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Potential Future Balance Changes - PvP


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@bravan.3876 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Actually axe is rly not as bad as most ppl think. I think the weapons is in a good spot. Played around with it lately in case staff will be trash after nerfs.

Exactly axe puts out good dps and a player who knows what they are doing can kill you with it much faster than they can with a staff.It also still encourages the user to actually actively use their shatters instead of actively not using them. People just dont do it because there is no reason to so long as staff provides great dps while boosting a defensive plays tyle.IT works against most situations so why use anything else.The damage is good enough and its safer so why use anything else.Staff also provides utility along side the great damage while axe is more just geared to damage so why use anything else.

Fighting an Axe mirage does not bother me. Fighting a passive staff mirage pains me greatly.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:You can kite pets. Rock Gazelle hurts but I don't think ranger is as egregious as you're claiming now, especially with the unblockable synergy soulbeast had being trimmed.

I have to say i dont agree with you here which is strange.Pets can be kited only if the ranger does not run beast mastery which most do run.

Otherwise the pet has far-greater mobility passively than you do as a player in combat let alone ones that have dashes, leaps, blinks, etc There is no realistic kiting them at general in combat speeds.

The only way you avoid pets generally is if you have constant access to superspeed or stealth which breaks their targeting causing them to run back to the pet owner or to another target till you re appear this might be enough of a gap to make pets seem avoidable. But generally on most professions that cannot stealth often there is no kiting the pet. The pet is going to get you how much it gets you depends on the situation.

The pets are viable mostly at point blank range even with beastmastery traited because 80% of pet attacks are 1s+ cast time and with stop animation , the more skilled the opponents the harder to land any pet attack as you need to find gaps in the enemy defensive rotations and even if manage that..the rock gazelle is the only one that can deal huge power burst due to a bug when it happens...other pets can deal as much dmg as an AA from a warrior or thief..which is still good in my opinion.

The main reason why rangers are forced to get beastmastery is because Anet (apologetically) said that increasing attck/speed of core pets would cause problems with the same models used in the core game hence why HoT/PoF pets are better overall.

Pets are the ranger mechanic and they're part of the dmg not a separate entity like people want to believe, without the pets the overall dmg of rangers drop by a lot...almost by 70% , outside couple heavy hitting skills ( maul and rapid fire ) the DPS of ranger is rather lacklustre ; considering the fact that PvP offers a more controlled DPS environment, a PvE benchmark can be used more effectively to demonstrate what I am saying.

My only gripe about ranger pets is that attempting to kill the pet is not a viable strategy to reduce the rangers effectiveness (currently). The pets that are not the birds are generally as tanky as another player and can be swapped too easily on demand or revived via soul beast fusion with no punishment. In pvp or wvw if you are under attack by a ranger killing the pet should be a viable option to reducing the rangers effectiveness. But you dont really have that choice so you have to ignore the pet and just avoid its key skills for the most part.

P.S I don't justify bugged attacks like rock gazelle and with that said I believe that tanky pets should offer support option for the player and only rock gazelle remains outside the spectrum and possibly bristleback, but I do expect squishy pets, that die in a couple aoe , to deal as much dmg as other profession auto-attacks in the 1-2k range ..anything less would be completely unreasonable

Any pet that can perform a Disabling attack even more so attacks that are not commanded by the ranger do need to be made more visible imo. Some pets have these kind of things others dont.

I agree with this. I think heavier emphasis should be placed on well-timed pet swaps, pet protection and control (F3 anyone?) and their active skills. Instead of, as it currently stands, fights being at times decided by random AI behavior that cannot be predicted. Pets like Rock Gazelle are obnoxious as hell, not only because they have multiple CC effects, but because they hit hard as heck on top of that.

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@viquing.8254 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :I think this is a bit off putting for one i dont think staff damage output should be what it is period no matter how you shift it. Axe should be the go to tool for hard condi dps from mirage but very few mirages use this because of the ease of staff.Mirage don't use axe
not because staff is better
but because axe get overnerfed and bad designed :The 3rd skill have plenty of ground bugs and half time positionnate you too far of your target to hit them while doing average direct damage and lol condi damage.Every class in the game has bugged skills you are not alone here get in line lol.The 2nd skill don't do much damage/soft cc, need to be in melee and you are a free target when you use it.Thats the high risk part and its a condition weapon you should not expect it to do high damage immediately thats how condition weapons are suppose to work.The first skill has average cast to little damage, is melee.Once again you are not the only one here either get in line thats kind of a general thing for good number of classes. See necro scepter for example, slow damage not soo good and ramps slow. Warrior sword also melee pretty slow in cast speed and condi ramp.The ambush can be reflected and was nerfed hard.But this is also a a fact of the staff ambush but its not a problem there? Projectile reflection is counterplay for any projectile it would be odd if it couldnt be reflectedAxe mirage actually applies the things you just listed. Its more active with good damage output and has higher risk and requires the mesmer to play offensivelyWho play a high risk, no reward tools ?That should be how most people play if a build has very low risk and very high reward then expect people to complain about it. I personally like the axe on mirage the 3 skills is pretty solid gap close / evade the 2 skill while its not an evade is not the the worst thing ever but i mean you do have the option to dodge while performing the 2 skill to avoid taking damage which makes it completely safe on use.

