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Let's Talk About PvP Balance


Cal Cohen.2358

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"bravan.3876" said:Neither Guards Mantras nor Mesmer Mantras (except for Mantra of Pain) need a cast time or delay or animation. If you feel Guards Mantras have too high effects so they are brianless spammable for high reward than better tweak their effects.I dont agree with you here. Mantras specifically on both mesmer and guardian are probably some of the first case by case skills that need to be looked at.

Fresh air ele for the most part will be fine with just its damage tone down a good bit.There is nothing skillful about a projectiles-less interrupt that can hit from extremely far away on button press command. Even more so that for the fact of it took 7 years just for that skill respect line of sight and require you to be looking / facing the person you want to hit with it.Things like steal, base guardian virtues (even some meditations etc), mesmer shatters, shroud activation, etc are fine being instant cast as those things are profession mechanics that i dont think cause any problems on their own. When it comes to utility skills though not so sure i agree. Even more so if that utility inflicts a instant hard cc with 0 tell on button press. Not many classes in the game have this kind of power to be frank i dont think any of them should.

When i really start to think about hard cc skills on utility skills i cant think of any that dont have any tell, minor delay, or projectile on them that hit from range them aside from MoD on mesmer. it is one of the few outliers that needs to be fixed. Even if its just turning the skill into a projectile at least in that case it can still be instant to use but has the delay of the projectile travel time and can be countered by reflects / projectile denial etc. You will be able to see it coming at you and not just have to do a 50/50 guess on when some's finger is going to press the button.

You are right lock down hard cc should never be instant! But Daze is not a lock down, you still can dodge, it is completely fine to be instant and Steal as something that can daze too from max range is also fine. The daze on Mantra always needed line of sight you never were daze when the skill was obstructed, also Mantra of Pain never dmg on you when you were out of los. The only thing actually got changes was that things being behind the Mesmer now count as out of sight. With other words they only nerfed the effect to hit behind, for the line of sight thing it even was a buff because now the charge doesn't activate when it is out of sight. Before patch the charge was just wasted when used on an obstructed target without hit the target at all. It is so funny that you guys are so fine with that on paper "nerf" even though half of it was a quality of life buff for the Mesmer xD Shows insane class knowledge... maybe Mesmer mains can find some other pseudo nerfs to calm down the casual masses and prevent Mesmers from getting nerfed to death even on their most skillful playstyle. I had a good laugh at least here. Mesmer is also an outlines as the only class with clones, lets get rid of that too right? Simple as it is Mesmer is supposed to be the onyly class until now (except for interrupt Ele, which even has passive proc daze on range btw) has clones and an playstyle based on interrupting not lock downing (that is why CI got reworked but Mantra not, it is a big difference).

Show me your godlike reaction time and reactive interrupt gameplay on a Powermes with a skill having a cast time themself pls (like when you see you want to interrupt an animation wait 0,5 secs before you react and see how often you can interrupt something on purpose with that) and be in facetank range of your target all time when you want to interrupt pls with a glass spec because that is what you ask for right? I bet both hands and my legs you can't win a single fight vs any class with it on same skill lvl. Even less under the circumstances you want to nerf the interrupt playstyle to, what is pretty much the hardest to play and the easiest to counter already. Mantra of Distraction has at least 10 counters i listed several times in this forum, it is utterly useless when random spammed and not hit keyskills as heal on a good moment or big dmg skills or big cc skills in fights or in conquest. Every other utility a Mesmer could take would be more useful than this and easier to use with less counterplay. If you have problems to deal with a Powermes using Mantra of Distraction (with or without Powerblock) on any class (except for Necro maybe but even there you have builds can deal with that at least in duels) than it is a l2p issue 10000%.

I you just cut Fresh Air dmg it just will be completely useless and used even less than already. Better get rid of the broken high instant range dmg mechanic and give it something impactful but counterable instead.

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Quick overview for each classWarrior (I may be biased as this is my main)-Warrior’s cunning is a bit much, basically designating them as scrapper and scourge killers. I’d say turn down the damage buff and make it apply to barrier exclusively-Winds of disenchantment is a bit weak in pvp, and really powerful in wvw

Guardian-Focus is op and is crowding out other weapon choices-Firebrand’s healing is a bit much for the amount of damage they put out. Glad they toned it down

Revenant-I literally never see this used

Ranger-Lingbow is annoying as hell-Druid, as always, is a bit weak in everything but raids

Thief-Condi thief’s are definitely annoying-please buff d/p. It’s so much more fun than s/d-Deadeye is rediculously broken

Engineer-Holosmith is way too powerful in some cases, but other things need to be turned up. The holo shockwave changes, while warranted, were a bit much. I’d say that 450 radius is more appropriate (and maybe return it to 600 in pve)-Scrapper needs a massive buff. Impact savant is completely awful, especially with the aforementioned warrior’s cunning. Function gyro also is bad, and getting progressively worse. The traits expert examination and damage dampener are also dumb and I never see them used.

Mesmer-Mirage is, as always, a broken bastard, and needs to be toned down so much-The lack of distortion on chrono is great (just wanted to thank you for that)

Elementalist-Especially on weavers, the amount of damage they can ignore through invuln is insane, and gives them great sustain, along with the ability to bounce if a fight goes south, especially considering their mobility.

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@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:
  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.

NO, please stop with this pattern of nerfing/buffing things, changes like these are why the game is totally unbearable today.

The trait is good at it is at the moment, it helps a lot of condi builds that are not even viable or good, the only one that is overperforming is condi s/d.Please instead of nerfing a trait/skill until it becomes garbage (like most of your balance patches) start looking at the bigger picture.

What's wrong here is sword #2 interaction with panic strike, and it has been long before PoF (remember condi thief ventari rev meta) you never removed condi thief, you just nerfed it and people realized core was better now it's the same, you nerfed core power and people realized condi thief is much better.

Remove the poison from panic strike, it's the easiest solution you can do, it will literally have 0 effect in any situation, what makes panic strike worth of choosing is first the other traits are worse and the immobilize effect is crucial in some situations for thieves (chasing) that's it, the poison is unnecessary so remove the poison and add anything else, boom you delete condi s/d thief for good and you don't nerf other condi builds.

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@Elxdark.9702 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:
  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.

NO, please stop with this pattern of nerfing/buffing things, changes like these are why the game is totally unbearable today.

The trait is good at it is at the moment, it helps a lot of condi builds that are not even viable or good, the only one that is overperforming is condi s/d.Please instead of nerfing a trait/skill until it becomes garbage (like most of your balance patches) start looking at the bigger picture.

What's wrong here is sword #2 interaction with panic strike, and it has been long before PoF (remember condi thief ventari rev meta) you never removed condi thief, you just nerfed it and people realized core was better now it's the same, you nerfed core power and people realized condi thief is much better.

Remove the poison from panic strike, it's the easiest solution you can do, it will literally have 0 effect in any situation, what makes panic strike worth of choosing is first the other traits are worse and the immobilize effect is crucial in some situations for thieves (chasing) that's it, the poison is unnecessary so remove the poison and add anything else, boom you delete condi s/d thief for good and you don't nerf other condi builds.

Nerfing deadly amibition won't really affect condi s/d daredevil.

But this change will really, really hurt all other (manageable) condi builds.

Take away the poison from panic strike, leave deadly ambition alone.

THE problem is the overpumped playstyle of s/d daredvil (condi).

Please, just go after panic strike and remove the poison.

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@bravan.3876 said:

@bravan.3876 said:Neither Guards Mantras nor Mesmer Mantras (except for Mantra of Pain) need a cast time or delay or animation. If you feel Guards Mantras have too high effects so they are brianless spammable for high reward than better tweak their effects.I dont agree with you here. Mantras specifically on both mesmer and guardian are probably some of the first case by case skills that need to be looked at.

Fresh air ele for the most part will be fine with just its damage tone down a good bit.There is nothing skillful about a projectiles-less interrupt that can hit from extremely far away on button press command. Even more so that for the fact of it took 7 years just for that skill respect line of sight and require you to be looking / facing the person you want to hit with it.Things like steal, base guardian virtues (even some meditations etc), mesmer shatters, shroud activation, etc are fine being instant cast as those things are profession mechanics that i dont think cause any problems on their own. When it comes to utility skills though not so sure i agree. Even more so if that utility inflicts a instant hard cc with 0 tell on button press. Not many classes in the game have this kind of power to be frank i dont think any of them should.

When i really start to think about hard cc skills on utility skills i cant think of any that dont have any tell, minor delay, or projectile on them that hit from range them aside from MoD on mesmer. it is one of the few outliers that needs to be fixed. Even if its just turning the skill into a projectile at least in that case it can still be instant to use but has the delay of the projectile travel time and can be countered by reflects / projectile denial etc. You will be able to see it coming at you and not just have to do a 50/50 guess on when some's finger is going to press the button.

You are right lock down hard cc should never be instant! But Daze is not a lock down, you still can dodge, it is completely fine to be instant and Steal as something that can daze too from max range is also fine. The daze on Mantra always needed line of sight you never were daze when the skill was obstructed, also Mantra of Pain never dmg on you when you were out of los. The only thing actually got changes was that things being behind the Mesmer now count as out of sight. With other words they only nerfed the effect to hit behind, for the line of sight thing it even was a buff because now the charge doesn't activate when it is out of sight. Before patch the charge was just wasted when used on an obstructed target without hit the target at all. It is so funny that you guys are so fine with that on paper "nerf" even though half of it was a quality of life buff for the Mesmer xD Shows insane class knowledge... maybe Mesmer mains can find some other pseudo nerfs to calm down the casual masses and prevent Mesmers from getting nerfed to death even on their most skillful playstyle. I had a good laugh at least here. Mesmer is also an outlines as the only class with clones, lets get rid of that too right? Simple as it is Mesmer is supposed to be the onyly class until now (except for interrupt Ele, which even has passive proc daze on range btw) has clones and an playstyle based on interrupting not lock downing (that is why CI got reworked but Mantra not, it is a big difference).

Show me your godlike reaction time and reactive interrupt gameplay on a Powermes with a skill having a cast time themself pls (like when you see you want to interrupt an animation wait 0,5 secs before you react and see how often you can interrupt something on purpose with that) and be in facetank range of your target all time when you want to interrupt pls with a glass spec because that is what you ask for right? I bet both hands and my legs you can't win a single fight vs any class with it on same skill lvl. Even less under the circumstances you want to nerf the interrupt playstyle to, what is pretty much the hardest to play and the easiest to counter already. Mantra of Distraction has at least 10 counters i listed several times in this forum, it is utterly useless when random spammed and not hit keyskills as heal on a good moment or big dmg skills or big cc skills in fights or in conquest. Every other utility a Mesmer could take would be more useful than this and easier to use with less counterplay. If you have problems to deal with a Powermes using Mantra of Distraction (with or without Powerblock) on any class (except for Necro maybe but even there you have builds can deal with that at least in duels) than it is a l2p issue 10000%.

