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Upcoming Balance Notes - 10/1/2019


Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

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Call to Arms: This skill has been renamed Call of Valor, and its functionality has changed. Removed an unnecessary unblockable skill fact. This skill now removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. It also now applies barrier in addition to vigor. :s plz give us a number for this barrier instead of a yea also this skill does this.

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The Scourge main mechanic change is a massive unnecessary nerf outside of WvW. Sand savant is the issue for WvW just fix that. Please

No changes to make Chronomancer’s core mechanic more usable after you gutted it by removing “baseline illusionary Persona” and now you’re just doing the same thing to Scourge?? Sad

You guys want feedback but don’t take it when we give it to you....people have been saying this is a bad idea for both Scourge and Chrono since these changes were announced/occurred, and nothing. Just crickets.

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Will there ever be something changed about class stacking in raids? Right now guardian and mesmer have been meta on pretty much every boss. Mirage is so far ahead on all condi bosses besides matthias of the other classes. With Power Chrono Time Warp stacking is a big issue, as you are able to play with 7 pure DPS chrono's, a berserker a druid and a alacrity renegade. Guardian (both Dragonhunter and Firebrand) have the same issue with "Feel my Wrath", which allows you to run with only 1 chrono. Because of this the meta becomes very stale because these options are so far ahead of all the other options on most bosses and it has been like this for several patches now. A change is really needed, I get that it won't be coming this tueseday, but I hope changes come soon.

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@Bellefon.1259 said:

@"Naxos.2503" said:
  1. If Necromancer minions can use necromancer stats, I move that turrets be allowed to use atleast a portion of engineer stats.

Necromancers' minions don't generally inherit necromancers' stats. "A minion has a fixed amount of health, damage, and armor…" --
. The few stats they do inherit (condi dmg, condi duration, and boon duration) are basically useless unless traited in Death Magic by a condi necro.

The reference in the notes: "Fixed an issue that caused this trait to use the minion's stats instead of the necromancer's." only pertains to a trait bug, and even then I'm not really sure what the issue was, unless minions only inherit a percentage of the necro's condi dmg/dur.

In general, AI is handled very poorly in this game. The best thing they did for scrapper was remove the AI altogether. A similar move could be done for turrets -- you place them on your shoulder instead of use them as static objects. Or something to that extent.

Any time somebody suggests a minion-based elite spec, they clearly have never played this game.

@FtoPScrub.5476 said:Holo nerfs in PvP are not enough, especially given nerfs to Scourge/FB which are a decent check against Holo. For the utility and damage it has, the sustain is really high and one of the main culprits is heat therapy having an insane amount of healing despite being a minor. Please consider nerfing this trait. It only needs to be adjusted numbers wise so it can be split between game modes. Additionally, 6 second stealth on elixir toss is very high. Perhaps consider looking at this too?

I agree with this. I think nerfing Heat Therapy would be enough to bring holo back in line in terms of sustain, because it is essentially a free heal on top of normal engineer healing skills.

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No one:

Anet: "Scourge: Shade skills no longer affect the area around the scourge while they have a shade present in the world. Increased the number of targets affected by shade skills from 3 to 5."

Literally NO ONE is okay with this change. But hey, maybe the aim IS to nerf Scourge to the ground, in which case this accomplishes that brilliantly.

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@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Ranger

In this update, we're making a major change to sword skills in order to better improve their flow during combat. Monarch's Leap, Hornet Sting, and Serpent's Strike are all shuffling around into new slots, which should make the weapon a little easier to understand. We're also including some enhancements for the off-hand dagger, which has been a pretty weak weapon that hasn't kept up with the pace of the game very well. Finally, we're simplifying the greatsword's Counterattack skill and taking some power out of the chain-attack sequence. We hope these changes will make the weapon feel a little smoother while removing some of the frustrating random dodges that happen when fighting against it.

  • Stalker's Strike: Base damage of this attack has been increased by 200%. This attack now deals double damage and inflicts 2 additional poison stacks if it strikes a foe with a movement-impairing condition.
  • Counterattack: Removed the Crippling Throw follow-up skill. This skill no longer automatically uses Counterattack Kick when blocking a foe within the range threshold. Instead, blocking any attack flips the skill to Counterattack Kick for 5 seconds. Increased the number of targets for Counterattack Kick from 1 to 3. Counterattack Kick now evades for its duration and activates faster.
  • Power Stab: This skill no longer evades for its duration. Its name has been changed to Enduring Swing. This skill now grants 15 endurance if it hits.