Also the conditions are pretty limited 2 main damaging conditions which is good because its easier to know what you should avoid and what you dont need to avoid vs staff autos which are slightly rng.Staff clone auto has a 1.75 sec delai + slow projectile moving animation for approximatively 1000 condi damage (counting the bounce). On every PvP map, it's more than easy to bait them considering the setup before they start doing some pressure.Getting hit by a few staff autos might not do much damageIt's the case. Who consider 1700 dps ((3*1000) / 1.75.) as a high pressure (less in practise because I didn't count it as condi duration.).while in other moments a few hits from staff autos might cause tons of damage.Tons of damage = how much ?Give me details please as you are a pro mesmer with data behind.The reason i point out how staff autos can do rng sytle dps is because the staff auto inflicts one of 3 condition all of which do varying ranges of damage as each of the conditions is scaled quite differently. Lets say you take 10 hits of winds of chaosOf those 10 hits you could get 7 bleeds 2 torments and 1 burn which is moderate possibly even pretty low damage over timeOROf those 10 hits you could get 2 bleeds 2 torment and 6 burn which is pretty heavy damage over timeBurn deals considerably more damage than bleed will and considerably more damage than torment even if you dont proc any burn but proc a ton more torment than bleed thats still pretty heavy damage over time for just passive auto attacks.

Ideally just eating autos from staff can be nothing bad or can be devastating depending on RNG.

All of this while boasting a passive defensive play style with hard defensive tools on top of it that you need to force out.We haven't choice than to play passive as they over-nerfed the active (aka condi application with shatter.).

I dont feel like thats true shatters are the same as core mesmer shatters its just fact that its greater passive dps to not shatter than it is to shatter them Axe mirages actually need to shatter or are encouraged to do so with their playstyle which leads to much higher burst potential than staff can perform its also more risky to play however.

There is also the matter of the fact that staff attack bounce around meaning there is potentially no end to the condition application so long as you are trying to engage the mirage it just is constant application.I counted the bounce in my calculations.

Ideally swapping to staff should lead to a dps drop for the utility and defensive play style it provides.Thanks for proving again you have no clue about this class.What will left if you drop the utility and defensive play ?You hope to kill someone with 3 confusion stacks during 4.5 sec on a 25 sec CD or with only an obvious animation from pistol fantasm ?

It's good to everyone, please don't make suggestion for thing you don't know anything apart from the fact that they kill you someday.

I dont have anything else to add ?

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Bruiser is a useless term that at best only means having a mix of physical defense and physical offense.

No, it's a useful term that actually differentiates bursty and glassy damage dealers from sustained damage & defense brawlers.

And I'm sure you're smart enough to realize that both Scrapper
to be a Bruiser and Holosmith ending up being a bruiser will always cause issues in design and giving both specializations a role/niche until holosmith is forced into a glass canon role.

Scrapper and Holo are the exact same role, that's my entire point. The design intent is not to be that way,
bro, I know.
Holo will never be forced into a glass cannon role, that's nonsense. Holo damage isn't even high-reward enough by nature, such as power mesmer or deadeye. It's just such high sustain so that you can reliably overwhelm people over time with spam. If Holo was as glass cannon defensively as Deadeye or Power Mesmer, without a reliable high burst combo it'd be trashcan. Holo will never be glass cannon without extreme reworks to increase burst and decrease sustain. (EDIT: Possibly forcing Holos into Photonic Blasting Module playstyles could achieve this, instead of spammy vent exhaust assaults.) Therefore, Holo is not even fundamentally built to be a mandatory high risk high reward, it's very foundation is contrary to the intent, it's meta build is a bruiser archetype, neither high risk nor high reward.

Holosmith isn't a bruiser. It's a Master-Of-All.

You're just jumping in on a conversation only about the glass cannon vs. bruiser archetypes and inserting more "Holo is overtuned."
Yeah bro, we know it's among the best bruisers.

Bruiser became more of a legitimate term specifically in regards to League of Legends because of the way that game is design the development team found that melee dps were so severely underpowered compared to range that they needed to be especially buffed defensively in order to compete. So the game had two ways of dealing melee DPS, assassin which are extremely fast or bruiser which are slow but defensive. Key point being slow. Holo is far, far to mobile and slippery to be considered slow by any metric. It's probably 3rd in terms of decap/chase/disengage behind thief and sword mirage.