I you just cut Fresh Air dmg it just will be completely useless and used even less than already. Better get rid of the broken high instant range dmg mechanic and give it something impactful but counterable instead.

It wont be useless if everyone else also gets adjusted properly with it. Thats why the goal is to cut everything down not just 1 thing or another thing overall

Though on the effect of a comparing mantra of distraction to thief steal.Thief steal requires them to trait for the daze and using it puts them into melee range which means there is some risk associated with using it.vsPower lock which is a longer daze with no tell, without a trait investment or requirement, has 2 uses, and has no negative to the caster on use as you are allowed to stay at range when using it. About the only negative to the skill is that you have to first charge it which 99% of the time is done out of combat initially making this draw back void to any initial combat situation.

Sorry i simply dont agree. The skill needs more room counter-play which is something they surely want to do going forward.Even a thief's steal has quite a bit of extra room for counter-play forcing the user into melee range and depending on your profession can be countered by things like auras, area denial skills which will still enforce a cc onto the thief, traps, symbols on the floor, necro marks, etc.

MoD has no such risk.You also are comparing a utility skill to a profession mechanic (improper comparison by skill category)

I looked at utility skills that inflicted hard cc vs MoD not a profession mechanic. In any case its an outlier of a utility skill that needs "some change" even if its still instant it at least needs to be a projectile in which reflects/projectile denial can counter it its only counter should not be stability (which can easily be ripped by the unjust speed of arcane thievery among the chaos) or the power to basically guess on a 50/50 button press.

The closest utility skills that inflicts a hard cc instantly with no tell at some range would be "Fear me" and rangers "protect me" which both have modest cooldowns and and pretty decent requirements that give room for counter-play or limit them to being reasonable.Even "Protect me" requires you hit the ranger to trigger meaning more likely than not something else or someone else can trigger the effect more likely than your target unless its a 1v1.and "Fear me" loses effectiveness with range increase from the caster to the target you want to hit with the fear.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@bravan.3876 said:Neither Guards Mantras nor Mesmer Mantras (except for Mantra of Pain) need a cast time or delay or animation. If you feel Guards Mantras have too high effects so they are brianless spammable for high reward than better tweak their effects.I dont agree with you here. Mantras specifically on both mesmer and guardian are probably some of the first case by case skills that need to be looked at.

Fresh air ele for the most part will be fine with just its damage tone down a good bit.There is nothing skillful about a projectiles-less interrupt that can hit from extremely far away on button press command. Even more so that for the fact of it took 7 years just for that skill respect line of sight and require you to be looking / facing the person you want to hit with it.Things like steal, base guardian virtues (even some meditations etc), mesmer shatters, shroud activation, etc are fine being instant cast as those things are profession mechanics that i dont think cause any problems on their own. When it comes to utility skills though not so sure i agree. Even more so if that utility inflicts a instant hard cc with 0 tell on button press. Not many classes in the game have this kind of power to be frank i dont think any of them should.

When i really start to think about hard cc skills on utility skills i cant think of any that dont have any tell, minor delay, or projectile on them that hit from range them aside from MoD on mesmer. it is one of the few outliers that needs to be fixed. Even if its just turning the skill into a projectile at least in that case it can still be instant to use but has the delay of the projectile travel time and can be countered by reflects / projectile denial etc. You will be able to see it coming at you and not just have to do a 50/50 guess on when some's finger is going to press the button.

You are right lock down hard cc should never be instant! But Daze is not a lock down, you still can dodge, it is completely fine to be instant and Steal as something that can daze too from max range is also fine. The daze on Mantra always needed line of sight you never were daze when the skill was obstructed, also Mantra of Pain never dmg on you when you were out of los. The only thing actually got changes was that things being behind the Mesmer now count as out of sight. With other words they only nerfed the effect to hit behind, for the line of sight thing it even was a buff because now the charge doesn't activate when it is out of sight. Before patch the charge was just wasted when used on an obstructed target without hit the target at all. It is so funny that you guys are so fine with that on paper "nerf" even though half of it was a quality of life buff for the Mesmer xD Shows insane class knowledge... maybe Mesmer mains can find some other pseudo nerfs to calm down the casual masses and prevent Mesmers from getting nerfed to death even on their most skillful playstyle. I had a good laugh at least here. Mesmer is also an outlines as the only class with clones, lets get rid of that too right? Simple as it is Mesmer is supposed to be the onyly class until now (except for interrupt Ele, which even has passive proc daze on range btw) has clones and an playstyle based on interrupting not lock downing (that is why CI got reworked but Mantra not, it is a big difference).

Show me your godlike reaction time and reactive interrupt gameplay on a Powermes with a skill having a cast time themself pls (like when you see you want to interrupt an animation wait 0,5 secs before you react and see how often you can interrupt something on purpose with that) and be in facetank range of your target all time when you want to interrupt pls with a glass spec because that is what you ask for right? I bet both hands and my legs you can't win a single fight vs any class with it on same skill lvl. Even less under the circumstances you want to nerf the interrupt playstyle to, what is pretty much the hardest to play and the easiest to counter already. Mantra of Distraction has at least 10 counters i listed several times in this forum, it is utterly useless when random spammed and not hit keyskills as heal on a good moment or big dmg skills or big cc skills in fights or in conquest. Every other utility a Mesmer could take would be more useful than this and easier to use with less counterplay. If you have problems to deal with a Powermes using Mantra of Distraction (with or without Powerblock) on any class (except for Necro maybe but even there you have builds can deal with that at least in duels) than it is a l2p issue 10000%.

I you just cut Fresh Air dmg it just will be completely useless and used even less than already. Better get rid of the broken high instant range dmg mechanic and give it something impactful but counterable instead.

It wont be useless if everyone else also gets adjusted properly with it. Thats why the goal is to cut everything down not just 1 thing or another thing overall

Though on the effect of a comparing mantra of distraction to thief steal.
Thief steal
requires them to trait for the daze and using it puts them into melee range which means there is some risk associated with using it.vs
Power lock
which is a longer daze with no tell, without a trait investment or requirement, has 2 uses, and has no negative to the caster on use as you are allowed to stay at range when using it. About the only negative to the skill is that you have to first charge it which 99% of the time is done out of combat initially making this draw back void to any initial combat situation.

Sorry i simply dont agree. The skill needs more room counter-play which is something they surely want to do going forward.Even a thief's steal has quite a bit of extra room for counter-play forcing the user into melee range and depending on your profession can be countered by things like auras, area denial skills which will still enforce a cc onto the thief, traps, symbols on the floor, necro marks, etc.

MoD has no such risk.You also are comparing a utility skill to a profession mechanic (improper comparison by skill category)

I looked at utility skills that inflicted hard cc vs MoD not a profession mechanic. In any case its an outlier of a utility skill that needs "some change" even if its still instant it at least needs to be a projectile in which reflects/projectile denial can counter it its only counter should not be stability (which can easily be ripped by the unjust speed of arcane thievery among the chaos) or the power to basically guess on a 50/50 button press.

The closest utility skill that inflicts a cc instantly with no tell at some range without any tell would be a warriors "Fear me" and rangers "protect me" which both have modest cooldowns and and pretty decent requirements that give room for counter-play or limit them to being reasonable.Even "Protect me" requires you hit the ranger to trigger meaning more likely than not something else or someone else can trigger the effect more likely than your target unless its a 1v1.and "Fear me" loses effectiveness with range increase from the caster to the target you want to hit with the fear.

Thief is a melee class on most weapons it is barely any downside that Steal ports him in his own attack range xD The Mantra charge has to be done infight a lot of times, i don't want to restart explaining to you too why Mantras are designed as they are and why the recharge clearly is a high cost for it. I am not comparing Steal to Mantra because you have totally different class mechanics/ weaknesses and strengths behind each of these skills make it a comparision from apples with oranges. Just like i gave one example... a Thief wants to get near to the target way more than a Mesmer. I only mentioned Steal (what is not only a daze, traited it has insane effects in addition to the daze, it can be traited way more powerful than Mantra can) because it shows that Anet doesn't have anything against instant range daze until now and that for good reasons (LR Ele is another example provides even passive interrupt daze gameplay). And looking at Chronomancer changes i am just afraid the game will get overly clunky und with way less flow by overreacting to skills only because they are instant. The only things should not be instant are skills with high killer impact by their own (not true for Mantra of Distraction not even with another trait invested like Powerblock) means their power only should come from comboing with non-instant skills they support in some way or it should mainly have utility/ defensive purpose without too strong effects (like a lock down would be too strong ofc, i agreed that reducing the daze duration from 1,5 secs to 1 secs would be a good change, but deleting the instant nature would just kill it. But prove me wrong and show me your gameplay vs decent player with it, i wanna see that godlike reaction time interrupting a 0,75 secs skill with something that has cast time itself). Mantra of Distraction has more counters than most utilities in this game. Sounds weird for an instant skill but it is because the only remarkable value it has is when interrupting what can be countered very easy and in a lot of ways or it is part of a oneshot as simple vulnerability stack tool, the whole combo can be countered very easy too.

But in the end we can agree to disagree, i hope balance team at least will think about that and don't overreact like casuals to a completely balanced and skillful mechanic needs to be like that or just get killed. Same as for other instant skills i mentioned. Cast time/ delay/ animations i only think are needed for Mantra of Pain and Ele Fresh Air mechanic. Other instant skill only need little tweaks in dmg or effect duration, thats all, no need to kill the playstyle or the flow of a class and lower skill ceiling by preventing comboing just because ppl are too lazy to learn at least 3 out of the 10 mentioned counters to a skill and use some brain when fighting against it.

That you compare skills like Fear me with a simple daze you can dodge during it, shows that you rly don't have much of a clue what you are talking about. A daze is way "softer" in its cc nature than a Fear or Taunt.

A Warrior can cc stun lock chain you with stuff you can't dodge anymore, you need a stunbreak for it and you complain about Mantra xD Sure the lock downs from Warrior are not instant but they are lock downs, that is exactly the difference. When a Mesmer daze chain you, you can just laugh dodge or simply run away/ los whatever and wait for your counter pressure being rdy again. If you get into a Warriors cc chain without a stunbreak rdy you are dead.

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@Crab Fear.1624 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:
  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.

NO, please stop with this pattern of nerfing/buffing things, changes like these are why the game is totally unbearable today.