(Stalker's Strike isn't good because the extra 300 range it got from traiting "Off-Hand Training" was removed.)

Okay... I don't know what you guys were thinking going into this but if these changes go through, you will have singlehandedly removed all of the skill and depth involved with playing greatsword ranger at a high level. Whoever thought of removing Crippling Throw and Power Stab needs to have a serious talk with some top tier ranger mains. Hopefully, these changes didn't come from the same person that completely butchered Druid in PvP.

First of all, the removal of Crippling Throw is extremely disappointing. Here's why:

  • Ranger greatsword has an extremely hard time sticking to targets for a melee weapon. Swoop is pretty clunky for chasing. Hilt Bash will miss on a target running directly away from you. Maul and the auto attacks have a very short range as well.
  • Crippling Throw's cripple gives us the ability to slow our target in order to actually be able to chase and deal damage at the cost of our block. This added strategy and depth to the playstyle.

Second, and I cannot emphasize this enough, DO NOT PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THE EVADE FROM POWER STAB.

  • The evades on Power Stab are NOT random. There are two regular hits, then the evade. It is the same sequence every single time. There isn't any randomness involved. Good players can (and do) easily interrupt the first two attacks to cancel the chain.
  • The evade has existed since GW2 release. Removing it has disappointed myself and every single ranger I know by a lot. It's extremely disheartening and I'm actually very sad that this is in the patch notes. Out of all of the nerfs over the years, the beatdowns Druid has received, I have never, ever been as unhappy as when I read this change.
  • Even on greatsword, rangers still lose in melee range against almost every other class. If we trade with holos we lose, warriors kill us, mesmer clones with IH will now be able to completely nuke us with condis without the ability to greatsword auto evade them while cleaving. We will also lose the ability to stand in team fights because of how squishy we are. The 15 endurance gain on hit is just rubbing salt in the wounds.

My suggestions (please, I'm begging you, please take them)

  1. Keep Crippling Throw in the game and have this skill flip to counterattack when we block an attack in melee range.
  2. Leave Power Stab alone.
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Honestly rangers melee should be buffed and long bow autos nerfed as well as rapid for by like 50% it's literally funny playing ranger and just deleting people in +1 with ease and zero skill. Atleast I admit it lmao more than half the ranger I see just sit back pew pew pew and apparently don't know what a rotation is but u can't blame them cuz why learn? I think they did a great job with ranger over all and it's a fun class but they way overturned such a ranged weapon, DE as well.

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Oppressive Collapse: This skill now requires line of sight.

Can that please be explained by Anet why the change, what prompted this, your overall change for necro is questionable, you want them to go melee, have you played a melee necro in WvW, it will get instant splatted by any of the other heavy classes, and the change to shades, have you see the rangers 1500 ranger instant burst damage they can do, so if i cast a shade at them, they move 300 units out of it, and WHAM im dead as i cant cast on me now, what classes you all playing in WvW.

You should have made ghastly breach a well where it can be cast at a location instead of static, i dont get the hate for necro, but warrior can run threw an enemy zerg and strip boons all over the place,

Mesmers can still pull off a wall in WvW by placing focus 4 on the wall with no line of sight, yet a knockdown skill for necro gets nerfed to dirt.

Also why no addressing the perma invis classes in WvW who can 1 shot you from invis, or the boom bot rangers who have insane damage and sustain, it really seems you are trying to push a few classes out of WvW and make others even harder to kill.

We really need proper reasoning for some of your changes.

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Kitty's short PVE-centric takes on upcoming changes.

