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Potential Future Balance Changes


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Your introduction says this is not the full list of changes that are being considered , which seems strange in itself if you are seeking feedback, but is this really your collective best prioritised analysis of the skills that you believe need to be addressed to deliver some semblance of Balance in WvW? (I am only going to comment from a WvW perspective.)

You also state that you are aiming to bring into line some of the dominant builds and compositions of the current WvW meta... I think I know what you are trying to say here but I dont really know and that is the major concern I have. There is no context provided around what you are trying to achieve, why you see these particular skills being an issue and how you would like to see the Meta evolve.

if one of the goals is to have more classes and builds included within effective squads or parties because they bring useful and synergistic skills would it not make sense to focus on that, starting with maybe an understanding from the Balance/Dev team what do they see as the Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Roles for each class ( eg Herald, Rev, Renegade) in say 1 on 1 Roaming, small scale groups 5 -10 and larger squads of 30 or so in WvW, as clearly the builds and skills required, their relative importance and use would be different in each case. This would expand the amount of viable builds that would be interesting and challenging to play and when you ask for feedback about individual skills that we have some context in which to provide meaningful feedback.It would also deal with issues like Rangers who may well be highly viable for 1 v 1 roaming or small groups but currently have no real builds that offer much utility to larger groups so why not develop develop some for Rangers who want to play in larger groups.It may also make it easier to have constructive discussions around classes like FB where as can be seen is this thread there are many people who believe rightly or wrongly that they have everything and are too prevalent in squads and so we should just take many of their current abilities away.

The other important component that appears to be missing in these skills and balance discussions is that one of the great and fun things about WvW is the Team aspect and the synergies that come from having a combination of different classes and their skills, A discussion about only the individual class skills and how they should be changed inevitably ignores this and we end up with many unintended consequences that make the game less enjoyable. To take one simple and small example what do you believe the consequences will be if you reduce condi clear on Guards Tome of Resolve, Purge Gyro and maybe reduce the effectiveness of Anti Toxin Runes ( which may well all be smart and sensible decisions) What do you believe will happen to Squad composition, gameplay and what Meta will be created in response because their will be one. Are the anticapated changes in line with creating a more fun, challenging and diversified build and class experience?

Of the list of changes you have proposed the only one I personally see as adding much to the current gameplay is ensuring their is a useful Reveal skill to counter stealth, whether it is on the Engineer, Warrior or Revenant or all three. Not so long ago in a previous skill discussion when you proposed removing it from the Engineer the overwhelming feedback from the players was to please change your decision and keep it. Obviously that feedback did not influence your decision but now you are looking at reintroducing it. This says a lot about the "balance" process and the perceived value of "feedback" that you seek. It also seems that bringing it back by replacing an existing engineer skill that people find useful does not seem like the most effective way of doing that.

Overall I have no doubt I will adapt but I am not looking forward to the proposed changes and my gameplay would change as a result of these proposed changes as I dont believe that overall they improve the game significantly.It is not really these proposed specific skill changes that would drive my change in behaivour , it is the larger context, the fact that this list of skills seems like a very limited view of the current issues in WvW, there is no mention of Elementalist or Thief which seems very odd, there is no mention of skills and issues with the Mount which has arguably brought about more change than any of the individual skills on your list, there is no clear context on what you are trying to achieve, what does "Balance" mean to you in this context, what exactly are you trying to balance and lastly when was the last time a proposed skill change was amended based on feedback from the players before being introduced?

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Vegeta.2563 said:I feel that maybe instead of 75 seconds, it should be placed at 60 second to be on par with Mass Invisibility from Mesmer?Mass invisibility can be traited for 48 seconds. Gyros cannot be traited for lower cd. I
wish
they would since Anet decided to make the scrapper traits worthless, but you get the idea.

If they really want to nerf it, just knock a pulse off or lower the stealth duration - or remove the smoke field on it. I'd rather have a competetive class on its own than maintaining a minstrel healbot for the sake of the zerg meta.

Yeah.. I just mean to have the same timer as Mass invis without traits.. base timer basically.

