[FEEDBACK] Feb. 6th Balance Patch

In this update, we looked to improve the weaver’s sword damage and move its high healing aspects further into the water attunement. In this vein, we reduced Riptide’s healing and increased Aqua Siphon’s base- and healing-power contributions. Additionally, we wanted to improve less-used skills in signets and improve the Glyph of Storms so that some storms have better situational use via differentiated recharges.

• Gale Strike: Damage per strike has been increased by 25%.
• Twin Strike: The damage of this attack has been changed. The initial strike now deals 33% less damage, and the second strike now deals 100% more damage. The overall damage of this skill has been increased by 33%.
• Shearing Edge: The damage of this skill has been increased by 50%.
• Natural Frenzy: The damage of this skill has been increased by 50%.
• Riptide: The healing-per-level aspect of this skill has been reduced by about 60%. Healing-power contribution has been reduced by 45%.
• Aqua Siphon: The healing-per-level aspect of this skill has been increased by about 60%. Healing-power contribution has been increased by 50%. The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Signet of Water: The active form of this signet now heals allies and chills enemies in its area of effect. The passive form of this signet now reduces incoming condition duration by 20% instead of removing conditions. Reduced the chill duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. Reduced the recharge from 25 seconds to 20 seconds. This is now a ground-target skill.
• Signet of Fire: Reduced the recharge from 20 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill now strikes up to 4 additional enemies around the target. This skill now performs a range check when cast.
• Glyph of Storms: Reduced the recharge of Firestorm from 60 seconds to 25 seconds. Reduced the recharge of Ice Storm from 60 seconds to 30 seconds. Reduced the recharge of Sandstorm from 60 seconds to 40 seconds. All storm glyph variants go on cooldown whenever one glyph is cast.
• Glyph of Elemental Power: In addition to its previous effects, this glyph now also increases outgoing damage by 25% for each strike. Fixed an issue that prevented this glyph from losing stacks when enhanced attacks were blocked, blinded, or evaded.
• Superior Elements: Fixed a bug in which multiple weavers could override each other’s cooldowns.

It's good to see sword's damage addressed but Riptide nerf is very unnecessary. There's nothing that justifies an elementalist choosing Unravel instead of a more significant skill. Aqua Siphon is meaningless since we need to keep rotating between elementalists and this skill is also slow to hit someone.Signets of Water and Fire may have some usages, but Signet of Water is the best. I appreciate the change to Glyph of Storms. Glyph of Elemental Power is only usable in pure dps burst.I see this patch as a failure for elementalist despite the changes already mentioned. Our cantrips still have high cooldowns and clunky to almost meaningless utility. Our traitlines passed unmodified. There are still many unusable traits in all the traitlines. We are still dependent on Water traitline to survive condition and dps.

RIPtide nerf is just stupid. (I'm being polite here) it was the weavers bread. They buffed a few skills and 2 of them is almost never hitters - gale strike, and aqua siphon. And that double Attunment to water to get heal. It's almost like they want us to use stupid unravel and personally I think it's stupid skill and should be removed and replaced with something normal. Why the hell I would use such skill in elite profession which is focusing on Double Attunment. What's the point?Well in general weaver is there where it was before - nowhere. It's still underperforming in current meta. You want bunker ? Go for druid or firebrand. Want damage, go for holo or war. Want Condi? Scourge or mirage. Every other class can do it better. In general you play ele because you simply like ele, nothing else.And I will agree that many eles traitlines are simply outdated. Slight rework/ refurbishing is required.

Riptide nerf is something that I wasn't expecting at all.Around people that cries about Scourge condi power,endless Mirage dodges,Spellbreaker "whole thing",here comes poor ele,that is clearly out of meta (sw/d).As someone said,yes,if you are good at this class,you can play at high rankings (i see no problem with climbing with that build to high plat,even legendary if I had enough time).But the thing that matters is that you need much higher skill to outplay other classes as ele,than if you were playing any other.

