On the negative, the level of change in 1 patch here is going to be an absolute ******* balance holocaust resulting on broken builds and emergency fixes, its a page 1 of the 'how not to phase in change in a controlled manner' handbook. However I can forgive that because I love LOVE the fact they realise their cadence of changes is far too slow and they are very making moves to address this. I've been banging on for a long long time about how this is the fundemental root cause of all the balancing issues, but it looks like they have software engineers on board that gets this.
"Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities." - The Spacing Guild Handbook.
Not much in the way of nerfing condies, im afraid condies will either be useless or flat out better than power with their current itteration. I think it would be healthier for the overall game if condi skills and condi dmg worked exactly like power with flat debuffs, no stacks and set coefficience for each diff skill (taking cc skills into acount for condie dmg as well)
I don't know who this new company is, but I like their balance changes already. If only to watch the flood of Mirage mains come down from the heavens to say their class was trash beforehand and this nerf is unnecessary and continuing the Mesmer discrimination.
Some of the underplayed HOT spec nerfs were harsh but otherwise this patch is looking good. Mirage dodge nerf might be overkill. Might want to make their dodge cost a little less endurance than normal. Thanks balance friends
PvP will get less spammy. I like that. Can’t wait to see it in action. And with the new, more frequent schedule of updates it is not a big deal when changes don’t seem to work out as they were supposed to.
Aside from how terrible balance is inevitably going be after basically flipping the board on this game, can we please stop blanket nerfing all hard cc skills to negligable damage. Cast time, cool down, range, and cc duration all need to be weighed against each other to determine appropriate damage levels. All this does is make long cool down well telegraphed CC's like prime light beam complete trash compared to more spammable and less telegraphed stuff like overcharged shot.
Not convinced the -50% endurance change for Mirage is going to be particularly viable. Especially if Ambush Skills are not improved to be more impactful.
One Clone Shattered: Reduced power coefficient from 1.15 to 1.0
Two Clones Shattered: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.92 to 0.7
Three Clones Shattered: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.805 to 0.613
Chrono Shatters
Split Second: Adjusted as follows.
One Clone Shattered: Reduced power coefficient from 1.15 to 1.0
Two Clones Shattered: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.92 to 0.7
Three Clones Shattered: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.805 to 0.613
Weapons
Greatsword
Spatial Surge: Reduced minimum power coefficient per strike from 0.23 to 0.15. Reduced maximum power coefficient from 0.335 to 0.223
Mirror Blade: Increased cooldown from 5 seconds to 8 seconds
Mind Stab: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.7
Phantasmal Berserker: Reduced phantasm power coefficient per strike from 0.23 to 0.15
Illusionary Wave: Reduced power coefficient from 0.3 to 0.01. Reduced cooldown from 30 seconds to 25 seconds
Staff
Winds of Chaos: Reduced power coefficient from 0.3 to 0.2
Phase Retreat: Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 12 seconds
Phantasmal Warlock: WvW will now use the PvP version of the skill (1 warlock summoned)
Scepter
Autoattack Chain: Reduced power coefficients from 0.5/0.5/0.75 to 0.333/0.333/0.5
Illusionary Counter: Increased cooldown from 8 seconds to 12 seconds. WvW will now use the PvP version of the skill (1 clone summoned)
Confusing Images: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.38 to 0.255
Sword
Autoattack Chain: Adjusted as follows
Mind Slash: Reduced power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.5
Mind Gash: Reduced power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.5
Mind Spike: Reduced base power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.666. Reduced power coefficient against foes with no boons from 2.0 to 1.333
Blurred Frenzy: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.2564 to 0.128
Sword OH
Illusionary Riposte: Reduced power coefficient from 2.0 to 1.0
Phantasmal Swordsman: Reduced power coefficient of the phantasm leap attack from 0.5 to 0.35, Reduced power coefficient per strike of the phantasm flurry attack from 0.15 to 0.1
Focus
Phantasmal Warden: Reduced power coefficient per strike of the warden attack from 0.138 to 0.1
Pistol
Phantasmal Duelist: Reduced power coefficient per strike of the phantasm attack from 0.115 to 0.1
Magic Bullet: Reduced power coefficient from 0.2 to 0.01. Reduced stun duration from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds
Torch
The Prestige: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.5
Shield
Tides of Time: Reduced power coefficient from 0.8 to 0.01
Axe
Autoattack Chain: Reduced power coefficients from 0.55/0.55/1.1 to 0.366/0.366/0.732
Lingering Thoughts: Increased ammo recharge from 10 seconds to 12 seconds
Axes of Symmetry: Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 15 seconds
Heal
Ether Feast: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 25 seconds
Mantra of Recovery: Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 18 seconds
Mirror: Increased cooldown from 15 seconds to 20 seconds
Signet of the Ether: Reduced illusion summon base heal from 350 to 297
Well of Eternity: Reduced initial base heal from 3230 to 2099. Reduced ending heal coefficient from 1.2 to 0.8
False Oasis: Reduced pulse base heal from 1620 to 1215. Reduced pulse heal coefficient from 0.5 to 0.2
Utility
Decoy: Increased cooldown from 40 seconds to 45 seconds
Mirror Images: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 35 seconds
Arcane Thievery: Reduced quickness and slow duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds
Blink: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 35 seconds
Mantra of Concentration: Increased cooldown from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Increased ammo recharge from 30 seconds to 45 seconds
Mantra of Distraction: Reduced diversion recharge from 15 seconds to 10 seconds
Power Lock (from Mantra of Distraction): Reduced daze duration from 1.5 seconds to 1 second
Power Spike (from Mantra of Pain): Reduced power coefficient from 1.33 to 0.45. Adjusted vulnerability from 5 stacks for 8 seconds to 12 stacks for 6 seconds
Mantra of Resolve: Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 25 seconds
Signet of Midnight: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 35 seconds
Well of Action: Reduced quickness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Well of Precognition: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 45 seconds
Sand Through Glass: Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 30 seconds
Elite
Mass Invisibility: Increased cooldown from 60 seconds to 75 seconds
Gravity Well: Reduced pulse power coefficient from 0.6 to 0.01. Reduced final power coefficient from 2.4 to 0.01 Reduced cooldown from 90 seconds to 60 seconds
Traits
Domination
Dazzling: Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Rending Shatter: Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Furious Interruption: Reduced quickness duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
Power Block: Reduced weakness duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Dueling
Sharper Images: Reduced bleeding duration from 5 seconds to 2 seconds
Desperate Decoy: Increased cooldown from 40 seconds to 120 seconds
Duelist's Discipline: Reduced bleeding duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
Evasive Mirror: Reduced mirror duration from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Chaos
Metaphysical Rejuvenation: Reduced regeneration duration from 10 seconds to 5 seconds
Illusionary Membrane: Reduced protection duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
Chaotic Persistence: Reduced bonus boon and condition duration per boon from 2% to 1%
Method of Madness: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 75 seconds
Master of Manipulation: Reduced superspeed duration from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Chaotic Transference: Increased toughness to condition damage conversion from 7% to 13%. Reduced concentration to expertise conversion from 13% to 5%
Chaotic Dampening: Reduced protection duration from 4 seconds to 2.5 seconds
Bountiful Disillusionment: Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Inspiration
Restorative Illusions: Reduced heal coefficient from 0.77 to 0.46
Mental Defense; Increased internal cooldown from 50 seconds to 90 seconds
Illusions
Phantasmal Haste: Reduced quickness duration from 1.5 seconds to 1 second
Maim the Disillusioned: Reduced torment duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Phantasmal Force: Reduced might duration from 10 seconds to 6 seconds
Chronomancer
Delayed Reactions: Reduced slow duration from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Seize the Moment: Reduced quickness duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
Mirage
Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modes
Renewing Oasis: Reduced regeneration duration from 4 seconds to 2.5 seconds
Dune Cloak: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.5
im not sure i understand what you want to do to mirage cloak (now reduce endurance by 50??), does that mean as daredevil has 3 dodges mirages now only have one??? oO also why you want to reduce evade uptime on a spec that is build around doing things with his dodges and has already less dodges than most other classes in current state? doesnt rly make sense to me. the times mirage (not using chaosline) can dodge too often are already over. better reduce vigor duration given by chaosline.
for mind wrack i would leave the shatter dmg alone, it is balanced since game release and builds not using dmg mulitplier already do not rly do that much dmg. i would go for superiority complex (crit-) dmg reduction instead and leave mind wrack alone. the trait is what you changed during power creeping the game and what often leads to stupidly high dmg spikes on all (key-)skills (like i had 10k+ split surges crits from only my own ambush, so no clones involved, compared to around 3k without that trait or 7k+ mindwrack crits while using that trait. otherwise you force player away from more active and tactical skillbased traits like deceptive evasion into passive dmg multiplier traits to even do any dmg. but no matter what you do with mw, sup. complex should get crit dmg reduction in any case when you want to touch dmg all over the board.
esp with that in mind i would not reduce gs autoattack dmg, better just reduce power coefficient from the mirages own ambush (split surge) a little bit (adjust gs clone ambushes that they stay the same as they are now). the core gs autoattack is (like mindwrack) not powercreeped and doesnt deserve any nerfs even when everything else in the game will get nerfed. also gs3 and 5 dont even do any remarkable dmg already no need to reduce dmg here. torch prestige and gs berserker also dont need any dmg reduction in my opinion. they never got powercreeped. and when you touch sup.complex they could even get a very little dmg increase, because the base weapon dmg is not powercreeped. esp because these power build weapons already suffer from decreased vuln stacks dura from domination traitline what is normally used in power builds.
