[FUN] Alt Balance Patch notes 01/16/2018

Since we didn't get any patch today so we could all say how bad the balance team is... here is a patch from me so you can instead let me know how bad I am at balance instead.

Good fun!

Boring Disclaimer:All of these changes are directed at PoF. If we were to write up how to fix HoT/core as well this balance list would suffer from extreme TL;DR. These changes are only in respect to sPvP. Any PvE buffs or changes would be better handled by someone else.

DeadeyeSlight buffs to survivability should help Deadeye become more present without breaking the game. Deadeye can deal massive burst damage and too many buffs or changes could result in a serious problem.

Mercy: Now grants a small amount of healing and restores 2 conditions if used at maximum malice.Shadow gust: Now breaks stun.

FirebrandFirebrand is a nice idea allowing guardians to have a viable support spec. The problem is the amount of healing it can dish out is ridiculously overtuned, and thus must see a nerf.

-All tome skills: Healing power contribution has been reduced by 20% across the board.-Epilogue Eternal Oasis: Reduced Healing buff from 33% to 15%.-Epilogue Unbroken Lines: Reduced toughness granted to 150.-Mantra of solace: No longer grants aegis to allies.-Loremaster: Reduced the cooldown bonus from 33% to 10%.-Legendary Lore: Now has an ICD of 10 seconds.-Archivist of Whispers: Reduced charge bonus to 2.-Increased power damage of Axe skills by 10%

HolosmithHolosmith has a few unfair attributes that need direction which left untouched allow engineers to do too much guaranteed damage.

-Holographic shockwave: Reduced radius to 300.-Crystal config Eclipse: Reduced stability to 1 stack.-Vent Exhaust: No longer triggers while immune.-Prime Light Beam: No longer unblockable.-All photon forge skills: Reduced power contribution to direct damage by 15%.

MirageMirage cloak allows for Mesmers to attack and defend at the same time. This alone wouldn't be a huge problem if it wasn't for the massive access to evade Mirage has and the ability to stack confusion while being unhittable. Both of these are seeing a nerf.

-Reverted all 12/2017 buffs related to Mirage.-Jaunt: Reduced confusion stacks to 2.-Riddle of sand: Reduced confusion stacks to 1.-Mirage cloak: Now only lasts 0.80 seconds.-Elusive Mind: No longer breaks stun, but restores a small amount of health if a condition is removed.

RenegadeRevenants received what is almost unanimously considered the worst of the new elite specs. Renegade has damage, but fails to provide any defensive capabilities at all making it an easy kill. A major rework to add some sustain and better protection to the line should bring it up to speed.

-Reverted 12/2017 nerf to mutilate defenses.-Kallas Fervor: Each stack now provides 30 toughness. Improved Fervor trait grants 50.-All Legendary Renegade stance skills: Increased summon vitality and effect radius by 30%.-Citadel orders: Now cost 0 energy.-Orders from Above: Now provides a small heal and removes a condition on each interval.-Wrought-Iron will: Now grants 2s protection.-Brutal momentum: The critical chance bonus has been reworked to grant 1% extra crit chance for every 3 endurance you have. ICD reduced to 6s.
-Sudden reversal: Now grants 6s stability when triggered.-Righteous Rebel: Main part of this reworked to "Reduces condition damage and duration on you by 7% for each stack of Kallas Fervor"-Charged mists: Reworked to grant 1 extra energy for each energy below 50 ( IE switching at 30 energy would grant +20 energy ).-Shackling Wave: The first part of this skill is now a 2s block again. Pressing twice rapidly skips to the damaging part of the skill.

ScourgeThe ability to do massive damage with AoE abilities that are mostly instant cast has resulted in a completely broken spec that is low risk high reward. These changes are mostly directed at making Shade skills more susceptible to counterplay. Certain core traits will be changed to be less overpowered when used with Scourge.

-All shade skills except Nefarious Favor: Now have a 0.5 second arm time. An animation is played on the scourge whenever a shade skill is triggered.-Sand shades: Now glow red and delay 0.5 seconds before striking.-Nefarious Favor: Added a 1 second cast time and animation. Increased cooldown to 8 seconds.-All punishment skills: No longer convert boons to cripple.-Sand Savant: Reduced radius by 10%. Reduced recharge bonus from 33% to 20%.-Dhuumfire: This trait now has a 3 second ICD when traited with Scourge.-Path of corruption: This trait now only corrupts 1 boon when traited with Scourge.

SoulbeastSoulbeast is close to being somewhat viable, however previous attempts to buff it by Anet have been core buffs that simply increase how broken Druid is. This buff is much more simple and direct.