The trait is good at it is at the moment, it helps a lot of condi builds that are not even viable or good, the only one that is overperforming is condi s/d.Please instead of nerfing a trait/skill until it becomes garbage (like most of your balance patches) start looking at the bigger picture.

What's wrong here is sword #2 interaction with panic strike, and it has been long before PoF (remember condi thief ventari rev meta) you never removed condi thief, you just nerfed it and people realized core was better now it's the same, you nerfed core power and people realized condi thief is much better.

Remove the poison from panic strike, it's the easiest solution you can do, it will literally have 0 effect in any situation, what makes panic strike worth of choosing is first the other traits are worse and the immobilize effect is crucial in some situations for thieves (chasing) that's it, the poison is unnecessary so remove the poison and add anything else, boom you delete condi s/d thief for good and you don't nerf other condi builds.

Nerfing deadly amibition won't really affect condi s/d daredevil.

But this change will really, really hurt all other (manageable) condi builds.

Take away the poison from panic strike, leave deadly ambition alone.

THE problem is the overpumped playstyle of s/d daredvil (condi).

Please, just go after panic strike and remove the poison.

If you remove poison from Panic Strike you will severely hurt P/D Condi, better remove immob from Sword#2 and replace it with cripple + chill or slow. (very low durations on chill/slow of course)

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@"Jekkt.6045" said:Hi Cal and welcome to the hell's kitchen :)I want to keep this as short as possible while still talking about as much as possible about my observations.

First i want to talk about the current meta builds:

Demolisher elixir holo:this build has too much sustain for the amount of damage it puts out. the damage should be brought down, or the sustain. either should be fine.

d/sh + gs spellbreaker:basically the same as holo. one problem skill i see is bull's charge. this skill is too good. it's an evade, it's a gap closer, a 3s knockdown and deals up to 6k damage on a quite low cooldown. rework rampage to something else that isn't a transform. shake it off is too unbalanced. it's too much condi cleanse on one button while warrior doesn't have enough sustained condi cleanse elsewhere.

tactics a/sh + gs core warrior:damage output is even higher than spellbreaker for the price of a lack of anti pressure tools (full counter) but with higher sustained healing through for great justice and tactics. the anti barrier trait should be reworked, this trait is an unfun hardcounter to weaver and scrapper. some counters are fine, but this is too much.

s/p + staff mirage:this one is quite difficult. on the one hand, it's very oppressive in a 1v1 and on the other hand quite useless in teamfights. i think both is unhealthy and should be changed. in a 1v1 the problem is the ability to deal a high amount of condi pressure while being invulnerable and in teamfights the problem is that it's hard to apply condis to a target because it's single target and because projectiles hit targets between you and your actual target.

s/d + sb condi daredevil:many people dislike this build quite a lot but i actually think its power level is fine. what i don't like about this build is that it operates with way less skills than power s/d and d/p that have to use multiple skills to deal damage while condi mainly uses infiltrator's strike. what i would do is move the condition application to skills that come after infiltrator's strike. an example would be: instead of applying poison on immob, apply poison with attacks to immobilized (can even include crowd control effects like stun etc) targets.

healer firebrand:i think support firebrand is mostly fine. it's possible that its healing output needs to be lowered a bit if it's too much after the power level has been decreased.

shiro power herald:this build is mostly fine in my opinion. what i'd like to see (and that's my personal opinion) is a very light damage nerf and a bit more condi cleanse.

weaver:weaver is probably fine the way it currently is. maybe burning duration on skills, or cooldowns on priordial stance could be reduced/increased a bit. i have my personal problem with the design of the whole build though. i dislike the way its defense works, mostly relying on evades, a bit of healing and the invul. i think weaver's defense is no fun.

those are the builds i consider to be on a meta power level.

now i will talk about other things that need some attention.

"stall builds" or tanks, however you want to call them.Some people might dislike them, but i find them quite interesting. they can change the dynamic of a match which is a healthy addition in my opinion.with the reduction of power in the game a close eye needs to be put on such stall builds that they don't become completely unviable. they should still keep their worth as a build that punishes the enemy team if they take too long to kill it with 2 players, but should also be balanced in a way that keeps them from being unkillable at all. their balance should be handled very delicately.

healer builds:i would very much appreciate it if other healer builds could be made viable. currently, the only viable healer is firebrand. tempest for example just falls short in terms of healing output and condition cleanse. tempest has slow sustained healing with not so great condition cleanse which makes it very hard to sustain against heavy condition pressure for an adequate amount of time and struggles in general to heal low hp allies. druid suffers from similar problems. the problem with support ventari revenant are of a different nature. one problem being the tablet. it's quite hard to send it to moving players and heal them. you need to pre cast the heal skill and move the tablet, hoping your ally will not use a teleport. imo the radius around the tablet should be increased to 600 from 240. another problem is the ventari elite. currently, you can use it to decap nodes whichs is kinda fine because rev as a healer is basically unviable (because of the radius). this skill should be changed from a knockback to a stun or knockdown.

there are some other builds that i would like to see buffed and some changes i'd like to see:

core d/d ele (damage output too low to be viable)

shoutbow warrior (longbow pressure is too low. f1 burning needs to be buffed, other longbow skills could use a buff too)

warrior traits: weaponswap cooldown trait should be made baseline. either completely, or at least 7.5s with the trait reducing it to 5s. hammer trait should be moved somewhere else. it's quite difficult to make a hammer build because you need more than you can take.

berserker without burst skills when not in berserk mode feels terrible. also, berserker hammer burst cone hitbox is bad compared to the circle of normal hammer burst.

buff celestial amulet, its stats are currently too low, making it too weak to even consider.

scourge nerf was wrong. the skills should have been tuned down, not its defense/offense taken away.

bring back geomancy sigil but reduce the hit damage it used to deal (the spikes if anyone remembers)

more amulet options, example, thoughness version of vitality combinations and vice versa (example, avatar variation with toughness instead of vit).

reduce boonspam and reduce boon corrupt

Wooh man I agree with a lot of this, i'm satisfied that there are others who think like me out there. HYPE!!I'll touch on a few things I disagree with.

Weaver - I guess it's not really a disagreement, though my only suggestion for this build would be to cut down the amount of burn per swapping to fire on enemies be reduced from 2 to 1, as 2 is pushing it a little, given they have other sources of burn through skills and utils etc. This way they still keep the pressure on their enemies, without being possibly way too oppressive unless they build for full damage and sacrifice survive for the damage, though then it wouldn't be a duelist and more a roamer/skirmisher.

Warrior traits - Not sure if baselining weapon swap to a smaller time frame would be ideal in my opinion, though I think that maybe berserker (to use their burst skills more often) should generate more adrenaline per strike as a baseline in their trait. Keep the reduction in defense, I think that's a healthy tradeoff as it will shine doing what it does best: going berserk and demolishing things with overwhelming power. Maybe some damage reductions on things like gunflame though as well as it can crit stupidly high. And yes, the barrier damage increase trait definitely needs to be toned down. 50% increase? I mean c'mon....10-15% would be understandable but 50% is crazy high. They already do great damage, that's just overkill.As for Warrior skills, GS 3 should have its damage toned down, and Bull's Charge should see a big damage nerf since it has so much utility plugged into it already. Else, nerf the utility.

Necromancer - In general, PLEASE for the love of all things good reduce the uptime of fear. Being feared forever is annoying. Reduce its base uptime to .5s, being fear locked for more than 4s at a time is just unfun.

Scourge - While I also agree that a tone down of their barrier output from their mechanic skills (besides desert shroud) would have been a good choice to go with, I do kind of like the idea of being more careful in how you place the shades down. As it was before, it was hard to get in and punish the scourge for them making a mistake because they could just use their mechanic skills and still punish you despite their mistakes. This changed opened up a bit more counterplay to their pressure. I don't think the build that's mostly run now should be changed much, as it's meant to be a damage dealing carry through condition pressure, unless Anet decides their barrier output is still too high.

Mesmer - Again not really much of a disagreement, I think Sharper Images should be looked at and reduced to a 50% chance to deal bleed on illusion crit. Also, the Phantasmal Duelists shoot 8x, while the Mesmer only shoots 3x. I think the illusions should match the Mesmer's attack output of 3x, as there is a trait that causes pistol skills (if I'm not mistaken this also applies to clones/phantasms) to proc bleed on hit. So definitely look into that.

Now, lets say the powercreep is dying down finally, and we're starting to see healthier gameplay. I wanted to bring this into light, as I think I'm the only one who actually plays this.Currently, I run a Scrapper build that focuses on dealing heavy damage to opponents in the form of a Roamer/Skirmisher. It uses Flamethrower in a power setup along with Juggernaut. I'll tell you the main issue I see with the build I use.As the powercreep currently is, it's fine. But once the powercreep starts to die down, it's going to need to be adjusted. Because it will be ridiculously broken if left alone after all is said and done. This build can almost indefinitely hold 25 stacks of might. Because of this, I can literally spray 6-7k auto attacks clean each time (unless they just dodge 4Head). 6-7k for autos...is pretty darn big. But as this powercreep currently is, it's justified as other things can hit stupidly hard too. So, what would I want to see nerfed? 2 traits: Mass Momentum and HGH.My build runs Firearms 3-3-1, Alchemy 2-2-1, and Scrapper 3-3-3. HGH on elixir use (all my utils are elixirs on this build, namely U, C, and X) grants 2 stacks of might for 15s. While this doesn't seem like much, 15s baseline is a lot. add 20% uptime thanks to HGH, on top of Boon Duration increase from Alchemy itself, and it can get up to 20+ seconds of might (Also thanks to Juggernaut increasing might uptime by another 20%). Couple this with Sigil of courage, every second I am hitting my enemy, I gain ANOTHER stack of might for 10s (maybe more, unsure if the sigils might durations are affected by Boon Dur increase etc). I easily, with no need for team support, keep my might at 25 stacks. That is just absurd honestly. If you're going to keep the might gain at 2 stacks for HGH, lower the uptime to 8s. If you cut down on the stacks of might from 2-1, then keep the might gain at around 12-15s, as it's only 1 stack. If Sigil of Courage is affected by boon duration increase, that should also stop and be unaffected by boon duration increase. And then Mass Momentum, maybe reduce the might stacks to 3s instead of the current 5s, or if it's going to be 5s, make it so it's also unaffected by boon duration increase. All in all, it's going to need to be nerfed, and might not make it to your radar unless someone like me speaks up about it.