decoy already is a pretty weak utility compared to others for an already high 40 secs cd. illusionary ambush is like 3 times as strong as decoy and has way less cd (i would give illusionary ambush at least 45 secs too btw). instead nerfing all skills that will get affected by pu and make it unusable for all builds without pu, just reduce or delete the stealth duration from pu. wasnt it like 1 secs stealth increase at some point? i remember something like that. so 1 secs more no matter how long the base stealth duration of a used skill is instead 50%. that way ppl would not use decoy anymore anyway (most would switch to signet of midnight) and also a higher cd on mass invisibility will not be necessary anymore.
mantra of pain should get the might and vuln stacks removed completely and not get more stacks for even more oneshot potential. decreased vuln duration doesnt help vs the low effort oneshot potential you have with the current core pu build thx to mantra of pain. or you let the mightstacks/ vuln as you plan it and remove the direct dmg from that mantra completely so that it only is used as a selfbuff tool (or makes it stack the might also on 2 teammates near the mesmer for that to give it some teamsupport utility).
not rly happy with the blink cd increase because again you nerf a skill for all builds to compensate a too short cd when chaosline is used. chaosline is the problem as a low skill ceiling line giving too much rewards and not the base cd of blink.
im all for deleting passives traits but pls delete them by replacing them with something useful and not just by making them not worth taking… 120 secs icd on desperate decoy is lol... no time to read all classes atm, does other passive traits on other classes get the same treatment or will mesmer be the only one again? since mes is already the only class with instant skills cant be used in the back, with the only skills need to face the target but have no automatic char alignment? pls remove the need to face your target from mantras, it is not needed and it is unfair, it contradicts the whole instant nature and make them unhandy like crazy. just remove the direct dmg from mantra of pain completely and such unfair treatment of instant skills will not be needed anymore. or add this senseless destruction to all instant skills in the game, like fesh air ele, fb mantras etc. and see how unhandy it will feel for them too….
overall good chances but take care that you dont nerf things with specific meta builds like core pu in mind. it often leads in making used skills unusable for any other builds not using the traitline that actually causes the problems and will force ppl into a traitline with in general lower skill ceiling because you nerf the wrong skills which then become too weak outside of builds with chaosline used. also always check if your changes force ppl into less active trait choices by nerfing dmg at places where it is not power creeped instead nerfing a trait that clearly adds too much dmg by itself (superiority complex).
EDIT: nvm didnt see the global changes when writing, gs changes maybe make sense now all together. still sup. complex trait needs attention
what is the boonremove prio for the new trait Vicious Expression???
what you mean with the changes to mirage cloak? it sounds horrible….
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my neighbours listen to awesome music... whether they want it or not
I don't understand Shadow Arts nerf. It's currently a meta trait on more than 1 build, none of which really uses "Shadow's Rejuvenation" let alone "Merciful ambush".
Given the overall nerfs and thief play style remaining the same, SA will be be even better in perspective than it currently is.
Overall stealth was barely touched, heartseeker ignored (it will hit pretty hard after these nerfs), shadow shot went from 4 to 5 innitiative,... thief meta strength received a very gentle slap compared to other specs.
I think this is the end of sPvP for me. I am for curbing power creep a bit, but reducing CD on everything, lowering the damage on everything, seems like random number generator. Some skills has the CDs they had and deal the damage/heal they do for a reason. Not to mention, there is no way in hell to know what skill does how much damage/heal and how much CD on my main class WHEN EVERY SINGLE SKILL IS DIFFERENT. Forget the other 8 classes.
This is a different game. One that seems a derivative of the existing one, confusing and far less interesting. I am already on the fence on GW2 as a whole, sPvP was one of the few remaining anchors that keeps me attached to the game. I think this it for this. And with PvE changes boarding on pathetic, I think this is it for the game.
Lol this is what people get by denying that mesmer, condi mesmer, sic em rangers/sbs. double heralds, meme one shot rifle warriors, magebane tether bunker spellbreakers, ventari bunker renegades, knockback scrappers, thieves in general, one shot eles, fire weavers, symbol firebrands were all busted, and for also denying that bursty meta game (which admittedly, rifle holo is a part of) was not how Conquest PvP should be.
Below is a real life recreation of forum responders to these balance patch notes
Thats alot to take in. Looks interesting but the one thing that stood out to me was DH´s "Dragons Maw"
"Dragon's Maw: Reduced power coefficient from 2.5 to 0.01. Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced slow duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 75 seconds to 50 seconds"
I play DH atm and i think im one of the few that actually use this ability instead of "Renewed Focus". Its a Elite and its the one ability that screams "Dragon Hunter" - its like a huge bear claw. Its fairly easy to play around, dodge, block, stability, whatever. Is should be a high damage ability. Fits the class and its the only elite-damage ability for DH. Im not saying it should one-shot ppl, but i doubt the damage needs a nerf - or atleast this much of a nerf.
I think its bad when ppl play "elites" but end up using everything not related to that spec. An Elite spec should invite you to use "the new unlocked stuff". Play Reaper ? use a GS and shouts. Play DH ? use Traps. So on. Think you would want to keep that in mind.
im not sure i understand what you want to do to mirage cloak (now reduce endurance by 50??), does that mean as daredevil has 3 dodges mirages now only have one???oO also why you want to reduce evade uptime on a spec that is build around doing things with his dodges and has already less dodges than most other classes in current state? doesnt rly make sense to me. the times mirage (not using chaosline) can dodge too often are already over. better reduce vigor duration given by chaosline.
That was exactly thoughts but its not likely they understand what they are doing or would change it.
F for fellow mesmer players (if any left) , the first chrono, now mirage (especially for power ones).
@otto.5684 said:
I think this is the end of sPvP for me. I am for curbing power creep a bit, but reducing CD on everything, lowering the damage on everything, seems like random number generator. Some skills has the CDs they had and deal the damage/heal they do for a reason. Not to mention, there is no way in hell to know what skill does how much damage/heal and how much CD on my main class WHEN EVERY SINGLE SKILL IS DIFFERENT. Forget the other 8 classes.
This is a different game. One that seems a derivative of the existing one, confusing and far less interesting. I am already on the fence on GW2 as a whole, sPvP was one of the few remaining anchors that keeps me attached to the game. I think this it for this. And with PvE changes boarding on pathetic, I think this is it for the game.
could you please consider, putting percentage-values next to the coefficient changes?
Like "Reduced the power-coefficient of "Skill X" from 2.0 to 1.5 (25%)".
Having to do quick maffs for that many changes is pretty tedious.
Comparison between changes would also be way easier and more practical.
im not sure i understand what you want to do to mirage cloak (now reduce endurance by 50??), does that mean as daredevil has 3 dodges mirages now only have one???oO also why you want to reduce evade uptime on a spec that is build around doing things with his dodges and has already less dodges than most other classes in current state? doesnt rly make sense to me. the times mirage (not using chaosline) can dodge too often are already over. better reduce vigor duration given by chaosline.
That was exactly thoughts but its not likely they understand what they are doing or would change it.
F for fellow mesmer players (if any left) , the first chrono, now mirage (especially for power ones).
no they cant be serious with that, some early april fool or something? that cant be real, it makes no sense at all... ahahahaha … just no! esp now im forced to dodge no matter if i need to just to not waste endurance reggen when my one dodge bar is full? how does that add skill need and more active gameplay? it is the absolute opposite… dumbed down we go (nick cave) yeah yeah yeah…
NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (cant believe….)
need to sleep but im actually shocked…. crying and laughing at same time
YT/Tw PvP WvW Power Mes Guides/ Gameplay https://tinyurl.com/njhmjsh
my neighbours listen to awesome music... whether they want it or not
could you please consider, putting percentage-values next to the coefficient changes?
Like "Reduced the power-coefficient of "Skill X" from 2.0 to 1.5 (25%)".
Having to do quick maffs for that many changes is pretty tedious.
Comparison between changes would also be way easier and more practical.
@otto.5684 said:
I think this is the end of sPvP for me. I am for curbing power creep a bit, but reducing CD on everything, lowering the damage on everything, seems like random number generator. Some skills has the CDs they had and deal the damage/heal they do for a reason. Not to mention, there is no way in hell to know what skill does how much damage/heal and how much CD on my main class WHEN EVERY SINGLE SKILL IS DIFFERENT. Forget the other 8 classes.
This is a different game. One that seems a derivative of the existing one, confusing and far less interesting. I am already on the fence on GW2 as a whole, sPvP was one of the few remaining anchors that keeps me attached to the game. I think this it for this. And with PvE changes boarding on pathetic, I think this is it for the game.
git gud
What does this mean?! You think this is hello kitty I am playing sPvP for the first time?! I am arguing that splitting every skill and trait damage is dumb. If you do not have anything to add to the conversation then s*************.
Suppriesed to see Herald healing skill Facet of Light/ Infuse light untouched. Maybe cap the max amount of damage it can heal.
Also, please consider toning down the power of theif short bow 5 skill infiltraitors arrow. Maybe it should used on an enemy target so that it's used for infiltration instead of just being hands down the best mobility in the game.
Lastly, gonna be sad to see big ol' bomb doing 2 damage
Autoattack Chain: Reduced power coefficients from 0.6/1.0/1.6 to 0.4/.666/1.066
Holo Leap: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 0.91
Corona Burst: Reduced might and vulnerability durations from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Photon Blitz: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.3 to 0.2
Holographic Shockwave: Reduced power coefficient from 0.56 to 0.01
Weapons
Rifle
Hip Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.65 to 0.44
Net Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.3. Increased cooldown from 9 seconds to 10 seconds
Blunderbuss: Reduced minimum power coefficient from 1.1 to 0.5. Reduced maximum power coefficient from 1.76 to 1.31. Increased cooldown from 9 seconds to 12 seconds
Overcharged Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01. Increased cooldown from 14 seconds to 15 seconds
Jump Shot: Reduced initial leap power coefficient from 0.3 to 0.1. Reduced landing power coefficient from 2.4 to 1.74. Reduced vulnerability duration from 7 seconds to 6 seconds. Increased cooldown from 18 seconds to 20 seconds
Pistol
Fragmentation Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.266
Poison Dart Volley: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.4 to 0.2. Increased poison duration from 7 seconds to 10 seconds.
