The next Balance Patch - preview

We are planning PvP/WvW splits, changes to the Confusion condition, regeneration effectiveness prioritization, boon/condition conversion table changes... PLUS MORE!! There are some mesmer changes we're excited about and hope to talk them about in more detail as we draw nearer to the update. Stay tuned!

-Karl

I thought we could have a preview of the balance patch this week, but for now we have not seen anything. Can we have some news? Or we just have to wait until we get disappointed like the latest patch?

NEWS (01/02/18)Phantasm changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26687/shattering-the-status-quoAlacrity changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26685/alacrity-time-for-a-change

Why asking when you know the answer??

People are going to be disappointed with every balance change. I’d rather the forums stayed clear for another week from the “Anet is out of touch”, “Anet doesn’t play their game”, “Just delete X class”, and all of the other threads acting as if the world just ended.

Prepare to be disappointed. Until they split pvp totally from pve for balance purposes and balance changes for pvp are made mainly by the pvp devs there is no other outcome really then disappointment.

As long as PvE does the PvP balance, the underwhelming sensation will be doubled. Do they even test those changes? Compare them? Or do they just slap some % changes based on statistics and complaints and call it a day?

@Rodzynald.5897 said:As long as PvE does the PvP balance, the underwhelming sensation will be doubled. Do they even test those changes? Compare them? Or do they just slap some % changes based on statistics and complaints and call it a day?

You know, most change are done with PvP in mind. Do you think the last condition patch was for PvE? Nope, they changed them for PvP and WvW. Do you think the necromancer needed boon corruption in PvE? Nope, anet load the necromancer with boon corruption just because there is a need in PvP/WvW for a counter to the boon meta, in PvE boon corruption have minor impact. Do you think that maybe spellbreaker was an issue in PvE? Nope, no mob ever complained about it's survivability and it's ability to disregard conditions. Do you think that chrono survivability was nerf back in the day because it was overperforming in PvE? Nope, the complain came from PvP. Do you think that is was an issue in PvE that the reaper had a high chill uptime? Do you think that it was an issue in PvE that dragonhunter and enineer were able to chain daze? Do you think they nerfed druid's healing ability for the sake of PvE? Do you think that they happened to nerf thiefs stealth uptime or even damage for PvE? Nope, every nerf on those were done for the sake of PvP and WvW.

It's true that a few change are done to balance PvE. Among them there is mesmer's ability to share distortion and some of the elementalist's gimmicky skills that deal load of damage in PvE. However, for everything else, in balance, PvP is king. If we were to count the ratio of balance change that happen for PvE and for PvP, most likely you'd see that 90% of the change are done to balance PvP, 5% to balance WvW and 5% to balance PvE.

However, I agree with you on one point. They do not test what they release. They obviously never tested the new e-spec before releasing them and they barely have any clue on how much some of their changes affect the game.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Rodzynald.5897 said:As long as PvE does the PvP balance, the underwhelming sensation will be doubled. Do they even test those changes? Compare them? Or do they just slap some % changes based on statistics and complaints and call it a day?

In the past I would have agreed with you, however the last major balance patch was almost entirely pve focused when pvp desperately needs some balancing attention (not counting the minor one that traded condi stacks for longer durations though that one was also pve focused). That patch, scourge was nearly completely untouched except for fixing a bug with dhuumfire which resulted in a buff while they nerfed condi ranger, condi ele, condi firebrand, and condi revenant while also buffing bunk firebrand mantras. Sure they finally toned down the game breaking spellbreaker, but that didn't require any changes that would affect golem dps which is all the pve people care about for the most part.

Please don't nerf Elusive Mind, please don't nerf Elusive Mind...

Mike O'Brien's wet dream for Guild Wars 2 is nobody ever talks or hypes or previews or even thinks about the game ever. You're not going to get a preview for a balance patch.

He hopes to one day drop a complete expansion just unannounced and watch the community try to figure stuff out blindly in the dark.

Asking for preview has no sense as they never ever changed something in balance patch based feedback. Also they probably still adding patch to servers so it already too late.

Here come the irrevenant nerfs!!!

I'm not anet but based on anets past behavior I can make a good guess what they will do.

-Irrelevant change to scourge that doesn't touch on why they are broken-Minor changes to other classes that don't fix issues-Revenant nerf-Mirage still borked-Druid still borked-condi still aids

@Dadnir.5038

It does not really concern me what they have in mind as long as they don't do it well. We all see what balance patches bring us. There are a few good steps in the right direction (or changes that are initially perceived as good, but don't turn out so well later on) and a huge leap backwards that pretty much leaves us with overall negative opinions. There are some core (not traitline) issues and bad designs that should be looked upon but they hold so tight to their lack of trinity mentality that it makes it harder to balance it. For example, in PvP you can run hybrid/semi-hybrid (amulet issue here) builds that on some classes are superior than any build focused on one thing. In my opinion, the biggest issue at hand that touches every aspect of every class in PvP and WvW is giving multiple things at once. First best example that comes to my mind is rather simple at its core: druid's lunar impact.