This can apply to any and everything though. All in all, just don't let things escape your radar just because it's not used. According to many people (of which I do not agree whatsoever), just because it's unused means it's bad automatically. When it could mean that the other options are just that much stronger, and if toned down, will give other things that are secretly overtuned their chance to shine and dominate things and ruin things etc. But all in all, I agree with what the write of this comment says with pretty much 100%.

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Its been said before, but to me these are the top priority issues right now:

  • Passive might stacking and high uptime of certain boons. Self stacking 25 might, and high to near permanent uptime of boons such as quickness, stability, and protection needs to be toned down.
  • Passive playstyles/damage while dodging. This mainly applies to mirage infinite horizon, and daredevil lotus training + uncatchable. These skills make dodging a major part of their dps, and create very passive playstyles with minimal opportunity for counterplay. Staff daredevil and to an extent sword weaver would be other builds that fit this description.
  • Power damage needs to be reduced. This issue is related to self might stacking.
  • Condi application, cleansing, and passive cover condis need to be looked at. Right now condi is incredibly bursty, where it is far too easy to completely overwhelm your target with 6+ condis, or very high stacks of 1-2 damaging condis. At the same time, its far too easy to remove huge amounts of condis.
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@"SeikeNz.3526" said:

you need start with the basics mechanics then you start nerfing every class:

Evade frames:

Evade on hit is very toxic and unskillful mechanic, evading while hitting should be removed or give it only for some specific very low dmg skills.if you want a skillful game you need to give evade only for players that know when to use it not spam it forever, players need to know when to dodge/block and not random spam it.

Example of toxic unskillful evades: death bloosom (thief), whirlwind attack ( warrior)Example of skillful evades: twiste of fate (weaver), quickshot(ranger), phase retreat(mesmer)

Blocks are an evade mechanic but they are skillful

Stability:

Stability boons are good but should give only one stack per skill slot, some skills give like 5-10 stacks of it, so they become unstoppable and the classes that has it are the ones with one shot potential so you can't stop them a.k.a holos/warriors/rangersremove stability stacking from some skills buff the time up, give like protection/stability then a stun breaker, not 5 stacks of stability, stack of stability should be only for using more than one skill or receiving from another character.

CC:knock downs/stuns need to have a lower duration, some knock downs can get you on the ground for 3 whole seconds, that's enough to some classes kill you before you can even react, even if you are supposed to have a stunbreaker you should not die because you get hit by it.

Damage on classes that has infinite cc:

A class that has alot of cc should not be allowed to have high damageDamage need to be scaled down on some power classes, all you need to do is lower the coeficient from power, no matter how much of toughness you have you going to be "one shotted " after an stunlock.

Might is not the problem, Damage of some power classes are the big problem, they scale too well with power so when they get Might they start one shoting people, the problem is the power scaling of some skills, some skills can scale too high with power and on top of that they can stun lock you to death, A.k.a Holos/warriors.

holos and warriors can stunlock you and on top of that you going to die in 2s because of their damage potential, unless you have a stunbreaker and one teleport skill.some skills need their coeficient from power tunned down, 50 power can turn into 500 damage on your head.just give skills lower coeficient from power like ranger shortbow has, not so lower though.**

Balance stats:

stats are not very balanced, a perfect balance should be when a player pick only toughness and the other pick only power and when they fight each other they should die at same time, then the player skill factor will influence here, when a player know how to dodge, when to block, when to cctoughness now is useful but not as useful as power, like i said before no matter how much toughness you have you going to die in 2 hits because power scale is too high on some weapons.

also, all classes need to be able to have a fair fight vs any other class, classes need to change only the playstyle

Boons need to be class specific:unless it's a support class that should have all kind of boons sharing

like alacracy is only for chrono/rev/ren

quickness should be only for chrono and fb/thiefs/rangersprotection should be only for warriors/guardians/scrappersmight should be only for elemental/warriors/reapers

Condi clear need to be removed from dodge rollswarriors/holos dodge rolls, yeah this break condi classes just because some classes can just dodge roll and negate all the damage

Condi is not a problem!!

condi is not a problem the problem is how some classes stack it.

Thief/dd can stack all kind of condi just for dodging or teleporting to you then running away and you are dead, you can't react and can't attack back, poison from thiefs need to do way less damage also they need to stack less condi type so you can clean better, just give a trait for their poison -50% less healing and lower their damage from poison by half.

mirage can use ambush from clones it's like 3 players attacking you, just remove ambush from clones.

Now you can start nerfing/buffing some classes

Classes that need a buff:

Druids

Druids traits are very good but the profission mechanic is the worst of the game right now, it's take too much time for the full energy, the heal is not even that good, the damage is bad and you can't use the skills right because of the long cast times while immobile.how to fix it:While reapers and holos can enter in their form everytime they want druids can't, give a buff on energy generation(2x more) and let druids enter in avatar form whatever they want not just after the full bar or let them enter after 20% of the bar has reached, remove the cd to enter in avatar form, their skill will still have cd of course, this will fix druids and glyphs, because everytime that you need avatar form you don't have full energy, so they can choose when to atk or heal, every 6,6% of the energy bar will be 1 second of avatar form, this will change the class alot and will be fun to play.

Elementalists

they need too much player skill to play while there's no trade off for that, staff is the worst weapon, it has a giant cast time for a low damage, in a fast paced game like gw2 means death, you can't stay imobile while being squish to do such low damage, their traits need to work no matter what element they are on, if you choose spec to water/light/earth and you equip fire on combat you lose 90% of your traits, its like fighting untraited, even if they have "4 weapons" it's the only class that fight theoretically untraited, while other classes specific weapon traits work even when you are not equiped with that weapon for half of the power, at least give the traits half of the power when they change the element and they will be fixed, reduce cast time from staffs or give more damage, doing this you going to buff tempests at the same time.

another suggestion is give them 5s buff of "element memory", can be a little floating orb on their shoulder, so they can dance around elements and have the traits working for 5s for the previous element

dragonhunter bow

dragon hunter bow is too slow with low damage, even if it's very fun to play, but you can't compete with a ranger in any form, if you try to fight one 1v1 you going to be destroyed because rangers have more damage, more range, faster attacks, more hp and a pet, give dragon hunter more damage for the bow or faster hits, you always have to change to gs to do damage, also deflecting shot should do knockback even without a trait because you are forced to pick it if you want to be useful.also HP, 11k hp is a joke for a guardian while holos/thiefs/warriors can crit you more than that.

Buff base hp to 15k atleastBuff damage of the bow skills because it's slow so it need to do more damage, need at least 25% more damage on the skills to be viableSpear of justice should do more burn stacks to worth the lost of virtue trait

chrono

fun class to play but it's like a boon bot, you are not the only class with quickness neither alacracy, then you need to shatter but your clones die in one hit and you can't shatter, any other class can out damage you and you don't have IH evasion like a mirage.give chrono slow on every shatter skill since they are master of time right? so it's going to be a offensive and defensive buff at same time, slow people down while being fast.need to fix clone shatters too, they shatter before they reach the enemy or get stuck doing no dmg. (times catch up -superspeed) should be a passive clone effect without a trait and rework it for another stats.(times march on) should be a perma speed rune(99%speed) or they should be immune to mov impairing conditions, chrono have the same speed of a dragon hunter what is a joke to the master of time, because any class have swiftness while mesmers don't have easy acess to it unless you go focus and that's bad for pvp, any class can catch you and you don't have any form of protection, even mirages have superspeeds on dodge!!suggestion put times catch up as a minor trait, put times march on as a major trait and give the same speed of rune of speed.

chrono concept need to be fast while slowing people down!! alot of classes can outrun it and attack faster, a holo/warrior/ranger can jump on you and can't outrun them!!they can clean your slow just be dodging and they will melt you in 2 seconds.

shield is another joke 30s cooldown and 40s cooldown on pvp it's like 10 deaths while sword block is only 12s cooldown!! echo of memory should do damage even if the attack is blocked as a counter attack, also lower the cd to 20s, tides of time is another joke 40s cooldown is very extreme, this should be 25s cooldown and 15s if you catch it, the damage is too low for shield combination since you need to go sword or scepter.

Soulbeast daggeri really don't see a point in picking it on main hand even if it's the soulbeast main weapon, the range is too low and damage not worth it, lower the cast time of dagger skills, the quickness buff from leap should be around 5s to 10s.

Classes that need a nerf:

like i said before if you change the basics most of the op classes will be nerfed/fixed already.

warriors/holos/thiefs

WarriorsToo much CC/Dmg/defense/sustaina class witth alot of cc should not be able to do high damage, just lower the power coeficient from weapons.

Holos

Too much CC/Dmg/defense/sustainthey can 10k hit you from range and knockdown you at same time, while having quickness and attacking without a cast time, if you try to fight back they will just stealth, get invulnerable, run away and reset the fight, you can't stop them because of the stability stacks, totally broken.

Thiefs/DD

can teleport to you and have evade up time forever, can stack 10 poisons plus all kind of condis on you with only one attack/dodge, unless you are a warrior with full condi clear you going to die, like i said before i think they should rework the poison from thiefs, nerf the damage to half but buff the less heal to 50%-60%, this will make them anti-healers but counterable, also sword 2 imobilize need to be removed because they can spam it and you can't move to fight back.

Rangerssick em is the only nerf needed, they can one shot people with rapid fire.

Mirageeverything is fine only IH is broken, let clones evade but remove ambush from it.also you can rework clones for more fun, remove all kind of damage from clones, but buff their hp a lot, give the player a little more damage, make clones run when the player run, make clones attack when player start attacking, yeah they will mimic you and players will have more hard time trying to get you and now you are really a mirage without doing op condi stacking

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Mirage still has no real trade off either so its no surprise people hate it just as much as holo who also has a very minimal tradeoff. Both have great sustain via defensive tools and tons of offensive pressure thats far too unhealthy for the game.Having to use evade to do damage mean you haven't this evade to evade burst/damage which is the definition of tradeoff."tons of offensive pressure" = low setup before strarting hurt while every ambush have obvious animation.Go into details please what is tons of offensive pressure, what is trade off, what is great sustain.Thats not a trade off thats just a part of the elite spec play style dont get the two things confused.Reaper has to stay in melee range to do realistic damage but thats not its trade off this is part of its play style.

Reaper's Its trade off is higher life force cost to use it's shroud mechanic which has less defense for more cleave and upfront damage and the loss of core shroud skills.Mirage trade off is not existent among the shatter skills. Not that the current meta really encourages you to use the shatter skills anyway. You can just leave clones up and alive especially staff clones to do tons of damage. through autos and Infinite Horizon.Yep, mirage ins't encouraged to shatter at all because ambush & clone auto do more damage than shatter since a years of nerf.So if I base my explanation with your trade off definition :Having to use evade = less survival to damage
is
a tradedoff.Moreover, you trade shatter/burst gameplay to a more lissed pressure over time. (<= and it's true because a core condi mes with illusion will have higher burst while not having good dps.).Clones auto and ambush aren't an asset since they can be kitted/brained as long as you don't melee rollface on a point.

