So what were good balance patch decisions made by Anet?

Bit of a common theme to be doomsday nae-sayers about how Anet is doing a terrible job. It is my opinion though that honestly balance moves in a generally positive direction, albeit at an absurdly slow pace for what it needs to. That and mode issues that have temporary balance fixes get lasered in on because balance patches actually occur while mode patches do not.

Bring up at least three patches, the entire patch doesn't need to be positive, but you should be able to pull out things from each of the patches to create a theme of things you like seeing.

06 Feb 2018Mesmers likely aren't much of a fan of this patch, and this did introduce the horrific period of time that resistance converted to immobilize, but there were several things I did like.

• Introduction of Purity of Purpose. Blatantly strong especially in hindsight, but this was an appreciated bold step to flip the WvW zerg meta some.
• Healthy nerfs to firebrand courage tome to reduce their boon spam.
• Beginning of the scourge corruption spam decrease that took almost 2 years to complete.
• Allowed ranger stances to stack, providing a foundation (that unfortunately still isn't usable) for ranger based parties to work in a zerg.
• QoL for herald facets and mount interactions
• Beginning of the Winds of Disenchantment nerf cycle, starting with an increase of .5s to 1s boon removal.

05 Mar 2019This was smaller but had two huge steps in the right direction.

• Unending corruption was changed to Herald of Sorrow. Harbringer's shroud is... something. But Unending corruption and the impact of shade spikes was simply absurd. It made necro impossible to compete with in terms of boon stripping, and that is with spellbreakers being what they were.
• Winds of Disenchantment becomes a channel that follows the warrior. This was very necessary at the time, though now is something that could possibly get reverted back post damage change.
• Small shout out to tempest shout changes that made tempest worth looking at again, though still inferior to it's PoP Scrapper competition.This was peak boon application + strip balance, in my opinion. Damage was still absurd so ranged combat reigned, but those two changes made it so going into melee actually seemed non-suicidal.

01 Oct 2019This patch is undoubtably not popular in many circles, but it did do three things I really appreciate.

• Tactics support warrior. Support warrior is... in a precarious and slightly bloated state in how much it focuses on one weapon and one traitline, but the addition to bring it back was appreciated.
• Anti-toxin nerf. With Anet finally getting a handle on conditions via the reduction in corrupts from necros, I like that they can acknowledge when the pendulum swings to much the other way.
• Inspiring reinforcement finally became what it should have been when it was first introduced some 5 years ago. Fast enough to actually be used as an initiation tool, and something that brought stab at a semi-workable level.
• Soft shout out to both the IoL nerf and Death magic traitline change. The DM trait change was a good pair with the tactics traitline change, it just didn't bring as much to the WvW table.

There are other patches with little things, but what I see as positives are there general acknowledgement that corrupts/strips (and conditions by proxy) were out of line, and the slow (way to slow but...) walk to the point they realized that cleanses were getting strong and then the walk back the other way.

Interested in hearing others highlights (especially roamers/small scale), there's no wrong answers, but there are ones that are to short. What's anet done right in regards to balance?

I appreciate that they at least keep trying to get the Warclaw more right, even if their attempts show they don't spend enough time in the mode to see how it's used.

It is my opinion though that honestly balance moves in a generally positive direction, albeit at an absurdly slow pace for what it needs to.Fun Fact about pacing: according to anets patch circle, today should be a balance patch day.

June 23, 2015

• Disruptor's Sustainment: This trait has been removed from the game.

Deadeye rework also belongs up there, I think. Turned a really avoidant one-shot playstyle into a bit more of a "skirmisher" archetype instead.

@KrHome.1920 said:

It is my opinion though that honestly balance moves in a generally positive direction, albeit at an absurdly slow pace for what it needs to.Fun Fact about pacing: according to anets patch circle, today should be a balance patch day.

Yesterday was a holiday. Since there will be a new Fractal released next week, then I expect balance changes then with a 'preview' sometime this week if they are major changes.

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

It is my opinion though that honestly balance moves in a generally positive direction, albeit at an absurdly slow pace for what it needs to.Fun Fact about pacing: according to anets patch circle, today should be a balance patch day.