You can design Holosmith to be glassy and difficulty and risky to play without needing to increase it's damage. It's damage and CC is already capable of rushing down an enemy extremely quickly (Oh and Rush Down is an actually useful term to describe gameplay style). And good holosmiths will dunk on players doing exactly that. The problem is that the second the get outplayed because of their resustain and disengage they can jack hammer you 2-3-4 times until they get the kill because of their extremely over the top resustain potential. If you're really outplaying an opponent you shouldn't need that many resets.

Regarding Deadeye and Power Mesmer, I have serious issues with how those playstyles exist in their current form as well. Deadeye was originally designed to be very similar to draw comparison to an Exodia Deck playstyle. They knew putting a legit sniper rifle character into an RPG is a difficult balance talk. So that's why malice existed but there had a number of clear design flaws in rifle and core thief traits that rewarded just sitting around stealthed casually accumulating malice until you hit max malice stacks and one shot an opponent. Deadeye should be a medium damage ranged class with a unique Exodia Deck style mechanic, it just shouldn't be able to have permanent stealth while doing so and rely more on good positioning.

And Power Memser I have a laundry list of issues with but I 100% feel it's damage should be forcibly decompressed so it can't overlap into an effective one shot mechanic. I have the opposite opinion of condition mirage, it's damage potential should be forcibly compressed from an endless barrage of clone autos and ambush attacks where at any given time there is a damage pulse theatening into a handful of weapon skill shots and scatters needed to down opponents.

And Whataboutx isn't a great argument even though I humored you about it.

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Bruiser is a useless term that at best only means having a mix of physical defense and physical offense.

No, it's a useful term that actually differentiates bursty and glassy damage dealers from sustained damage & defense brawlers.

And I'm sure you're smart enough to realize that both Scrapper
to be a Bruiser and Holosmith ending up being a bruiser will always cause issues in design and giving both specializations a role/niche until holosmith is forced into a glass canon role.

Scrapper and Holo are the exact same role, that's my entire point. The design intent is not to be that way,
bro, I know.
Holo will never be forced into a glass cannon role, that's nonsense. Holo damage isn't even high-reward enough by nature, such as power mesmer or deadeye. It's just such high sustain so that you can reliably overwhelm people over time with spam. If Holo was as glass cannon defensively as Deadeye or Power Mesmer, without a reliable high burst combo it'd be trashcan. Holo will never be glass cannon without extreme reworks to increase burst and decrease sustain. (EDIT: Possibly forcing Holos into Photonic Blasting Module playstyles could achieve this, instead of spammy vent exhaust assaults.) Therefore, Holo is not even fundamentally built to be a mandatory high risk high reward, it's very foundation is contrary to the intent, it's meta build is a bruiser archetype, neither high risk nor high reward.

Holosmith isn't a bruiser. It's a Master-Of-All.

You're just jumping in on a conversation only about the glass cannon vs. bruiser archetypes and inserting more "Holo is overtuned."
Yeah bro, we know it's among the best bruisers.

Simply: Holo's damage is still too good for how much sustain it is able to pack into its build.

Holo is basically able to devote its entire build to defensive options because it gets all the damage it needs from its free kit.

If core engi or scrapper wanted to do that, they would have to devote at least 1, probably 2 traitlines to damage as well as 2-3 slot skills.

Holo just gets it all with photon forge which has no meaningful downside.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:And Whataboutx isn't a great argument even though I humored you about it.

Whataboutx is not my argument.. so no idea what you're talking about. I was clearly illustrating of the differences between 2 of the multiple high risk high reward builds versus specs that aren't at the high reward omega burst combos from stealth or afar that doesn't rely on chain CC'ing opponents without stunbreak & stab. Obviously if you have a low risk build it evens out, but you if the class doesn't have omega burst combos you can't just force it into a glass cannon, you can only force it out of play.

Edit: With reworks Holo could be a glass cannon but the build doesn't exist atm

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@shion.2084 said:Hello,For Bias... I play a non-meta Holo and am typically a low plat solo player. Not that the tier means much given the crapshoot that match making is.

I have only ever played engineer in PVP since game begin. Most seasons, if I don't get totally hosed by match making, I end up around the same place. So Holo was no more successful for me than core, or scrapper, etc.

I think that removing stability as a means of balance is a poor choice.

1) You will exacerbate the complained about behaviour -

If your plan is to limit a holo to having to use corona burst to get stability, and it is still required that it hit the target at relatively close range, then what you've done is just made Holo's play to the hated play style of hit and run even more. Because they will have to be even more opportunistic to avoid ranged CC which they won't have a means of defending against.

You will push holo's to an even higher YOLO damage output style to compensate.

2) You will reduce general enjoyment by leveraging a known MMO no-no

Being CC juggled is not fun. Generally things that might as well have you take your hands off the keyboard and wait for 10 seconds for it to be over.... is not fun. Balancing by forcing this onto a class is just going to reduce game play enjoyment.

