Flashbang - Anet, please address this trait properly.

It's infuriating having to deal with being blinded nonstop at all times against a Holo because they dodged. This trait makes fighting Holo as a Warrior the biggest exercise in frustration I've had in a long time.

I think pretty much everyone agrees at this point that this trait is massively overtuned, that bloating an already strong trait like Explosive Entrance with extremely powerful defensive utility is just too much, especially considering there's no ICD and the requirements to have access to it are...dodging. Can we finally get some actual balance to this trait, not more fake adjustments like blind duration reduction?

I see many ways to change it.

Such as putting a timer on Explosive Entrance like 2 seconds before the effect runs out so people can't stretch it as long as they want while playing defensively, because that's the biggest issue I have with it.

People are running away yet able to jump back in with 8k damage easily with often a daze and the blind because the effect never runs out and when they are back up that's because they messed up in the first place and you the attacker is likely to be full HP too, should the reward not be this high from one simple trait.

I don't recall any traits carrying something this hard, even the old Endure Pain and Balanced Stance passive triggers weren't as good as that yet they have 300 seconds cooldowns now. (While I agree that immunity to death by power is strong, maybe should the cooldowns have been increase from 90 to 120, not 300.)

Seems like a fair change if they want to keep damage as well because it'll be "limited" while still blockable and evadable.

Explosions is a very offensive traitline and with the way this one gets used very often, it's not fitting and too versatile with the lack of any investment into the final result.

Forcing a riposte from the user to benefit from the trait rather than let them indefinitely have one way to mess your offense up while being offensive as well is the broken aspect of it.

Think of it like the old way EE trait worked, it was a small bomb on a timer, so really should the bonus attack also be on a timer so it's not always a 100% perfect results from what happens to be a straight upgrade from the old with extra bonuses (Blind, Daze).

Only thing I care about is the damage on nades and ee, just slightly tune it down and it’ll be barable. At least that’s my opinion as a plat3+ and regular competitor for daily ats, mostly as a side noder/duelist though I can play pmuch any role at plat3 lvl

@"CutesySylveon.8290" said:This trait makes fighting Holo as a Warrior the biggest exercise in frustration I've had in a long time.

There is an incredible disconnect I've noticed between those that main war and mains of all other classes. Warrior is unique in that every attack or offensive skill used (With the exception of "Fear Me!") has a telegraph and can't really be cheesed. No stealth, no ports, no skill-stacking, etc. It's a 1 to 1 kind of play style. Consequently, it is incredibly easy to completely shut down a warrior with blinds because all their bursts are so telegraphed and predictable. This is why build diversity for the warrior is always lower than other classes too. In a perfect world the warrior can see the enemy coming and can plan his engagement or retreat accordingly, allowing for most reasonable warrior builds would be usable, even as high as plat. Unfortunately we live in a world where other classes with can stealth, port, or otherwise cheese their way into taking advantage of this type of playstyle.

EDIT: One of the cheesy things that makes blindness not a problem for other classes is that they have symbols and wells and such that pulse damage while the character uses other abilities (Skill stacking). Just thought I'd clarify that.

@Dantheman.3589 said:Only thing I care about is the damage on nades and ee, just slightly tune it down and it’ll be barable. At least that’s my opinion as a plat3+ and regular competitor for daily ats, mostly as a side noder/duelist though I can play pmuch any role at plat3 lvl

Thing is Nades are likely to be far less of an issue if Holo can't stack might so easily, and while I hate how braindead they are to use, dealing with the persistent blinds from Flashbang is a much bigger problem in my opinion because of how much utility it offers, the ease of access, and effectively unlimited uses of it.

I can make a conscious decision to try to face off against the grenades if I feel I can get benefit from it like landing my key CC skills or bursts, but instead I just get blinded and miss. Rinse and repeat when my next attempt is dodged. This isnt even factoring in the Daze because I dared to be at high health.