March 5th 2019Partially fixed multiple ongoing issues in WvW

• Gyros, their rework of gyros is one of (if not the best) utility skill rework. All of the gyros have a clear purpose and feel good to use. The only issue it introduced was the strength of purge gyro, which has defined the condi-clear meta.

• The bonus evade time on Mirage was removed, which helped remove the frustrating perma-dodge builds used at the time.

• Unending Corruption was removed.

• Banner rework was a small but positive change. Winds of Disenchantment was changed to its modern form, allowing counter play with the ‘hunt-the-warrior’ minigame

• Warclaw was added. Thematically it is great, numerically it continues to cause debate.

April 23rd 2019Elite trade off’s

• Blunderbuss was given the first implementation of dynamic scaling, which feels much better to play with than the old cut off system.

• The addition of the core F2 skill to revenants. This skill felt like it has always been there and filled a gap that made core more competitive with the E-Specs

• Daredevil got a trade-off which felt in proportion to the specialization. Traits were reworked slightly, adding proper opportunity loss between them.

• The thematic change to Berserker was excellent, unfortunately it didn’t feel as good due to the numerical balance not being in the right spot.

• Small change. The Grasping Darkness change greatly increased Reaper’s skill cap, by allowing player skill to invalidate the existence of a wall

February 25th 2020Finally everything was nerfed™ patch

• Fully addressed the issue of DPS being too high across the board. One-hitting someone with an auto attack before this update was possible, and it didn’t feel good for either player.

• Attempted removal of automatic trait defences. Auto-proccing skills feel bad to play against, as there is no interaction on the attacker’s part.

@Galmac.4680 said:As necro player I'd say no balancing was good. Pure nerfs every single time, not one single patch without some frustration.

Why man? Reaper still hits hard and necro is a raid boss in wvw.

@Junkpile.7439 said:Necro is horrible class to play. Only stability is some silly well and it doesn't even work. Doesn't have any good movement skills, bad stunbreaks, wells barely do any damage, boon corrupt skills are pure joke and so on.

Spectral walk and wurm are insane stun breaks and mobility. Necro is the 2nd most slippery class in GW2 only behind thief.

Reaper, oh I miss the old reaper times before that nerf balance patch, where chill was nice.

And Scourge in WvW... well, I could hit those 2 targets now. But I need some cast time to set my second shade. Uuooh, the enemies are now on another place or outside this microscopic small radius... and now I have to wait for my cooldown. (sad but true)

All changes that aligned Engineer with their purity of purpose.

I absolutely LOVE that ANET never gave any cooldown to Auspicious Anguish. Especially love they got rid of damage on CCs. I mean I'm nearly invincible in random blobs from condis, and even more so when those silly necros fear mark me! Pffft, thanks for the clear you silly scourges. Getting tickled by random CCs? I appreciate the free cleanse buddy! Thank goodness this trait never ended up like, Pain Response, Smiter's Boon, Shrug It Off, Burning Fire, or any other condi cleanse trait with a cooldown. Did I forget to mention the free boons too from Auspcious Anguish? Brilliant!

Commander Mesmer here I come!

D:

Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

according to ppl who don't care about balance and just want things they don't like removed, mirage getting one dodge was the best change evar

When they made illusionary warden spawn at foe.

When they made ranger long bow projectile speed baseline.

When they made consecrations cast at range baseline.

If you forgot that these changes were made, yeah it's been that long....

@Dawdler.8521 said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

That doesn't really count because that change was an abomination in the first place. It was the start of the giant Necro snowball we have in wvw. I was playing celestial reaper with no condition focus and even I was taking that trait for the damage increase. Pretty sure those 8 months killed the joy in wvw harder than any other time.

@Dawdler.8521 said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

It was due to PvE, not PvP, too. They didn't want people playing condi reaper in PvE, lol.

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

Condi reaper in pve was hard enough to play as it is, it required placing chillfields properly (tough to pull off with the overlapping fields of other players)

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

Condi reaper was actually fun unlike power reaper too imo, but Anet said "no".

@God.2708 said:Bit of a common theme to be doomsday nae-sayers about how Anet is doing a terrible job. It is my opinion though that honestly balance moves in a generally positive direction, albeit at an absurdly slow pace for what it needs to. That and mode issues that have temporary balance fixes get lasered in on because balance patches actually occur while mode patches do not.