If you ask my opinion, it is the combination of rifle and Holo that make for the problem. The combination of jump shot, and the knock back available, blunderbuss and Then Holo mode allow the holo to do too much juggling, with a big 5k jump shot area finish.

To do what holo does is a large risk, they melt under focused attention, they can't stand on a point in general mele, the meta build isn't great at dealing with a serious condition applier. Essentially what annoys people is that these attributes force a meta Holo to run off, reset and ambush again. The thief has the same sort of pattern and draws similar ire.

As for the effectiveness of a holo, when I deal with them I basically have to get out of the way of the first big barrage, if I have cooldowns and reflexes up to do it I then have to chase them down. The problem being they often pick a time when I'm on cool down to attack and then I'm toast. A warrior is currently a tough match up off node against a holo, a thief is quite difficult to deal with, Mesmers can drop you, a good Ele can kite but not usually kill. I do well against guards. I do passably against revs having a slight advantage. With Necros its very one sided. If the reaper gets the drop on me, it's game over and vice versa.

I know there's a lot of holo hate, but I'm not seeing more than 1 on the opposing team typically and they aren't seeming to draw the best stats. The meta version is very annoying though because of its gank and run nature... and if I want to deal with one I pretty much have to specifically bait and hunt it. A well done thief I haven't got a chance against.

Theres very little risk when the holo can drop a hturret and blast its field very often to reheal close to 100% shrink or go invisibile. Holo's ability to heal itself as it does needs toned down as does its disengage potential if all other aspects are to remain the same.

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@coro.3176 said:Simply: Holo's damage is still too good for how much sustain it is able to pack into its build.

Holo is basically able to devote its entire build to defensive options because it gets all the damage it needs from its free kit.

If core engi or scrapper wanted to do that, they would have to devote at least 1, probably 2 traitlines to damage as well as 2-3 slot skills.

Holo just gets it all with photon forge which has no meaningful downside.

Agreed, and again not sure why you're telling me this very obvious and beaten to death info

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:And Whataboutx isn't a great argument even though I humored you about it.

Whataboutx is not my argument.. so no idea what you're talking about. I was clearly illustrating of the differences between 2 of the multiple high risk high reward builds versus specs that aren't at the high reward omega burst combos from stealth or afar that doesn't rely on chain CC'ing opponents without stunbreak & stab. Obviously if you have a low risk build it evens out

Power Mirage and Deadeye are both high risk and skill cap enough where only about 2-5 people play it well enough to hit the top 100 on said build, EU or NA.

Holosmith is as low risk as you can possibly get, hence why so many people have used it to get God of PvP and why it's all over the top 100 on both EU and NA and why holosmith mains were frequently hitting 60% usage per match in platinuum ranked on NA last season.

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@coro.3176 said:Simply: Holo's damage is still too good for how much sustain it is able to pack into its build.

Holo is basically able to devote its entire build to defensive options because it gets all the damage it needs from its free kit.

If core engi or scrapper wanted to do that, they would have to devote at least 1, probably 2 traitlines to damage as well as 2-3 slot skills.

Holo just gets it all with photon forge which has no meaningful downside.

Agreed, and again not sure why you're telling me this very obvious and beaten to death info

Just adding on, summarizing, and trying to get the message out because apparently people are still calling for nerfs to core abilities and the devs are listening.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:Power Mirage and Deadeye are both high risk and skill cap enough where only about 2-5 people play it well enough to hit the top 100 on said build, EU or NA.

Holosmith is as low risk as you can possibly get,I've been repeatedly saying that Holosmith is not high risk ... why are you telling me this like I don't know? Lmfao...

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Power Mirage and Deadeye are both high risk and skill cap enough where only about 2-5 people play it well enough to hit the top 100 on said build, EU or NA.

Holosmith
is as low risk as you can possibly get
,I've been repeatedly saying that Holosmith is not high risk ... why are you telling me this like I don't know? Lmfao...

Because every time people point it out you come in and say "no you can't possible nerf X_thing_that_enables_holosmith_to_be_the_safest_build_in_the_game."

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@"mortrialus.3062" said:Because every time people point it out you come in and say "no you can't possible nerf X_thing_that_enables_holosmith_to_be_the_safest_build_in_the_game."

That's because you can eliminate the safety of Holosmith enough without smacking Scrapper or Core, which I know many people have said to you already, but you're convinced that Engineer must be nerfed in 7 ways bare minimum across the board. Without Elixir U being on the bar at all, the soloq potential is vastly reduced.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:You can kite pets. Rock Gazelle hurts but I don't think ranger is as egregious as you're claiming now, especially with the unblockable synergy soulbeast had being trimmed.

I have to say i dont agree with you here which is strange.Pets can be kited only if the ranger does not run beast mastery which most do run.

