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Balance Patch Preview - PvP


Cal Cohen.2358

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@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Project exa.3204 said:--Will we FINALLY see spirits in conquest again?!!

No. They're far too weak. You could double the life value and give them 100% prot uptime, and a Reaper post patch would still down them all in a single Shroud 4.

I'd be all for making the spirits share HP with the ranger if that's what it takes.

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@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:

  • Nothing seemed too outstanding to comment on, until I got to this: Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modes = Woah woah! Is that... necessary? I mean a lot of people with long time aggression vs. Mirage are probably thinking "YEAH IT DESERVES IT. SCREW MIRAGE" but really guys, without the ability to double dodge roll when needed, the Mirage is going to frequently be caught in the kinds of bursting that it cannot avoid. I think Arenanet needs to seriously reconsider this very heavy handed nerf.

I think that is the trade off, they can dodge while CCed but they only have one dodge bar. It sounds a lot like something that would be in Guild Wars 1. This patch is awesome.

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@Aza.2105 said:

I think that is the trade off, they can dodge while CCed but they only have one dodge bar. It sounds a lot like something that would be in Guild Wars 1. This patch is awesome.

Except that this is way too harsh of a trade off, most trades off aren't as bad as this one. I don't think we're going to see any mirage anymore if this goes through, which is sad because id rather face a mirage than it being replaced by the one shot core mesmer or the condi core bunker mesmer, but it seems like we're heading in that direction

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war

Hundred Blades: Reduced power coefficient of each strike from 0.525 to 0.35. Reduced final strike power coefficient from 1.1 to 0.8this is just sad. rename skill to 8 swings.Staggering Blow: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01Backbreaker: Reduced power coefficient from 1.5 to 0.01Earthshaker: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.01so now war ham is useless. thanks.Tremor: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.8 to 0.01. Reduced cooldown from 25 seconds to 20 secondsgreat compensation.Balanced Stance: Increased cooldown from 40 seconds to 60 secondswth is the point of this.Winds of Disenchantment: Reduced target cap from 10 to 5omfg. not only is this an unlisted 10 sec channel, you're nerfing one of the best components of this skill. no reason to take spb in wvw anymore.Shield Master: Reduced might duration from 8 seconds to 1 secondwhat?Defy Pain: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 secondsLast Stand: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 secondsjesus just remove them already. nobody wants auto procs in the game.

guard

Tome of Resolvemight as well just remove.Unflinching Charge: Reduced stability duration from 2 seconds to 1 second.cuz that makes total sense. might as well rename it to charge, remove stab, and call it a day with a big pat on the back.Mighty Blow: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 1.82. Increased cooldown from 4 seconds to 10 secondsutterly speechless.Empower: Reduced might duration from 12 seconds to 6 secondsthis is dumb.Cleansing Flame (torch 5): Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.4 to 0.28this is dumb.Hallowed Ground: Increased cooldown from 45 seconds to 60 secondsthis is dumb.Hold the Line: Reduced protection duration from 6 seconds to 4 secondsthis is dumb.Stand Your Ground: Increased cooldown from 30 seconds to 45 seconds. Reduced target cap from 10 to 5.one of the worst changes yet. if you want to remove the target cap fine but don't mess with the cd of this skill. its the # 1 thing keeping melee viable in wvw since release.

rev

Healing Orb (created by various skills and traits): Reduced heal coefficient from 0.15 to 0.075this is dumb cuz it needs a radius buff.Coalescence of Ruin: Increased cooldown from 4 seconds to 10 secondsmight as well remove hammer.Frigid Blitz (mace 4): Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 15 secondsthis is dumb.

ranger

Hunter's Call: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.15 to 0.1makes no sense lol... warhorn isn't a threat to anyone.

teef

Death Blossom: Increased initiative cost from 4 to 5uhh why? how about redesigning this skill to make d/d an actual threat while making heartseeker the condi skill.Spotter's Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.8 to 0.4. Increased immobilize duration from 1 second to 1.5 secondsholy christ. remove both the immob and cripple from rifle 2. being able to kite indefinitely while outputting massive ranged damage is what is breaking this weapon.

engi

Fragmentation Shot: Reduced power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.266this is laughable.Static Discharge: Reduced power coefficient from 0.33 to 0.2what the hell for?Expert Examination: Reduced weakness duration from 4 seconds to 3 secondsno one uses this.

mes

Confusing Images: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.38 to 0.255omg. not only does this currently do no damage since the nerf as well as being one of the easiest to dodge animations on the game, but you're nerfing it even more. cmon.Mantra of Concentration: Increased cooldown from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Increased ammo recharge from 30 seconds to 45 secondswhat. another useless utility skill now.Mirage Cloak: This trait now reduces the mirage's endurance by 50 in competitive modesi have to believe this isn't going to make it thru, or else it will have been the worst change in gw2s history. STOP nerfing around the problem. address dodging while stunned and FIX the class so you stop nerfing it into the ground, making core the only viable mes spec to play.

necro

Executioner's Scythe: Reduced power coefficients from 2.0/2.6/3.2 to 0.01/0.015/0.02 (Above 50%/Below 50%/Below 25%). Increased stun duration from 1.5 seconds to 2.5 secondsplease leave stun duration as is and make the stun an aoe or else its useless.Dagger AA: Reduced power coefficients from 0.9/0.7/1.2 to 0.6/0.466/0.8i mean... if you're gonna nerf necro dagger then you might as well dumpster it since its suicide to even attempt to stay in melee for more then 3 seconds.Enfeebling Blood: Reduced weakness duration from 6 seconds to 4 secondsyeah remove this offhand from the game as well.

