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Upcoming Balance Notes - 10/1/2019


Irenio CalmonHuang.2048

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Here are my thoughts on the upcoming balance changes:

Ranger

Amazing changes to ranger’s melee weapons. The sword will no longer be clunky,

Do you even play ranger? The sword was never clunky. Just because you do not know how it works, it doesn't means its clunky. It was a beautiful weapon that has been slaughtered.

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@Frenjo.9587 said:

On other changes:

  • Illusion of Life nerf seems rather heavy handed, as I posted in the feedback threads, a reduction to two seconds would be preferable - however five has always been far too long.
  • Mantra changes are still quite disappointing, but won't really affect too much except for some added clunkiness in use.

This is reflective of exactly my thoughts. Particularly with regards to Illusion of Life. Reducing this to 1s is just unreasonable considering the uncontrollable variables of a game. 5s is too long but 1s is too harsh. 2 or 3s would be happy medium.

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@TheGrimm.5624 said:

@"Pterikdactyl.7630" said:The % modifiers on that Warrior barrier trait...what in tarnation.

Well it is one way to break up a Zerg. Barrier has needed counter play for a while. Maybe 50% is high, but it is also eating through a barrier so we'll see in practice how it plays out. The 25% while target is above 90% health may take precedence over the barrier modifier though.

I think if it only applied to the barrier it would be fine, but since it sounds like it will act as normal and then apply to health than it's kind of a near death sentence to players running rune of sanctuary or anyone getting minor barriers.

I agree. Small barriers are going to be death sentences versus warriors now.

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@"Game of Bones.8975" said:I don't play PvP and Scrappers (at all) or WvW and Warriors (much) so I have the unbiased view of 'it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.'

How long has this been a thing? Just like the Scourge in your example has playable options, you also have the option of target selection with your Warrior.

What is an acceptable solution to you? Are you asking to remove the 50% altogether or reduce it to a lower number? All your post told me was "It's bad, don't do it again."

I enjoy reading posts, like yours, where players are active and point out discrepancies the play-testers may not have noticed or run across. To me that's only half the post, the other half is a workable solution or two showing you have put that extra bit of thought in how to make the game better for everyone. Then people can debate whether your problem/solution is a workable one.

This change will be in the update next week. The reason this is bad is because they are trying to balance power creep by adding more power creep. Im guessing the main reason they made this change is because scourge aoe barrier is very strong in wvw since you can give your whole squad 5k+ extra health during engagements. Its possible this change could help melee/warrior focused squads to counter ranged scourge heavy squads. Instead of tuning down powerful skills, like the ones that give barrier to group members, anet has decided to add in something else nearly as strong to "counter" it. This doesnt really fix gameplay, it just creates more issues as the power creep accumulates over months and years, until there are too many issues to balance anything properly.

Scrappers rely on passive barrier for some sustain, since they have a flat vitality reduction, so with this trait warriors hard counter scrapper builds even more. Also as far as i know, there are no play testers outside of people working at anet, which is a whole other issue.

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The comment about barrier and alacrity at the the very start of the patch notes signifies part of what needs to be improved in GW2 with regards to class design and specifically class separation and uniqueness.Unfortunately the trend seems to be homogenising the classes in terms of impact and applied effects to the highest degree possible and differentiate them only on a epidermic - visuals and animations - basis.

With regards to PvP and WvW the usual elephant in the room.Time to kill has to increase in order for the combat mechanics of the game to become apparent and enjoyable.Sometimes I think that simply decreasing damage output-especially on basic/auto attack skills would do wonders for the quality of combat in GW2.Then there would be room for better balancing some of the over tuned defences that were created as a result of the damage arms race.Not an easy goal to achieve when in PvE mode classes play more like they belong in a hack and slash action RPG but hey....

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@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:Greetings all! As before, here are the planned Balance update notes for next week's release! We look forward to your discussions and theorycrafting.