I didn't care about underperforming sw/d build,because I like challenges,but now,what was the point of that nerf?Was anyone even complaining about it?Or was it just a random nerf,one amongst others.Or maybe you just want us to use Unravel,huh?Sure,I will exchange it for Twiste of Fate,was useless anyway :)

Edit:Overall healing reduced by 60%,Healing Power reduced by 45%,so you just basically threw out 2/3 of this skill.Why won't you change Riptide to "dodge back and make water field",almost same.

Riptide was basically a main heal for me, so I won't have to activate signet of restoration. Now that's sadly pretty much gone. I don't get to use aqua siphon much because you don't double attune in water much anyway. And Aqua siphon doesn't always land, like some other skills. When it doesn't land, it won't heal either which is the biggest flaw of this skill.

Ele was very tanky for me in spvp (and fun!). Though when playing scourge the time it took to kill one was ridiculous ?

The Riptide nerf effectively killed Weaver in PvP.

Hopefully this thread is read by karl or other anet devs. Because riptide was a big factor why the elite spec was still viable across each game mode. In PvE less, but in WvW and PvP the heal was actually what made it still good.

Especially for those who got a good amount of healing power (instead of more damage) for more sustain have been punished for wanting survivability over damage, even though we picked for healing power, we now don't get the sustain we wanted while damage is also lacking. They could have just lowered the healing on riptide but increased the healing power coefficient at the same time to give us healing power users a reason to keep using it.

@Velimere.7685 said:The Riptide nerf effectively killed Weaver in PvP.

And in WvW.

they may have nerfed us a little bit, but I really hope they are trying to make us viable damage specs while keeping us from being unkillable at the same time, thats my hope at least. They need to do a bit more like fix up trait lines so we don't need to take water to survive and add condi cleanse to other lines, but yeah I don't think it's too bad. You just can't face tank so much unless you build to face tank. We definitely need more compensation though.

@"Widmo.3186" said:Was anyone even complaining about it?

As a matter of fact, yes someone was: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/7115/riptide-holds-back-sword-so-much-it-might-need-nerfing

I expected a feedback, but i just see opinions..

Well i think that riptide nerf was intended to use mora aqua siphon, which was buffed, along with twin strike, shearing edge and natural frenzy, which are dual skills tied to water. The idea is to incentive more the usage of water attunement during the weaver rotation.

But well, now to test aqua siphon and the new water signet if it can compensate for a good heal.

@Conqueror.3682 said:I expected a feedback, but i just see opinions..

Well i think that riptide nerf was intended to use mora aqua siphon, which was buffed, along with twin strike, shearing edge and natural frenzy, which are dual skills tied to water. The idea is to incentive more the usage of water attunement during the weaver rotation.

But well, now to test aqua siphon and the new water signet if it can compensate for a good heal.

Feedback is always an opinion. I don't know why you were expecting anything else, nor what you could have possibly been expecting instead. Maybe a bug report? I think there's more appropriate ways of submitting those, though. This is our feedback on the changes that they made to sword weaver, most specifacally riptide, which myself and many others think was a mistake.

The nerf to riptide, if any was required at all (which is debatable), was way too drastic. Buffing aqua siphon in return as some sort of 'compensation', which requires double water attunement and landing a melee attack on an enemy, is a joke. The double water attunement requirement means you lose so much momentum that it doesn't matter if they had made aqua siphon the best healing skill in the game (which they haven't).

This is ignoring the fact that if you are switching to water, you are already in trouble. Having to wait another 4 seconds in order to unlock a heal that requires you to land a melee attack on an enemy in order to do anything is absurd, and is going to lead to you dying most of the time.

In short, I don't think Anet truly understands how the build plays in practice, nor how meaningless most of the other changes they made to the sword skills are. The skills that they buffed are near useless, for reasons other than the numbers attached to them. They can make aqua siphon automatically heal you to full when you land it, and it still wouldn't matter the majority of the time, simply because the requirements in order to actually get it to heal you are too demanding to be able to reliably pull it off in a real fight.