Static Shot: Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.4 to 0.3
Blowtorch: Adjusted minimum burning from 4 stacks for 3 seconds to 2 stacks for 6 seconds. Adjusted maximum burning from 4 stacks for 6 seconds to 2 stacks for 12 seconds. Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 15 seconds
Hammer
Autoattack Chain:
Positive Bash: Reduced power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.533. Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Negative Bash: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.666. Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Equalizing blow: Reduced power coefficient from 1.4 to 0.933. Reduced might and vulnerability durations from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Electro-Whirl: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 1.2 to 0.68. Increased cooldown from 6 seconds to 8 seconds
Rocket Charge: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 1.1 to 0.74. Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 18 seconds
Shock Shield: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.25 to 0.1
Thunderclap: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.8 to 0.45. Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds
Sword
Autoattack Chain: Reduced power coefficients from 0.88/0.93/1.5 to 0.586/0.62/1.0. Reduced vulnerability duration from 10 seconds to 6 seconds
Refraction Cutter: Reduced strike power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.75
Radiant Arc: Reduced base quickness duration from 2 seconds to 1 second. Reduced bonus quickness duration per 50% heat from 2 seconds to 1 second
Heal
Static Shock (AED Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01
Healing Turret: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds
Med Blaster (Med Kit 1): Reduced heal coefficient from 0.2 to 0.1
Medic Gyro: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. Reduced pulse heal coefficient from 0.6 to 0.25. Reduced initial heal coeffcient from 0.7 to 0.2
Reconstruction Field (Medic Gyro Toolbelt): Reduced protection duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
Coolant Blast: Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 25 seconds
Utility
Big Ol' Bomb (Bomb Kit Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 2.475 to 0.01. Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds
Grenade Barrage (Grenade Kit Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient per grenade from 0.6 to 0.5
Super Elixir (Elixir Gun 5): Reduced pulse base heal from 204 to 163. Reduced pulse heal coefficient from 0.1 to 0.05
Magnet (Tool Kit 5): Increased cooldown from 20 seconds to 25 seconds
Elixir B: Reduced boon durations from 10 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 40 seconds to 30 seconds
Toss Elixir B (Elixir B Toolbelt): Reduced might duration from 10 seconds to 6 seconds
Toss Elixir S: Reduced stealth duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Personal Battering Ram: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 0.01. Reduced ammo recharge from 25 seconds to 20 seconds
Launch Personal Battering Ram (Personal Battering Ram Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 0.5
Rocket Boots: Reduced power coefficient from 1.25 to 0.5
Super Speed (Slick Shoes Toolbelt): Reduced superspeed duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Throw Mine: Reduced power coefficient from 2.0 to 0.01. Increased boons removed from 1 to 3
Mine Field (Throw Mine Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient per mine from 0.77 to 0.5
Surprise Shot (Rifle Turret Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.5
Rocket Turret: Reduced overcharge power coefficient from 2.75 to 0.01
Thump (Thumper Turret Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01
Blast Gyro: Reduced power coefficient from 2.25 to 0.01. Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 seconds
Bypass Coating (Blast Gyro Toolbelt): Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 35 seconds
Defense Field (Bulwark Gyro Toolbelt): Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 40 seconds
Spectrum Shield: WvW will now use the PvP version of the skill (25% reduced recharge over heat threshold)
Hard Light Arena: Reduced field duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. Reduced bonus field duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 30 seconds
Prismatic Singularity (Hard Light Arena Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 0.1 to 0.01. Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 35 seconds
Photon Wall: Reduced power coefficient per wall from 1.5 to 0.5
Particle Accelerator (Photon Wall Toolbelt): Reduced power coefficient from 0.7 to 0.4. Increased cooldown from 8 seconds to 10 seconds
Elite
Supply Crate: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01. Increased stun duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 120 seconds to 90 seconds
Sneak Gyro: PvP will now use the WvW version of the skill (60s cd)
Prime Light Beam: Reduced power coefficient from 3.0 to 0.01. Reduced cooldown from 60 seconds to 40 seconds
Traits
Firearms
Sharpshooter: Reduced bleeding duration from 3 seconds to 1 second
Serrated Steel: Reduced bonus bleeding duration from 33% to 15%
Thermal Vision: Reduced expertise from 150 to 60
Juggernaut: Reduced might duration from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced bonus might duration from 20% to 10%
Incendiary Powder: Reduced bonus burning duration from 33% to 10%. Reduced burning duration from 8 seconds to 4 seconds
Inventions
Experimental Turrets: Reduced might duration from 10 seconds to 6 seconds
Bunker Down: Increased internal cooldown from 3 seconds to 4 seconds
Medical Dispersion Field: Reduced heal share percentage from 50% to 25%
Alchemy
Hidden Flask: Reduced boon durations from 8 seconds to 4 seconds
Compounding Chemicals: Reduced concentration from 240 to 75
Invigorating Speed: Increased internal cooldown from 5 seconds to 10 seconds
Protection Injection: Increased internal cooldown from 20 seconds to 30 seconds
Health Insurance: Reduced outgoing heal bonus from 20% to 7%
Comeback Cure: Reduced regeneration duration from 4 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Emergency Elixir: Increased internal cooldown from 40 seconds to 60 seconds
HGH: Adjusted might duration from 2 stacks for 15 seconds to 3 stacks for 6 seconds
Purity of Purpose: Boon durations have been adjusted as follows:
Protection, Quickness, Stability, Alacrity: Reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Resistance: Reduced from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds
Fury, Aegis, Retaliation, Regeneration: Reduced from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Vigor: Reduced from 10 seconds to 3 seconds
Might, Swiftness: Reduced from 10 seconds to 5 seconds
Tools
Static Discharge: Reduced power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.2
Power Wrench: Reduced cooldown reduction from 33% to 20%. Reduced elite skill recharge from 3 seconds to 1 second
Lock On: Reduced fury duration from 5 seconds to 2.5 seconds. Adjusted vulnerability from 10 stacks for 8 seconds to 5 stacks for 6 seconds
Takedown Round: Reduced power coefficient from 2.0 to 0.5
Kinetic Battery: Reduced quickness duration from 3 seconds to 2 seconds
Scrapper
Gyroscopic Acceleration: Reduced superspeed duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Mass Momentum: Reduced stability duration from 5 seconds to 3 seconds
Expert Examination: Reduced weakness duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Holosmith
Heat Therapy: Reduced base heal per stack from 49 to 39
Thermal Release Valve: Reduced power coefficient from 0.75 to 0.1. Reduced burning duration from 6 seconds to 2 seconds
I still think the pistol main-hand auto attack for Engi needs to match its tooltip of .5s cast time, instead of .8s cast time that it is currently.
As well, Inventions needs a serious looking into. It doesn't have much synergy with itself in terms of regeneration and the like.
The greatest enemy to improvement, is ignorance. But the desire to learn will cast ignorance into the fire.
@Foshizle.9802 said:
I don't understand Shadow Arts nerf. It's currently a meta trait on more than 1 build, none of which really uses "Shadow's Rejuvenation" let alone "Merciful ambush".
Given the overall nerfs and thief play style remaining the same, SA will be be even better in perspective than it currently is.
Overall stealth was barely touched, heartseeker ignored (it will hit pretty hard after these nerfs), shadow shot went from 4 to 5 innitiative,... thief meta strength received a very gentle slap compared to other specs.
But overall well done, this was needed.
This. If you're going to hit everyone hit thieves in sa harder. The last thing we need is this getting soured by permastealth.
Im usually not one for proposing thief hits because squishy, but by extension all thieves just got less squishy. They can take more shaving to SA in particular. Leeching venoms and siphoning can probably be dialed back.
Also people who wanted exorbitant nerfs getting them but also getting their cheese nerfed WHEEZE
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
I obviously didnt read every change in huge detail and wont understand the implications of these changes until its possible to test them, but some of these changes seem very questionable. For starters, a 0.01 power coefficient on cc seems like overkill. CC is too powerful right now but i think the problem is the abundance of cc skills, not the damage they do. However since removing some cc entirely is probably too big of a change, increasing cooldowns, or even a 0.1 power coefficient would probably be enough to make cc skills damage much more reasonable, while still making them do enough damage to secure a down/kill or be a significant part of a damage combo.
Second, there dont seem to be many nerfs to mobility skills, either in range or cd time. Mobility needs to be tuned down if damage is being tuned down since the gap between low and high mobility classes is very large. With lower damage, fights will likely last longer and depend more on positioning and kiting, which will make mobility even more important and impactful.
Lastly i didnt really see many changes to condition damage and cleansing but I probably just skimmed over it, or its in the general notes. Im skeptical that just reducing the number of stacks is going to make condi more engaging and fun to fight&play.
Overall its great to see so many changes all focused at reducing power creep and improving the quality of gameplay.
I'm kinda on board with where anet seems to be going with this.
However, I am also somewhat worried that they're trying to fix things with large amounts of numerical changes. Some numbers do need to be nerfed, yes, but there are also some deep-rooted mechanical issues present that cannot be fixed just by changing a damage coefficient.
I don't even like mirage and I already feel bad w/that -1 dodge. Goodness gracious, that is def too harsh right there.
smokescreen needs to be at least a min cd, its the stronget skill in the game
ele glyph is digsutingly op needs like 2 min cd or so
these are the most cancerous things about currente metagame and theyre being left out
its very disappointing
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I wanted such dmg reductions since HoT. However as others correctly mentioned; if these changes are to come through then Thiefs Shadow Arts and its huge stealth uptime will need a nerf too, maybe put other requirements on the Stealth on Heal (like "be below 50% hp" or something of the sorts) and other traits.