The fact that mirage is a hot topic means its a problem and its one of the bigger problems that needs to be looked at sooner rather than later.No, it's a fact that mesmer is a problem since release because of illusions / targeting problem for the majority of the player base since the release should it be viable or not.Thats not what we are here to talk about.This explain the "hot issue" and make people like me bored (to not say angry) of gameplay destruction and unviability because of this same player base who will always has issue as long as mesmer pop a clone. Particulary when argumentation is 100% feeling and extrapolation with no data behind....Well you have alot of people 100% "Feeling" something needs to be done and sooner rather than later this is factual data.

In truth it does not matter. The only data or facts we need is based on what they dev said.
"If its good right now it's considered to be stronger than we want it to be"
This factually includes mirage considering its the main combat choice of the mesmer profession in pvp at the moment. You dont need data to know this. This is the reality of the situation.

Yeah Mirage is the main choice for mesmer now what is the mirage representation globally and at high level ?(Even with NA who seems to have 50% mes representation, when you add WvW and EU PvP, it drop more than you can think.)

@DinoStone.2485 said :Mesmer-Mirage is, as always, a broken kitten, and needs to be toned down so much-The lack of distortion on chrono is great (just wanted to thank you for that)Yeah the chrono change is sooooo good that we didn't see them anymore, thanks for this definition of a good mesmer rework who highlight how think most mesmers whiners here. =) =) =)
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@Elxdark.9702 said:

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:So, for the purpose of this discussion, consider these two future updates. First for the short-term:
What outliers do you see in the current meta?
Then think about the big picture:
What issues do you see on a fundamental level that should be addressed?

Hey there and Thank you for the Update.

I have to ask, are the sentences in
bold
ment as questions for the players or an example of what is the Team going to ask themselves when balancing/spliting?

Also, you say it should be focused mainly on splits, does it mean we should not expect changes to functionality of skills, but instead simple number tweaks?

Would
for example
, caping might stacks at 10 be considered a split or somewhat complicated change that is for now off the board?

For this post, these questions are for the players as discussion topics. They are also things that the team is discussing internally as we look toward these balance updates.

I want you all to focus on splits because those are the changes we can do with no impact on the rest of the game. If a split makes sense for PvP or WvW, we can just do it. Functionality changes require larger discussions about the impact on the whole game. We are starting discussions internally about things that are not addressable with numbers changes, because there are things that need a functional change but need to change for the sake of competitive modes.

Game mode-specific boon caps is something that we have talked about, but there are other ways that we can solve some of these problems. For the example of might, I'd want to look at the sources and durations of might applications. 25 might isn't necessarily a problem if it requires significant investment from multiple team members, but a single player self-stacking 25 might is something that probably shouldn't happen. There's also the possibility of splitting the effectiveness on a game mode basis.

im glad ur back at arenanet (:

but yea delete condi thief

Very near future release note:
  • Deadly Ambition: The internal cooldown of this trait has been increased from 5 to 10 seconds in PvP only. The stacks of poison has been decreased from 2 to 1 in PvP only.We're not sure it's enough but hopefully a good start.

NO, please stop with this pattern of nerfing/buffing things, changes like these are why the game is totally unbearable today.

The trait is good at it is at the moment, it helps a lot of condi builds that are not even viable or good, the only one that is overperforming is condi s/d.Please instead of nerfing a trait/skill until it becomes garbage (like most of your balance patches) start looking at the bigger picture.

What's wrong here is sword #2 interaction with panic strike, and it has been long before PoF (remember condi thief ventari rev meta) you never removed condi thief, you just nerfed it and people realized core was better now it's the same, you nerfed core power and people realized condi thief is much better.

Remove the poison from panic strike, it's the easiest solution you can do, it will literally have 0 effect in any situation, what makes panic strike worth of choosing is first the other traits are worse and the immobilize effect is crucial in some situations for thieves (chasing) that's it, the poison is unnecessary so remove the poison and add anything else, boom you delete condi s/d thief for good and you don't nerf other condi builds.

They are looking at the bigger picture. The problem lies in Daredevil s/d because the traits that allow it to stack 6 poison in one go, on top of other things that give poison, are what causes Daredevil s/d to be as unbearable as it is now.

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@viquing.8254 said:

@Itz Jay.8941 said :Nerf condi mirage hard, this spec has so much evasion it should be pushed more into playing power or hybridFalse, It has less evade uptime than many other metaclass when looking at vigor uptime, endurance regeneration and evade skills.

@"shadowpass.4236" said:

Mesmer

If you ignore there was a year of nerf, your post is useless.

  • Problem
    : Combined with
    , this trait means that
    alone can apply anywhere from 8-16 stacks of long-duration bleeding. Also, coupled with Mirage’s exceptionally high access to CC’s, this means that pistol skills can recharge nearly instantly.
  • Solution
    : Currently, this trait bleeds on EVERY hit from pistol attacks from you and your illusions. Instead, change this to 33% chance to bleed on CRITICAL hits like most other bleeding-related traits. Also, remove the 25% cooldown reduction on interrupt and make it a flat 20% cooldown reduction on pistol skills.You know that it's normal for a spell with 20+ sec CD, 0.5 sec cast, visible animation to hit for 6 to 8k over 3+sec ? Specialy when traiting for this ?It's better to have an instant direct 5k on many skill with bugged or no animation like some class can do ?

No this is not normal (speaking on "it's better to have an instant 5k on many skill" part), and is part of the problem of the power creep. Just because other things can do it currently, does not mean it's fine. That's not a good comparison example. As Cal said: think of the BIGGER PICTURE as a WHOLE. This is why things all across the board are being brought DOWN, because the powercreep is currently too high.

  • Problem
    : Again, this trait is 100% chance on critical hits to apply a 5-8 second bleed (Carrion vs. Deadshot amulet). This results in insane amounts of bleeding stacks with little effort on the mesmer’s part.
  • Solution
    : Similar to
    ,
    ,
    , and
    (basically every single bleed-on-attack related trait), make it 33% on critical hits and reduce the bleeding duration to 3 seconds because the effect can trigger from 3 different sources.All the class you link didn't have viable condi build, maybe there is something linked, dunno.

"Viable" or not, the fact that 2 phants that can hit 8x (the actual mesmer skill for pistol 4 only hits 3x), causing bleed thanks to a trait that allows pistol skills to bleed already (I assume pistol skills on illusions count as these pistol skills as well) coupled with a trait that, if they crit, automatically causes bleed is absurd. You don't see this?

  • Problem
    : These trait multiplies the effectiveness of a Mirage’s ambush skills by FOUR times. Instead of using lesser versions of ambush skills, every illusion uses the exact same attack the player uses. This results in:
    4 dazes
    from
    ,
    from
    ,
    from
    , and
    from
    . Keep in mind, these ambush attacks can be SPAMMED and all of these conditions I listed are applied PER USE.Lol at the link from 1 years.Ok it's not possible now to do this.Aaand : Problem : how mirage put pressure without IH ?Keep in mind these ambush can't be spammed because you haven't neither perma vigor, neither endurance regen, neither other way to sustain than evade.
  • Solution
    : The ambush attacks from illusions still trigger but ONLY the animation and minor power damage. They should NOT apply any conditions or other effects. This trait should be used to confuse enemies not obliterate them with multiple, high condition stacks.People, like write in this thread are actually enough confuse with illusions, I'm sure they prefer took the damage while just the mesmer attack buffed with the number of illusion than the opposite.

While I agree they shouldn't have their mirage cloak skills taken away from them, the illusions should at least disappear after use of IH, imo.

  • Problem
    : Dodging while disabled should not exist.CC fiesta on every class shouldn't exist while no building into it.Passive autostab or other CC immune should neither exist.Fix theses first plz.
  • Solution
    : Remove the ability to dodge while disabled.Did you find viable build on core mesmer without stealth ? Once you show me a prove that this kind of build can even be considered, you can apply your solution.

I don't think dodging while evading is the issue, the issue is within how they can perpetually cause massive condition pressure thanks to some overtuned traits. So I agree with you on this.

  • Problem
    : This skill is a 4.75 second cooldown, 2 second duration block that summons 2 clones and applies 7 stacks of torment (5 on trigger, 1 per clone).This skill as a 8 sec cooldown and apply 5 stack of torment. (the 600 damage from clone can be deleted.).Strangely you miss to talk about confusing image who does less damage than other class similar weapon for same gear ?
  • Solution
    : Increase the cooldown to 10 seconds (8 seconds while traited) and reduce the torment on trigger to 3.Solution 1 : don't rollface.Solution 2 : cleanse.Solution 3 : evade during the counter effect.Solution 4 : be out of range.Solution 5 : use a unblocable skill.Solution 7 : use a evade while attacking/blocking skill like many spec can do.Solution 6 : LoS.

While some of these solutions make sense, the way you present them and most of them are just....not very brilliant in terms of suggestion. Because lets face it, not everything runs a build with unblockables, high mobility (eh well maybe currently everything does run high mobility because it's a bit necessary, which is stupid), and permanent evades. Also consider the fact that CC like immob does exist and prevents movement so LoS, while it's smart, may not always be accessible? Offer an informed and well educated suggestion.

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@"shadowpass.4236" said:

Mesmer


(This is from a thread I made a year ago)


Duelist’s Discipline

  • Problem: Combined with Sharper Images, this trait means that Phantasmal Duelist alone can apply anywhere from 8-16 stacks of long-duration bleeding. Also, coupled with Mirage’s exceptionally high access to CC’s, this means that pistol skills can recharge nearly instantly.
  • Solution: Currently, this trait bleeds on EVERY hit from pistol attacks from you and your illusions. Instead, change this to 33% chance to bleed on CRITICAL hits like most other bleeding-related traits. Also, remove the 25% cooldown reduction on interrupt and make it a flat 20% cooldown reduction on pistol skills.

Sharper Images

  • Problem: Again, this trait is 100% chance on critical hits to apply a 5-8 second bleed (Carrion vs. Deadshot amulet). This results in insane amounts of bleeding stacks with little effort on the mesmer’s part.
  • Solution: Similar to Sharpened Edges, Sharpshooter, Barbed Precision, and Bloodlust (basically every single bleed-on-attack related trait), make it 33% on critical hits and reduce the bleeding duration to 3 seconds because the effect can trigger from 3 different sources.