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Thief: With the current meta there has been alot of Perma Stealth Deadeyes and with little to no reveal on most classes being unable to counter, I would really suggest to nerf stealthing in general.

Warclaw: with mounts implemented its a good way to get around the map, I do not think that it should have that much of a capability to survive by evading and taking quite a bit of damage before dropping out of mount. Suggestion for changes, reduce Health pool to a 1 hp and remove evades on Warclaw. Reasoning Sure mounts are good to move around with but it shouldn't affect gameplay where you are able to run pass enemy players. As if there were no mounts in the first place you would meet a player and fight landing you in combat log without running away easily.

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As a engineer main and a wvw support those scrapper change look bad. The smoke field on f4 is a great tool in melee fight to reduce enemy zerk heal or to cleave body. And dont reduce the condi of pirge gyro its gonna make this skill so bad l, yes there is a problem and purge gyro is not, the problem is the antitoxin rune jjst had an icd. This rune is not baseline on the scrapper XD some dont use it and nerfing the skill instead of the rune would make the rune nearly a must. Overrall for the engineer its does not feel great, for me its a miss

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Warrior could use some nerfing to their god mode exploit of stacking heal on might (which heals way to much for a class that can maintain 25 stacks of might), and while switching between passive blacks and invulnerability states can then focus on doing pure damage in all three areas including condition damage. I've seen the meta build for warrior bot the blocks and invulnerability while exploiting the 100% critical rate and whirlwind exploit that only hits foes at the starting point and not in the path for very high attacks boosted by critical chance for 5000+ damage per hit.

Warriors have too little risk with a build that can passive block and then switch to invulnerability while in the middle of attacking. It should be either defense or attack not both.

Invulnerability on warriors should disable all the warrior's attacks or blocks should not be passive meaning they fix them in-place and also disable attacks.

Bad enough seeing a warrior shrug off large groups of players while being able to constantly dish out 5000+ damage per hit to their targets.

I know the devs wanted an easy class idea with the warrior but warriors macro bot their blocks and exploit the critical system for a perfect win every time. Instead you have buffed their attack power for even more of a exploit...

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@Mini Crinny.6190 said:

WeaverTwist of Fate recharge from 5 to 10 (pvp/wvw only)Aqua Siphon recharge from 15 to 20 (pvp/wvw only)

Twist of fate is fine,

What's the problem with Aqua Siphon?

The problem any decent weaver can hold points vs2 forever and vs3 for minutes.My point is: no tank should have lasts for minutes vs3. At least not in pvp because it is harmful for the pacing of the game.

Okay, so there are 2 builds weaver has, one you can just leave it and +1 elsewhere and the other you can kite it since it doesn't have alot of mobility.. Overall Ele is probably the most balanced class of all since it has strengths and obvious weaknesses

Still wondering why Aqua Siphon was mentioned since double attuning to water is not worth it

You could say that about necro. Cause it has far more weaknesses than strengths.But about ele?Nope definitely not. There is for example a super overpowered condo roaming build right now, that is tankier than any class, with some insane condibursts, that tick you in 3 ticks.Sorry but ele is far away from being balanced.

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@Nimon.7840 said:

WeaverTwist of Fate recharge from 5 to 10 (pvp/wvw only)Aqua Siphon recharge from 15 to 20 (pvp/wvw only)

Twist of fate is fine,

What's the problem with Aqua Siphon?

The problem any decent weaver can hold points vs2 forever and vs3 for minutes.My point is: no tank should have lasts for minutes vs3. At least not in pvp because it is harmful for the pacing of the game.

Okay, so there are 2 builds weaver has, one you can just leave it and +1 elsewhere and the other you can kite it since it doesn't have alot of mobility.. Overall Ele is probably the most balanced class of all since it has strengths and obvious weaknesses

Still wondering why Aqua Siphon was mentioned since double attuning to water is not worth it

You could say that about necro. Cause it has far more weaknesses than strengths.But about ele?Nope definitely not. There is for example a super overpowered condo roaming build right now, that is tankier than any class, with some insane condibursts, that tick you in 3 ticks.Sorry but ele is far away from being balanced.

