My view of the patch as a support Tempest

Considering most of my PvP experience comes from playing support Tempest and support FB/core guardian, I thought I would share my thoughts on the patch in a format that could be used to recreate what each particular person experience   Memser : First Im glad to see some shaving on mirage, although I could somewhat hold a fight vs them for up to 3-4 seconds, at the very least now i shouldn't be blowing up while not being able to press buttons or move/dodge. Personally I think they could use a little less untargetability (like longer CD on axe) but they should also gain a bit more sustain (scaling on their healing, not flat amount, but more scaling, so that if they want a bit more sustain they have to equip some healing stats. This is going to be a recurrent thing for many classes).   Ranger : Soulbeasts, well, I'm not sure they understood what made soulbeasts strong, things like the constant upkeep of protection (thanks to plasma, protection of dodge, earth runes which gives prot and also increase their self healing without equipping healing stats, and this healing incre also applies to rej as well and remember that having prot gives a flat healing every second too). Honestly, i want to see less sustain on their part. Again, if you dont have healing stats equipped, your sustain should not be that high.    Warriors : spellbreaker meta build did not get touched, I understand some people think they are just strong, or at worst ok, but I think their bust damage vs sustain can also be looked at, or at the very least sustain, which once again, without equipping healing stats they are constantly healing everything back up and usually takes 2 people to burst them down after shield/stances if they lodge themselves in the home node. Sure they might fall down eventually, but it takes too long and too many CD and people. Move their GS damage from #3 to #2, #4 and #5, overall same damage, or easier yet, make it like ele air dagger #5; if the skill doesnt hit a person (we dodged it or it is used to escape) then CD increases (or how they "nicely" worded it for eles; increased CD to double, and then say that "when it hits an enemy, the CD is halved"....im still salty about that unneeded nerf).   Engis : Holos, they are still strong, too strong, specially their sustain. Not a single point in a healing stats yet they can heal full health by exiting forge and blasting water a couple of times. Again, sustain needs to be looked at. Im not looking forward to undying bunker scrappers with retaliation galore, but I do think their support abilities will now go up through the roof with the amount of new accessible fields they got!   Thiefs: the change to DE stealth is pretty good, not a fan of p/p thieves, but lets see how the patch pans out. Also, please continue to look into sword/dagger, sword #3 is still unblockable, does a lot of damage and steals too many boons, at the very least lower the boons stolen so that a single skill doesnt completely negate support guardians/eles, and also, unblockable skills shouldnt be so spammable, it makes hard to come by blocks in ele and aegis on guardians completely pointless when they already have lowest hp in the game. Give them more scaling on their healing if they use healing stats.   Revs : they need more condi clears options, and less upfront damage, also, only exception to the healing scaling, they just need sustain in general, but only after the upfront damage is shifted around to be more over time through autoattacks or other skills.   Necros : i would like to play more support necro, but as it stands they got little ways to do so other than vamp aura, which could use some more healing scaling. Im glad to see some boon convertion moved around, but im gonna wait to see how it plays out in actual game, although Im not very fond of the constant mindless condi spam and boon convertion they still have. Please for the loveof the Six, let us heal their hp through shroud, my healings go wasted on them. Not sure reaper needed more buffs, but lets see how everything plays out.   Guardians : Love playing support, both core and FB, I was already doing low damage as a support but I can see why the change to smite cond was needed. My main damage specc was DH, so the change to true shot is welcomed, although I would have preferred lower CD rather than range. Anyways, I now feel the use of staff justified, just wish it wasnt in the same trait tier as healing on aegis. They were hit pretty hard as far as core burst, which is completely understandable, although I think we will keep seeing them around.   Ele : Tempest, Im glad to see them get some much needed love, although it doesnt completely fix the class, they acknowledged that they still need more to bring them up to par with other classes. I particularly think we need more sustain and less scaling on some speccs that dont use healing stats, like those running damage builds. FA still needs to be less upfronted damage, and we need to give reasons and options to go outside arcane/water for even damage speccs. As a support tempest these changes are good start, I would look into the second tier passive trait which is underwhelming, a whole trait just to give 5 seconds of swiftness, when other classes have class defining perks. Also, please nerf the sustain on weaver and grant them a bit more scaling on damage, they are healing trolls that win by boring attrition or making you snooze on the keyboard.   tl;dr good changes in general, less protection upkeep on ranger, less flat healing and more healing scaling for holo/soulbeast/spellbreakers, sustain should cost equipping healing stats, like it does for pretty much any other class. More flat healing for mesmers/revs/eles, less upfront damage for FA ele and shiro rev. Look at sword/dagger #3 thieves since it is a nightmare for supports. Less condi convertion for necros and more sustain, let us heal them through shroud.