Otherwise the pet has far-greater mobility passively than you do as a player in combat let alone ones that have dashes, leaps, blinks, etc There is no realistic kiting them at general in combat speeds.

The only way you avoid pets generally is if you have constant access to superspeed or stealth which breaks their targeting causing them to run back to the pet owner or to another target till you re appear this might be enough of a gap to make pets seem avoidable. But generally on most professions that cannot stealth often there is no kiting the pet. The pet is going to get you how much it gets you depends on the situation.

The pets are viable mostly at point blank range even with beastmastery traited because 80% of pet attacks are 1s+ cast time and with stop animation , the more skilled the opponents the harder to land any pet attack as you need to find gaps in the enemy defensive rotations and even if manage that..the rock gazelle is the only one that can deal huge power burst due to a bug when it happens...other pets can deal as much dmg as an AA from a warrior or thief..which is still good in my opinion.

The main reason why rangers are forced to get beastmastery is because Anet (apologetically) said that increasing attck/speed of core pets would cause problems with the same models used in the core game hence why HoT/PoF pets are better overall.

Pets are the ranger mechanic and they're part of the dmg not a separate entity like people want to believe, without the pets the overall dmg of rangers drop by a lot...almost by 70% , outside couple heavy hitting skills ( maul and rapid fire ) the DPS of ranger is rather lacklustre ; considering the fact that PvP offers a more controlled DPS environment, a PvE benchmark can be used more effectively to demonstrate what I am saying.

My only gripe about ranger pets is that attempting to kill the pet is not a viable strategy to reduce the rangers effectiveness (currently). The pets that are not the birds are generally as tanky as another player and can be swapped too easily on demand or revived via soul beast fusion with no punishment. In pvp or wvw if you are under attack by a ranger killing the pet should be a viable option to reducing the rangers effectiveness. But you dont really have that choice so you have to ignore the pet and just avoid its key skills for the most part.

P.S I don't justify bugged attacks like rock gazelle and with that said I believe that tanky pets should offer support option for the player and only rock gazelle remains outside the spectrum and possibly bristleback, but I do expect squishy pets, that die in a couple aoe , to deal as much dmg as other profession auto-attacks in the 1-2k range ..anything less would be completely unreasonable

Any pet that can perform a Disabling attack even more so attacks that are not commanded by the ranger do need to be made more visible imo. Some pets have these kind of things others dont.

I'd love to see more DPS oriented pets like bird/felines where they're squishy but do hit hard or utility pets like bears/moa and some canine that do far less dmg but arguably ( need some buffs here ) offer more support utility . As I have explained pets are the ranger mechanic and asking to disable another profession mechanic for a limited amount of time it's not really an option..unless you allow ranger to effectively stop mesmers from casting clones for 60s or prevent a thief from restealthing or stopping a warrior from gaining adrenaline.

I can understand people asking to remove tanky pets with DPS as that should not be allowed but asking to easily kill pets and leave rangers helpless for 20s+ it's not really an argument, it sounds more like a bad joke than a good idea

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@Chaith.8256 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:Because every time people point it out you come in and say "no you can't possible nerf X_thing_that_enables_holosmith_to_be_the_safest_build_in_the_game."

That's because you can eliminate the safety of Holosmith without smacking Scrapper or Core, which I know many people have said to you already, but you're convinced that Engineer must be nerfed in 7 ways bare minimum across the board. Without Elixir U being what it is, the soloq potential is vastly reduced.

Unique ways the Holosmith as a specialization makes it safe; Prismatic Converter, Heat Therapy, Traited Corona Burst, Photon Wall, Spectrum Shield, Vent Exhaust,

The ways core engineer makes Holosmith the safest spec to play in the game; Elixir U, Elixir S, Healing Turret, Cleansing Burst, Toss Elixir S, Hidden Flask, Invigorating Speed, Transmute, Emergency Elixir, Compounding Chemicals, HGH.

If they're Prot holo the way core Engineer enables them to be more safe is:

Healing Turret, Mortar Kit, Cleansing Pulse, Overshield, Reconstruction Enclosure, Energy Amplifier, Anticorrosion Plating, Hidden Flask, Invigorating Speed, Transmute, Elixir E, Compounding Chemicals, Iron Blooded,

Something is got to give. And to be honest, all of the sustain traits and all of the sustain utilities on holosmith can be hard disabled and it probably won't be enough. And yeah, core engineer needs some help. But where core Engineer needs help has never been it's utility or support or sustain, because those have always been overloaded. It's because it's weapon options are below mediocre and kits are so flawed as to not make up for that even closely.