It's a Shame you can no longer press 1 and kill a Ele now I guess but you can always kite it and it will die

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@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Greetings fellow Tyrians,

We've been thinking about implementing the following changes and wanted to share them with you to hear your thoughts and feedback. We’re aiming to bring into line some of the more dominant builds and compositions of the current WvW meta so that new options can be brought to the table, so the bulk of the changes shared here are WvW-centric. This is not the full list of changes that are being considered for the next balance update.

This is not a call for general profession feedback. Here are a few questions to think about while looking over the potential changes:

  • Would your gameplay change as a result?
  • Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?
  • Are you looking forward to these potential changes?
  • What are your concerns with this set of changes?
  • What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?

With those types of questions in mind here's some of what we're looking at.

Engineer

  • Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.
  • Purge Gyro: Reduce the number of cleansing pulses from 5 to 3 in WvW.
  • Sneak Gyro: Increase the cooldown of this ability from 45 to 75 seconds in WvW.

Guardian

  • Sanctuary: Increase number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill from 10 to 20 before it expires.
  • Tome of Resolve, Chapter 2 - Radiant Recovery: The existing split from PvP of cleansing 2 conditions is brought to WvW as well. This ability would continue to cleanse 3 conditions in PvE.
  • Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
  • Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation.

Mesmer

  • Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.
  • Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
  • Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

Necromancer

  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
  • Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.

Ranger

  • Long Range Shot: Reduce the damage range of this skill from 0.7-0.9 to 0.65-0.75 in WvW only.

Revenant

  • Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.
  • Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.

Warrior

  • Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
  • Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.
  • Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.
  • Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback!

Sincerely,GW2 Systems Team

Please consider not removing aegis from Tome of Courage skill 2 and 5. This change will ruin guardian off meta builds. I’d rather see the remove of the other boons.

If healing from aegis is the problem, then nerf the healing power numbers to reduce it. Removing a block, which is the meat of a guardians self defense, isn’t health for build diversity.

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Would your gameplay change as a result?Doubtful. Unfortunately, I mostly solo roam WvW on Reaper, and sometimes play very small group (3-4). I don't think the changes are centered around small scale at all. I have zerged only a handful of times, and hate following tags because of lag and rendering issues. Zerging really isn't that fun in any case.

Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?Anything would probably help at this point. The most important thing is continuous balance patch progression. A lot of very questionable stuff stays live for a looonnggggg time. For example, only very recently have holosmiths become what I call "beatable" in small scale.

Are you looking forward to these potential changes?Sure. Some will be terrible in practice, but some will surprise on the up-side. Honestly, though, I think the primary balance issue haven't really been touched by these changes. For example, I initially hated the necromancer spectral mastery --> soul barbs change, so now I run fear of death instead. My play style is a bit different as a result, but it is progress....

What are your concerns with this set of changes?As stated previously, don't think that this specific revision will really change much on a fundamentals level, as they do not really strike at the core issues that dog the mode, the most obvious of which is overall balance across professions: some professions are simply much stronger than others.

Necromancers, for example, are on the weak end of the spectrum in WvW and SPvP: they "so-so" damage over a wide area, have good boon strip and flip, but have very obvious and easily exploitable weaknesses, as well as no real sustain. The weakness are largely overcome by stacking in WvW. Unfortunately, when stacked, necromancers (a weak profession) become a maelstrom of death due to persistent area damage spam and boon flip/strips. Solution: you need to make necromancers stronger, and remove the efficiency of stacking. The second could be done simply by force enabling melee assist, so that characters cannot occupy the same space. The former could be done via incorporating actual sustain into the necromancer kit.

What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?Hard to determine, and probably dominated by second order effects.

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My biggest concern with the Rev changes to hammer is.. hammer is rarely used outside of wvw now, doing these changes at this point will it make hammer totally obsolete? I would favor changes that actually make ALL weapons attractive to open up better build diversities over obsolescence. Is there not some way to make this a more attractive weapon for pve? As a backline hammer rev, I really enjoyed how it plays even in pve but there's no room for it in fractals or raiding at all. I would strongly prefer changes that make things not soo cookie cutter in the sense that only ONE set of weapons for pve and ONE only for pvp/wvw.