@"Fortus.6175" said:  Thiefs: Also, please continue to look into sword/pistol, sword #3 is still unblockable, does a lot of damage and steals too many boons, at the very least lower the boons stolen so that a single skill doesnt completely negate support guardians/eles, and also, unblockable skills shouldnt be so spammable, it makes hard to come by blocks in ele and aegis on guardians completely pointless when they already have lowest hp in the game. Give them more scaling on their healing if they use healing stats. 1# off; You are talking about Sword/Dagger not S/P

As for the rest: it does absolutely nowhere near lot of dmg ever since its quite huge Nerf to that skills which, especially compared to other professions.I got same opinion on the Boons stolen, two is nowhere near too many, more like just the correct amount, don't forget that it's one of the few reasons why S/D is Meta. It is not too many especially if we consider that stuff like Stability, Regeneration and Might are so down the line in its boon removal order, with an exception to Protection which is more likely than others, but is still too far to make it viable vs supports should it be stealing only One boon, because people fail to see that this "spammable" skill uses almost 50% of thieves entire Ini pol per one use successful chain. So Thief can use it twice in a row, which due to boons being applied so often is adequate to remove 4, imagine if it was only 2 per entire Thiefs wasted Ini pol, that would be just utterly useless vs all the supports. I believe the skill people are referring to as "spammable" are missed Flanking Strikes, which can of course be used up to 4 (if lucky and given bit more time then 5) times but only if it's missed, which of course means you gotta rejoice because thief is now about to get ****.

@Alatar.7364 said:

@"Fortus.6175" said:  

Thiefs

: Also, please continue to look into sword/pistol, sword #3 is still unblockable, does a lot of damage and steals too many boons, at the very least lower the boons stolen so that a single skill doesnt completely negate support guardians/eles, and also, unblockable skills shouldnt be so spammable, it makes hard to come by blocks in ele and aegis on guardians completely pointless when they already have lowest hp in the game. Give them more scaling on their healing if they use healing stats. 1# off; You are talking about Sword/Dagger not S/P

thanks for the correction, i fixed it on the post.

Boons stolen are random, there is no order, which funnily enough, the only class with boon steal priority is thieves with steal prioritizing stability first above all other boons, which of course screws eles the most since we basically have almost no way of applying it, heck, overloads are completely shut down with one steal. TA have shown that S/D is a near permanence due to their strength, which of course goes back to my initial post that one single skill shouldn't almost completely nullify an entire class build, with eles being the hardest countered here. While I do think thieves could use more sustain, they shouldnt be a death sentence to supports, just like supports cant kill anyone on their own, nobody on their own should have such an easy time killing them either, and so far the only class that have this potential is S/D thieves (and a rampage warrior but at the very least thats an elite).

@Fortus.6175 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Fortus.6175 said:  

Thiefs

: Also, please continue to look into sword/pistol, sword #3 is still unblockable, does a lot of damage and steals too many boons, at the very least lower the boons stolen so that a single skill doesnt completely negate support guardians/eles, and also, unblockable skills shouldnt be so spammable, it makes hard to come by blocks in ele and aegis on guardians completely pointless when they already have lowest hp in the game. Give them more scaling on their healing if they use healing stats. 1# off; You are talking about Sword/Dagger not S/P

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Larcenous_Strike

The boons stolen are not random.

Thief profession is entirely nullified by multiple professions, if 2 boons stolen are "entire nullifying" you, then you might wanna take a look at Scourge first.S/D thief can't kill support spec just on its own, you might wanna take a look at the way you play or traits/amulets you use if that happens to you, I mean no disrespect by that.

Steal prioritizing Stability is absolutely fine by me since thief is the only profession in game that has absolutely no access to stability (+ Rev who has it only in Renegade..) , outside 1 second Stab on BP which is just a bad joke.