So far this might be the very best balance update I have ever gotten to read and I absolutely can't wait for it.
I have to admit lots of the past updates have been somewhat of a disappointment to me let alone trying to survive current meta, but this one, oh joy, I agree with every single line.
Also, PLEASE CHECK OTHER THREAD if you haven't already.
Theres some juicy stuff in those too. I know Cal mentioned it but I need the soulbeasts to know they can only use one pet now.
@ArthurDent.9538 said:
Aside from how terrible balance is inevitably going be after basically flipping the board on this game, can we please stop blanket nerfing all hard cc skills to negligable damage. Cast time, cool down, range, and cc duration all need to be weighed against each other to determine appropriate damage levels. All this does is make long cool down well telegraphed CC's like prime light beam complete trash compared to more spammable and less telegraphed stuff like overcharged shot.
After this patch goes live we can see which CC skills fall off the charts.
I don't think prime light beam is one of them though. 40 second cd launch is still hot, especially since it hits multi, drops a fire field on high heat, and can be precast from stealth.
Also its a 1.25 windup cast for 1200 range, unblockable less if you got quickness. If anyone should be complaining about their cc skills lacking damage its reaper but it's too early to even say that.
Let them make all the cc hit for null. I want to see how that plays out.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
Genuinely happy that they chose to tone down the amount of damage, buffing and so on, no more explosive combat, or at least less.
I'll be going back to pvp once this update hits.
Simply put most of these changes i am good with wont even lie tons of nerfs but it needed to happen im happy to see that some professions on paper dont look like they will be over nerfed compared to the obvious ones that really really really needed it.
I was expecting necro to be over nerfed but i am fine with the damage nerfs to be honest necro will be even more weak to cc now though but i mean that was already a thing. On paper it looks like damage soaking for necromancer as it was designed to do will be some what on par with damage evasion that other professions have but again this is on paper.
Necros sustain now will mainly depend on how everyone elses damage output looks and i would say with everyone dropping down and boons also coming down this is looking like one of you best balance passes so far.
Im sad at the loss of foot in the grave although it was weak as heck but you replaced it with something that might actually see use and most defiantly should have been included in the necromancers kit in some way. I can say if this was the perfect spot for it but its good to see that a trait like "Eternal Life" was added in the general notes.
Im super happy to see some of the insane stuff go and some elites get more proper trade offs like the other already have.
Im still waiting on a total scourge rework though i dont see anyone using that even with the reduction to everything else its just too clunky overall on paper these notes so far look like solid 8/10. I would say this is mostly step in the right direction for competitive modes.
@Curennos.9307 said:
Don't even like mirage and I already feel bad w/that -1 dodge. Goodness gracious, that is def too harsh right there.
Harsh like fighting them on a melee low mobility spec has been for the past couple years? In the distance, cackling"Tradeoffff! Tradeofff!"
@Nebilim.5127 said:
Why was stealth largely untouched?
Probably because the damage you can do out of it got shaved too, and stealth alone is detrimental to contest.
Def up for shaving that if needs be though.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
The changes and the theory therein looks great to me, but there were some outstanding "Just why?" thoughts that I had, while reading through these notes. Some of these changes are either too much of a nerf or just too weird in my opinion. Let me try to summarize this up and make it short & sweet. Just to point out some things I think the community needs to be paying attention to and discussing before this patch:
Warrior:
Global - The Rifle changes seem quite strong, all the new ammo skills and RButt refresh may allow War/Bers to be "Ranger worthy" so to say, in terms of ranged efficiency. People complained so much about Ranger & Deadeye, will these War changes be a good thing?
PvP Split - I understand that the idea here is to lower CC damage, but War's design as a class revolves around so much casual CC, that with all of these CC Skill coefficient damages dropping through the floor, that in conjunction with War receiving large damage nerfs to normal non CC skills as well, I think War is losing way too much damage. It's going to become a kitty cat patsy class, similar to Druid now. It's whole role and reason of being able to CC lock down, will be rendered useless when it simply has no damage output while doing it.
Guardian:
Global - Nothing outstanding to comment
PvP Split - Looks good next to other class changes, however nerfing Deflecting Shot to .001 on longbow will make this already competitively weak weapon kit, actually useless. The DH longbow will have no damage output. I'm talking practical damage output, things that you can realistically hit players with in pvp. Trying to make up for Deflecting Shot damage loss in LB#4 LB#5 is not going to work. In no way is it a fair tradeoff.
Revenant:
I don't feel like I understand it enough to give good feedback on these changes. But from what I can tell, it seems good.
Engineer:
Looks good & rounded for what this patch is supposed to accomplish.
Thief:
Global - Looks good but there is this one thing -> Choking Gas: This ability now dazes foes on its initial impact rather than when they are above a poison stack threshold. The daze duration has been increased from 0.5s to 1s. Increased initiative cost from 4 to 6 in PvP and WvW. Woaaaaaaah might want to rethink that one. I thought all CC skills were going to lower damage right? Well this Choking Gas is maintaining condi pressure while being granted kind of a Super CC status there. That's not going to be good for what this patch wanted to accomplish. Seriously guys, it should not be dazing immediately on each cast. We are going to see Daredevil Bunkers who hold nodes through means of sheer CC output due to this skill. They won't even be worried about actually killing a player. They'll just hold a node and stall with good usage of Swipe CC, Choking Gas play, and w/e else CC they want to add in here. That's going to be a very fresh annoying build structure that should be avoided before it is even implemented into a patch where everything is supposed to be getting nerfed.
PvP Split - Looks fine to me.
Ranger: "My area of greatest commentary. I'll go a bit deeper here, coming from a long time Ranger main."
Global - 1) No longer swap pets in combat = completely agree with this. 2) Honed Axes: Baseline ferocity is now also applied to your pet = Woah woah woah woah. Ok, you guys better make sure that feroc bonus isn't going to equate to a +480 feroc bonus for the Ranger while in merge, or we're going to be seeing a disproportionate buff to Soulbeast, when this patch was supposed to be a tranquilizer to power creep. 3) Lead the Wind: No longer grants swiftness when performing a projectile combo. Instead grants swiftness for 10 seconds and quickness for 5 seconds (2.5 seconds in PvP and WvW) when striking with an attack from beyond 1200 range. This effect has a 15 second cooldown. = mmmmm this is awfully stronk. I dunno, I'd like to hear player feedback from other Ranger mains on this one. 4) Druidic Clarity: This trait no longer causes entering Celestial Avatar to stunbreak. = What the hell is this? Druid in the past 5-6 seasons, and even since HoT, has already undergone ENORMOUS nerfing. Pet attribute cut by 20%, CA CD on almost an unrealistic timer to even use practically, Staff #3 AG removal of evade frame which was detrimental to its competitive play, and then just in general massive nerfs to the heal factor of its kit. Now you're laying down removal of stun break on CA and granting even further nerfing to its kit? Come on Arenanet! The class was already functioning previously to this patch, as if it had already undergone this patch. If you would have at left its heal kit alone, it may have been a half viable support next to FB, after this patch hits. But after this even further nerfing to its kit, the Druid's class kit will be useless in competitive modes still, and the Druid will not be functional without that stun break off Druidic Clarity. So now that specialization after all of the nerfing you've done to it, is now going to be rendered as a flat-footed target with a bad heal kit that doesn't do squat. A Druid will be a nerfed Core Ranger who is missing a 3rd valuable core trait line, that instead has a bad specialization line that offers nothing defensive at all, outside of a badly designed kit that cannot be used competitively for all of the reasons that I have already covered heavily in these threads: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/77006/lets-talk-about-druid-competitively-after-pet-nerf-and-buffs-that-ca-deserves - https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/82294/discussion-about-detrimental-weapon-kit-changes-for-all-classes - https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/86250/reworking-underperforming-specs-druid-edition
PvP Split - Way way way way too much heal nerfing for Druid. My good dudes at the office, the class has virtually no heal factor in competitive modes already. I mean it is like 1/4th the heal output of a FB now, and the kit is not practical to use for team support in competitive modes "read the links I posted if you want to know why". You guys need to leave the healing alone on Druid. Seriously, go into a game for yourselves, load up a maximum heal factor Druid build and go try healing some people in the mists. You can do it easily by standing OOC on a pillar in the arena, and landing CA skills on people's heads who are dueling. You will quickly see that burning a full CA bar's worth of skills, is just bad heal output. Now imagine trying to use that bad heal output while being attack by something that has a ton of CCs, when you're in a bad heal kit, and have no offensive pressure. Leave the Druid alone. Good god guys. Just why? Outside of that, can't argue with any other changes.
Elementalist:
I don't know the class well enough for any heavy commentary. Seems like it got hit hard though.
Necromancer:
Strangely enough, seems good. Quite a bit more disengage potential added. I think it will pan out well.
Mesmer:
Nothing seemed too outstanding to comment on, until I got to this: Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modes = Woah woah! Is that... necessary? I mean a lot of people with long time aggression vs. Mirage are probably thinking "YEAH IT DESERVES IT. SCREW MIRAGE" but really guys, without the ability to double dodge roll when needed, the Mirage is going to frequently be caught in the kinds of bursting that it cannot avoid. I think Arenanet needs to seriously reconsider this very heavy handed nerf.
As far as amulet removal, 4 stat combos being turned down, and rune boon/condi durations being turned down, not so sure how I really feel about this yet. But I can say that removing diversity & choice is not the right path to take here. I do understand the idea behind removing boon/condi durations, which I completely 100% agree with. But I don't want to be pigeonholed into a small selection of options. That's not fun. I guess we'll see how it pans out.