~GW2 Systems Team


Profession Skills

General

When we originally created the alacrity and barrier effects, they were intended to be profession specific, but we've changed this stance after seeing how the game changed and evolved over time. While the original effects were visually iconic to their initial professions, it was a good time to update them with a look that could fit any profession.

  • Barrier: Updated the visual effects of this effect to be less profession specific.
  • Alacrity: Updated the visual effects of this effect to be less profession specific.
  • Special Forces Training Area: Conditions on the Preview Holo-Golem will no longer be removed by player skills.
  • Low-Health Traits: Updated traits that activate when the user drops below a specified health threshold so that they behave more consistently.

Items

  • Superior Rune of Antitoxin: This rune no longer removes additional conditions from allies cleansed by the player. Instead, it removes an additional condition from the player whenever a condition is removed from the player.

Necromancer

The Death Magic specialization has had a significant rework this update, revolving around a new effect and various means of gaining additional defense while bringing together a more cohesive set of playstyles. 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. If they do have a shade present, then those skills will happen around their summoned sand shades. Alongside this change, the scourge and each sand shade now affect an increased number of targets by default, which can be increased further through the use of the grandmaster trait Sand Savant. This change leans into the dependence a scourge has on their unique elite specialization mechanic, shades, and opens up the specialization to future potential improvements across its kit. 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.

  • 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.
  • Manifest Sand Shade: The duration of sand shades in WvW and PvP has been increased from 10 seconds to 15 seconds.
  • Minion Summoning Skills: Fixed a bug that could allow minions to persist after the skill was unequipped.
  • Oppressive Collapse: This skill now requires line of sight.
  • 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.
  • Grasping Darkness: Fixed an issue that could cause the claw effect to pop out of existence before the skill completed. Removed misleading legendary projectile effects from this skill due to it not being a projectile.
  • Blood Bond: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to heal the necromancer when it activated.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • 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.
      • 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.
    • 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.
      • Unholy Sanctuary: This trait is unchanged.

This death magic Rework feels CRAZY underwhelming, No minion rework to go along with it? With those being the focused utilities you would think you guys would of brought them into the forefront and given them more tools/toys to work around. To top that off to me this WILL NOT make it a more chosen trait-line nothing about this feels that strong. It's a decent start but its almost too little, too late and it lacks any of what would be needed to move our current meta and current builds into taking Death-magic. Necromancer still suffers from mobility issues outside of Scourge and the damage they bring is good but if anyone knows the class you will get juked hard and there is little you can do. This trait-line needs WAAAAY more flare and way more nuance and flavor for it to be taken. Passive defense is a good start but since it is "Death magic" to bread and butter of the classes theme, it should have a strong presence. (Don't make it required, but make it strong enough for those of us who wish to run it can run it.) Minions need a rework they feel like crap right now, and they could use model updates to make em more spooky as they really don't hold up graphically and we all know you can do way better. Perhaps make the Deathmagic traits ALSO summon various random minions around the caster, depending on their shroud levels and make it so that while in shroud you basically become like an anchor to the spirit realm and pull all sorts of nasty stuff out? This would only work if you had death-magic so if you don't like minions or a lot of micromanagement then it wouldn't be the trait-line for you. But I think ALOT of us expected more, and we would like more as well we would like utilities that kind of suck to be brought to the forefront and made competitive with current and long time veteran used skills. (New ways to play, thats the name of the game.)

Revenant

In addition to some changes to Coalescence of Ruin and Gaze of Darkness aimed at WvW play, we are also tuning up a few of Mallyx's Legendary Demon Stance skills from the last update as we felt they ended up on the weak side. Jalis's Legendary Dwarf Stance skills are also seeing some improvements aimed at making them more powerful and easier to use to better warrant the use of your energy.

