really need to look like this...
{Toast} {Crispy} {Extra Crispy} {Burn} {Mending} {Sprint} {Ash} {Knockdown Rocks Make Me Aleepy} {Fireball II}

It's even worse when skills are duplicated... Searing Heat & Teinai's Heat.

The game has too many skills. Now, to make things even more confusing, some skills will have two versions - one for PvP and one for PvE? ArenaNet should wise up for Guild Wars 2. I think that most players are turned off by this level of confusion. While I admire ArenaNet's ability to use a thesaurus, I think that the franchise would benefit from streamlined skills.

I've been playing this game since early 2004 and I still don't have all of the Elementalist skills unlocked.

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Michael Garofalo
Webmaster - http://photics.com

I agree with Photics, but on a different note. I don't mind the "magic the gathering" type gameplay. I kinda like matching skills up to different combinations, but that's because I'm not a grinder going up to the next level. Although I don't like that they always "balance" the skills. I mean seriously?! If its not broke don't fix it! Gamers will always find a counter to it! I mean, one of my favorite sword skills back in the day I was ascending in the desert (wow... a couple of years ago, has it really been that long?) and they completely changed it! Just come out with a new skill that counters the dang thing, don't change it. 55 monk seems ultimate, but against a mesmer, HAHAAHAHAHAHA. Touch ranger, I've seen counters, snares, knockdowns, the like.

But they tried to make people placated by splitting it. Well all they accomplished was making the two communities all the more different. Now pvpers are gonna suck at pve, and vice versa! I was looking forward to pvp to with my skillset, well now I know that my skillset is going to suck so I might as well not even try. Geeeee thanks Anet, your superior thinking skills on how to fix a problem has astounded me again.

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I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman,"Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.-George Carlin