1. It is an AoE heal +
2. Heals everyone for equal ammount +
3. Has a daze built in (power creep) +
4. 8 seconds cooldown (that is reasonable)
5. Long distance skill, can be dropped from safe spots. +But what are the downsides? Does it have any significant drawbacks? I am glad that at least it doesn't deal 1.5k base power damage and applies some conditions to spice things up.

Anyway, of course it has to work like that and has to be that strong to withstand the damage output in the current state of the game. But this is due to powercreep and if we just wanted to tone things down, it would be definitely better. So let's take off our powercreep googles, the most drastic thing might be the daze. Why would you put an additional disruption to a strong healing skill that can be used from distance and is AoE? This skills screams power creep for having too much at once. At this point what balance team does is playing with numbers to change cooldowns or healing scaling which may result in either too strong or too weak skill. Lunar impact could be easily broken into two different skills. But anyway, that is what happened to a lot of different skills in this game since HoT. Because of that I would really like to discuss and ask questions about some of those skills, talk with the designers, what was the thought behind power creeping? Did they really not see that? Was that intended? Is this their understanding of lack of trinity? Is changing numbers the only thing they see fit to fix it?FYI: I still play from time to time as a druid and I know what it is capable of in current meta. Please, don't take it as rant on l2p level because it is not the issue at hand.

I could write a whole essay on it along with some proposals, but at this moment I do not have the time. Plus, they wouldn't change a thing because whoever pulls the strings in terms of skills/traits/mechanics has their own point of view that, as we can see, doesn't actually work in PvP anymore. But what can I say? It's their game, they are supposed to know better by default.

NEWS ON MESMERPhantasm changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26687/shattering-the-status-quoAlacrity changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26685/alacrity-time-for-a-change

Thoughts?

Those mesmer changes will make pretty little difference. In pvp alacrity is a negligible factor since it isn't feasible to get high up-times and phantasms generally don't last very long before being killed or shattered.

Edit: Now that I think about it a bit more it will probably be a substantial mesmer buff as they plan on increasing the power of the phantasms on initial summon to make up for them not being able to attack multiple times even though they rarely did stick around for more than one attack in pvp.

Mesmer changes are 120% buffs :

-easier DPS rotation : shattering phantasms will not reduce overall DPS anymore-easier access to alacrity

It's nice to play when one of devs in charge of balance specifically mains a class....am I right?

The Clone/Phantasm change would be a significant buff to Mesmer in PvP. I am curious how they plan to implement this and deal with the overturned state of Mirage. That said, I feel the change will make Mesmer far more enjoyable and intuitive to play.

@Arheundel.6451 said:Mesmer changes are 120% buffs :

-easier DPS rotation : shattering phantasms will not reduce overall DPS anymore-easier access to alacrity

It's nice to play when one of devs in charge of balance specifically mains a class....am I right?

Yes indeed, it looks like the developer in charge is enjoying playing with his mesmer. There is no other logical explanation as to why mesmer is extremely OP and it has not been nerfed and will not be nerfed.

Anyone notice how mesmer still puts out 4 stacks of burn on torch, when everyou other burn was reduced stacks and increased duration? I love that

what did the Confusion condition change?

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:what did the Confusion condition change?

1,000% increased tick-damage, 90% decreased on-skill-activation damage.

@Velimere.7685 said:

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:what did the Confusion condition change?

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:what did the Confusion condition change?

@ZeteCommander.4937 said:what did the Confusion condition change?

It's unbelievable,are you kidding me.

while I think these are good major changes, this patch is supposed to address much higher priority issues, like boon corruption and class effectiveness disparity, which is currently huge.

Considering that devs have limited time, I do not see how readjusting phantsmans, chrono and alacrity is a good time investment at this time.

@"kappa.2036" said:We are planning PvP/WvW splits, changes to the Confusion condition, regeneration effectiveness prioritization, boon/condition conversion table changes... PLUS MORE!! There are some mesmer changes we're excited about and hope to talk them about in more detail as we draw nearer to the update. Stay tuned!

-Karl

I thought we could have a preview of the balance patch this week, but for now we have not seen anything. Can we have some news? Or we just have to wait until we get disappointed like the latest patch?

NEWS (01/02/18)Phantasm changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26687/shattering-the-status-quoAlacrity changes: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/26685/alacrity-time-for-a-change

Mesmer getting a complete redesign, not thief? two of the most longest toxic design classes in the game going as far to Gw2 beta; except only one getting a redesign and not the other?

Karl; thief and mesmer dev, Remove 1 toxic design class, keep the other one? what do you see wrong with this picture really?

Both Thief and Mesmer are continually being exempted from being competitive Yet Anet are continually prompting Gw2 as a 'competitive and fun' game?

Does Anet truly believes we trust them by keep making excuses especially to these two toxic classes?

' Anything that suggests the possibility of favoritism really begins to work against the public confidence'

The damage Favoritism has caused to Gw2 within its 5 years is despicable. Yet being presummabley being implemented and enforced in the next upcoming balance patch?

http://www.tentonhammer.com/articles/guild-wars-2-are-thieves-and-mesmer-s-the-cause-of-the-meta

'There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience'

GL GW2

I really hope there isn't just another overlord profession... Why is it so hard to just bring the professions in line with one another?