Infinite Horizon

Mirage Cloak

  • Problem: Dodging while disabled should not exist.
  • Solution: Remove the ability to dodge while disabled.

Illusionary Counter

  • Problem: This skill is a 4.75 second cooldown, 2 second duration block that summons 2 clones and applies 7 stacks of torment (5 on trigger, 1 per clone).
  • Solution: Increase the cooldown to 10 seconds (8 seconds while traited) and reduce the torment on trigger to 3.

First of all, stop taking stuff out of your ass .Illusionary counter has 8s cd, not 4,5. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusionary_CounterSpawned clones go throught motion of autoattack the same way normal clones do, so adding that to the damage is just not very smart.

Illusionary axes, DO NOT apply 25stacks of torment, dunno where you took it from, in fact if you use it with 3 clones, and all axes land, thats 12 stacks of torment ( less then half ) and 9 stacks of bleed ( assuming all 9 hits crit 50% chance, times 9 its almost impossible )

Pistol bleeds, Im not sure if nerfing pistols damage by 85% is a solution here, how about we nerf rapid fire from ranger by 85%? im sure you would be thrilled about that.

Clear bias shown as usual, when you speak of your main its buff this, buff that, wrongly changed shmack. When you speak of mesmer nerf thi by 85%, nerf that by 66%, remove this remove that. yikes.

tldr. at least get the facts right before you complain.

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@otto.5684 said:

@Tulki.1458 said:My number one balance concern (which is relevant to PvP but not specific to it) right now is the philosophy of elite spec tradeoffs.

On paper, giving elite specs tradeoffs so that core builds are viable is a good idea. It opens the door for more build options.Unfortunately, this philosophy was pursued only partway and then dropped. And now we're left with a number of elite specs that have tradeoffs baked into them, and a bunch that do not have any tradeoffs whatsoever.

What are your plans around this philosophy? Are you going to continue it? If you are not, are you going to revert the tradeoffs you've already made to specs like Scrapper and Chronomancer?

The current plan is to continue adding tradeoffs to elite specs that don't have them.

I will say this one more time. Unless the core builds can compete with elites, this is a facade. And the elites that you tried to do this with, almost all are not sPvP viable, like: chrono and berserker. The concept from a design strategy.. is wrong. And this has been a trend of all these redesigns. So far, the only one that worked is scrapper. And after 2 re-makes, it ended-up kinda where it started...

You need to determine how core builds can be competitive first, before making unnecessary changes to elites, that so far, have been completely off the mark.

I think core builds can be competitive with the tradeoffs added to elite specs. What should also be considered, is the tradeoffs to skills themselves. For example, skills with a lot of utility built into them should not also offer high damage, and high damage skills should not also offer great utility etc. There has to be a tradeoff. Another example, skills on super low, or no, CDs should not be hitting like a truck, while skills with high CDs should not be hitting for so little you can take it legit sit there and take it as if it's worthless. Same with high animation skills, skills with high cast times, etc etc. Many factors play into how skills should do their damage, if any damage at all, based on things like cooldown, resource used, built in utility, cast time, animation speed, and many more.But once the proper things are toned down, other things can start to shine more because now they won't be overshadowed by all the broken things that are currently running rampant in the game. I'd be inclined to put some good faith in Cal, he's been around for a while and I think he knows what's good for the game.

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@Cal Cohen.3527I actually do have one more question i hope you wouldn't mind answering on the subject of boons vs boon conversion. This came to thought last night as i talked with a friend who brought up a good point. His point calling out how thief can take certain boons before others regardless of what boons are covering the more valuable boons.

When it comes to boon stealing with thief i know that a thief will always steal some critical boons in a certain order before any other boon.With the reduction of boons that might be planned in the future has there ever been any talk about the lesser strips and corruptions that remain after also always targeting specific more valuable boons that often need to be corrupted in a key moment over others or always targeting boons in a specific order based on their value? Ive noticed that some times some boon corrupting/strip skills can be blocked by the aegis boon in some instances while in other instances depending on the skill it may get corrupted or stripped.. Another example you see would be rampage but the warrior has several other boons covering the stability you really need to hit in the key moment to give you a fighting chance and your corrupts fail to hit it due to other cover boons. Resulting the boon corrupter/stripper making the right play and still being punished after the fact this also some times happens with instance of full counter or weavers after they gain stability from stances etc.

Is there a possibility some boon strips or converts can target only offensive boons over defensive ones while others are more geared to target defensive boons before offensive ones?

Or do you think that things overall will kind of even out as things get toned down all together?

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@viquing.8254 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Mirage still has no real trade off either so its no surprise people hate it just as much as holo who also has a very minimal tradeoff. Both have great sustain via defensive tools and tons of offensive pressure thats far too unhealthy for the game.Having to use evade to do damage mean you haven't this evade to evade burst/damage which is the definition of tradeoff."tons of offensive pressure" = low setup before strarting hurt while every ambush have obvious animation.Go into details please what is tons of offensive pressure, what is trade off, what is great sustain.Thats not a trade off thats just a part of the elite spec play style dont get the two things confused.Reaper has to stay in melee range to do realistic damage but thats not its trade off this is part of its play style.

Reaper's Its trade off is higher life force cost to use it's shroud mechanic which has less defense for more cleave and upfront damage and the loss of core shroud skills.Mirage trade off is not existent among the shatter skills. Not that the current meta really encourages you to use the shatter skills anyway. You can just leave clones up and alive especially staff clones to do tons of damage. through autos and Infinite Horizon.Yep, mirage ins't encouraged to shatter at all because ambush & clone auto do more damage than shatter since a years of nerf.So if I base my explanation with your trade off definition :Having to use evade = less survival to damage
is
a tradedoff.Moreover, you trade shatter/burst gameplay to a more lissed pressure over time. (<= and it's true because a core condi mes with illusion will have higher burst while not having good dps.).Clones auto and ambush aren't an asset since they can be kitted/brained as long as you don't melee rollface on a point.

If thats the case i demand life force consumption for reaper be reverted immediately, skill 5 should be a reveal like is in core shroud skill 2 should blink you to your target and the auto attack should fire arc projectile if the target is not in range lets just ignore profession mechanic trade offs for the sake of defending your main class and pretend playstyle is the trade off.

IF you cant understand my joke here then there is no reason to continue the conversation because we will just go back and forth endlessly looping back to the start of the subject where i define what anet sees as a trade off for an elite spec and then you tell me your own made up version which comes from the play style but not the profession skill mechanic (the shatters) and then start poking out other details in other areas that drag the conversation even farther off topic.

Lets just agree to not agree and we can wait and see what happens we can hope that it works out for everyone in the long run ??

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Emapudapus.1307 said:Since i am playing mostly
necromancer
PvP (mostly legend in HoT times), these things i think are bloated atm, not fun to play against or use, but necessary because of other powercreep. Also i think there also needs to be splits of traits between elite specialisations since they preform so differently and for one specialisation it can be useless and for other overpowered.:

Sorry but im gonna reply to this one cause i see a few things that are concerning and fairly questionable in your suggestions.

-GS 4 reaper: blind, cripple, boon corrupt, dmg, dark field, longer lasting; too much of everything.Really this just needs to be sped up keep the blind and cripple. Depending on how much boons get culled down depends on if it should keep its corrupt or not-Spectral walk: too bloated atm, duration too long or removal of condi removal.This is probably fine as is you have to remember necromancer lost its spectral mastery trait and the spectral skills (except spectral armor for some odd reason) were compensated as a result.-reaper onslaught: too bloated, perma quickness with ferocity too much, previous trait was better. Promotes unhealty oneshot builds.Well there is no such thing as a 1 shot build on necro that simply does not happen right now unless you stand there and let it happen. There is no skill or combo of skills that nukes you from 100-0 in 1.5 seconds in necros kit. Reaper does not do damage that you dont see coming unlike alot of the other professions, ref, mirage, soul beast, etc, Most classes can often survive a full soulsprial even let alone if they dodge its obvious animation.I agree the quickness should be removed from this trait but the ferocity is fine unless we see all other classes also lose ferocity or other similar stat traits. I would suggest making reaper shroud just faster at its base (so its not clunky but also not quickness level fast roughly 30% faster down from 50% that quickness gives) you could easily do this by reducing all the cast times in the reaper kit by 33% of their current base its the same thing as effectively making the skills faster.-Master of corruption: the effect is too strong. For it to be balanced the original cooldowns have to be too long, extra conditions arent fun for anyone (aka nerf to heal from 24 to 30 sec and 2 conditions on heal use)This makes no sense really. Depending on how long you have been playing you would know that Consume conditions for example use to orginally be 24 seconds and got Nerfed up to 30 seconds with the addition of self vuln application.-fear of death: bloated trait. It should give you max 50% fear duration which dont make condi duration less valuable.First of all make fear a hard cc then we can talk about cutting its duration. Currently has way too many counters and this makes core un-viable in the pvp setting as fear application is one of its main lines of defense.-deathly chill: split between reaper-core-scourage.This leads me to think you dont know what you are talking about, or trolling possibly? Because deathly chill is a reaper only trait. There can be no core/reaper/scourge split. Not like this trait is commonly used anyways.-death perception: should be reverted back to 50% crit (too many dmg modifiers give rise to oneshot builds).Necormancer cannot currently perform a 1 shot build unless you stand there and dont do anything at all. It cant sneak up to you and 1 tap you to death. The old version was far too much crit chance at best reduce the ferocity gain only if other professions also lose ferocity/other stats on their stat bonus traits-corrupt boon: its not overpowered but as its design atm with many condi cleanses and many boons, its too spamy and low impact (low impact not by itself but from enemies and their cleanses or bloated use of boons)Im not sure its spamy but the only reason necromancer has so many is because so many other professions have a ton of boons that also need to be removed (way more than the necromancer has) and can handle.