We have all these weapons available to all these professions but it seems most of them are just dead in the water.

I am sad to see the possible change to ranger longbow because already as it is, nobody wants rangers for anything unless they're healing on druid in wvw. They need to have some kind of compensation, maybe adjustments to shortbow as well. The disparity between power/condi builds is kinda huge. I understand the shift moved to power more over condi because of all the people using massive condi cleanses again, now there's shift to press that back or to make changes kinda cancel out the point in making them in the first place.

Can something be done for longbow on dragonhunter too please? It's become a laughing stock anymore. I absolutely used to adore it in pve, but it's again, like hammer for rev a laughable thing for any actual content that isn't strictly open world.

How can changes be made that will satisfy people while at the same time, curbing.. 'one shot' style play or making weapons obsolete?

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@Zepoolpe.9217 said:

@"greysen.2506" said:Should be giving some nice buffs to PVE while at it. This class is currently garbage in PVE. I don't mean that to insult anyone but I just did every story quest in the game on Necro ( which was a god awful tedious experience due to what felt like some of the lowest damage possible) and then on a Ranger (which was like heaven by comparison). Will be using Necro for farming SW only now. There should never be that big a disparity between two classes where you feel like one was pure trash in its ability to kill stuff. And I wasted plenty of gold messing with the build but nothing made it much better. That there are currently no metas out there for Necro also says quite a bit about it. Most every class has some kind of meta build except Necro. Please buff this for PVE. It's a tedious grind to play it. Things take forever to die.

I don't mean to insult anyone either but posts like this always make me laugh...And these posts are always insulting when you say what people write makes you laugh. Rude and insulting. So you missed your objective to not be insulting. Once you laugh at something someone says or writes you have insulted them. Pretending to not want to insult anyone then being dismissive and insulting is actually worse than just straight out being a rude person. And you know your intention was to be insulting.

Power reaper lacks single target damage. That was the specific problem in PVE doing the stories. Specific bosses were a tedious chore due to the lack of single target dps. https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/necromancer/reaper/power/

Many situations in this game's stories require you to focus single target bosses. In some, range is the only decent option. I don't use a staff ever and the alternative weapons provide terrible dps. So fat hp hitbags take forever and are a chore. Perhaps not for you because you laugh at others but I've read enough about Necros to see that my thoughts on this are actually far from uncommon. When someone like you comes along and dismisses people with a laugh because for whatever reason it is easy for you, you just come off like a jerk. An elitist jerk who wants to pretend to not be one.

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@greysen.2506 said:

@greysen.2506 said:Should be giving some nice buffs to PVE while at it. This class is currently garbage in PVE. I don't mean that to insult anyone but I just did every story quest in the game on Necro ( which was a god awful tedious experience due to what felt like some of the lowest damage possible) and then on a Ranger (which was like heaven by comparison). Will be using Necro for farming SW only now. There should never be that big a disparity between two classes where you feel like one was pure trash in its ability to kill stuff. And I wasted plenty of gold messing with the build but nothing made it much better. That there are currently no metas out there for Necro also says quite a bit about it. Most every class has some kind of meta build except Necro. Please buff this for PVE. It's a tedious grind to play it. Things take forever to die.

I don't mean to insult anyone either but posts like this always make me laugh...And these posts are always insulting when you say what people write makes you laugh. Rude and insulting. So you missed your objective to not be insulting. Once you laugh at something someone says or writes you have insulted them. Pretending to not want to insult anyone then being dismissive and insulting is actually worse than just straight out being a rude person. And you know your intention was to be insulting.

Power reaper lacks single target damage. That was the specific problem in PVE doing the stories. Specific bosses were a tedious chore due to the lack of single target dps.

Many situations in this game's stories require you to focus single target bosses. In some, range is the only decent option. I don't use a staff ever and the alternative weapons provide terrible dps. So fat hp hitbags take forever and are a chore. Perhaps not for you because you laugh at others but I've read enough about Necros to see that my thoughts on this are actually far from uncommon. When someone like you comes along and dismisses people with a laugh because for whatever reason it is easy for you, you just come off like a jerk. An elitist jerk who wants to pretend to not be one.