Like I'm sure you know how inflexible something like Pistol+Pistol is and how it could use some sort of disengage like a leap away flip over skill on the glue shot. I'm sure you know how if you want to hybridize between pistol+pistol and pistol+shield you give up too much damage. I'm sure you know all the engineer kits are weirdly and outdatedly hybridized between condition and power damage, or their method of delivering damage just isn't good like Bomb Kit being entirely PBAOE and Grenade being entirely ground targeted AOE with Grenade Kit.

And you and I both know you know that.

You give core engineer a main weapon loadout or kit as well rounded and fully realized as Warrior Greatsword, or Mesmer Scepter+Pistol and you'd immediately have one of the strongest builds to ever exist in the game because of all the utility and traits backing it. It's why scrapper spent most of HoT as a top tier build and why holo has spent most of PoF as a god tier buid. Because that's what happens when you plug top tier weapon kits into engineer traitlines.

The OP traits on Holo, the OP traits an utilities on core engineer should be nerfed. And kits should be redisigned across the board in a massive rework.

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I cannot for the life of me find a consistent design approach to elite specs and how they are handled other than "different ways of playing".

Are they supposed to open up different roles? If so, in a major or minor way? What is the balance approach when they fill the same niche?

And what about sPvP balance specifically? Is there supposed to be a best in slot for any one role? Is diversity even a goal, or is the goal to nuke the most overperforming specs at all costs then rinse and repeat?

I can get on board with specific changes and I can follow their logic, but I just don't know where we are really (REALLY) going, what it should look like, and how we are actually going to get there. Nothing seems consistent or to make sense in the big picture.

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  • ArenaNet Staff

Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

  • Sigil of Agility and its impact on other builds

This is something that we were still thinking about at the time of the original post, and went with the most aggressive variation as a discussion topic. For now we’re going to leave Agility in the game at reduced effectiveness (1s quickness) in order to have less impact on builds that we aren’t specifically targeting for this update. 1 second will still allow for a key skill to be used under quickness, while reducing the overall value for things like holo. Long-term we are still planning to remove Agility completely, as it’s too freely accessible as a source of quickness. This does fit more with the current state of things, but quickness is something we’ll be taking a close look at for the future update and it’s very likely that Agility is out of place moving forward.

  • Not enough holo nerfs

Especially with the lesser nerf to agility, we agree that holo needs a bit more in this update. We’re looking at additional defensive reductions. Holo damage is certainly high, but we want to mostly leave that damage potential in the short-term, while adding more opportunity to counterpressure as a way of mitigating that damage. The new changes are included at the end of the post.

  • What about doing [any number of other suggestions]?

There are more changes that make sense to do. There are concerns about some builds that aren’t being hit. There are questions about whether these changes are the right changes.

These changes are all very focused on fixing problems in the short-term. Ideally we wouldn’t splash into other builds, but in some cases it’s bound to happen. We wanted to create a small set of high-impact changes to improve things while we work toward bigger goals. The alternative was to just not do any balance until the future update is ready, but we felt that we could address some problems so we’re going to take the opportunity. If other big problems appear following this update, we still have the ability to make small adjustments outside of the usual balance cadence as needed.

Updates to the previous list:

  • Sigil of Agility: Reduced quickness duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
  • Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only
  • Heat Therapy: Reduced heal per stack from 65 to 49 (-25%) in PvP only

We still have a bit more time to iterate, but at this point we’re primarily looking for feedback on the holo changes.

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@Arheundel.6451 said:

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:You can kite pets. Rock Gazelle hurts but I don't think ranger is as egregious as you're claiming now, especially with the unblockable synergy soulbeast had being trimmed.

I have to say i dont agree with you here which is strange.Pets can be kited only if the ranger does not run beast mastery which most do run.

Otherwise the pet has far-greater mobility passively than you do as a player in combat let alone ones that have dashes, leaps, blinks, etc There is no realistic kiting them at general in combat speeds.

The only way you avoid pets generally is if you have constant access to superspeed or stealth which breaks their targeting causing them to run back to the pet owner or to another target till you re appear this might be enough of a gap to make pets seem avoidable. But generally on most professions that cannot stealth often there is no kiting the pet. The pet is going to get you how much it gets you depends on the situation.

The pets are viable mostly at point blank range even with beastmastery traited because 80% of pet attacks are 1s+ cast time and with stop animation , the more skilled the opponents the harder to land any pet attack as you need to find gaps in the enemy defensive rotations and even if manage that..the rock gazelle is the only one that can deal huge power burst due to a bug when it happens...other pets can deal as much dmg as an AA from a warrior or thief..which is still good in my opinion.

The main reason why rangers are forced to get beastmastery is because Anet (apologetically) said that increasing attck/speed of core pets would cause problems with the same models used in the core game hence why HoT/PoF pets are better overall.

Pets are the ranger mechanic and they're part of the dmg not a separate entity like people want to believe, without the pets the overall dmg of rangers drop by a lot...almost by 70% , outside couple heavy hitting skills ( maul and rapid fire ) the DPS of ranger is rather lacklustre ; considering the fact that PvP offers a more controlled DPS environment, a PvE benchmark can be used more effectively to demonstrate what I am saying.

