So yea every single ultra fast trial completion guild has at least one thing in common so far:
Several members of the run have all the pvp skill unlocked. Most notably: Barrier.
Many of the guilds members have next to none of the undaunted skill line unlocked. As they spend very little time in the harder pve content (VR dungeons) and they pvp almost 95% of their time.
Yet guilds who focus almost 100% on pve content, and thus have all of the undaunted skill line unlocked:
Struggle to get completions at all if they don't take along enough pvp'ers.
Yet an entire skill line and pve ingame guild - undaunted ARE story wise, the guys who are meant to do well at the trial. The undaunted members who induct you into the guild return and give you the quests for the trials.
Yet if you try to use (almost) ANY of those stupid undaunted skills in the trials, your gonna not only get a poor time, but your most likely going to wipe as well.
How to win the trials fastest:
1. Barrier. The more of these you pop at critical boss phases, the more most your party members can stand skill to ignore mechanics and thus dps faster.
2. War Horn. Massively increases all 12 members dps.
3. Siege shield. Massively increases damage reduction against ranged attacks (Commonly used in both trials)
4. Purge (Useful in hell ra when destroyers and other bannermen debuff the hell out of you)
(all of these hit 12+ players at once)
BAD SKILLS to use:
3. Bone shield (Hits a maximum of 3 players with the synergy, the self skill is in itself worse then immovable)
4. Necrotic orb (Horribly low dps, synergy is poor only affects 1 player)
5. Blood Altar (Horribly low effect in general, horribly slow cast time)
6. Trapping webs (Weak snare. There i no reason to bother to snare anything in the trial, everything hard enough is immune)
Notice a pattern?
Nearly all pve unlocked skills suck. All pvp unlock skills rock.
(Inner fire is very useful unlike all the other undaunted skills)
Now I'm not saying the guilds with the top times are pureply pvp guilds. They obviously excell at both (most of them have active emperors and other top scorers in active campaigns) and also some hardcore pve players.
Just that there is a huge inbalance at play here.
PvP focused players should be rewarded with skills that excel in pvp.
PvE focused players should be rewarded with skkils that excel in pve.
Currently PvPs get both. The pve skills suck hard. (They were buffed in 1.1, but not in any way anyone cares about for trials)
Fixes:
1. Buff all undaunted skills up to 12 targets. Bone shield too, once synergy is active.
2. Remove cast time from blood altar entirely. Instant cast.
3. Massively increase the power of the webs synergy spiders, and bug fix it so it actually works some of the time.
4. Increase inner fires damage 50%
5. MASSIVELY increase necrotic orbs damage, speed and synergy mana return. Given this is the FINAL undaunted skill unlock, it should be mega powerful. Barrier is the final PvP skill unlock and is unarguably CRITICAL to get the best trial times, thus necrotic orb should match.
FIX SYNERGIES SO YOU SELECT WHICH ONE TO USE. -- This is the most broken thing about these skills, all have synergies, none work in trials as they all overlap and you cant pick which to activate, and some can get your character killed as they prevent blocking.
Perhaps:
Hold X, press 1-9 to select which synergy.
Perhaps increase the number of undaunted achievements required to unlock these to compensate. (Personally got it maxed out at VR1 since I do an insane amount of dungeons)
Edited by Axer on June 7, 2014 11:45AM Axer. Main tank and Leader of Crush it! (NA-EP highly skilled trials guild)