Necro, and especially reaper, is by far the easiest class to solo PvE with. And no, the damage is only sub-optimal in raids where everyone gets full boons and buffs. If you remove supports, reapers do very high damage because they have pretty good access to self-might and quickness. Reaper doesn't have a single weakness as a solo build and if there was challenging solo content that was relevant it would be the undisputed meta. Stop looking at raid strategies and thinking they have any relevance in solo play.

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@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Greetings fellow Tyrians,

We've been thinking about implementing the following changes and wanted to share them with you to hear your thoughts and feedback. We’re aiming to bring into line some of the more dominant builds and compositions of the current WvW meta so that new options can be brought to the table, so the bulk of the changes shared here are WvW-centric. This is not the full list of changes that are being considered for the next balance update.

This is not a call for general profession feedback. Here are a few questions to think about while looking over the potential changes:

  • Would your gameplay change as a result?
  • Do you feel these changes would improve or worsen the state of the game?
  • Are you looking forward to these potential changes?
  • What are your concerns with this set of changes?
  • What consequences do you expect would come from these changes?

With those types of questions in mind here's some of what we're looking at.

Engineer

  • Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.
  • Purge Gyro: Reduce the number of cleansing pulses from 5 to 3 in WvW.
  • Sneak Gyro: Increase the cooldown of this ability from 45 to 75 seconds in WvW.

Guardian

  • Sanctuary: Increase number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill from 10 to 20 before it expires.
  • Tome of Resolve, Chapter 2 - Radiant Recovery: The existing split from PvP of cleansing 2 conditions is brought to WvW as well. This ability would continue to cleanse 3 conditions in PvE.
  • Tome of Courage, Chapter 2 - Daring Challenge: This skill grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.
  • Tome of Courage, Chapter 5 - Unbroken Lines: This skill no longer grants aegis or retaliation.

Mesmer

  • Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.
  • Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
  • Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

Necromancer

  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
  • Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.

Ranger

  • Long Range Shot: Reduce the damage range of this skill from 0.7-0.9 to 0.65-0.75 in WvW only.

Revenant

  • Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.
  • Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.

Warrior

  • Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
  • Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.
  • Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.
  • Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback!

Sincerely,GW2 Systems Team

Where is the forgotten Spec? = buff dp teef, get rid of spammy Sd condi w/o destroying Sd Power. UR challenge!!! Show us that we r all wrong and u can do it.

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@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:Patch notes being considered do the things.

@"shadowpass.4236" said:We need more of these threads. This is very good to see and a high frequency of threads like these by Anet, along with them working with proven, experienced members of their competitive/endgame-modes will encourage people to stay and continue playing.

Agreed.Thanks for offering more transparency on this before the skills get implemented. It is a large help in pointing out oversights that could potentially cripple classes before the actual patch date. Please keep doing this.

I'm only going to comment on PVP changes, since WvW is outside of my scope right now.

Mesmer

  • Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.

This is fine, but I would like to note that this change will largely affect WVW mesmers, so I'd like to pass that feedback off to them.

  • Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.

Mesmers in pvp wont like this, but It will make retreating mesmers weaker and allow some breakup of their damage dealing, while keeping their openers useful. The only question I have is, "what do you mean by "respects line of sight?" Are we talking line of sight that follows the curvature of terrain marked as ground, or are we talking an invisible physical projectile like headshot that can be obstructed on inclines?

  • Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.

Okay, but I don't think this is entirely necessary because of the rework made below. If someone remains in chaos storm random dazes would be a reasonable outcome of that. As long as the chaos storm synergy doesnt force them to remain in the storm, it should be fine as is. I'll let a mes chime in on that/pass feedback on that off to affected mains.

  • Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

This is fine. same kind of behavior as improvisation. What is the cooldown on it? If there's no cooldown, then the above change to chaos storm makes more sense. If theres a reasonable cooldown, my stance on the above change to chaos storm remains as it was.

Necromancer

  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
  • Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.

Seems like a WVW change which I will pass off to wvw necros. The PVP influence seems...iffy. Just keep in mind that teams hard target necros first in conquest, so reducing their barrier could make them useless easily.