~ EDIT
Furthermore after thinking about it quite a bit on the past 24 hours, this 0 damage CC stuff is bad idea boys. I can see turning down the damage output some over powered CCs, but things are just not over powered at all that are CCs, such as Deflecting Shot or the entire Warrior Hammer Kit. Turning down 2HKO damage potential on something like Rampage is a good idea, although I'd have rather seen that stuff go to about 50% of it's original damage output, not to no damage at all. But bringing things like Def Shot & War Hammer Kit down to 0 damage CCs when that stuff was already weak to begin with? That's just as good as deleting that stuff from play entirely. And no we aren't talking "oh it simply isn't viable for meta" no no no no, what you're doing here by bringing those kids of weak skills down to 0 damage is quit seriously as good as deleting it from the game and ruining the class specializations tied to them entirely. This 0 damage on hard CCs is also coming with a very very large intra-class loss in QUICKNESS uptime. <- That alone is going to cut out a ton of damage. Right now people are only looking at the damage coefficient numbers while giving their feedback. They haven't quite noticed yet how mass loss in Quickness boon duration uptime will also effect damage output, as well as the 0 damage hard CCs. This next patching is going to be HoT like sustainy. Despite the small cuts to heals & CDs, the enormous damage loss is far heavier than the small cuts we are receiving in sustain factor. Consider this.
@Cal Cohen.2358 I couldn't urge Arenanet enough, to reconsider that 1 decision out of all decisions in this patch, to bring all hard CCs down to 0 damage output. This is going to mutilate the intra-class dynamic in ways that we have never seen before. I think bringing hard CCs down to simply 50% of the original damage values is adequate. This .001 damage stuff is going to cause deep problems with certain specializations and the practical use of their kits at all.
Hello.
I really hoped that you would change the "Unload" skill and show some love to P/P pvp. Right now it is a very slow (1.5 sec), expensive (6 ini), easily avoided skill that does moderate damage. You almost never get 1 initiative back and 8 hits, since everyone dodges, blocks, reflects, absorbs. And now you plan to cut the damage from both the auto attack and the "Unload". Why reduce auto attack damage? It is already very weak for power builds.
Can you change the skill so that the initiative is spent during the application of the skill, and not immediately? This will allow more flexibility to manage the stock of initiative. Or reduce the application time if you decide to reduce damage.
P/P is only weapons set that doesn't have any viable defense. No stealth acsess, no evade, no block. "Black Powder" was nerfed. Another idea is to make "Black Powder" smoke cloud to block projectile, like DE 4 skill. P/P need some defense.
The only major caveat with this sort of direction is the fact that you aren't really changing ALL THAT MUCH if the majority of these changes address only one aspect of gameplay: the cadence. What these "sweeping" changes technically all boil down to is that any instance of PvP combat will simply just last longer. There are a number of opportunities for design change with this sort of gameplay shift, but ultimately, I don't see all that much coming from this. GW2 would still remain more or less as a "Simon Says" sort of game in which combat is determined entirely by "favorable match-ups" and feeling out an opponent's cooldown cycles; it's mostly muscle memory and esoteric knowledge that is cultivated outside of active gameplay.
It's a shame that most, if not all, of the people who actually made GW2 have already left ArenaNet. We are left with a staff who can't do much aside from adjust some numbers in hopes of generating a change which will appear drastic enough to the playerbase in hopes that said playerbase might take any given "big patch" as something substantial and "game-changing." If this weren't the case, we wouldn't see Warrior off-hand mace (an UTTERLY un-used PvP weapon) receiving random nerfs to cooldowns and damage coefficients, but rather a complete, functional redesign.
You probably could have achieved exactly what this patch attempts to do by just giving every (except Thief), like, 3 extra dodges baseline. Edit: Removing damage from hard CC was AN ENTIRE 8 YEARS IN THE MAKING I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. FINALLY. ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS THAT IT TOOK YOU PEOPLE THIS LONG.
Nothing seemed too outstanding to comment on, until I got to this: Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modes = Woah woah! Is that... necessary? I mean a lot of people with long time aggression vs. Mirage are probably thinking "YEAH IT DESERVES IT. SCREW MIRAGE" but really guys, without the ability to double dodge roll when needed, the Mirage is going to frequently be caught in the kinds of bursting that it cannot avoid. I think Arenanet needs to seriously reconsider this very heavy handed nerf.
sigh.
I want to be petty and I'll continue being petty later but, putting that aside:
But mirrors grant evade to mes, and some of their utilities outright create these. I think being forced to tag mirrors to cover the rest of their evade sounds suitable.
If it's too much though, at least try adding easier access to vigor to bridge the gap before going the emergency revert route.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
I think thief initiative regen should get slowed. Builds like s/d thief are going to be nuts post-patch because their tempos haven't been nerfed.
Who cares if the damage gets nerfed when s/d thief can still use their s3 evade multiple times. And defensive cooldowns have been increased so it's just gonna be incredibly strong.
Hi, as a fellow necro main that plays in Plat 2, i just saw that you guys didn't revert the nerf that made shades not work on the player unless you use manifest shade on yourself , please I beg you guys to look after scourge based on mechanical issues that happen on pvp and play a few matches with him to realize how bad this skill looks.
As a lifelong ranger in PvP I support all of these changes, and look forward to the new and interesting metas.
We debated this in HoTM today and everyone generally agrees the ranger dial backs were for the best, as will also enable other pets and specs to be playable.
--Will we FINALLY see spirits in conquest again?!!
The direction is completely off the mark. I dunno why you guys keep yoyoing on the game speed. When I started in 2015, it was heavy bunker, then later in 2015 became pirate ship, with HoT it became bunker, and remained so for a while. In the end of HoT, I think it is was the best as far as I remember, then PoF kitten everything up, and we went scourge+FB, to pirate ship again. Lately it have been fair. TTK is in a decent place. Some exceptions, which, honestly, is all what needed to be hammered out. Why are you doing all these changes? I have no idea. Yes, we wanted less power creep, but this is not less power creep, this is almost a complete redesign of the game, one that will most surely alienate many players, and will make it impossible for any new player or returning player to get in to sPvP. You walled it. Dunno before who in the class balance higher ups, was preventing something like this from happening. They were 100% correct. This is a major accessibility disaster in the making. And instead of doing all this, would not have been much easier to just increase HP pools?!
Another note: "We want cooldowns to be felt. Longer cooldowns promote more calculated usage of skills; if skills are used poorly it should create an opportunity for the enemy to push their advantage. Shorter durations of high impact buffs have a similar effect. Skillful timing is going to be rewarded, and poor usage is going to be exploitable by enemies. In some cases, it’s still going to make sense to have a longer duration attached to a longer cooldown, but most of the time we’re looking at shorter durations for things like stability, protection, quickness, high might stacks, among others." Longer CDs does not equal more calculated usage of skills, it equals slow game play. Yes, some things are currently spammy, but you do not solve that by increasing the CD of everything. If something can be used every 5 secs now it is every 6 sec, when everything else CD increased also by 20%, leaves it exactly as spammy as it was before. You just slowed the entire game play for no reason. And this was one of the main GW2 sPvP criticism in the past.
This statement sounds nice: "For this update, we’re targeting a 2.0 power coefficient as the new baseline for big damage skills. These are the skills like Eviscerate; skills that exist to deal large amounts of damage and not do much else. Skills that provide more and more value in other aspects (cc, sustain, mobility, defense, etc.) will have lower power coefficients. In some cases, we’ve pared down the secondary value and in others we’ve shaved the damage. It really comes down to what the desired purpose of the skill is, and as such how much of the skill’s power budget should be spent on damage. The 2.0 is not a hard cap, just the general top-end for single hit, high damaging abilities." Until you see something like this: Full Counter: Reduced power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.1. Increased daze duration from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds. No, just no. The skill does not deal much damage. It is primary goal was CC. When you remove the damage and increase the CC, that is not a nerf, it is a buff. I will talk a bit about how many changes seem to blank nerf, cuz we are nerfing, versus, it is measured and makes sense. However, this makes the game play worse, especially that this not the only skill this seems to be the case for. There is already a reduction in stability. You know what this does? Make the game a kitten CC fiasco. Mind you, as we stand on live WE HAVE SO MUCH CC. I though curbing CC would be a top priority here. Nope..
Which takes us to what I call lazy work. I will talk about guardian, since it is my main. Example one: Spear of Justice: Reduced damage from 0.6 to 0.01. Why? I understand lowering the skill damage a bit, but 0 damage? The skill has 0.75 cast time, and a 20 sec CD. Could it be followed-up with a pull? Sure, but that also has a 40 sec CD. So why does not the skill deal damage. A bigger offender deflection shot. The is an aimed skill that requires timing, aiming and planning. Its damage was buffed very recently, cuz the effort the skill required to use warranted higher damage. Why would you nerf the damage to 0? It makes no kitten sense.
Continuing with lazy approach here. Passive traits. Everyone hates them. The players hate them. The devs hate them. WHY NOT REMOVE THEM ALREADY. What are you waiting for?!! This is the second time you address passive traits and your solution is to increase CD, AGAIN. Really? And staying with guardian here, Retaliatory Subconscious: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. I always preferred this trait over unscathed contender for reliability. 60 secs is acceptable. Again, why not remove it in favor of an active defensive skill, instead of this? Some fun changes: Hunter's Determination: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 seconds. kitten 5 minutes. Dude, whoever made that change, what were they smoking . You know what this tells me? You assigned this to an intern with 1 instruction: "if there is anything related to CC surrounding it NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRF CDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD AND DAMAGE." It does not matter if anyone even use it on live, or if the change makes sense. This goes to much of these changes. I read and all I see is NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRF. But no one ever uses this weapon, trait, utility as is. I honestly do not think a dev, deeply entrenched in PvP balance, read these changes in detail before posting them. To me, this seems more like a the work of an inexperienced person.