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Elementalist

  • Speedy Conduit: This trait has been removed. Its functionality has been combined with Harmonious Conduit, and it has been replaced with Gathered Focus.
  • Gathered Focus: This new trait takes the master tier, minor trait slot, and it grants 120 concentration plus an additional 120 concentration while the elementalist is above 90% health.An obvious nerf to auramancer though it still outputs so much boons that doesn't really affect good auramancers.
  • Harmonious Conduit: This trait no longer increases damage after completing an overload. Instead it grants swiftness in addition to stability. It has also changed positions with Invigorating Torrents.
  • Invigorating Torrents: This trait has switched positions with Harmonious Conduit. Its functionality is unchanged.So no more master traits for dps tempest. Dps nerf for some builds.
  • Imbued Melodies: This trait has been reworked, and its name has been changed to Transcendent Tempest. This trait reduces the time it takes to attain a singularity by 33% when switching elements and increases outgoing damage and condition damage by 7% for 7 seconds after an overload completes.Compensates for the aforementioned nerf to the point of actually boosting power tempest's dps in total by maybe 0,5-1,5%.

Engineer

  • Equalizing Blow: Increased damage by 9%.
  • Electro Whirl: Increased damage by 9%.
  • Rocket Charge: Increased damage by 10%.
  • Shock Shield: Reduced recharge from 20 seconds to 18 seconds.
  • Thunderclap: Increased damage by 6%. Reduced recharge from 24 seconds to 20 seconds.Not enough boost. Double these percents and hammer scrapper might come out of pure meme zone in PVE.
  • Shaped Charge: This trait now increases damage by 0.5% per stack of vulnerability instead of by a flat amount.+2,5% to multiplier.
  • Solar Focusing Lens: This trait now also grants 2 stacks of Afterburner when deactivating photon forge. Increased stacks granted from overheating from 5 to 6.Promotes exiting Photon Forge as part of rotation and is especially beneficial for ECSU rotation.
  • Chemical Field: This skill has been replaced by Detection Pulse as the tool belt skill for Purge Gyro.
  • Detection Pulse: This skill replaces Purge Gyro's previous tool belt skill, Chemical Field. The radius of this skill has been reduced from 1200 to 900, and its targeting has been improved in large group settings.
  • Purge Gyro: The tool belt skill for Purge Gyro has changed from Chemical Field to Detection Pulse.Makes Purge Gyro's toolbelt skill useless in instanced PVE. Even less incentive to play heal-scrapper instead of core engi.
  • Med Blaster (Med Kit): Increased healing to match tooltip.
  • Health Insurance: Updated description and tooltips to accurately reflect the functionality of this trait. This trait increases incoming healing by 10% and increases outgoing healing by 20% while using Med Kit.So heal-engi was actually few % stronger healer than tooltips said.
  • Mechanized Deployment: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to grant less than the listed 15% recharge reduction.
  • Mass Momentum: Increased stability duration from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.Slightly helps with Object in Motion-trait's uptime.
  • Impact Savant: Reduced the vitality loss from this trait from 300 to 180.Moar HP. Omnom.

Guardian

  • Orb of Wrath: Reduced damage by 10% in PvE only.Justified nerf.
  • Symbol of Blades: Removed the double strike that occurs when the symbol is first created. Increased damage of each strike by 20% to compensate. Overall damage is unchanged.
  • Zealot's Defense: Increased PvE damage by 20%.These changes essentially make sword about 10-15% better option than scepter dps-wise according to Kitty's previous testing.
  • Sanctuary: Increased number of enemies that can be knocked back by this skill before it expires from 10 to 20. Decreased duration from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. Decreased recharge from 75 seconds to 60 seconds.Good thing PVP-wise as Kitty loves that skill.
  • Tome of Courage—Chapter 2: Daring Challenge: This skill now grants retaliation for 3 seconds instead of aegis.A clear nerf to healbrand and Tome of Courage will now only be worth using for reflect and retaliation/stability uptime in most cases.
  • Eternal Armory: Changed burning from 2 stacks for 2 seconds to 1 stack for 4 seconds.Tames the burst a tiny bit.
  • Stoic Demeanor: This trait now inflicts burning for 5 seconds in addition to inflicting slow. Reduced the internal cooldown from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Cooldown is now determined per target instead of globally.Still not worth using in endgame PVE.