And things that got undeserved, unfun changes or made them useless/pointless:

-Warhorn 5: rework made it prety useless, pointless and unfun, lower range, shorter duration, no cripple, not working with blood traitline for siphons, killing all synergy. Should be rerolled back.I feel like it does not need to totally be re rollled back. How ever the duration that it pulsed over time before should be rolled back. There are some beneifits to having a mobile aoe that does not strike (full counter procs, retaliation procs, shocking aura procs, frost aura procs, etc)-Parasitic contagion: could be buffed little and working while in shroud or split between scourage and others.I feel like this is one of the traits that should not change till we see how all the other nerfs work out.-consume condition: shouldnt apply condition on youBut you want it when traited to apply 2 conditions and have a higher base cd as stated above???-Plaguelands: revert to old spell except for scourage, atm its unfun and useless and in vanilla GW2 it was quite interesting spell to use.No point to doing this now imo the old skill did make you tanky but was not that exciting for me personally-Lichform: rework? I dont know whats its purpuseIt may not need a total rework once we see the other nerfs come through but i still think it needs some major QoL if this gets nerfed as it is right now its a dead skill in general. The cd is already too high and the skills are lackluster and clunky.-Blood bond: it feels little weak atm, before bugfix when it also healed it was good, noone was complaining its too strong.Lol no that was broken you just never saw a good player use it with Signet of suffering. Trust me this trait is fine as it is.-cold shoulder: (for me personaly) less dmg recieved from chilled enemies was better for me than dmg done to chilled enemies, too many +% dmg modifiers makes dmg bloated.If only chill application was viable in pvp (its currently already not a thing and surely wont be with more reductions coming) At best this trait can be one that meets in the middle with 5% offence 5% damage reduction-soul eater: unthematic traitline undergone many iteration now it lost its purpose and its too restrictive (like range or not working in shroud) unfun to use.I would say remove the range limit and healing factor from it all together and it might be fine.-Axe 2: too clunky if ppl use evade or dodge or something on it. Needs quality of life improvements.Lol this is fine as perhaps lower its damage slightly and speed up so that it strikes slightly faster (but can be evaded in a single dodge)-soul spiral: poison duration could be increased back to before nerf, would help with bruiser role little and if someone wants to go back to condi reaper.No reason to do this as reaper as been slowly going toward the power role. The poison is only there to help combat healing for a short period.

Deathly chill was typo, i ment dhuumfire.As for one shots i ment that they promote them and not like they have it. I am just saying that it promotes unhealthy gameplay towards others and unskillfulll, simple low effort/high efficiency gameplay (perma quickness in shroud + free ferocity). In my opinion the quality of gameplay of reaper was greatly diminished since the change (but at thee time needed because of power creep).And you misunderstood master of corruption. I ment that because its strong cooldown reduction the original cooldowns are high (even consume condition was nerfed from 24 to 30s), which i think its not good design. And extra condi on you is not fun for anyone, specially on heal.

And why you think blood bond was broken? Necro doeasnt have tank build so it didnt help with unkillable build. Power has to take 2 traitlines to be reliable (curse and blood), which lowers their dmg, same for condi with blood. And 1v1 necro also wasnt broken because of it. Maybe if they tone down everything it will be too strong, but even then i think current version could see some improvements.

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@Emapudapus.1307 said:

@Emapudapus.1307 said:Since i am playing mostly
necromancer
PvP (mostly legend in HoT times), these things i think are bloated atm, not fun to play against or use, but necessary because of other powercreep. Also i think there also needs to be splits of traits between elite specialisations since they preform so differently and for one specialisation it can be useless and for other overpowered.:

Sorry but im gonna reply to this one cause i see a few things that are concerning and fairly questionable in your suggestions.

-GS 4 reaper: blind, cripple, boon corrupt, dmg, dark field, longer lasting; too much of everything.Really this just needs to be sped up keep the blind and cripple. Depending on how much boons get culled down depends on if it should keep its corrupt or not-Spectral walk: too bloated atm, duration too long or removal of condi removal.This is probably fine as is you have to remember necromancer lost its spectral mastery trait and the spectral skills (except spectral armor for some odd reason) were compensated as a result.-reaper onslaught: too bloated, perma quickness with ferocity too much, previous trait was better. Promotes unhealty oneshot builds.Well there is no such thing as a 1 shot build on necro that simply does not happen right now unless you stand there and let it happen. There is no skill or combo of skills that nukes you from 100-0 in 1.5 seconds in necros kit. Reaper does not do damage that you dont see coming unlike alot of the other professions, ref, mirage, soul beast, etc, Most classes can often survive a full soulsprial even let alone if they dodge its obvious animation.I agree the quickness should be removed from this trait but the ferocity is fine unless we see all other classes also lose ferocity or other similar stat traits. I would suggest making reaper shroud just faster at its base (so its not clunky but also not quickness level fast roughly 30% faster down from 50% that quickness gives) you could easily do this by reducing all the cast times in the reaper kit by 33% of their current base its the same thing as effectively making the skills faster.-Master of corruption: the effect is too strong. For it to be balanced the original cooldowns have to be too long, extra conditions arent fun for anyone (aka nerf to heal from 24 to 30 sec and 2 conditions on heal use)This makes no sense really. Depending on how long you have been playing you would know that Consume conditions for example use to orginally be 24 seconds and got Nerfed up to 30 seconds with the addition of self vuln application.-fear of death: bloated trait. It should give you max 50% fear duration which dont make condi duration less valuable.First of all make fear a hard cc then we can talk about cutting its duration. Currently has way too many counters and this makes core un-viable in the pvp setting as fear application is one of its main lines of defense.-deathly chill: split between reaper-core-scourage.This leads me to think you dont know what you are talking about, or trolling possibly? Because deathly chill is a reaper only trait. There can be no core/reaper/scourge split. Not like this trait is commonly used anyways.-death perception: should be reverted back to 50% crit (too many dmg modifiers give rise to oneshot builds).Necormancer cannot currently perform a 1 shot build unless you stand there and dont do anything at all. It cant sneak up to you and 1 tap you to death. The old version was far too much crit chance at best reduce the ferocity gain only if other professions also lose ferocity/other stats on their stat bonus traits-corrupt boon: its not overpowered but as its design atm with many condi cleanses and many boons, its too spamy and low impact (low impact not by itself but from enemies and their cleanses or bloated use of boons)Im not sure its spamy but the only reason necromancer has so many is because so many other professions have a ton of boons that also need to be removed (way more than the necromancer has) and can handle.

And things that got undeserved, unfun changes or made them useless/pointless:

-Warhorn 5: rework made it prety useless, pointless and unfun, lower range, shorter duration, no cripple, not working with blood traitline for siphons, killing all synergy. Should be rerolled back.I feel like it does not need to totally be re rollled back. How ever the duration that it pulsed over time before should be rolled back. There are some beneifits to having a mobile aoe that does not strike (full counter procs, retaliation procs, shocking aura procs, frost aura procs, etc)-Parasitic contagion: could be buffed little and working while in shroud or split between scourage and others.I feel like this is one of the traits that should not change till we see how all the other nerfs work out.-consume condition: shouldnt apply condition on youBut you want it when traited to apply 2 conditions and have a higher base cd as stated above???-Plaguelands: revert to old spell except for scourage, atm its unfun and useless and in vanilla GW2 it was quite interesting spell to use.No point to doing this now imo the old skill did make you tanky but was not that exciting for me personally-Lichform: rework? I dont know whats its purpuseIt may not need a total rework once we see the other nerfs come through but i still think it needs some major QoL if this gets nerfed as it is right now its a dead skill in general. The cd is already too high and the skills are lackluster and clunky.-Blood bond: it feels little weak atm, before bugfix when it also healed it was good, noone was complaining its too strong.Lol no that was broken you just never saw a good player use it with Signet of suffering. Trust me this trait is fine as it is.-cold shoulder: (for me personaly) less dmg recieved from chilled enemies was better for me than dmg done to chilled enemies, too many +% dmg modifiers makes dmg bloated.If only chill application was viable in pvp (its currently already not a thing and surely wont be with more reductions coming) At best this trait can be one that meets in the middle with 5% offence 5% damage reduction-soul eater: unthematic traitline undergone many iteration now it lost its purpose and its too restrictive (like range or not working in shroud) unfun to use.I would say remove the range limit and healing factor from it all together and it might be fine.-Axe 2: too clunky if ppl use evade or dodge or something on it. Needs quality of life improvements.Lol this is fine as perhaps lower its damage slightly and speed up so that it strikes slightly faster (but can be evaded in a single dodge)-soul spiral: poison duration could be increased back to before nerf, would help with bruiser role little and if someone wants to go back to condi reaper.No reason to do this as reaper as been slowly going toward the power role. The poison is only there to help combat healing for a short period.

Deathly chill was typo, i ment dhuumfire.As for one shots i ment that they promote them and not like they have it. I am just saying that it promotes unhealthy gameplay towards others and unskillfulll, simple low effort/high efficiency gameplay (perma quickness in shroud + free ferocity). In my opinion the quality of gameplay of reaper was greatly diminished since the change (but at thee time needed because of power creep).And you misunderstood master of corruption. I ment that because its strong cooldown reduction the original cooldowns are high (even consume condition was nerfed from 24 to 30s), which i think its not good design. And extra condi on you is not fun for anyone, specially on heal.

And why you think blood bond was broken? Necro doeasnt have tank build so it didnt help with unkillable build. Power has to take 2 traitlines to be reliable (curse and blood), which lowers their dmg, same for condi with blood. And 1v1 necro also wasnt broken because of it. Maybe if they tone down everything it will be too strong, but even then i think current version could see some improvements.

imo reaper in a power build struggled to kill anything considering when HoT brought it to the game it was suppose to be the go to melee cleave down spec that was offered for the necromancer. IT was ball means a busier who could 1v3 on a point with ease. (i dont consider that healthy gameplay either) slowly they shifted reaper to a power dps role and to do that it needed marjor tune ups in the power dps department compared to alot of other power dps roles. Even now the base shroud is far too slow to work as a proper power up / effective mechanic. The moment quickness comes off RO its going to feel clunky even more so for players who have gotten very use to RO now over the years.

As for blood bond other classes dont get to keep their abusive skills and traits, note ranger gs auto chain evade, and the obnoxious lockdown (that was CI mirage) why should necro get to keep something like that thats not an intentional thing. I try to look at things from a fair perspective i dont agree that its bugged state was healthy for the game for the few players who did know about it. (alot of people never knew it was bugged like that)

Moving back to reaper i think they need to remove the quickness from RO in both pve and pvp and maybe drop the ferocity in pvp only down to maybe 150 (if other professions also lose bonus stats on their traits as well because it would be fair that way). From there give RO a new mechanic perhaps it modifies one of the skills in the reaper shroud kit instead.But they also need to compensate the default reaper shroud in all game modes making it faster overall say 30% down from 50% so it feels comfortable to use and not clunky slow. Just don't bump it to quickness levels of speed. this opens up trait selections in all 3 grandmasters and allows reaper to have higher potential in pve when grouped with other players who can give it quickness.

This improves its top end power in pve when groupedLowers its effectiveness in pvp and wvw reasonably allowing it to feel strong and at the same time opens up its build diversity againGives the shroud itself some QoL

which is probably good on both parts of the game overall

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@Ghos.1326 said:

@Itz Jay.8941 said :Nerf condi mirage hard, this spec has so much evasion it should be pushed more into playing power or hybridFalse, It has less evade uptime than many other metaclass when looking at vigor uptime, endurance regeneration and evade skills.