Bring up at least three patches, the entire patch doesn't need to be positive, but you should be able to pull out things from each of the patches to create a theme of things you like seeing.

06 Feb 2018Mesmers likely aren't much of a fan of this patch, and this did introduce the horrific period of time that resistance converted to immobilize, but there were several things I did like.

• Introduction of Purity of Purpose. Blatantly strong especially in hindsight, but this was an appreciated bold step to flip the WvW zerg meta some.
• Healthy nerfs to firebrand courage tome to reduce their boon spam.
• Beginning of the scourge corruption spam decrease that took almost 2 years to complete.
• Allowed ranger stances to stack, providing a foundation (that unfortunately still isn't usable) for ranger based parties to work in a zerg.
• QoL for herald facets and mount interactions
• Beginning of the Winds of Disenchantment nerf cycle, starting with an increase of .5s to 1s boon removal.

05 Mar 2019This was smaller but had two huge steps in the right direction.

• Unending corruption was changed to Herald of Sorrow. Harbringer's shroud is... something. But Unending corruption and the impact of shade spikes was simply absurd. It made necro impossible to compete with in terms of boon stripping, and that is with spellbreakers being what they were.
• Winds of Disenchantment becomes a channel that follows the warrior. This was very necessary at the time, though now is something that could possibly get reverted back post damage change.
• Small shout out to tempest shout changes that made tempest worth looking at again, though still inferior to it's PoP Scrapper competition.This was peak boon application + strip balance, in my opinion. Damage was still absurd so ranged combat reigned, but those two changes made it so going into melee actually seemed non-suicidal.

01 Oct 2019This patch is undoubtably not popular in many circles, but it did do three things I really appreciate.

• Tactics support warrior. Support warrior is... in a precarious and slightly bloated state in how much it focuses on one weapon and one traitline, but the addition to bring it back was appreciated.
• Anti-toxin nerf. With Anet finally getting a handle on conditions via the reduction in corrupts from necros, I like that they can acknowledge when the pendulum swings to much the other way.
• Inspiring reinforcement finally became what it should have been when it was first introduced some 5 years ago. Fast enough to actually be used as an initiation tool, and something that brought stab at a semi-workable level.
• Soft shout out to both the IoL nerf and Death magic traitline change. The DM trait change was a good pair with the tactics traitline change, it just didn't bring as much to the WvW table.

There are other patches with little things, but what I see as positives are there general acknowledgement that corrupts/strips (and conditions by proxy) were out of line, and the slow (way to slow but...) walk to the point they realized that cleanses were getting strong and then the walk back the other way.

Interested in hearing others highlights (especially roamers/small scale), there's no wrong answers, but there are ones that are to short. What's anet done right in regards to balance?

I agree with the scourge boonrip nerf, it was a big step in the right direction (hey, reaper is viable too, now!). Bit I still feel that CC is the main problem, the constant CC spam (which is why firebrand shouldn't be touched stability wise, imo, or other classes could have access to more party stab so they're more viable).

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

They making reaper more viable with minions so botting in pve maps can be easier.Everytime i have to go into one of these new desert maps and greeted with minion botters.

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

Imagine the tankiness of today's common core necro builds combined with the ability to stack 24 bleeds in one second covered with 5 cover conditions (including perma chill) at 10 second intervals. Reaper shroud degenerated 2% per second and something like sigil of cleansing removing 3 conditions didn't exist.

Staff+GS condi reaper is still viable as a roaming build and probably the best build you can bring to the field to have a chance against a decent thief. It's better than any core necro build for the roaming purpose. In pvp it's lacklustre only because it relies on a geomancy and hydromancy sigil combo, which isn't possible in that game mode.

For pve: condi reaper has always been bad in any team composition because you practically can't control the field placements of your group. That build does only work in solo content or at the training golem.

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

I was talking about PvE

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@Shiyo.3578 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Anet did patch deathly chill!

After changing it to destroy WvW for 8 months and singlehandedly creating the condi meta, they finally fixed it 1 week after PoF had released and everyone had already abandoned the reaper in favor of the vastly superior scourge

Thumbs up

My posting is about wvw and pve since wvw is the thread topic.