Mesmer

  • 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 a skill fact to show Chaos Storm's duration.Makes it more useful for CC...if you for whatever reason use staff as mesmer in PVE. Which you 99.9% likely don't. (Boosts would be nice, though they don't need to bring staff exactly back to its former broken glory.)
  • Chaotic Interruption: This trait has been reworked. When interrupting a foe, it now recharges one of your currently recharging equipped weapon skills by 5 seconds. This trait has a 1-second internal cooldown.
  • Delayed Reactions: This trait no longer grants alacrity but now triggers on any control effect rather than only on interrupts. Added a 3-second cooldown per target.Might be worth using to guarantee full slow uptime for Danger Time.
  • Lost Time: This trait has been reworked. It now grants 3 seconds of alacrity to the mesmer when applying slow to a target. This effect has a 3-second cooldown.Interacts nicely with Delayed Reactions though prolly doesn't get used due to supports using StM and dpsers using Chronophantasma.
  • Seize the Moment: This trait now applies quickness in a 240 area-of-effect radius around the mesmer and can hit 5 targets (including the mesmer).Helps support chrono at keeping up quickness.

Necromancer

  • Scourge: Shade skills no longer affect the area around the scourge while they have a shade present in the world. Increased the number of targets affected by shade skills from 3 to 5.
  • Oppressive Collapse: This skill now requires line of sight.Is the pathing otherwise fixed? Kitty's friggin tired of "No line of sight." at bosses like VG.
  • Feast of Corruption: Reduced damage by 20% in PvP and WvW. The existing split of corrupting 2 boons in PvP has been brought to WvW as well. This skill continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE. This skill now queues behind other skills rather than interrupting them.
  • Devouring Darkness: Reduced damage by 20% in PvP and WvW. The existing split of corrupting 2 boons in PvP has been brought to WvW as well. This skill continues to corrupt 3 boons in PvE. This skill now queues behind other skills rather than interrupting them.Helps at rotating. Kitty approves.
  • Sand Savant: Increased the number of targets affected by the larger shade from 2 to 5 so that it now affects up to 10 targets.Say hello to 10-target mightbot scourge! From what Kitty mathed, shade skills alone keep up 8ish might for 10 due to Abrasive Grit. If you also slot in BiP, WoP, Dessicate, Ghastly Breach and torch for Oppressive Collapse with proper boon duration, the combined might output is enough to keep up full-ish might for 10 despite 5-target limits on most of those stuffs.
  • Death Magic: This trait line has been reworked. Many traits now revolve around a new effect called Death's Carapace that increases toughness by 20 for each stack up to a maximum of 30 stacks. Death's Carapace stacks are applied for 10 seconds from all traits except Flesh of the Master.Omnom, allows necromancer tanking without using much gears for it.
    • Minor:
      • Armored Shroud: This trait now gives 5 stacks of Death's Carapace when entering shroud.
      • Soul Comprehension: In addition to its previous effects, this trait now also grants 1 stack of Death's Carapace for each kill the necromancer participates in.
      • Beyond the Veil: This trait has been reworked. It now reduces condition damage by 10% while the necromancer has at least 10 stacks of Death's Carapace.
    • Adept:
      • Flesh of the Master: Instead of granting armor for each minion, this trait now causes the necromancer's minions to grant them 2 Death's Carapace stacks as long as the minions are alive.
      • Putrid Defense: This trait has changed positions and its functionality has changed. It now causes poison to deal 15% more damage and grants 1 Death's Carapace stack when applying poison.Slightly useful for condi scourge tanking.
      • Shrouded Removal: This trait has changed positions. In addition to its previous effects, it now grants 3 Death's Carapace stacks when a condition is removed.
    • Master:
      • Necromantic Corruption: This trait is unchanged.
      • Dark Defiance: This trait is unchanged.
      • Deadly Strength: This trait has been reworked. It now causes Death's Carapace to grant an additional 10 power per stack.+300 power if you can keep up the stacks.
    • Grandmaster:
      • Death Nova: Updated skill facts and description. Updated attack name from Lesser Poison Cloud to Poison Nova in order to indicate that it has different behavior from Corrosive Poison Cloud. Fixed an issue that caused this trait to use the minion's stats instead of the necromancer's. Fixed various issues that caused this trait to behave inconsistently with certain minions. Increased damage by 60% in PvE only.
      • Corrupter's Fervor: This trait has been reworked. It now grants 1 Death's Carapace stack when applying any condition. Additionally, at 25 Death's Carapace stacks or above, the necromancer gains pulsing protection for 3 seconds every 3 seconds.Very useful for condi scourge tanking.
      • Unholy Sanctuary: This trait is unchanged.Good to see that this wasn't changed as it's mandatory for gimmicky builds like oilkiting necro at Deimos (as necro is probably the only class without access to blocks and aegis).