@ionix.9054 said:

@"Widmo.3186" said:

Was anyone even complaining about it?

This one?I meant some serious threads,with some more posts and arguments,not this guy,whose opinion comes truly from nowhere.It just looks like he literally jumped into forums after being defeated in 1v1 vs ele,because he couldn't interrupt Riptide.So I wouldn't compare this "pls nerf crying" to f.e. this one https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/19576/scourge-is-really-depressing .But sure,"as a matter of fact" it counts :)

After testing sw/d post patch,Riptide nerf is really perceptible and as I mentioned before,now it's just roll backward and make waterfield.Switching to full water attunement not gonna happen,except if you'll make water sword AA anyhow more useful.Then,there might be a reason to stay in first slot water for more time than to just use 2nd skill.

@Raizex.7423 said:

In short, I don't think Anet truly understands how the build plays in practice, nor how meaningless most of the other changes they made to the sword skills are. The skills that they buffed are near useless, for reasons other than the numbers attached to them. They can make aqua siphon automatically heal you to full when you land it, and it still wouldn't matter the majority of the time, simply because the requirements in order to actually get it to heal you are too demanding to be able to reliably pull it off in a real fight.

This^exactly my thoughts about it, that they haven't really played and dont know how the rotation goes. Because thats the only explanation of such huge and drastic nerf, they have no idea what in matches is going on. and i agree with everything you said ^^

I actually used aqua siphon for a few hours, since you could double attune to water with the bug. It was occasionally marginally worth the time and risk of hitting someone with a slow skill that does poor damage to try to get the heal.

but now, lol. useless

@Raizex.7423 said:

@"Conqueror.3682" said:I expected a feedback, but i just see opinions..

Well i think that riptide nerf was intended to use mora aqua siphon, which was buffed, along with twin strike, shearing edge and natural frenzy, which are dual skills tied to water. The idea is to incentive more the usage of water attunement during the weaver rotation.

But well, now to test aqua siphon and the new water signet if it can compensate for a good heal.

What i expected as a feedback is the following

"i tested the new skills and got these results, so, yes, the nerf to riptide was huge, etc etc..."

But no, what i read is "oh no, riptide is nerfed, everything got into oblivion",

I have not testet enough yet to say that was a huge nerf and weaver got into problems, i havent tested it how it works with the new signet of water, have you tested these skills enough to make good conclusions?

Also, water attunement is largely used in pvp as a defensive option, so, all the buffs related to water/x dual skills will benefit the profesion, but if you think that gale strike, which is a good cc is near useless, then just... wow, i will just stop right here.

I dont care if anet undersands the class or what they want, i just said that, by looking at the changes, it seems that they want us to use more aqua syphon, so lets start practicing.

But no, what i read is "oh no, riptide is nerfed, everything got into oblivion",

I have not testet enough yet to say that was a huge nerf and weaver got into problems, i havent tested it how it works with the new signet of water, have you tested these skills enough to make good conclusions?

I dont care if anet undersands the class or what they want, i just said that, by looking at the changes, it seems that they want us to use more aqua syphon, so lets start practicing.

If using riptide a 1000 times pre patch and then experience for yourself post patch that riptide has lost its burst healing (and thus making us really vulnerable and melt against burst classes like thief/mesmer) there is no reason to do any "testing" in order to give feedback. And why do you think that signet of water is the solution? To compensate riptide, you're basically telling me to give up a utility skill.

Some skills anet buffed are useful and often used because going from water and then to another attunement is often done. But you can't tell us to learn to use aqua siphon (yes i do use it, but it's one of the least used skills) and have us wait for over 3 seconds until we can change attunement again for water 5 or water/water 3 while we're bursted down. It also makes sword weaver much more predictable when it comes to their heals. The moment you see us rotate backwards, the opponent knows a heal is possibly coming in about 2 or 3 seconds.

Weaver is fine. Before the patch you had to gear aggressively to do any real damage, and the healing was still good. I often had top healing in PVP with marauder amulet. That probably shouldn't be a thing.