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Fortus.6175 said:

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Fortus.6175 said:  

Thiefs

: Also, please continue to look into sword/pistol, sword #3 is still unblockable, does a lot of damage and steals too many boons, at the very least lower the boons stolen so that a single skill doesnt completely negate support guardians/eles, and also, unblockable skills shouldnt be so spammable, it makes hard to come by blocks in ele and aegis on guardians completely pointless when they already have lowest hp in the game. Give them more scaling on their healing if they use healing stats. 1# off; You are talking about Sword/Dagger not S/P

Interesting about the boon stealing, although aegis first is pretty rough for guardians, same with protection being up there, which again doubles down on its ability to weaken supports who rely on those. The last meta battle build was updated using the latest AT, and I was not surprised to see S/D thief make it to meta once again https://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest, so i dont think they are, by any metric, weak. And whether you like metabattle or not, they mostly update using metrics of what the players are actually using in ranked AT, and I would argue they are the main reason eles can not exist in AT. Thief might have some other inherent weaknesses, but their strengths are too marked agaisnt a specific subset of classes, and still extremely strong against almost all other classes. Please be mindful that Im not saying they are OP, dont think thats what Im implying, all Im saying is that the Sword #3 is too strong as a single ability. I would even argue thieves havent been able to get buffs in much needed areas because of skills like these.

"> Revs : they need more condi clears options, and less upfront damage, also, only exception to the healing scaling, they just need sustain in general, but only after the upfront damage is shifted around to be more over time through autoattacks or other skills."

I do not understand ... Automatic attacks? you pretend to speculate on how to balance a class without saying what or why is this op? I do not mean to offend, but do you know how rev works? Download damage where? Why? More support? Rev what you need is rework of renegade, the main thing would be that and then repair errors that have been from the beginning here ... tune other legends that are not used would also be fine, but ... You are determined to destroy the only construction that works in pvp one more time...

@Fortus.6175 said:Also, please nerf the sustain on weaver and grant them a bit more scaling on damage, they are healing trolls that win by boring attrition or making you snooze on the keyboard.Weaver's damage is fine; its ability to hit targets which aren't simply standing still is not.

The 3/4-second-cast 130-range sword skills need to be buffed to 180-range.

@"rev in love.8439" said:

"> Revs : they need more condi clears options, and less upfront damage, also, only exception to the healing scaling, they just need sustain in general, but only after the upfront damage is shifted around to be more over time through autoattacks or other skills."

I do not understand ... Automatic attacks? you pretend to speculate on how to balance a class without saying what or why is this op? I do not mean to offend, but do you know how rev works? Download damage where? Why? More support? Rev what you need is rework of renegade, the main thing would be that and then repair errors that have been from the beginning here ... tune other legends that are not used would also be fine, but ... You are determined to destroy the only construction that works in pvp.

I did not say they are OP, not sure where you got that in my post. More condi clear doesnt mean support, it means just that, more condi clear for themselves (whether that can also apply to allies can be debatable depending on skills, but as it stands, they got too few options outside of staff or ventari). Upfronted damage comes from Shiro sword combo, which gives unblockable gap closer that ignores LoS coupled with shiro #6 and, f2 from herald and lastly the recently changed extra damage on each damage instance, you need a large health pool to survive those and thats something neither guardians nor ele have.

I wanted to keep my post relatively "short" given how much I was trying to cover, and even then it came out to be a wall of text, but I think most people are familiar with what I mean when I say their upfront damage is high, and their sustain/condi clear low.

Yes renegade does need help, nobody denies that, again, not sure where you got me saying otherwise in my post. Again, I didnt want to make the post too long, but I think rev needs some core improvements, because it feels the class was built with herald in mind, and renegade does show some of its flaw because of this.

Im not determined to destroy anything, im just providing my feedback from playing as and playing agaisnt certain classes. Like most people, I want more builds to be viable, but not at the expense of other builds.

At the time of me making this post I had not checked metabattle builds, yet now that I did check it to double check what people are running on AT, I was once again not surprised to see Shiro/Her on the category of Meta: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

I believe it is easier and more understandable to even out outliers, than to buff everyone to the heavens and continue the power creep.

@Velimere.7685 said:

@Fortus.6175 said:Also, please nerf the sustain on weaver

and grant them a bit more scaling on damage

, they are healing trolls that win by boring attrition or making you snooze on the keyboard.Weaver's damage is fine; its ability to hit targets which aren't simply standing still is

not

.

Imagine Pyro Vortex as a cone like scourge's torch 4 or rev's sword 4. Let us dream...