Ranger

  • Stalker's Strike: Base damage of this attack has been increased by 200%. This attack now deals double damage and inflicts 2 additional poison stacks if it strikes a foe with a movement-impairing condition.
  • Crippling Talon: This skill now uses the ammunition system and has 2 ammo with a 15-second count recharge time and a 1-second recharge between uses. Reduced cripple duration from 6 seconds to 4 seconds. Reduced bleeding duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.Might semi-work for grieving build but Kitty's kinda pessimistic. One more stack to both skills and they'd be ok.
  • Hornet Sting: This sword skill has moved to weapon slot 3. It now recharges Monarch's Leap if it hits. Its recharge has been increased from 8 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Monarch's Leap: This sword skill is now the primary skill in weapon slot 2. Using this skill flips it over to Serpent's Strike for 5 seconds. It now has an 8-second recharge.
  • Serpent's Strike: This skill is now the follow-up skill to Monarch's Leap. It no longer has a recharge.Monarch's Leap will become worth using but Serpent's Strike needs its damage doubled to see use in PVE.
  • Counterattack: Removed the Crippling Throw follow-up skill. This skill no longer automatically uses Counterattack Kick when blocking a foe within the range threshold. Instead, blocking any attack flips the skill to Counterattack Kick for 5 seconds. Increased the number of targets for Counterattack Kick from 1 to 3. Counterattack Kick now evades for its duration and activates faster.QoL for stuff like kiting at Deimos.
  • Power Stab: This skill no longer evades for its duration. Its name has been changed to Enduring Swing. This skill now grants 15 endurance if it hits.Aww, Kitty liked dat evade ._.

    Revenant

  • Embrace the Darkness: Lowered the recharge from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.QoL as Kitty sometimes accidentally double-pressed it and it went on long CD and it was mildly infuriating.
  • Call to Anguish: Decreased energy cost from 35 to 30. Reduced recharge from 5 seconds to 3 seconds. Increased radius from 240 to 360. Damage increased by 33%.Still not worth using unless you need that pull functionality.
  • Focused Siphoning: Increased base healing by 88% in PvE.
  • Elder's Respite: Added a 10-second internal cooldown to this trait.Doesn't really have an effect in PVE as healing revenant has other regen sources.

    Thief

  • Leeching Venoms: This trait now immediately grants a stack of spider venom when the thief first enters stealth and every 3 seconds after.A pure PVP trait like before.
  • Improvisation: Instead of recharging an entire skill category at random, this trait now recharges one of your equipped utility skills at random.Hopefully it'll at least recharge a skill that is recharging.
  • Stolen Bundles: Stolen bundles now show their number of uses as ammunition.QoL.
  • Shadow Siphoning: Increased base healing by 62%.Not enough for PVE.
  • Cloaked in Shadow: Increased base damage and the damage multiplier by 100%. Increased base healing by 100% and the heal multiplier by 60%.Still pretty much a joke.