As a guardian main, quick note, I can easily tell you FB will be very broken if this goes live as is. VERY broken. Beside the down scaling, like everyone else. Elite mantra (which considering some of the other nerfs, has been lightly touched), everything is nearly the same. It is already top tier on live. What you think is going to happen? On the other hand, DH, is absolutely butchered. Almost every change that was made in the last year, trying to make it meta(which has not even materialized yet), was walked back.
In my opinion, these changes cannot go live without player testing. You guys need to create a test server. There is some seriously broken kitten here. One dodge on mirage? Dare Devil, barely touched, even though it is very dominant in top sPvP right now. I am serious, you think this is ready for live.
Again, back to splits, the same question, how is someone who is not super invested in sPvP would be able to jump from another mode to sPvP and be able to play when every most skills traits and utilities are different? How can a veteran player coming to the come 6 month from now, be able to access sPvP. Accessibility is one of the main traits of GW2. This completely kills it.
Overall, I personally think these changes are raw. Very very raw. Untested, unchecked and most definitely not ready for live. They must be put on test server for players and major feedback is provided before remotely considering putting them on live. If you do not, it will be a disaster. And GW2 is not in place to handle these currently.
Comments
On the negative, the level of change in 1 patch here is going to be an absolute ******* balance holocaust resulting on broken builds and emergency fixes, its a page 1 of the 'how not to phase in change in a controlled manner' handbook. However I can forgive that because I love LOVE the fact they realise their cadence of changes is far too slow and they are very making moves to address this. I've been banging on for a long long time about how this is the fundemental root cause of all the balancing issues, but it looks like they have software engineers on board that gets this.
"Any path that narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans do not thread their way through a maze; they scan a vast horizon filled with unique opportunities." - The Spacing Guild Handbook.
Beware the meta!
Byebye weaver, was nice knowing you. One day we will meet again, I hope.
Dont mind me, I just randomly spam 35 skill-buttons
25.02.2020 edit - Nevermind, now I spam only 29 skill-buttons
Not much in the way of nerfing condies, im afraid condies will either be useless or flat out better than power with their current itteration. I think it would be healthier for the overall game if condi skills and condi dmg worked exactly like power with flat debuffs, no stacks and set coefficience for each diff skill (taking cc skills into acount for condie dmg as well)
I don't know who this new company is, but I like their balance changes already. If only to watch the flood of Mirage mains come down from the heavens to say their class was trash beforehand and this nerf is unnecessary and continuing the Mesmer discrimination.
Some of the underplayed HOT spec nerfs were harsh but otherwise this patch is looking good. Mirage dodge nerf might be overkill. Might want to make their dodge cost a little less endurance than normal. Thanks balance friends
PvP will get less spammy. I like that. Can’t wait to see it in action. And with the new, more frequent schedule of updates it is not a big deal when changes don’t seem to work out as they were supposed to.
~ Miyu Chan / twitch miyu_chan_serenity
Aside from how terrible balance is inevitably going be after basically flipping the board on this game, can we please stop blanket nerfing all hard cc skills to negligable damage. Cast time, cool down, range, and cc duration all need to be weighed against each other to determine appropriate damage levels. All this does is make long cool down well telegraphed CC's like prime light beam complete trash compared to more spammable and less telegraphed stuff like overcharged shot.
Fire, can’t wait to test these changes
Depression and anxiety are the worst...
Not convinced the -50% endurance change for Mirage is going to be particularly viable. Especially if Ambush Skills are not improved to be more impactful.
please touch Shadow arts DP, it needs a touch of the mighty devs-
im not sure i understand what you want to do to mirage cloak (now reduce endurance by 50??), does that mean as daredevil has 3 dodges mirages now only have one??? oO also why you want to reduce evade uptime on a spec that is build around doing things with his dodges and has already less dodges than most other classes in current state? doesnt rly make sense to me. the times mirage (not using chaosline) can dodge too often are already over. better reduce vigor duration given by chaosline.
for mind wrack i would leave the shatter dmg alone, it is balanced since game release and builds not using dmg mulitplier already do not rly do that much dmg. i would go for superiority complex (crit-) dmg reduction instead and leave mind wrack alone. the trait is what you changed during power creeping the game and what often leads to stupidly high dmg spikes on all (key-)skills (like i had 10k+ split surges crits from only my own ambush, so no clones involved, compared to around 3k without that trait or 7k+ mindwrack crits while using that trait. otherwise you force player away from more active and tactical skillbased traits like deceptive evasion into passive dmg multiplier traits to even do any dmg. but no matter what you do with mw, sup. complex should get crit dmg reduction in any case when you want to touch dmg all over the board.
esp with that in mind i would not reduce gs autoattack dmg, better just reduce power coefficient from the mirages own ambush (split surge) a little bit (adjust gs clone ambushes that they stay the same as they are now). the core gs autoattack is (like mindwrack) not powercreeped and doesnt deserve any nerfs even when everything else in the game will get nerfed. also gs3 and 5 dont even do any remarkable dmg already no need to reduce dmg here. torch prestige and gs berserker also dont need any dmg reduction in my opinion. they never got powercreeped. and when you touch sup.complex they could even get a very little dmg increase, because the base weapon dmg is not powercreeped. esp because these power build weapons already suffer from decreased vuln stacks dura from domination traitline what is normally used in power builds.
decoy already is a pretty weak utility compared to others for an already high 40 secs cd. illusionary ambush is like 3 times as strong as decoy and has way less cd (i would give illusionary ambush at least 45 secs too btw). instead nerfing all skills that will get affected by pu and make it unusable for all builds without pu, just reduce or delete the stealth duration from pu. wasnt it like 1 secs stealth increase at some point? i remember something like that. so 1 secs more no matter how long the base stealth duration of a used skill is instead 50%. that way ppl would not use decoy anymore anyway (most would switch to signet of midnight) and also a higher cd on mass invisibility will not be necessary anymore.
mantra of pain should get the might and vuln stacks removed completely and not get more stacks for even more oneshot potential. decreased vuln duration doesnt help vs the low effort oneshot potential you have with the current core pu build thx to mantra of pain. or you let the mightstacks/ vuln as you plan it and remove the direct dmg from that mantra completely so that it only is used as a selfbuff tool (or makes it stack the might also on 2 teammates near the mesmer for that to give it some teamsupport utility).
not rly happy with the blink cd increase because again you nerf a skill for all builds to compensate a too short cd when chaosline is used. chaosline is the problem as a low skill ceiling line giving too much rewards and not the base cd of blink.
im all for deleting passives traits but pls delete them by replacing them with something useful and not just by making them not worth taking… 120 secs icd on desperate decoy is lol... no time to read all classes atm, does other passive traits on other classes get the same treatment or will mesmer be the only one again? since mes is already the only class with instant skills cant be used in the back, with the only skills need to face the target but have no automatic char alignment? pls remove the need to face your target from mantras, it is not needed and it is unfair, it contradicts the whole instant nature and make them unhandy like crazy. just remove the direct dmg from mantra of pain completely and such unfair treatment of instant skills will not be needed anymore. or add this senseless destruction to all instant skills in the game, like fesh air ele, fb mantras etc. and see how unhandy it will feel for them too….
overall good chances but take care that you dont nerf things with specific meta builds like core pu in mind. it often leads in making used skills unusable for any other builds not using the traitline that actually causes the problems and will force ppl into a traitline with in general lower skill ceiling because you nerf the wrong skills which then become too weak outside of builds with chaosline used. also always check if your changes force ppl into less active trait choices by nerfing dmg at places where it is not power creeped instead nerfing a trait that clearly adds too much dmg by itself (superiority complex).
EDIT: nvm didnt see the global changes when writing, gs changes maybe make sense now all together. still sup. complex trait needs attention
what is the boonremove prio for the new trait Vicious Expression???
what you mean with the changes to mirage cloak? it sounds horrible….
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ok I thought pvp changes were only the ones mentioned here. with global changes rev is dead
gg not salty at all
I don't understand Shadow Arts nerf. It's currently a meta trait on more than 1 build, none of which really uses "Shadow's Rejuvenation" let alone "Merciful ambush".
Given the overall nerfs and thief play style remaining the same, SA will be be even better in perspective than it currently is.
Overall stealth was barely touched, heartseeker ignored (it will hit pretty hard after these nerfs), shadow shot went from 4 to 5 innitiative,... thief meta strength received a very gentle slap compared to other specs.
But overall well done, this was needed.
I think this is the end of sPvP for me. I am for curbing power creep a bit, but reducing CD on everything, lowering the damage on everything, seems like random number generator. Some skills has the CDs they had and deal the damage/heal they do for a reason. Not to mention, there is no way in hell to know what skill does how much damage/heal and how much CD on my main class WHEN EVERY SINGLE SKILL IS DIFFERENT. Forget the other 8 classes.
This is a different game. One that seems a derivative of the existing one, confusing and far less interesting. I am already on the fence on GW2 as a whole, sPvP was one of the few remaining anchors that keeps me attached to the game. I think this it for this. And with PvE changes boarding on pathetic, I think this is it for the game.
Lol this is what people get by denying that mesmer, condi mesmer, sic em rangers/sbs. double heralds, meme one shot rifle warriors, magebane tether bunker spellbreakers, ventari bunker renegades, knockback scrappers, thieves in general, one shot eles, fire weavers, symbol firebrands were all busted, and for also denying that bursty meta game (which admittedly, rifle holo is a part of) was not how Conquest PvP should be.