All of this being passive just makes it that much worse.

as holo/scraper main, pls put 10cd on flashbang trait

@Noah Salazar.5430 said:as holo/scraper main, pls put 10cd on flashbang trait

I would like it to last 0,5s-0,75s personally. I dislike ICD's that way waiting out the blind is an option, heck even dodging follow up attack would make it go away so 0,75s could be really healthy, as of right now 2s is just too long honestly

@CutesySylveon.8290 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:Only thing I care about is the damage on nades and ee, just slightly tune it down and it’ll be barable. At least that’s my opinion as a plat3+ and regular competitor for daily ats, mostly as a side noder/duelist though I can play pmuch any role at plat3 lvl

Yeah I could see that if your a roamer or some team fighter, maybe just increase cd for that, but part of my point is as a 1v1er it doesn’t seem like much of an issue at least to the point where you lose 1v1s

I had a scrapper blind me for 15 secs, lol.

The only way to fix this trait is to remove it.

@Dantheman.3589 said:

@CutesySylveon.8290 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:Only thing I care about is the damage on nades and ee, just slightly tune it down and it’ll be barable. At least that’s my opinion as a plat3+ and regular competitor for daily ats, mostly as a side noder/duelist though I can play pmuch any role at plat3 lvl

1v1 is a single aspect to consider, and you already listed two other situations in which it could be seen as a problem and they're much more important in my opinion. sPvP isn't balanced around dueling.

Thing is, it's just as much of a problem in 1v1 as anything else because there's no limit to its uses, both against the Holo by themselves or in a team since EE, and therefore Flashbang, is an AoE. So if you're fighting them 1v1, you're getting blinded, and in a teamfight you're still getting blinded but more often since the Holo hitting your teammates could proc it. No matter the situation, it needs some changes.

If all they nerf is flashbang you wont notice a shift in meta bc Big Boomer is just as good. Its a little less dominant in 1v1s vs warriors for sure, but in pretty much every non 1v1 situation its better, even.

Explosive entrance damage (hits harder than Pulm LUL), might generation (pretty much exclusively wrt ECSU; nerfing HGH would be stupid), Flashbang, and crate should all be looked at. Nade damage maybe, but that should definitely come after the passive damage + modifiers are looked at.

On 9/20/2020 at 10:49 AM, CutesySylveon.8290 said:

It's infuriating having to deal with being blinded nonstop at all times against a Holo because they dodged. This trait makes fighting Holo as a Warrior the biggest exercise in frustration I've had in a long time.

I think pretty much everyone agrees at this point that this trait is massively overtuned, that bloating an already strong trait like Explosive Entrance with extremely powerful defensive utility is just too much, especially considering there's no ICD and the requirements to have access to it are...dodging. Can we finally get some actual balance to this trait, not more fake adjustments like blind duration reduction?

I just fought a holo using this obnoxiously over-tuned trait. You're so right that its the biggest exercise in frustration. It doesn't matter how much you outplay the engi because he will always blind or CC you into big damage without having to try. It's incredible that ppl complained so much about Reckless Dodge on warrior and hardly anyone mentions this abomination.

51 minutes ago, Ovark.2514 said:

I just fought a holo using this obnoxiously over-tuned trait. You're so right that its the biggest exercise in frustration. It doesn't matter how much you outplay the engi because he will always blind or CC you into big damage without having to try. It's incredible that ppl complained so much about Reckless Dodge on warrior and hardly anyone mentions this abomination.

People did complain about it, but anet basically told them to shut up by reducing the blind duration twice instead of actually designing a better trait. So the people eventually gave up or quit the game.

9 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

People did complain about it, but anet basically told them to shut up by reducing the blind duration twice instead of actually designing a better trait. So the people eventually gave up or quit the game.

I just want to know how anet can have someone as passionate about the combat of the game as CMC is but still leave unaddressed the immense list of issues combat still has. . . I wanna get a full stop on all new content for the game until this stuff is fixed. They cannot keep piling on new elite specs to a set of core specs that have 1/3 of their traits and skills unusably bad.