  • Coalescence of Ruin: This skill no longer deals increased damage with successive impacts; it now always deals damage equal to what was previously the second-impact damage. Its damage remains split between game modes. Added a red warning rectangle visible to enemies.
  • Embrace the Darkness: Lowered the recharge from 10 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Gaze of Darkness: This skill now reveals stealth enemies up to a range of 600, inflicting blindness and vulnerability.
  • True Nature (Assassin): Reduced radius from 600 to 360.
  • 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%.
  • Inspiring Reinforcement: Increased pulsing stability duration from 1.5 seconds to 3 seconds. Increased initial stability duration from 2 seconds to 3 seconds. Increased the speed at which the road is built by 100%. Increased road length from 600 to 900.
  • Forced Engagement: Increased damage reduction from taunted targets from 20% to 33%. This skill now also throws chains at up to 4 additional targets within a range of 360 of the selected target.
  • Focused Siphoning: Increased base healing by 88% in PvE.
  • Elder's Respite: Added a 10-second internal cooldown to this trait.

This won't help mallyx at all because his whole kit is weak when it comes to WvW and PvP, sure he is good for Raids and openworld... scratch that. Raids Alacrigade and healigade/Ventarigade is better. I feel like the whole trait-line and legend itself needs a rework; He doesn't feel good to play and he also lacks the boon-corrupt that would make him viable in competitive play. (He is also competing with necromancer, which already has a strong presence in all modes.) He needs to be made more unique and powerful, I feel like going back to the roots of what this legend was intended to be and taking a hard look would be solid. And then just from there add onto it and make it to the standard that specs/traitlines are today. He needs more defense and more use, because right now all he can do really is be semi-annoying at best and be a good filler at worst. ( We want more than just power herald/hammmer rev as options to play in competitive.)

I also Don't see the jalis stuff? Might be me but it looks more like mallyx/renegade/herald/hammer stuff, since jalis was mentioned I would of though that he would at least get some touches on what exactly you want to change. (I feel like Ventari is the only part of rev that got a good rework might just be me though.)

Warrior

In this update, we're focusing on changes to the Tactics trait line and warhorn skills. We've removed the traits related to reviving allies in order to make room for new traits and improvements to old traits that focus more on ways warriors can affect allies while they are still in the fight. The new Tactics traits are focused around empowering allies through boons and effects, helping allies who are taking a beating, and a selection of warrior-enhancing battlefield strategies.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Sight beyond Sight: Increased the radius of this skill to reveal stealth enemies within a radius of 600.
  • Burning Arrows: This trait has been removed, and its effects have been merged with Crack Shot in the Discipline line.
  • 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.
      • Empowered: Moved from the adept tier. The effects are unchanged.
      • Mending Might: This trait applies might to an ally and heals the warrior.
    • 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.
      • Phalanx Strength: Increased might duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.

Im super interested in these warrior changes, Gonna make them a really good niche-pin in a group even more than they already are. Im super excited at the idea of a "Support" warrior. Makes me wonder if the next E-spec you guys are cooking up is something along those lines, and you did this tactics change to make some synergy for it... you cheeky little devils you.

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@Novaura.1079 said:Hello ArenaNet Balance Team,

You have again ignored the fact that Chronomancer Support Wells are a terrible design in almost every game mode. While you are tweaking Firebrand you NEED to buff other support orientated classes. You are leaving them too far behind.

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).

That doesn't help us because, unless I missed it, we still cannot self-shatter on chronomancer. Also, Firebrand can give out quickness every time it gives out Aegis....

You need to rework chronomancer wells, as previously mentioned:

@Novaura.1079 said:Hello,

Can you please look into adjusting Chronomancer Support wells?

You made support wells as that classes niche that no one wants to stand in for mediocre boons that anyone else can give out while mobile but these require you to be stationary.

Please have them pulse around you as you move similar to the Function Gyros as they are now a "well". This would help diversify some of the support monopoly that firebrand has especially if you give some of them stability / barrier / resistance.