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Thats alot to take in. Looks interesting but the one thing that stood out to me was DH´s "Dragons Maw"
"Dragon's Maw: Reduced power coefficient from 2.5 to 0.01. Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Reduced slow duration from 4 seconds to 3 seconds. Reduced cooldown from 75 seconds to 50 seconds"
I play DH atm and i think im one of the few that actually use this ability instead of "Renewed Focus". It
s a Elite and its the one ability that screams "Dragon Hunter" - its like a huge bear claw. Its fairly easy to play around, dodge, block, stability, whatever. Is should be a high damage ability. Fits the class and its the only elite-damage ability for DH. Im not saying it should one-shot ppl, but i doubt the damage needs a nerf - or atleast this much of a nerf.I think its bad when ppl play "elites" but end up using everything not related to that spec. An Elite spec should invite you to use "the new unlocked stuff". Play Reaper ? use a GS and shouts. Play DH ? use Traps. So on. Think you would want to keep that in mind.
@Jazz.4639
That was exactly thoughts but its not likely they understand what they are doing or would change it.
F for fellow mesmer players (if any left) , the first chrono, now mirage (especially for power ones).
Mirage needs to have their endurance regen added back and the ambushes need to be greatly buffed if they only get one dodge.
This still feels like a cheap way of balancing Mirage when they should've just looked at the ambushes with IH.
git gud
@Cal Cohen.2358
could you please consider, putting percentage-values next to the coefficient changes?
Like "Reduced the power-coefficient of "Skill X" from 2.0 to 1.5 (25%)".
Having to do quick maffs for that many changes is pretty tedious.
Comparison between changes would also be way easier and more practical.
no they cant be serious with that, some early april fool or something? that cant be real, it makes no sense at all... ahahahaha … just no! esp now im forced to dodge no matter if i need to just to not waste endurance reggen when my one dodge bar is full? how does that add skill need and more active gameplay? it is the absolute opposite… dumbed down we go (nick cave) yeah yeah yeah…
NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (cant believe….)
need to sleep but im actually shocked…. crying and laughing at same time
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git gud at maff
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Fun Daredevil
What does this mean?! You think this is hello kitty I am playing sPvP for the first time?! I am arguing that splitting every skill and trait damage is dumb. If you do not have anything to add to the conversation then s*************.
Suppriesed to see Herald healing skill Facet of Light/ Infuse light untouched. Maybe cap the max amount of damage it can heal.
Also, please consider toning down the power of theif short bow 5 skill infiltraitors arrow. Maybe it should used on an enemy target so that it's used for infiltration instead of just being hands down the best mobility in the game.
Lastly, gonna be sad to see big ol' bomb doing 2 damage
Nice job , nice direction, first time i see a top balance !
But don"t forger to hard nerf the damage of downstate skill plz !
I still think the pistol main-hand auto attack for Engi needs to match its tooltip of .5s cast time, instead of .8s cast time that it is currently.
As well, Inventions needs a serious looking into. It doesn't have much synergy with itself in terms of regeneration and the like.
The greatest enemy to improvement, is ignorance. But the desire to learn will cast ignorance into the fire.
This. If you're going to hit everyone hit thieves in sa harder. The last thing we need is this getting soured by permastealth.
Im usually not one for proposing thief hits because squishy, but by extension all thieves just got less squishy. They can take more shaving to SA in particular. Leeching venoms and siphoning can probably be dialed back.
Also people who wanted exorbitant nerfs getting them but also getting their cheese nerfed WHEEZE
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
I obviously didnt read every change in huge detail and wont understand the implications of these changes until its possible to test them, but some of these changes seem very questionable. For starters, a 0.01 power coefficient on cc seems like overkill. CC is too powerful right now but i think the problem is the abundance of cc skills, not the damage they do. However since removing some cc entirely is probably too big of a change, increasing cooldowns, or even a 0.1 power coefficient would probably be enough to make cc skills damage much more reasonable, while still making them do enough damage to secure a down/kill or be a significant part of a damage combo.
Second, there dont seem to be many nerfs to mobility skills, either in range or cd time. Mobility needs to be tuned down if damage is being tuned down since the gap between low and high mobility classes is very large. With lower damage, fights will likely last longer and depend more on positioning and kiting, which will make mobility even more important and impactful.
Lastly i didnt really see many changes to condition damage and cleansing but I probably just skimmed over it, or its in the general notes. Im skeptical that just reducing the number of stacks is going to make condi more engaging and fun to fight&play.
Overall its great to see so many changes all focused at reducing power creep and improving the quality of gameplay.
awesome patch! nerf ele glyph, way 2 strong atm, otherwise this is insane! thanks to the team, keep this going
Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modes
kitten？Opposition
I'm kinda on board with where anet seems to be going with this.
However, I am also somewhat worried that they're trying to fix things with large amounts of numerical changes. Some numbers do need to be nerfed, yes, but there are also some deep-rooted mechanical issues present that cannot be fixed just by changing a damage coefficient.
I don't even like mirage and I already feel bad w/that -1 dodge. Goodness gracious, that is def too harsh right there.
smokescreen needs to be at least a min cd, its the stronget skill in the game
ele glyph is digsutingly op needs like 2 min cd or so
these are the most cancerous things about currente metagame and theyre being left out
its very disappointing
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I wanted such dmg reductions since HoT. However as others correctly mentioned; if these changes are to come through then Thiefs Shadow Arts and its huge stealth uptime will need a nerf too, maybe put other requirements on the Stealth on Heal (like "be below 50% hp" or something of the sorts) and other traits.
So far this might be the very best balance update I have ever gotten to read and I absolutely can't wait for it.
I have to admit lots of the past updates have been somewhat of a disappointment to me let alone trying to survive current meta, but this one, oh joy, I agree with every single line.
Also, PLEASE CHECK OTHER THREAD if you haven't already.
Theres some juicy stuff in those too. I know Cal mentioned it but I need the soulbeasts to know they can only use one pet now.
After this patch goes live we can see which CC skills fall off the charts.
I don't think prime light beam is one of them though. 40 second cd launch is still hot, especially since it hits multi, drops a fire field on high heat, and can be precast from stealth.
Also its a 1.25 windup cast for 1200 range, unblockable less if you got quickness. If anyone should be complaining about their cc skills lacking damage its reaper but it's too early to even say that.
Let them make all the cc hit for null. I want to see how that plays out.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
Genuinely happy that they chose to tone down the amount of damage, buffing and so on, no more explosive combat, or at least less.
I'll be going back to pvp once this update hits.
Simply put most of these changes i am good with wont even lie tons of nerfs but it needed to happen im happy to see that some professions on paper dont look like they will be over nerfed compared to the obvious ones that really really really needed it.
I was expecting necro to be over nerfed but i am fine with the damage nerfs to be honest necro will be even more weak to cc now though but i mean that was already a thing. On paper it looks like damage soaking for necromancer as it was designed to do will be some what on par with damage evasion that other professions have but again this is on paper.
Necros sustain now will mainly depend on how everyone elses damage output looks and i would say with everyone dropping down and boons also coming down this is looking like one of you best balance passes so far.
Im sad at the loss of foot in the grave although it was weak as heck but you replaced it with something that might actually see use and most defiantly should have been included in the necromancers kit in some way. I can say if this was the perfect spot for it but its good to see that a trait like "Eternal Life" was added in the general notes.
Im super happy to see some of the insane stuff go and some elites get more proper trade offs like the other already have.
Im still waiting on a total scourge rework though i dont see anyone using that even with the reduction to everything else its just too clunky overall on paper these notes so far look like solid 8/10. I would say this is mostly step in the right direction for competitive modes.
Why was stealth largely untouched?
Harsh like fighting them on a melee low mobility spec has been for the past couple years?
In the distance, cackling "Tradeoffff! Tradeofff!"
Probably because the damage you can do out of it got shaved too, and stealth alone is detrimental to contest.
Def up for shaving that if needs be though.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
The changes and the theory therein looks great to me, but there were some outstanding "Just why?" thoughts that I had, while reading through these notes. Some of these changes are either too much of a nerf or just too weird in my opinion. Let me try to summarize this up and make it short & sweet. Just to point out some things I think the community needs to be paying attention to and discussing before this patch:
Warrior:
Guardian:
Revenant:
Engineer:
Thief:
Ranger: "My area of greatest commentary. I'll go a bit deeper here, coming from a long time Ranger main."
Elementalist:
Necromancer:
Mesmer:
As far as amulet removal, 4 stat combos being turned down, and rune boon/condi durations being turned down, not so sure how I really feel about this yet. But I can say that removing diversity & choice is not the right path to take here. I do understand the idea behind removing boon/condi durations, which I completely 100% agree with. But I don't want to be pigeonholed into a small selection of options. That's not fun. I guess we'll see how it pans out.
~ EDIT
Furthermore after thinking about it quite a bit on the past 24 hours, this 0 damage CC stuff is bad idea boys. I can see turning down the damage output some over powered CCs, but things are just not over powered at all that are CCs, such as Deflecting Shot or the entire Warrior Hammer Kit. Turning down 2HKO damage potential on something like Rampage is a good idea, although I'd have rather seen that stuff go to about 50% of it's original damage output, not to no damage at all. But bringing things like Def Shot & War Hammer Kit down to 0 damage CCs when that stuff was already weak to begin with? That's just as good as deleting that stuff from play entirely. And no we aren't talking "oh it simply isn't viable for meta" no no no no, what you're doing here by bringing those kids of weak skills down to 0 damage is quit seriously as good as deleting it from the game and ruining the class specializations tied to them entirely. This 0 damage on hard CCs is also coming with a very very large intra-class loss in QUICKNESS uptime. <- That alone is going to cut out a ton of damage. Right now people are only looking at the damage coefficient numbers while giving their feedback. They haven't quite noticed yet how mass loss in Quickness boon duration uptime will also effect damage output, as well as the 0 damage hard CCs. This next patching is going to be HoT like sustainy. Despite the small cuts to heals & CDs, the enormous damage loss is far heavier than the small cuts we are receiving in sustain factor. Consider this.