-Beastmode: Now increases all damage dealt by 10% and reduces all damage received by 10% while active.-Second skin: Entering beastmode now removes 1 condition.-Griffon Stance: Now breaks stun.

SpellbreakerSpellbreakers have become increasingly more fair after initial nerfs but still deal too much damage for how hard they are to kill. Sustain will be better split between strength and defense traits to force spellbreakers to choose better between the two without seriously affecting core warrior.

-Full counter: Reduced damage by 10%-Breaching strike: Reduced power contribution to 1.32-Arcing strike: Changed damage from flat 532 to 412/472/542/ per adrenal bar spent.-Break enchantments: reduced damage by 15%. Increased recharge to 20s.-Might makes right: Increased endurance gained to 4.

WeaverThe second worst elite spec after Renegade has the opposite problem. Weavers can spec for good survival, but lack damage. Buffs to power should make Weavers an actual threat instead of just an easily ignored annoyance.

-Weaver: Ferocity is increased by 150 when attuned to two elements.-All fire attuned sword skills: Increased damage by 10%-All earth attuned sword skills: Increased bleeding by 1 stack.-Seiche: Increased damage to 120-Superior elements: Increased critical % from 15 to 25.-Elemental refreshment: Also increases damage of dual skills by 10%.-Elemental Polyphony: Increased attributes gained to 200.-Perfect Weave: When this is succesfully achieved it sends out an AOE shockwave that deals 532( 1.32 ) damage in a 400 radius and inflicts 1 stack of burning/bleeding/weakness/confusion for 3 seconds.

Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

Yeah ele has always been sort of a problem for thieves.

But against classes with actual sustain weaver can't really kill them very reliably.

I am probably missing something completely obvious on the Spellbreaker part. But doesn't Spellbreakers only have access to t1 bursts, making the nerf to Arcing Slice hit Core Warrior and not SB?

@Loop.8106 said:I am probably missing something completely obvious on the Spellbreaker part. But doesn't Spellbreakers only have access to t1 bursts, making the nerf to Arcing Slice hit Core Warrior and not SB?

Currently arc slice does the same damage at all adrenaline levels and does not scale at all. Nerfing it to scale with levels primarily hurts sb.

@Cougre.6543 said:Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

You clearly lack knowledge of the class. Elle is the weakest class in the game.

So like I agree that mirage is op right now,but like you do realize that the 12-17 buffs didn't even affect the meta mirage toolkit right?

The only real skills that saw attention were mantras and a portal range check. Honestly reverting the patch would actually buff chron cause we get distortion share back

Bad, over the top changes. I'm positive that the game doesn't need more than small but decisive taps to the main culprits of this unbalance (sc, mi, fi, ho) to get going in a good direction.

Some are plain wrong like crystal config for holo, it does give 1 stack, but it pulses twice and lasts a little too long.

@Razor.6392 said:Bad, over the top changes. I'm positive that the game doesn't need more than small but decisive taps to the main culprits of this unbalance (sc, mi, fi, ho) to get going in a good direction.

Some are plain wrong like crystal config for holo, it does give 1 stack, but it pulses twice and lasts a little too long.

Still better than what Anet's balance team would ever do.

@Poelala.2830 said:

@Cougre.6543 said:Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

you spelled revenant worng

I like your warrior changes.(I like your gs burst change so it only hurts SB.. core doesnt need any nerf anymore.. maby if revert some nerfs like mmr back to 3 or 4 you also mentioned)

Greetings Warr player

Sorry to ruin it for you but you literally butchered everything. You didn't nerf or buffed a little. You cut huge pieces to fit your perspective.

Please remember that Anet doesn't balance the classes differently (PvP,PvE,WvWvW). So changing something to to a Spec will either nerf or boost the class thus making useless for general use.

While I disagree with much of these changes, we need changes with far greater magnitude. The changes you have for scourge and FB will barely leave a dent. The changes to renegade will not make it viable.

More importantly, much of the build diversity built in the last few month in HoT were ruined, by PoF, primarily by boon removal/corruption. Add to it the layers of AOE CC and AOE condi application, sPvP right now is barely playable.

We need major changes.

Do people seriously still find fault with Firebrand? I am not even playing it and any berserker/marauder power spike damage gets through firebrands like a warm knife through butter that tries to defend itself with more layers of butter.If you focus scourges or anything else in a fight then no wonder you find FB's healing to be too much. Try to spike'em with power, they won't escape, they can only heal and hope for their team to help them out, thus they are heavily dependant on their team's competence. Try to nuke them while traversing points solo, there are many counters to firebrand and I found that out after playing it myself. Just to make sure, again, I do not play FB myself as of now, I actually play to hunt them down as soon as I see them. You don't have to call bias.