Warrior

  • Charge: The icon for this skill has been updated. This skill now only removes movement-impairing conditions. It now increases the damage of affected allies' next 2 attacks by 25% (10% in WvW) for 8 seconds in addition to its previous effects. Increased swiftness duration from 10 seconds to 15 seconds. This skill is now a blast finisher.Kinda like what someone suggested the other day but...."next 2 attacks"? Kinda useless unless you have a squad of power reapers.
  • Call to Arms: This skill has been renamed Call of Valor, and its functionality has changed. Removed an unnecessary unblockable skill fact. This skill now removes 3 conditions from affected allies instead of specific conditions. It also now applies barrier in addition to vigor.Extra heals when it interacts with new Shrug It Off...but it requires condis to cleanse so useless on most bosses.
  • Burning Arrows: This trait has been removed, and its effects have been merged with Crack Shot in the Discipline line.Slight dps boost to condi warrior.
  • Crack Shot: Instead of granting bonus adrenaline for base harpoon gun shots, this trait now adds 3 seconds of bleeding to each shot.
  • Tactics: The Tactics line has been reworked. Several traits in this line now revolve around a new effect called Soldier's Focus, which grants bonuses when executing bursts.
    • Minor:
      • Marching Orders: This new trait grants the Soldier's Focus effect every 15 seconds. This effect is expended when hitting with a burst to grant 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds to allies within a range of 300.A bit long cooldown, in Kitty's opinion. Though it's 6 might to 5 allies @100% BD if triggered off-CD.
      • Empowered: Moved from the adept tier. The effects are unchanged.
      • Mending Might: This trait applies might to an ally and heals the warrior.Gotta see details.
    • Adept:
      • Leg Specialist: In addition to its previous effects, this trait now also grants a 7% damage bonus against foes suffering from a movement-impairing condition. The cooldown on this trait is now calculated per target.
      • Soldier's Comfort: This new trait heals nearby allies when Soldier's Focus activates.
      • Roaring Reveille: This new trait increases the number of targets for warhorn skills from 5 to 10 and causes warhorn skills to grant an additional boon. It grants fury for Charge and resistance for Call to Arms. It also grants an additional 120 concentration.
    • Master:
      • Warrior's Cunning: This new trait increases damage by 25% against foes with health above 90%. Additionally, it increases damage by 50% against foes that have barrier. These bonuses do not stack.
      • Shrug It Off: This trait has moved, and its icon has been updated. In addition to its previous effect, it also causes the warrior to heal allies when removing damaging conditions from them.
      • Empower Allies: In addition to its previous effects, this trait also increases the radius of Soldier's Focus to 600. Added a missing number of targets skill fact.
    • Grandmaster:
      • Martial Cadence: This new trait causes Soldier's Focus to reduce the warrior's equipped weapon skill cooldowns by 3 seconds.
      • Vigorous Shouts: This trait no longer grants adrenaline when using shouts. Instead, it grants healing power equal to 13% of power.The heal from shouts need higher HP-modifier as even in generous case, shouts will only heal about 550-650 heals per second and heal warrior would need about 2000 heals per second to be considerable as option again.
      • Phalanx Strength: Increased might duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.Might seem like a small change but helps a ton at making PS warrior great again as now the might is way more sustainable.

The DPS boosts from tactics are kinda nice. Empowered 7-10% + Leg Specialist 7% + Warrior's Cunning 2,5% + reduces weapon skill cooldowns from Martial Cadence.

And about that dragonhunter's longbow btw, it actually does decent dps now if you rotate gs+lb. Kitty benched it to 29519 on current balance era. Don't believe? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZTdQqAYMN_IBnEwuYgQlHnNTxvLLlhzCMhNUOqiQra0/

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eleImbued Melodies is being removed—we felt it wasn't very interestingthis is really bad. an auto proc reflect was the one thing holding up staff tempest in a number of scenarios.Transcendent Tempestthis looks like crap. I am very disappointed that a reflect is being replaced with this, equally uninteresting trait.

engigood scrapper changes, still not enough holo nerfs. you guys need to reduce the amount of vigor + quickness holo can get, and increase holo leap cd. seriously, a 600 range leap on a 2 sec cd is ludicrous and beyond my understanding as to why it still exists.

guardok, stoic demeanor buff cool.

mesmerok. chrono needs invuln clones or something to be viable.

necrodeath magic rework looks cool, sand savant granting 10 targets and shade skills being tied to the shade is going to be catastrophic. tons of people are saying it. don't do it, or I swear to god you guys will lose what tiny amount of faith people have in your balancing skills. a decent middle ground imo is to have sand savant only grant 10 targets to support and barrier traits.

ranger1 hand sword changes make no sense, gs changes look good. soulbeast burst and stacking dmg mods still untouched. inspiring reinforcement still doubles whatever might the ranger has. this should have been fixed a long time ago.

revok.

teefok. cloaked in shadow is garbage and should be changed to something else.

warI don't know what to say. power creeping tactics to unholy hell and making warhorn op sounds cool I guess...btw what in the nine hells is this:Martial Cadence: This new trait causes Soldier's Focus to reduce the warrior's equipped weapon skill cooldowns by 3 seconds.this is op powercreep trash, its only saving grace is how janky it is.

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Would be nice if stacking scourges isn't a thing (this patch is a scourge buff), and firebrands (it's a fb buff too).

And as always, nerfing fb won't fix anything but make the class eventually unplayable.

You need to bring other supports up to being viable.

And as long as scourge can have 10 target shades.

We're gonna keep stacking them.

This has been it.

For two years.