Revenant

  • Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.

Fair.

  • Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.

The same range as DDs new Swipe huh? Fair enough. Gives heralds a fighting chance against thieves if they're not running meta, but if they -are- currently running meta (power, Shiro/Herald, sword/sword staff) it makes that a losing matchup for thief now.

Warrior

  • Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
  • Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.
  • Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.
  • Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.

Not sure i I like warriors hard countering thieves that much. They already have magebane tether that acts as both a reveal and a CC. Do they need the sight beyond sight buff as well?

We look forward to seeing your thoughts and feedback!

Summary: Seems fine overall; thieves indirectly being nerfed, people will continue to claim thieves are busted. Thieves should now immediately leave if a warrior is nearby and they are not outnumbering the warrior. I don't like that, but it seems thematic.

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@Irenio CalmonHuang.2048 said:

  • Would your gameplay change as a result?Not as it standsEngineer
  • Chemical Field: This skill is replaced by Detection Pulse (from the old Sneak Gyro elite toolbelt) as the toolbelt skill for Purge Gyro.Engineer needs something back from having removed stealth detection in the last balance pass
  • Purge Gyro: Reduce the number of cleansing pulses from 5 to 3 in WvW.
  • Sneak Gyro: Increase the cooldown of this ability from 45 to 75 seconds in WvW.I can see why you want to do this.

The biggest problem is that you haven't addressed the Scrapper Vitality nerf. I understand your desire for a tradeoff, but you ought to consider what you did with Berserker by creating a Grand Master trait that offsets the penalty, albeit without getting as much a buff as the other two Grand Master traits. As it stands you have severely hamstrung Scrapper healers by nerfing vitality and then tying barrier to damage. Another way of helping scrapper healers would be to add the amount of healing done to the incoming barrier increase.

GuardianNO comments

Mesmer

  • Illusion of Life: Increase the cooldown of this skill from 75 to 90 seconds in PvP & WvW and reduced the duration from 15 seconds to 8 seconds of its effect in PvP & WvW.This nerf in itself is not a huge concern, but it is a single piece in a much larger picture of your systemic assault on Mesmer & especially Chronomancer that have suffered change after change and nerf after nerf. Whether accurate or not, you have given the impression that you don't know what you want Mesmers & Chronos to be. This has been a serious and significant detriment to the class game wide. Truly I would recommend holding off on this and even consider giving Chrono a buff to off set the harshness of how you have treated them in the past 2 years.
  • Power Break (Mantra of Pain): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Power Lock (Mantra of Distraction): This skill now requires you to face your target and respects line of sight.
  • Chaos Storm: This skill now always dazes on the first strike but can no longer randomly daze on other strikes. This change also applies to Lesser Chaos Storm. Added skill fact to show chaos storm's duration.
  • Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been re-worked and now reduces the cooldown of one of your weapon abilities by 5 seconds when you interrupt a foe.

Necromancer

  • Feast of Corruption: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduce damage by 20% in PvP & WvW. The existing split from PvP of corrupting 2 boons is brought to WvW. This ability continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE.
  • Sand Cascade: Reduce the barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP.
  • Sand Flare: Reduced the barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW.I think these are healthy changes for these game modes.

Ranger

  • Long Range Shot: Reduce the damage range of this skill from 0.7-0.9 to 0.65-0.75 in WvW only.Why are you doing this? For a class which so many WvW commanders have explicitly stated that they kick from squads, and others have gone as far as saying they have no place in WvW, the only role left for most rangers is roaming. It makes no sense to reduce their dps this way unless you find a way to increase their desirability for group play.

Revenant

  • Coalescence of Ruin: This skill would no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; instead it deals damage equal to what was previously the middle impact damage. Damage remains split between game modes. A red warning rectangle visible to enemies has been added to this skill.
  • Gaze of Darkness: This skill would reveal stealthed enemies up to 600 range away in addition to striking enemies within its 360 radius.I think this too will be a good addition to WvW to provide counterplay to stealth.