I would certainly like to see some of these change take place. Shaking up POF meta has to be done at one point.

Although the nerfs to Holosmith and Firebrand seem a bit too much. Start with some tweeks like 5%,10% and see from there if they still overperform.

Rest seems fair.

lol @ your proposed holosmith changes. Those nerfs would destroy any utility the spec has in PvP (and PvE, no less). We already got a 20% damage nerf pre-PoF, and making prime light beam blockable? That's just lulzy. It's already on a 60s cooldown. Did you just want to make holosmith another scrapper?

Also, lol @ your suggestion that weavers can't do damage. Just check the elementalist forum -- they can easily do a ton of damage, that's not the problem. The problem is lasting 10s in a fight and doing damage. Right now, they can either last forever or do a ton of damage, but there's nothing in the middle.

@Poelala.2830 said:

@Cougre.6543 said:Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

I highly recommend you go try a:

• Core Rev
• Core Condi Engi/Core Power Engi/Scrapper
• Core Necro

Is ele in a good place? No. But it's definitely not the weakest class in the game.

@tartarus.1082 said:So like I agree that mirage is op right now,but like you do realize that the 12-17 buffs didn't even affect the meta mirage toolkit right?

The only real skills that saw attention were mantras and a portal range check. Honestly reverting the patch would actually buff chron cause we get distortion share back

Actually, a lot of Mesmer and Mirage skills saw their confusion stacks increased while all other classes saw condi stacks reduced i think those are the pertinent changes.

The changes to scourge would only make it unplayable, not balanced. Double timers on shade skills is just dumb.Just make shades targetable like Renegade summons. Change it so that both the renegade summons and sand shades dissipate not with damage but with break bar (like the Shatter heal crystals, and those chak drones that buff other chak), and that's pretty much all the balance you need for shades.The rest are just kind of over the top changes.Scourge needs cripple, just like Reaper needs Chill. Both have a hard time engaging in extreme range, and without these conditions both would be impractical, especially vs all those mobile classes like warrior, thief, mesmer, ele, etc.Scourge already has good counters, and making those classes more viable (DE and SB) will work forwards toward balancing it, that coupled with a counter to Shades would make Scourge pretty balanced.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@tartarus.1082 said:So like I agree that mirage is op right now,but like you do realize that the 12-17 buffs didn't even affect the meta mirage toolkit right?

The only real skills that saw attention were mantras and a portal range check. Honestly reverting the patch would actually buff chron cause we get distortion share back

It really didn't though all changes were isolated to axe, scepter, and the axe trait. None of which are run by the meta build.

Therefore the hypothetical reversion wouldn't affect pvp mirage only the pve clone build. A real nerf would examine the ineptitude synergy, riddle of sands, and elusive mind.

Again I think Mirage needs to be looked at. Let's just make real changes, the real problem with mirage is that it has high 1v1 potential and high mobility. Therefore it can win most fights it takes and disengage and reset when the fight tilts. Anet needs to decide if they want mirage to be a duelist/dps or a mobile/plus-1 spec like thief, and make changes accordingly.

@Vagrant.7206 said:lol @ your proposed holosmith changes. Those nerfs would destroy any utility the spec has in PvP (and PvE, no less). We already got a 20% damage nerf pre-PoF, and making prime light beam blockable? That's just lulzy. It's already on a 60s cooldown. Did you just want to make holosmith another scrapper?

Also, lol @ your suggestion that weavers can't do damage. Just check the elementalist forum -- they can easily do a ton of damage, that's not the problem. The problem is lasting 10s in a fight and doing damage. Right now, they can either last forever or do a ton of damage, but there's nothing in the middle.

@Poelala.2830 said:

@"Cougre.6543" said:Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

• Core Rev
• Core Condi Engi/Core Power Engi/Scrapper
• Core Necro

I'm confused why you even said this. I said ele is the weakest CLASS. You named BUILDS. Revenant is also just as weak, but as a whole engineer and necro are strong. It's like me saying "Scourge is strong" and you saying "No! Have you heard of minion-mancer blood magic??" Bad builds =/= bad class.

@otto.5684 said:The changes to renegade will not make it viable.We need major changes.

We do. That's why I stated at the beginning that these were just PoF only and not touching HoT or core very much.

Core balance is completely borked and is full of power creep / neglect. If someone were to extensively go over just how bad it is the list would become way too long for just a late night writeup, so I didn't bother.