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ranger sword looks so much better... i've always wanted the second skill to be the leap skill instead of the evade skill...

death magic changes look interesting, as do tactics changes

Tempest changes are nice... but i'd like to suggest removing latent stamina (two vigor traits always felt like a waste to me, especially since everyone thought this trait belonged in Water traits), moving invigorating torrents into latent stamina's place in the adept tier (for better synergy with the shout trait), and coming up with a new trait for the master tier. the warhorn trait could have been fine in the master tier, methinks....

but a new tempest trait could shake things up a little... such as "grant 3s protection to allies when you change attunements, 10-20 second cooldown", or "grant stability when you grant protection", or "overloads convert conditions on allies into barrier", or "breaking a stun grants an aura based on attunement (even on allies affected by eye of the storm)", or "Overloads also add 1s poison on every pulse", or "obtaining singularity grants barrier (earth) or resistance (water) or alacrity (air) or retaliation (fire)", or who knows?

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Its a bit too confusing to work out how this update will effect the tempest classes but i must point out one thing tempest is an support class i am not sure any of this will buff the support that tempest is losing from the antoxic runes. This may be the end of support tempest in wvw and only scraper and FB will be it. I guess the only nice thing is tempest maybe an ok bruser build but i think weaver dose it way better already.

As for the class only boons any thoughts on making stab have an different look as it seems anet things stab is a gurd only boon must like alacrity and barrier use to be.

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The sand shade change is going to make dps scourge just awful to play against high movement bosses in raids. Scourge is already weak in raids and now some of my shade abilities will miss on moving bosses or I won't be able to hit them at all for a time if I run out of shade charges. This could discourage players from placing sand shades at all in these situations which would also be a dps loss.

Also, the whole purpose of sand shades was to "play the field" and place them to cover a lot of area; now I'll have to place all of them on the boss to ensure that my shroud abilities can hit while still benefiting from the shades. This really defeats the supposed purpose of the sand shade mechanic.

This change is going to make scourge even less desirable in raids and just feel really clunky to play on the bosses that move a lot (which is where I mostly play it). PvE Scourge really doesn't deserve this new limitation.

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@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:

Necromancer

The scourge elite specialization has also undergone a significant change such that its shade skills will only fire around them when they do NOT have a shade up.

This change creates a choice between whether scourges expose themselves to some melee risk but charge in to affect foes around them, or whether they hang back and summon a shade near their foe and are unable to affect themselves with shade abilities (unless they also place one on their own location). We'll be keeping a close eye on the results of this change and making adjustments accordingly.

This change seems to punish scourges for using their unique elite specialization mechanic. It discourages using shade skills at range, and seems to favor scourges as melee fighters without having good melee skills. Fighting that ranger? — don’t shade them or lose significant defense from arrows and pets. Chain stunned by warrior/engi? — won’t be able to activate shade on yourself due to cast time, therefore locked out of all F shade skills until other shades disappear.

Shroud is the infamous "second health bar" that compensates necros for their lack of mobility/blocks/evades. Scourges don't have shroud, but rely on barrier, the 5-second health bar topper. Placing a shade anywhere but on top of the scourge is a 15-second lockout from having any local use of shade skills = less barrier = less defense.

Hoping this gets a harder look before release, but if not, then please also consider:

  1. removing the 1/2 sec cast time to Manifest Sand Shade (F1), allowing faster re-positioning, making the choice one of "here or there but not multiple locations";
  2. removing the 1/2 sec activation delay that was later added to shade skills (F2-F5) to compensate for time needed to reposition shades; and
  3. maybe modifing Manifest Sand Shade (F1) to be a single-shade toggle (eliminating 3 shades): press once to place, and while shade still exists, press again to remove shade, thus making necro act as the shade — thus giving a controlled choice about where shades activate.

One more thing: I have to assume, without testing, that since Garrish Pillar (F4) won’t activate near the scourge if they are not on an active shade, or have no shades active, (edit: double-negative usage error) seems like traited Transfusion won’t activate either?

Experimentation is fine. I can’t judge Death Magic yet, so I'm open to exploring. Maybe it will be awesome, maybe a one week experiment to experience baseline leather-class armor.

Rather than have to think about sitting in my shades, thus limiting mobility further, sadly, I’ve already begun to train myself to never press F1 again.

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