@"shadowpass.4236" said:

Mesmer

If you ignore there was a year of nerf, your post is useless.

  • Problem
    : Combined with
    , this trait means that
    alone can apply anywhere from 8-16 stacks of long-duration bleeding. Also, coupled with Mirage’s exceptionally high access to CC’s, this means that pistol skills can recharge nearly instantly.
  • Solution
    : Currently, this trait bleeds on EVERY hit from pistol attacks from you and your illusions. Instead, change this to 33% chance to bleed on CRITICAL hits like most other bleeding-related traits. Also, remove the 25% cooldown reduction on interrupt and make it a flat 20% cooldown reduction on pistol skills.You know that it's normal for a spell with 20+ sec CD, 0.5 sec cast, visible animation to hit for 6 to 8k over 3+sec ? Specialy when traiting for this ?It's better to have an instant direct 5k on many skill with bugged or no animation like some class can do ?

No this is not normal (speaking on "it's better to have an instant 5k on many skill" part), and is part of the problem of the power creep. Just because other things can do it currently, does not mean it's fine. That's not a good comparison example. As Cal said: think of the BIGGER PICTURE as a WHOLE. This is why things all across the board are being brought DOWN, because the powercreep is currently too high.

  • Problem
    : Again, this trait is 100% chance on critical hits to apply a 5-8 second bleed (Carrion vs. Deadshot amulet). This results in insane amounts of bleeding stacks with little effort on the mesmer’s part.
  • Solution
    : Similar to
    ,
    ,
    , and
    (basically every single bleed-on-attack related trait), make it 33% on critical hits and reduce the bleeding duration to 3 seconds because the effect can trigger from 3 different sources.All the class you link didn't have viable condi build, maybe there is something linked, dunno.

"Viable" or not, the fact that 2 phants that can hit 8x (the actual mesmer skill for pistol 4 only hits 3x), causing bleed thanks to a trait that allows pistol skills to bleed already (I assume pistol skills on illusions count as these pistol skills as well) coupled with a trait that, if they crit, automatically causes bleed is absurd. You don't see this?

  • Problem
    : These trait multiplies the effectiveness of a Mirage’s ambush skills by FOUR times. Instead of using lesser versions of ambush skills, every illusion uses the exact same attack the player uses. This results in:
    4 dazes
    from
    ,
    from
    ,
    from
    , and
    from
    . Keep in mind, these ambush attacks can be SPAMMED and all of these conditions I listed are applied PER USE.Lol at the link from 1 years.Ok it's not possible now to do this.Aaand : Problem : how mirage put pressure without IH ?Keep in mind these ambush can't be spammed because you haven't neither perma vigor, neither endurance regen, neither other way to sustain than evade.
  • Solution
    : The ambush attacks from illusions still trigger but ONLY the animation and minor power damage. They should NOT apply any conditions or other effects. This trait should be used to confuse enemies not obliterate them with multiple, high condition stacks.People, like write in this thread are actually enough confuse with illusions, I'm sure they prefer took the damage while just the mesmer attack buffed with the number of illusion than the opposite.

While I agree they shouldn't have their mirage cloak skills taken away from them, the illusions should at least disappear after use of IH, imo.

  • Problem
    : Dodging while disabled should not exist.CC fiesta on every class shouldn't exist while no building into it.Passive autostab or other CC immune should neither exist.Fix theses first plz.
  • Solution
    : Remove the ability to dodge while disabled.Did you find viable build on core mesmer without stealth ? Once you show me a prove that this kind of build can even be considered, you can apply your solution.

I don't think dodging while evading is the issue, the issue is within how they can perpetually cause massive condition pressure thanks to some overtuned traits. So I agree with you on this.

  • Problem
    : This skill is a 4.75 second cooldown, 2 second duration block that summons 2 clones and applies 7 stacks of torment (5 on trigger, 1 per clone).This skill as a 8 sec cooldown and apply 5 stack of torment. (the 600 damage from clone can be deleted.).Strangely you miss to talk about confusing image who does less damage than other class similar weapon for same gear ?
  • Solution
    : Increase the cooldown to 10 seconds (8 seconds while traited) and reduce the torment on trigger to 3.Solution 1 : don't rollface.Solution 2 : cleanse.Solution 3 : evade during the counter effect.Solution 4 : be out of range.Solution 5 : use a unblocable skill.Solution 7 : use a evade while attacking/blocking skill like many spec can do.Solution 6 : LoS.

While some of these solutions make sense, the way you present them and most of them are just....not very brilliant in terms of suggestion. Because lets face it, not everything runs a build with unblockables, high mobility (eh well maybe currently everything does run high mobility because it's a bit necessary, which is stupid), and permanent evades. Also consider the fact that CC like immob does exist and prevents movement so LoS, while it's smart, may not always be accessible? Offer an informed and well educated suggestion.

It was meant subjectively meaning it has too much evasion for what it does.....

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Regardless of how much everyone disagrees with each other's suggestions, I think this is the wrong thread to create arguments.

It's a rare opportunity where Arenanet directly asked us for our opinions. We should keep this thread clean.

~ Just gonna throw that in there.

Couldn't agree more. For the first time in awhile I'm excited that PvP could turn a sharp corner -- and I don't want the players to get in their own way (like IMO they often do).

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Ele Wish ListFrom my understanding, There’s now more control over skills and numbers within PVP and WVW only. Here’s a few things on Ele that I wish would change in these game modes.

Traits-Earth Traitline is underperforming and needs buffs. If these changes only make it to PVP. So be it.Elemental Shielding- Protection lasts for the duration of the Aura (4 sec).Is 4 seconds of protection really game breaking? I’m honestly shocked this hasn’t been changed already.Serrated Stones- Increased damage from 5% to 7%.Nearly every single trait in GW2 involving increased damage via conditions has a baseline of 7%. If not 10%!Earth’s Embrace- Cast Armor of Earth while struck below a health threshold of 33%. Cooldown reduced to 60sec.This suggestion is moderate, compared to Emergency Elixir for Engineer, which grants 3k barrier and protection, every 40 sec. Armor of Earth only grants two boons, and yet Anet is treating it as if it grants invulnerability.

--Further changes are in this link. Hopefully more changes will be made throughout the game because Earth Traitline isn’t strong enough to compete with every other core traitline. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/90607/earth-traitline-is-in-need-of-buffs#latest

UtilitiesArmor of Earth- Reduce to 40 sec. Reduce the amount of Stab to 3. Who needs 10 stacks of Stab anyway? Stability at the moment is too reliant on Elite Specs when it should be a core mechanic.Conjures- Eliminate Cast time to create conjure. Elite Conjure remains 1 sec. Conjures are never used.One reason why is because the cast time is way too long. Pvp specifically is fast paced. If nothing can be changed about the conjures in general, at least reduce cast time. Alternative weapons need to be ready on hand as quick as weapon swapping.Unravel-Reduce count recharge to 15 sec. Reduce stance duration to 3 sec. I don’t get why Primordial Stance got buffed to 20 sec, when it was already performing great, but Unravel remained the same. Most Ele’s complain that Unravel is underperforming.With this change, Unravel will only effect one element, instead of 2, but will also be able to be used more often.
Tornado-Skill applies protection in addition to previous affects. Tornado is not nearly as strong as rampage. Lack of defense is one reason why.
Aquatic Stance- Eliminate Cast time and increase base healing of initial heal. No one uses this stance because Signet of Restoration does the same thing but better. Create equal competition between both skills.

Dagger SkillsEarthen Rush- Reduce cooldown to 12 sec.This skill got nerfed many times until it’s the same skill as Burning Speed. But burning speed has a much lower cooldown. If they’re gonna be the same skill, make the cooldowns the same.
Steam Surge- Increase Duration of Water field to 4 sec. Dagger is a squishy weapon. Why is the only skill with sustain on a 2 sec water field duration. Sword, which has much higher built in sustain already has a 4sec water field.Grinding Stones-Increase Radius to 240. Damage reduction increased to 33%

I see a lot of suggestions asking for Evade frames on weaver to be reduced. I understand weaver has a lot of built in defense; however, if the plan is to reduce evade frames, please reduce evades on Twist of Fate, not weapon skills. Twist of Fate is a 20sec break stun, superspeed, and evade. If traited, it even grants Stab. It’s a strong skill. Nerfing TOF would be fair, not sword evades.

Tempest-Plenty of People have said it already, but Firebrand is a much better support than tempest. This is because Tempest does not give out as much boons or as much cleanse. Buffs must be made for Tempest to Compete.

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@"Ghos.1326" said :"Viable" or not, the fact that 2 phants that can hit 8x (the actual mesmer skill for pistol 4 only hits 3x), causing bleed thanks to a trait that allows pistol skills to bleed already (I assume pistol skills on illusions count as these pistol skills as well) coupled with a trait that, if they crit, automatically causes bleed is absurd. You don't see this?With no traiting, this phantasm do meh damage considering the animation/cast/CD.What I see if we talk about same trait comparison is that we have a 3 sec vigor on crit while other have 5 sec for example to jump into the initial argumentation.Also they put bleed because if they put any other condition there would be way more whine (can't imagine replacing it by confusion/torment will pass for example.).

I don't think dodging while evading is the issue, the issue is within how they can perpetually cause massive condition pressure thanks to some overtuned traits. So I agree with you on this.I disagree about the "massive aspect of condition" as long as I can with a powermirage win or pressure enough to anticap a condimirage.Ofc you can't facetank it on point but with little kite/LoS is very easy to nullify the condimirage output.

@ZDragon.3046 said :If thats the case i demand life force consumption for reaper be reverted immediately, skill 5 should be a reveal like is in core shroud skill 2 should blink you to your target and the auto attack should fire arc projectile if the target is not in range lets just ignore profession mechanic trade offs for the sake of defending your main class and pretend playstyle is the trade off.In that case I demand to have ambush on shatter instead of on evade then we can talk about no counterpart.Effectively if you can't see the counterpart of mirage cloak currently it's not needed to discuss more.But I will be here every nerf based on personnal view with no factuals data behind.

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:Regardless of how much everyone disagrees with each other's suggestions, I think this is the wrong thread to create arguments.

It's a rare opportunity where Arenanet directly asked us for our opinions. We should keep this thread clean.

~ Just gonna throw that in there.I'm gonna put a end of perpetual mesmer whine based on feelings with no argument other than "I want to play easy mode against a class". Whatever it came from.Note that I don't care about real discussion with explanation.With this we can have a real discussion, not only a whine list of people coming here after getting killed by X in the game.

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