For instance, Revenant has the problem that anet wants its weakness to be both condi-spam and interrupt-spam. Now many balance patches and an expansion of power creep later every class in the game has access to one or the other - Resulting in Revs having too many negative matchups. Either one of these weaknesses has to give, or both of them should be made neutral. This is much more a core problem than a Renegade problem and if Invocation sucked less both Renegade and Herald would be in a much better spot but w/e.

@Vagrant.7206 said:lol @ your proposed holosmith changes. Those nerfs would destroy any utility the spec has in PvP (and PvE, no less). We already got a 20% damage nerf pre-PoF, and making prime light beam blockable? That's just lulzy. It's already on a 60s cooldown. Did you just want to make holosmith another scrapper?

I suggested a 15 scaling nerf not a 15% flat nerf. Holosmiths would still have mad damage.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:The changes to scourge would only make it unplayable, not balanced. Double timers on shade skills is just dumb.

Time to react with animations are an absolute must for scourge to ever be balanced. Instant cast AoE skills are almost always a balance nightmare because they have no realistic counter, therefore they are either strong enough to be worth it or not. If you want to keep it instacast it would have to be nerfed -to oblivion- otherwise it will continue to dominate high level play.

You clearly lack knowledge of the class. Elle is the weakest class in the game.

LOLOLOL, and yet ele can beat SB.

@Poelala.2830 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:lol @ your proposed holosmith changes. Those nerfs would destroy any utility the spec has in PvP (and PvE, no less). We already got a 20% damage nerf pre-PoF, and making prime light beam blockable? That's just lulzy. It's already on a 60s cooldown. Did you just want to make holosmith another scrapper?

Also, lol @ your suggestion that weavers can't do damage. Just check the elementalist forum -- they can easily do a ton of damage, that's not the problem. The problem is lasting 10s in a fight and doing damage. Right now, they can either last forever or do a ton of damage, but there's nothing in the middle.

@Poelala.2830 said:

@"Cougre.6543" said:Funny how weavers supposedly lack damage, yet they're one of the most dangerous classes to me as a thief with their plasma beam. I'd argue they're the perfect standard for balance.

• Core Rev
• Core Condi Engi/Core Power Engi/Scrapper
• Core Necro

I named specs, not just builds. If you're going to call ele the weakest class, you have to take into account its specs and builds as well. If you look at engineer's different specs, they are all underperforming in PvP except for holo. While ele isn't the strongest class in the meta (it's low on the pole), it does have several non-gimmick builds that are strong when played well.

As a whole, engineer is not as strong as you think it is. It's held together by baling wire and duct tape (I suppose living up to its namesake). There are a huge number of skills and traits that are functionally worthless. Only a few worth using stand out. That is not a "strong" class, that's one walking on a razor's edge. > @Master Ketsu.4569 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:lol @ your proposed holosmith changes. Those nerfs would destroy any utility the spec has in PvP (and PvE, no less). We already got a 20% damage nerf pre-PoF, and making prime light beam blockable? That's just lulzy. It's already on a 60s cooldown. Did you just want to make holosmith another scrapper?

A 15% "scaling" nerf (whatever that means) still means a 15% flat nerf on overall power damage in PF. From the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon strength) Power ( 1.0 ) / (target's Armor)

A 15% nerf on the power (to 0.85) would be a flat nerf to all of PF. That's how multiplication works.

@"Vagrant.7206" said:

A 15% "scaling" nerf (whatever that means) still means a 15% flat nerf on overall power damage in PF. From the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon strength) Power ( 1.0 ) / (target's Armor)

A 15% nerf on the power (to 0.85) would be a flat nerf to all of PF. That's how multiplication works.

Not all skills have the same scaling % multiplier. For instance, look at Photon Blitz:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Photon_Blitz_(PvP)Damage (8x): 936 (2.4)

The multiplier % is 2.4, not 1.0.

This nerf would only change it to 2.25. So say you have 2k power that multiplies to 4800 with 2.4 and 4500 with 2.25. The actual nerf is really only 6.25% less scaling in this case. You are confusing this with a more direct 15% nerf after the calculation and would result in 4080 scaling -which I agree would be too much of a nerf to holo.

@Poelala.2830 said:You clearly lack knowledge of the class. Elle is the weakest class in the game.Perhaps you lack reading comprehension. I don't think I said anything regarding elementalist's overall place in the balance, simply that I think it should be the standard to balance all other classes to.

@NeedCoffee.1402 said:

You clearly lack knowledge of the class. Elle is the weakest class in the game.

And SB can beat ele, and will each time if the SB is good and knowledgeable of the class.