My only gripe about ranger pets is that attempting to kill the pet is not a viable strategy to reduce the rangers effectiveness (currently). The pets that are not the birds are generally as tanky as another player and can be swapped too easily on demand or revived via soul beast fusion with no punishment. In pvp or wvw if you are under attack by a ranger killing the pet should be a viable option to reducing the rangers effectiveness. But you dont really have that choice so you have to ignore the pet and just avoid its key skills for the most part.

P.S I don't justify bugged attacks like rock gazelle and with that said I believe that tanky pets should offer support option for the player and only rock gazelle remains outside the spectrum and possibly bristleback, but I do expect squishy pets, that die in a couple aoe , to deal as much dmg as other profession auto-attacks in the 1-2k range ..anything less would be completely unreasonable

Any pet that can perform a Disabling attack even more so attacks that are not commanded by the ranger do need to be made more visible imo. Some pets have these kind of things others dont.

I'd love to see more DPS oriented pets like bird/felines where they're squishy but do hit hard or utility pets like bears/moa and some canine that do far less dmg but arguably ( need some buffs here ) offer more support utility . As I have explained pets are the ranger mechanic and asking to disable another profession mechanic for a limited amount of time it's not really an option..unless you allow ranger to effectively stop mesmers from casting clones for 60s or prevent a thief from restealthing or stopping a warrior from gaining adrenaline.

I can understand people asking to remove tanky pets with DPS as that should not be allowed but asking to easily kill pets and leave rangers helpless for 20s+ it's not really an argument, it sounds more like a bad joke than a good idea

well people kill mesmer clones in one hit and they can't shatter, mesmer can only resummon it easy if they trait for it, why rangers should be different and pets can't die having 40k hp? rangers have a backup pet already and they should put a cd of 60s after the pet dies to ress.

today i was playing pvp and i killed the ranger and he left me with 20% of my life, i was trying to finish him and the pet was stunning me while the ranger was downed, the pet killed me then the pet ressed him because my class don't have a stun while downed, but he could only do that because in the middle of the fight i was not able to kill the pet because he would ress just be changing it, tell me how is that fair?

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

  • Sigil of Agility and its impact on other builds

This is something that we were still thinking about at the time of the original post, and went with the most aggressive variation as a discussion topic. For now we’re going to leave Agility in the game at reduced effectiveness (1s quickness) in order to have less impact on builds that we aren’t specifically targeting for this update. 1 second will still allow for a key skill to be used under quickness, while reducing the overall value for things like holo. Long-term we are still planning to remove Agility completely, as it’s too freely accessible as a source of quickness. This does fit more with the current state of things, but quickness is something we’ll be taking a close look at for the future update and it’s very likely that Agility is out of place moving forward.

  • Not enough holo nerfs

Especially with the lesser nerf to agility, we agree that holo needs a bit more in this update. We’re looking at additional defensive reductions. Holo damage is certainly high, but we want to mostly leave that damage potential in the short-term, while adding more opportunity to counterpressure as a way of mitigating that damage. The new changes are included at the end of the post.

  • What about doing [any number of other suggestions]?

There are more changes that make sense to do. There are concerns about some builds that aren’t being hit. There are questions about whether these changes are the right changes.

These changes are all very focused on fixing problems in the short-term. Ideally we wouldn’t splash into other builds, but in some cases it’s bound to happen. We wanted to create a small set of high-impact changes to improve things while we work toward bigger goals. The alternative was to just not do any balance until the future update is ready, but we felt that we could address some problems so we’re going to take the opportunity. If other big problems appear following this update, we still have the ability to make small adjustments outside of the usual balance cadence as needed.

Updates to the previous list:

  • Sigil of Agility: Reduced quickness duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
  • Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only
  • Heat Therapy: Reduced heal per stack from 65 to 49 (-25%) in PvP only

We still have a bit more time to iterate, but at this point we’re primarily looking for feedback on the holo changes.

I feel validated.

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@viquing.8254 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Actually axe is rly not as bad as most ppl think. I think the weapons is in a good spot. Played around with it lately in case staff will be trash after nerfs.

When is the last time an axe mirage kill you ?What can you say about my why is axe bad ?

I don't know what to say about your axe opinion. I thought it is bad too until i tried it and it worked well. When you care for your axe 2 use you don't rly get interrupted during that. Axe 3 is still an insane skill. Don't use Sage amulet with axe and the dmg is good. That was my experience at least. It was already a decent use, when now everyhting else will get nerfed axe will be even better most likely.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi again,

First off, really enjoying reading through all the feedback. While we don’t have time to respond to each individual post, we wanted to respond to a few of the points that have been brought up multiple times.