Literally a terrible choice having a stationary support well with those kinds of boons that no one will stand in any almost any game mode.

Please no more pulsing around the player AoE fields.These should be sparse and few in between.They are very disruptive abilities with almost no counter play and also produce way too much visual noise in a game that is already plagued by it.What I'd prefer to see is a comprehensive rebalancing of boons in relation to the classes that apply them with build diversity in mind.Diversity is achieved when each class brings something unique and useful to the table not when every class is exactly or almost the same.

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@Game of Bones.8975 said:Does anyone know if ANET does rigorous play-testing before making these changes? Or do they make the change, see how it is used by the actual players, and make alterations after they see how it works in the world?

Bit of both. They will do some play testing internally with their own teams, but it would be impossible to pick up on the wider nuances until dispersed to every mode and a large (and imaginative) playerbase.

It tends to be the speed of alterations that tends to be the point of concern and that they rotate balances very slowly between specific parts of a class - eg one elite or one weapon or one trait line at a time

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Let's redo the support traitline of warrior, and stick a +50% damage modifier in a master trait, because we are anet and now warriors have crazy extra damage in every specialization.Hurray!!! This game digs deeper and deeper its failure hole with more of the nonsense powercreep over already powercreeped specs they love so much.

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@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@azzardome.9184 said:nerfing base thief and daredevil while deadeye is left untouched. same goes for condi drd. some real big brain balance here

How did you figure that the changes are a nerf to core and DD? Genuine question, the patch doesn't seem to nerf anything but is mostly QoL stuff, and swipe got a cooldown buff.

Improvisation getting a huge nerf? have you ever played thief before? condi drd didnt get touched while core sd is getting a huge nerf. same with dp daredevil. you dont see how that is a problem. the two builds left on thief that require some lvl of base skill getting even more nerfed.

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@Jables.4659 said:

@azzardome.9184 said:nerfing base thief and daredevil while deadeye is left untouched. same goes for condi drd. some real big brain balance here

To be fair, the Improvisation nerf was long overdue. To give you an example of why, I often ran Withdraw, Shadow step, Signet cleanse, Roll for Initiative, and Dagger Storm as my utility line. It wasn't terribly uncommon for me to get multiple trick recharges in a row from stealing, which led to me being able to use dagger storm 3 times within a 30 second period. It was luck based kitten that could immediately turn the tide of a fight regardless of player skill.

well my point is why the hell they nerf the only skillfull builds left on thief whle builds such as condi daredevil and shadowarts deadeye exist.

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@RyuDragnier.9476 said:

@azzardome.9184 said:nerfing base thief and daredevil while deadeye is left untouched. same goes for condi drd. some real big brain balance hereWhere in the patch notes has Thief and DD been touched? Wondering because I don't see it.you clearly dont play thief if you cant see how big of a nerf the improvisations trait is.

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Warrior's Cunning is broken. This trait single handedly eliminates scrapper from pvp.

"Deal 50% extra damage to any scrapper" and "Deal 50% extra damage to anybody using Rune of Sanctuary".If I ever see a scrapper on the opposing team during PvP pre-match, I'll be swapping to a warrior to absolutely crush them.

Please fix this. Fix it by causing the bonus +50% damage to not apply to excesss damage that is dealt to the player's health bar.

For example:A player has 150 barrier. A warrior hits that player for 1000 damage (prior to any bonus from warrior's cunning).

It will take 100 damage to destroy the barrier (100 * 1.5 = 150). The remaining 900 damage is dealt to the player's health bar. However the remaining 900 damage does not recieve +50% damage.

Furthermore, Warrior's Cunning now makes 1-shot builds do +25%/+50% damage!Please balance the game to promote meaningful class interaction and meaningful gameplay! 1-shot builds do not promote meaningful class interaction. Have you ever played a game like Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone? Those games are most fulfilling when both players get to interact with one another; when both decks have meaningful interaction with each other. Please do the same for guild wars!

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