Warrior

  • Charge: This skill would only removes movement impairing conditions and then increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% in addition to its previous effects. Increase swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill becomes a blast finisher.
  • Call to Arms: Removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. Grants barrier in addition to vigor.I like the change to condition removal, I don't like the barrier. Barrier needs to stay primarily the place of scrapper & scourge. Don't spread it about too much.
  • Sight Beyond Sight: Increase the radius of this ability to reveal hidden enemies up to 600 range away.Also a welcome change
  • Quick Breathing: Thinking of kicking re-working it a bit to pair with the warhorn skill changes so they feel more cohesive. Continues to increase number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon instead of reducing the cooldown (Fury for Charge and Resistance for Call to Arms). Grant +120 Concentration.
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Another nerf to necromancer ? Your balance team is PATHETIC anet.• Staff rework• Death magic traitline rework• in PvE people are still being kicked or refused for parties because it's underperforming, wake up and do something about it.• sPvP still main target because; no heavy acces to stability, no decent defensive skills, no invulns.• Make scourge portal instantcast or lower cast-time to 1/4th - 1/2 of a second• If you want to focus a whole traitline around life leech atleast make sure it's viable in any way• Last time you completely patched out the viable healing effect on reaper shroud trait, lower the numbers ? Agreed. Remove the whole thing ? I know this class isn't the developers' fan favourite but this is just ridiculous. Open your eyes and stop this bullshitSo many skills and traits that are long forgotten and can use any type of change, if you rework whole elite specs for things to become more viable you can atleast have a look at underperforming skills for other professions aswel.

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@greysen.2506 said:

@greysen.2506 said:Should be giving some nice buffs to PVE while at it. This class is currently garbage in PVE. I don't mean that to insult anyone but I just did every story quest in the game on Necro ( which was a god awful tedious experience due to what felt like some of the lowest damage possible) and then on a Ranger (which was like heaven by comparison). Will be using Necro for farming SW only now. There should never be that big a disparity between two classes where you feel like one was pure trash in its ability to kill stuff. And I wasted plenty of gold messing with the build but nothing made it much better. That there are currently no metas out there for Necro also says quite a bit about it. Most every class has some kind of meta build except Necro. Please buff this for PVE. It's a tedious grind to play it. Things take forever to die.

I don't mean to insult anyone either but posts like this always make me laugh...And these posts are always insulting when you say what people write makes you laugh. Rude and insulting. So you missed your objective to not be insulting. Once you laugh at something someone says or writes you have insulted them. Pretending to not want to insult anyone then being dismissive and insulting is actually worse than just straight out being a rude person. And you know your intention was to be insulting.

Power reaper lacks single target damage. That was the specific problem in PVE doing the stories. Specific bosses were a tedious chore due to the lack of single target dps.

Many situations in this game's stories require you to focus single target bosses. In some, range is the only decent option. I don't use a staff ever and the alternative weapons provide terrible dps. So fat hp hitbags take forever and are a chore. Perhaps not for you because you laugh at others but I've read enough about Necros to see that my thoughts on this are actually far from uncommon. When someone like you comes along and dismisses people with a laugh because for whatever reason it is easy for you, you just come off like a jerk. An elitist jerk who wants to pretend to not be one.

Right... The fact that you seem to have stopped reading at my initial jest (it was a jest, maybe a poor one, but on intend to replicate your own "i don't mean to insult...") and then went on to try to explain me why Reaper is a bad class citing a site about raid builds kinda makes my point: in my post i tried to explain why players should not look at the so called "meta" as the Almighty Truth in all cases because it is only meaningful in very precise cases.Raid builds are for raids only... in fact, they are not even for all raid fights because depending of the raid boss, the optimal class & build configuration will change.Is any Reaper (or Core Necro or Scourge for that matter) good for raids? No, absolutely not.

But you were not talking about raids, you were talking about a generic PvE environment (ie: the Open World) and the quests it contains (either story line ones or world events) and that you usually do solo (I'm counting events as solo, because even if you are in a group, there is no synergies and it is more a mass solo party than a real group).Is Reaper good for this solo environment? Hell yes! I'd even say that's it's one of the best.Why? Well the post right after yours summarised it very well:

@"Ganathar.4956" said:Necro, and especially reaper, is by far the easiest class to solo PvE with. And no, the damage is only sub-optimal in raids where everyone gets full boons and buffs. If you remove supports, reapers do very high damage because they have pretty good access to self-might and quickness. Reaper doesn't have a single weakness as a solo build and if there was challenging solo content that was relevant it would be the undisputed meta. Stop looking at raid strategies and thinking they have any relevance in solo play.