  • Sigil of Agility and its impact on other builds

This is something that we were still thinking about at the time of the original post, and went with the most aggressive variation as a discussion topic. For now we’re going to leave Agility in the game at reduced effectiveness (1s quickness) in order to have less impact on builds that we aren’t specifically targeting for this update. 1 second will still allow for a key skill to be used under quickness, while reducing the overall value for things like holo. Long-term we are still planning to remove Agility completely, as it’s too freely accessible as a source of quickness. This does fit more with the current state of things, but quickness is something we’ll be taking a close look at for the future update and it’s very likely that Agility is out of place moving forward.

  • Not enough holo nerfs

Especially with the lesser nerf to agility, we agree that holo needs a bit more in this update. We’re looking at additional defensive reductions. Holo damage is certainly high, but we want to mostly leave that damage potential in the short-term, while adding more opportunity to counterpressure as a way of mitigating that damage. The new changes are included at the end of the post.

  • What about doing [any number of other suggestions]?

There are more changes that make sense to do. There are concerns about some builds that aren’t being hit. There are questions about whether these changes are the right changes.

These changes are all very focused on fixing problems in the short-term. Ideally we wouldn’t splash into other builds, but in some cases it’s bound to happen. We wanted to create a small set of high-impact changes to improve things while we work toward bigger goals. The alternative was to just not do any balance until the future update is ready, but we felt that we could address some problems so we’re going to take the opportunity. If other big problems appear following this update, we still have the ability to make small adjustments outside of the usual balance cadence as needed.

Updates to the previous list:

  • Sigil of Agility: Reduced quickness duration from 2 seconds to 1 second
  • Photon Wall: Increased cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in PvP only
  • Heat Therapy: Reduced heal per stack from 65 to 49 (-25%) in PvP only

We still have a bit more time to iterate, but at this point we’re primarily looking for feedback on the holo changes.

Thanks for the update! It really seems like feedback is being heard and acted upon. The targeted updates between larger updates should really help cut down on those long balance droughts. I'm excited and hopeful for things to come.

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@ZDragon.3046 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Actually axe is rly not as bad as most ppl think. I think the weapons is in a good spot. Played around with it lately in case staff will be trash after nerfs.

Exactly axe puts out good dps and a player who knows what they are doing can kill you with it much faster than they can with a staff.It also still encourages the user to actually actively use their shatters instead of actively not using them. People just dont do it because there is no reason to so long as staff provides great dps while boosting a defensive plays tyle.IT works against most situations so why use anything else.The damage is good enough and its safer so why use anything else.Staff also provides utility along side the great damage while axe is more just geared to damage so why use anything else.

Fighting an Axe mirage does not bother me. Fighting a passive staff mirage pains me greatly.

.

@bravan.3876 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said :Actually axe is rly not as bad as most ppl think. I think the weapons is in a good spot. Played around with it lately in case staff will be trash after nerfs.

When is the last time an axe mirage kill you ?What can you say about my why is axe bad ?

I don't know what to say about your axe opinion. I thought it is bad too until i tried it and it worked well. When you care for your axe 2 use you don't rly get interrupted during that. Axe 3 is still an insane skill. Don't use Sage amulet with axe and the dmg is good. That was my experience at least. It was already a decent use, when now everyhting else will get nerfed axe will be even better most likely.

Confession: I never stopped playing axe, even after it was heavily nerfed and made clunkier (not only did they severely nerf damage, they made it so you have to turn and face your target for the ambush to activate). Still playing axe today, mostly because I find the active, though riskier playstyle 100x more fun than passive staff play which I find extremely boring. Fun > rating for me.

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It is amazing what is happening here. CMC actually reading the posts and adjusting the patch. I am looking forward to more counter-pressure for holo, because the damage is very high and the sustain on the contrary high as well, which didn't work well (especially with my necro being cc-chained)Any word on when the balance patch is supposed to be ready?Two weeks, one month, or even after the season? I know that this plan does not necessarily have to be set in stone.

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jesus, a net stop nerfing the wrong things. you have an issue with clone gen from "mirage" and dodging after scepter block. simply just nerf mirage to "can only generate 1 clone at a time" or can make max 2 clones. leave scepter alone as it directly affects the other non mirage specs. that aren't exactly worth while playing already.

its time u start making changes more appropriately. if only one elite class is over performing nerf that elite. if an elite is under performing buff it appropriately.

you ask why we end up stale meta's and accuse people of being degenerates for playing the only viable build a class has yet you continue to make changes forcing single build per class metas as you never just deal with the actual issue. too much condi from mirage? nerf the flipping mirage condi application then.

you current logic on this is equal to hypothetically saying, weavers can change element too often, nerf it and increase base elemental swap cooldown by 10 seconds on core ele? if you find logic in that then your not suited to a balance team so plz resign and make space for someone with common sense

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