3 hours ago, Ovark.2514 said:

I just want to know how anet can have someone as passionate about the combat of the game as CMC is but still leave unaddressed the immense list of issues combat still has. . . I wanna get a full stop on all new content for the game until this stuff is fixed. They cannot keep piling on new elite specs to a set of core specs that have 1/3 of their traits and skills unusably bad.

There is a planned large balance patch Post EoD release that Raymond Lukes is supposed to spearhead. Those details were buried at the bottom of one of the WvW Restructuring news releases. I can only assume PvP will be touched as well as WvW, though I could be wrong. 

4 hours ago, Ovark.2514 said:

I just want to know how anet can have someone as passionate about the combat of the game as CMC is but still leave unaddressed the immense list of issues combat still has. . . I wanna get a full stop on all new content for the game until this stuff is fixed. They cannot keep piling on new elite specs to a set of core specs that have 1/3 of their traits and skills unusably bad.

If i had to guess, management at either anet or ncsoft has decided a long time ago that pvp/wvw is a very low priority. Im sure the devs like cmc and ben would like to be working on pvp & balance, but they are being told they need to work on other projects. All we can really hope for is some big balance patches after EoD that go over all the old traits and skills that are outdated.

Man we were going on for awhile without people asking for nerfs on anyone. Can we stop thanks? No one needs to be nerfed some folks need buffs we do not need any more removal of things in pvp nothing is wrong with holo's i lose to alot of holo and i also beat alot of holo's.

Please stop this.

Honestly, I would mald at flashbang when holo and flashbang were hyper OP, but now after all the toning down its not as bad anymore, you can avoid the flashbang itself by evading the follow-up attacks, and it kind of nudges holo to use its defensive CD's to deal damage or help his team leaving them more vulnerable and thats kinda cool.

Personally I'd rather Explosive Entrance and flashbang were removed entirely (obviously you put something in there), while I think there can be purposeful plays around and with it the majority of the time it's very passive.

On 9/22/2020 at 4:40 AM, Lowlights.7021 said:

If all they nerf is flashbang you wont notice a shift in meta bc Big Boomer is just as good. Its a little less dominant in 1v1s vs warriors for sure, but in pretty much every non 1v1 situation its better, even.

Explosive entrance damage (hits harder than Pulm LUL), might generation (pretty much exclusively wrt ECSU; nerfing HGH would be stupid), Flashbang, and crate should all be looked at. Nade damage maybe, but that should definitely come after the passive damage + modifiers are looked at.

That's fine, the request wasn't "shift the meta", it was "remove flashbang blind", which indeed should be done. If it wouldn't even shift engis position in the meta then that just means engi mains shouldn't be too opposed to it.

On 12/7/2021 at 5:17 AM, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

If i had to guess, management at either anet or ncsoft has decided a long time ago that pvp/wvw is a very low priority. Im sure the devs like cmc and ben would like to be working on pvp & balance, but they are being told they need to work on other projects. All we can really hope for is some big balance patches after EoD that go over all the old traits and skills that are outdated.

And it seems that this is their dumbest kitten up, since Amazon raked in allot of mulla out of their broken game that is WvW but with extra steps. And now the whole refocus on WvW seems like trying to catch up with a trend, it ends up late to the party kind of deal. If they did the refocus 2 years ago they could have pulled the rug under New world right now when it bombed.
The most annoying thing about GW2 is that it is trend setter game even after 9 years and yet NCSOFT/Arenanet are working on trend catch up, the game just needs proper direction and developing instead of the whole we did something but it is done and we are moving to something  else. Arenanet seem like ADHD child but on a full company level.    

Offtopic: Do you guys remember how pre-HoT Blinding Ashes got CD doubled from 4s to 8s, because people had issues with Elementalists staying all the time in Fire just to blind frequently? Can you imagine it's still 8s despite removing tanking Amulets and so on? 

Ontopic: Now compare Blinding Ashes (that require you to stay in Fire to get anything from lower CD, and you can't pick Flame Expulsion for free 25 stacks of Might anymore if you go for BA) to Flashbang that rewards you for playing game as intended and tell me what went wrong with balancing Elementalist? 🥱