@Cal Cohen.2358 I couldn't urge Arenanet enough, to reconsider that 1 decision out of all decisions in this patch, to bring all hard CCs down to 0 damage output. This is going to mutilate the intra-class dynamic in ways that we have never seen before. I think bringing hard CCs down to simply 50% of the original damage values is adequate. This .001 damage stuff is going to cause deep problems with certain specializations and the practical use of their kits at all.
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The game is ruined (even more, somehow). Good bye.
Never said I'm the best, but I believe I'm better than you.
Warhorn
Charge: PvP will now use the WvW version of the skill (10% damage bonus)
Call of Valor: Reduced number of conditions cleansed from 3 to 2
Burst of Strength (Facet of Strength): Reduced damage bonus from 15% to 7%
???
Hello.
I really hoped that you would change the "Unload" skill and show some love to P/P pvp. Right now it is a very slow (1.5 sec), expensive (6 ini), easily avoided skill that does moderate damage. You almost never get 1 initiative back and 8 hits, since everyone dodges, blocks, reflects, absorbs. And now you plan to cut the damage from both the auto attack and the "Unload". Why reduce auto attack damage? It is already very weak for power builds.
Can you change the skill so that the initiative is spent during the application of the skill, and not immediately? This will allow more flexibility to manage the stock of initiative. Or reduce the application time if you decide to reduce damage.
P/P is only weapons set that doesn't have any viable defense. No stealth acsess, no evade, no block. "Black Powder" was nerfed. Another idea is to make "Black Powder" smoke cloud to block projectile, like DE 4 skill. P/P need some defense.
The only major caveat with this sort of direction is the fact that you aren't really changing ALL THAT MUCH if the majority of these changes address only one aspect of gameplay: the cadence. What these "sweeping" changes technically all boil down to is that any instance of PvP combat will simply just last longer. There are a number of opportunities for design change with this sort of gameplay shift, but ultimately, I don't see all that much coming from this. GW2 would still remain more or less as a "Simon Says" sort of game in which combat is determined entirely by "favorable match-ups" and feeling out an opponent's cooldown cycles; it's mostly muscle memory and esoteric knowledge that is cultivated outside of active gameplay.
It's a shame that most, if not all, of the people who actually made GW2 have already left ArenaNet. We are left with a staff who can't do much aside from adjust some numbers in hopes of generating a change which will appear drastic enough to the playerbase in hopes that said playerbase might take any given "big patch" as something substantial and "game-changing." If this weren't the case, we wouldn't see Warrior off-hand mace (an UTTERLY un-used PvP weapon) receiving random nerfs to cooldowns and damage coefficients, but rather a complete, functional redesign.
You probably could have achieved exactly what this patch attempts to do by just giving every (except Thief), like, 3 extra dodges baseline. Edit: Removing damage from hard CC was AN ENTIRE 8 YEARS IN THE MAKING I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. FINALLY. ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS THAT IT TOOK YOU PEOPLE THIS LONG.
sigh.
I want to be petty and I'll continue being petty later but, putting that aside:
But mirrors grant evade to mes, and some of their utilities outright create these. I think being forced to tag mirrors to cover the rest of their evade sounds suitable.
If it's too much though, at least try adding easier access to vigor to bridge the gap before going the emergency revert route.
The "Balance" is a fantasy -- another mortal superstition.
I think thief initiative regen should get slowed. Builds like s/d thief are going to be nuts post-patch because their tempos haven't been nerfed.
Who cares if the damage gets nerfed when s/d thief can still use their s3 evade multiple times. And defensive cooldowns have been increased so it's just gonna be incredibly strong.
Hi, as a fellow necro main that plays in Plat 2, i just saw that you guys didn't revert the nerf that made shades not work on the player unless you use manifest shade on yourself , please I beg you guys to look after scourge based on mechanical issues that happen on pvp and play a few matches with him to realize how bad this skill looks.
As a lifelong ranger in PvP I support all of these changes, and look forward to the new and interesting metas.
We debated this in HoTM today and everyone generally agrees the ranger dial backs were for the best, as will also enable other pets and specs to be playable.
--Will we FINALLY see spirits in conquest again?!!
Okay, now with a bit clearer head.
The direction is completely off the mark. I dunno why you guys keep yoyoing on the game speed. When I started in 2015, it was heavy bunker, then later in 2015 became pirate ship, with HoT it became bunker, and remained so for a while. In the end of HoT, I think it is was the best as far as I remember, then PoF kitten everything up, and we went scourge+FB, to pirate ship again. Lately it have been fair. TTK is in a decent place. Some exceptions, which, honestly, is all what needed to be hammered out. Why are you doing all these changes? I have no idea. Yes, we wanted less power creep, but this is not less power creep, this is almost a complete redesign of the game, one that will most surely alienate many players, and will make it impossible for any new player or returning player to get in to sPvP. You walled it. Dunno before who in the class balance higher ups, was preventing something like this from happening. They were 100% correct. This is a major accessibility disaster in the making. And instead of doing all this, would not have been much easier to just increase HP pools?!
Another note: "We want cooldowns to be felt. Longer cooldowns promote more calculated usage of skills; if skills are used poorly it should create an opportunity for the enemy to push their advantage. Shorter durations of high impact buffs have a similar effect. Skillful timing is going to be rewarded, and poor usage is going to be exploitable by enemies. In some cases, it’s still going to make sense to have a longer duration attached to a longer cooldown, but most of the time we’re looking at shorter durations for things like stability, protection, quickness, high might stacks, among others." Longer CDs does not equal more calculated usage of skills, it equals slow game play. Yes, some things are currently spammy, but you do not solve that by increasing the CD of everything. If something can be used every 5 secs now it is every 6 sec, when everything else CD increased also by 20%, leaves it exactly as spammy as it was before. You just slowed the entire game play for no reason. And this was one of the main GW2 sPvP criticism in the past.
This statement sounds nice: "For this update, we’re targeting a 2.0 power coefficient as the new baseline for big damage skills. These are the skills like Eviscerate; skills that exist to deal large amounts of damage and not do much else. Skills that provide more and more value in other aspects (cc, sustain, mobility, defense, etc.) will have lower power coefficients. In some cases, we’ve pared down the secondary value and in others we’ve shaved the damage. It really comes down to what the desired purpose of the skill is, and as such how much of the skill’s power budget should be spent on damage. The 2.0 is not a hard cap, just the general top-end for single hit, high damaging abilities." Until you see something like this: Full Counter: Reduced power coefficient from 0.5 to 0.1. Increased daze duration from 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds. No, just no. The skill does not deal much damage. It is primary goal was CC. When you remove the damage and increase the CC, that is not a nerf, it is a buff. I will talk a bit about how many changes seem to blank nerf, cuz we are nerfing, versus, it is measured and makes sense. However, this makes the game play worse, especially that this not the only skill this seems to be the case for. There is already a reduction in stability. You know what this does? Make the game a kitten CC fiasco. Mind you, as we stand on live WE HAVE SO MUCH CC. I though curbing CC would be a top priority here. Nope..
Which takes us to what I call lazy work. I will talk about guardian, since it is my main. Example one: Spear of Justice: Reduced damage from 0.6 to 0.01. Why? I understand lowering the skill damage a bit, but 0 damage? The skill has 0.75 cast time, and a 20 sec CD. Could it be followed-up with a pull? Sure, but that also has a 40 sec CD. So why does not the skill deal damage. A bigger offender deflection shot. The is an aimed skill that requires timing, aiming and planning. Its damage was buffed very recently, cuz the effort the skill required to use warranted higher damage. Why would you nerf the damage to 0? It makes no kitten sense.
Continuing with lazy approach here. Passive traits. Everyone hates them. The players hate them. The devs hate them. WHY NOT REMOVE THEM ALREADY. What are you waiting for?!! This is the second time you address passive traits and your solution is to increase CD, AGAIN. Really? And staying with guardian here, Retaliatory Subconscious: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 60 seconds. I always preferred this trait over unscathed contender for reliability. 60 secs is acceptable. Again, why not remove it in favor of an active defensive skill, instead of this? Some fun changes: Hunter's Determination: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 seconds. kitten 5 minutes. Dude, whoever made that change, what were they smoking
. You know what this tells me? You assigned this to an intern with 1 instruction: "if there is anything related to CC surrounding it NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRF CDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD AND DAMAGE." It does not matter if anyone even use it on live, or if the change makes sense. This goes to much of these changes. I read and all I see is NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRF. But no one ever uses this weapon, trait, utility as is. I honestly do not think a dev, deeply entrenched in PvP balance, read these changes in detail before posting them. To me, this seems more like a the work of an inexperienced person.
As a guardian main, quick note, I can easily tell you FB will be very broken if this goes live as is. VERY broken. Beside the down scaling, like everyone else. Elite mantra (which considering some of the other nerfs, has been lightly touched), everything is nearly the same. It is already top tier on live. What you think is going to happen? On the other hand, DH, is absolutely butchered. Almost every change that was made in the last year, trying to make it meta(which has not even materialized yet), was walked back.
In my opinion, these changes cannot go live without player testing. You guys need to create a test server. There is some seriously broken kitten here. One dodge on mirage? Dare Devil, barely touched, even though it is very dominant in top sPvP right now. I am serious, you think this is ready for live.
Again, back to splits, the same question, how is someone who is not super invested in sPvP would be able to jump from another mode to sPvP and be able to play when every most skills traits and utilities are different? How can a veteran player coming to the come 6 month from now, be able to access sPvP. Accessibility is one of the main traits of GW2. This completely kills it.
Overall, I personally think these changes are raw. Very very raw. Untested, unchecked and most definitely not ready for live. They must be put on test server for players and major feedback is provided before remotely considering putting them on live. If you do not, it will be a disaster. And GW2 is not in place to handle these currently.
Every nerf hurt my soul