Here is the second and final part of the interview we had with the Guild Wars Live Team. Robert Gee talks about the changes we will see to the Elementalist profession in Guild Wars in the near future. This update was originally scheduled to be released before Wintersday, but it got pushed back, so it might not interfere with the festivities. There also has been a “leak” about the changes, so we already know what to expect. We anticipated the update and handed in the questions before the leak, so keep that in mind when reading. Enjoy.
GWOnline.net:Â Some say a long overdue – update to the Elementalist is rumored to be out soon. Energy Storage is the Elementalist’s exclusive attribute. What changes are you making to this attribute to give the profession an extra punch versus high armor foes in the upcoming update or will it be completely untouched?
Robert Gee: We’ve seen this suggestion pop up several times before and during the elementalist update, however this isn’t something we really considered from a balance standpoint. Buffing Energy Storage directly would have a direct effect on monsters which could affect the difficulty of the entire game. Instead we chose to adjust the armor and health values of high armor foes in hard mode. Doing this addresses the low damage that Elementalists do in this mode without affecting the difficulty of normal mode or their power in PvP.
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John Stumme: The overall design of Winds of Change had been completed long before it went into production, so the changes that you see in part 2 aren’t a direct response, so much as it is the story picking up its pace. Part 1 was intended to be a gradual introduction that began to establish the Ministry of Purity as a believable faction within the world, one that was populated with members that were people, and not just green names in a map. The player’s main point of contact through this was Zei Ri, and he was written in a way to give players a sense of who the Ministry was drawing in, and how their movement was evolving.