Let's look in detail why Reaper is a good soloing class: it's a jack-of-all-trades! They self-buff (not all buffs, but some of the most important ones for DPS like stab, might, quickness, etc...), they rip boons, they have an extended HP pool (aka the shroud), they can CC (hard and soft), they have interrupts, they can reach close to 100% crit chance (when in shroud), they have a very good melee weapon (greatsword) and a very good ranged weapon (axe) and you have one of the best AoE burst in the game with Reaper Shroud #4 (aka #spin2win ;) )Then there is the build: like i said, if you want to cheese everything, including most champions, use the minion master build: they will heal, they will soak damage for you, they will tank for you, they will CC for you. A reaper Minion Master is basically a one man army.

You want to do fractals? Well, try Discretize's Reaper build (btw, check their website and read whet they are saying about reapers in fractals). Is part of the usual fractal meta? No, of course not, but you don't really need meta if you are not doing T4 CM fractals, good builds are enough.

Ok.. that's for the class and the build.. now let's look a the player (and by player, i don't mean you, i mean a generic player).You mentioned Snow Crows meta builds. Ok.. Then let's take an average player, give him a meta class/build with fully optimised ascended gear and ask him to reach the same kind of dps on the (static) training golem that shown on the Snow Crows vids: most players will only reach 40 or 50% of the max DPS shown on the video. Then put them in an fight with a boss that has fight mechanics and they will do even less.Why? Well..

  • Is he a clicker or does he use keybinds?
  • If he is using keybinds, are they the default ones or are they optimised for his position on his keyboard?
  • Is he using a gamer mouse with button on the side or a normal mouse? (a gamer mouse is not an absolute necessity but it greatly helps)
  • Does he know his optimum skill rotation or does he just smash his keybinds at random as they come out of cooldown.
  • Does he hold a particular skill in his rotation even though it's out of CD just because he know he will need it of a coming fight mechanic or does he go blindly in a fight.
  • etc...

All that to say to you these two things:

  1. Always look at a class & build in the context of the content you are actually doing (which also means that yo can have different toons with different classes for other contents)
  2. If you are not performing well, don't go "that class is awful" right away, but look at your gameplay and ask yourself "what I am doing wrong and how can i improve it".Trust me: I've been there and then someone pointed out exactly what I've just pointed out to you and it helped improve my gameplay a lot.

PS: sorry guys for the wall of text ;)

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Okay, some good direction here, but this is only the very beginning of what's needed.

Very little is going to change until boon in both access and duration AND ease of application/generation, invulns/damage immunity effects, and Scourge/AoE Boon Corruption spam are straight-up gutted. It's just too much.

Bottom line is this: AoE anything should be generated by combo fields/finishers to reward players who work well together and punish those who don't. Having field + finisher in one kit creates a power dynamic favoring a certain class for some specific thing, but also lets some of the power-budget of a class be assigned to combo fields/finisher types rather than solely playing on duration/intensity where "class which gives most access to X boon and is still strong elsewhere is clearly the best." Adding risk-factors is an important part of PvP balance and shared interactive mechanics players play off of and strategize around is what makes group PvP more interesting.

Further along this point worth mentioning is engagement when it comes to the PvP experience in general. Look back on the game's launch manifesto about skill visibility and paying attention to what characters are doing rather than a bar of skills. Paying attention to what people are doing is fun. Paying attention to their respective skill/buff bars isn't. Invulns, sequenced blocks, boon strength (protection and resistance) and other damage mitigation are what outright define a win or loss in the current game-state. This isn't engaging, and isn't fun, and there's just so much power in them that they can't be ignored nor can a meta evolve around them. Increasing predictability is a good thing, and is a major factor in what defines and consequently rewards/makes distinct skilled play from unskilled play.

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