Now you can gear for more sustain and still do same damage. I switched to Sage amulet and that's been fine. In WVW I switched from mara/zerk to a hybrid gear. No traits needed to change.

If we are going to complain about anything, it should be the unreliable ability to hit moving targets (firegrab I've been looking at you since launch). That and the fact that dagger has longer range than sword. That just boggles my mind. If there is a slight range increase and a bug fix or two, s/x weaver will be a beast.

I think for sword Weaver to be viable we'll need another amulet like Sage's but with the distribution of healing and condition damage reversed.

The change to Riptide means sword Weaver absolutely has to have maximum healing now, and even then its survivability is still less than meta.

I think if you make weaver duel skill barrier trigger the sec you use the skill it would go a long way to making weaver as a class viable with out the need of stacking high healing power and healing effects. Look at scraper it now has a barrier that triggers ever 3 sec but its able to do it before dmg is calculated meaning its barrier its always going to take dmg with out it falling off doing nothing at all.

If the fear is to make weaver unkillable due to barrier remove it from the class and add in real melee effects such as protection stab and resiscenets as well as real self contestant condi clears and def skill (effects and skills from the weaver line alone that lets its play as a melee class). Barrier often feels more of an support tool then a self sustane tool so putting it on tempest would be far more effective and removing some of the tankly effects on tempest over to weaver should let these 2 elite spec fill there rolls better.

Wrong post lmao. Sorry.

Balance updates like this are literally the reason why I left the game. I come back to check what is going on with what would be my favorite class every now and then and see that things are only getting worse and worse. For so long ive believed that ele should be the class that has so much potential to be great because in most ways its one of the harder classes to master in the game, but every update I see every other class getting much better and ele being in the same spot. If the devs simply made atleast one type of build that was actually a viable dps spec I would come back to this game, but its clear the only time that would happen is if they change up the devs who are in charge of ele. I cant remember the last time we had a fun dps spec that was actually viable, and able to compete with something like a thief in high end tpvp.

Make dual skills grant stab instead of paper thin barrier!And make skills hit, maybe.

@MyPuppy.8970 said:Make dual skills grant stab instead of paper thin barrier!And make skills hit, maybe.

That not a bad ideal but i think protection and /or aegis would fit better but have a stab from duel skills to be trate able.Barrier dose not make weaver melee at least barrier after the fact if it was more like scraper barrier where it triggers before dmg is taken that what real melee barrier looks like.

@"Conqueror.3682" said:I expected a feedback, but i just see opinions..

Well i think that riptide nerf was intended to use mora aqua siphon, which was buffed, along with twin strike, shearing edge and natural frenzy, which are dual skills tied to water. The idea is to incentive more the usage of water attunement during the weaver rotation.

But well, now to test aqua siphon and the new water signet if it can compensate for a good heal.

I gave my feedback: riptide's nerf wasn't necessary at all and if they thought they could bring Weaver to more dps lines then I'm really sorry to say this but they failed miserably, again. If you don't use Arcana (arcane traitline) you have full 4,0secs CD on each attunement swap, which means that whenever you attune to water, you'll have to wait 4secs to attune again and use Aqua Siphon. The important question is: what happens during those 4secs? Does it justify the risks?Elementalist (and revenant) is the profession that you take the highest risks for the lowest rewards. If you want to survive melee range you gonna need water traitline (as always regardless range) and these followin' traits: Elemental Pursuit, Swift Revenge and Woven Stride. You can guess why those traits. Now tell me if this brings variety to our profession? It's always the same choices, desperately made to have enough "sustain" so we can HOPE to endure a fight.

And if they really thought that we'd be slotting either Unravel or Signet of Water for more sustain, wrong again! Someone in this thread already mentioned it but I'm going to ask again: why would I have Unravel as an utility skill if the elite spec's mechanic revolves around double attunements? Wouldn't it be better if Unravel was an F5 skill? Think about.