*ele

Fireball: Reduced power coefficient from 1.0 to 0.666Lava Font: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.525 to 0.454what the hell once again. you are nerfing the one thing that makes this attunement good. damage.Dragon's Tooth: Reduced power coefficient from 2.25 to 2.0except NO ONE gets hit by this skill. rethink scepter.Arc Lightning: Reduced power coefficients per strike from 0.15/0.3/0.449 to 0.1/0.2/0.3LOL nice meme status.Riptide: Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.33 to 0.1. Reduced pulse heal coefficient from 0.1 to 0.05. Reduced pulse base heal from 165 to 120. Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 18 secondshorrible.Earthen Vortex: Increased cooldown from 12 seconds to 18 secondshorrible. riptide and this are what makes sword viable. don't mess with them.Armor of Earth: Increased cooldown from 50 seconds to 60 secondsreally?Pyromancer's Puissance: Reduced might duration from 10 seconds to 6 secondsok this is useless.Electric Discharge: Reduced power coefficient from 0.25 to 0.05. Reduced vulnerability duration from 8 seconds to 6 seconds. Increased vulnerability stacks from 1 to 8seriously? you're gonna gut one of the things that made scepter viable even more and tack on some vuln and think thats ok? wow. just wow.Invigorating Torrents: Reduced regeneration and vigor durations from 5 seconds to 3 secondsthis is crap. tempest needs all the help it can get.

you forgot herald 10 target pulsing boons, malicious backstab/ deaths judgement +70/ +105% damage one shots, heartseeker coefficients, mes one shots from stealth, probably a few others i can't think of.

overall the damage nerfs are pretty extreme. the cc skills doing 0.01 is meme status, and they're all pretty useless considering you're not shortening their cd's as a balancing act. the boon rip nerfs are dumb. there are way too many boons in this game, we need more rips not less. maybe spread out the rips instead of flat out removing them. i don't know why in the nine hells you're over nerfing things no one is using, but it saddens me to no end. i had to restrain myself from writing this entire thing in caps. we need more diversity.

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@mortrialus.3062 said:

The following amulets have been removed from the PvP Build panel
  • Deadshot Amulet
  • Wanderer Amulet

Why? These are literally the same offensive/defensive split for stats are Marauders and Demolisher's.

swift condi build from hit and run play style like their power counter part, condi don't belong in high damage builds, most condi application are cheap so..specially with how survivable some classes can be without defensive stats aka mesmer, thief

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It's nice to see boon intensive builds and builds that run bunker but still get insane dps mostly getting eviscerated from the meta game. Even better is to see boon soulbeast be (hopefully) entirely removed from the meta game (probably wont be with the change to stunbreak into protection and vigor). However with the pushes to lower power level, it means that bunker builds that exist just to stall are getting an insane buff. Most builds that are affected by this have their power reduced (which didn't matter on some of them as they had virtually no killing potential in the first place) while the healing/survivability of the builds remain mostly unaffected as the only thing for them that was significantly nerfed were the healing skills themselves and not the side skills that enhance survivability.As great as it is to see damage reduced so it isn't as much of a 3 second kill fiesta, there are still major problems that haven't really been addressed. Enduring Swing on Ranger should be reverted back to its evasion state rather than endurance state as it only feeds into the overarching problem of the Wilderness Survival tree being a requirement (way too good compared to most options) of playing ranger in PvP. The reasoning behind the nerf never even made sense in the first place as it went something along the lines of "feels luck based" even though it's just a auto chain that is easy to see and respond to. Sword on ranger needs more help than it has needed ever. Almost no one uses sword on ranger anymore as its evasion skill (Serpent Strike) has been locked behind using a suicide leap and the reason to use a main hand generally speaking is the access to off-hand Axe. It also doesn't help that Hornet Sting is way too slow to dodge anything effectively and pretty much is used exclusively for movement.Also feels like some classes were removed from the game while other classes were barely affected. d/p thief still does insane damage on a stat that they already pretty much max on as stealth still remains as a stupid mechanic that is extremely difficult to punish. Would like to see thieves become revealed if they go for a stealth attack and it misses (maybe exclude it to apply reveal when being manually blocked or rolled through) so they don't just keep trying for a stealth attack since they are completely free to do so. Necromancer pretty much just got significantly more health for free as all damage has been reduced for scaling percentages while the necromancer shroud health amount stays the same. There are probably many more things that I wont talk about in this post since it is already too long like blocking for (x) seconds is insanely strong in this meta game as well as rolling becoming closer to being on par as running tank stats.Now as for PvE, there are still things that need changing that people have been complaining about for years. Chronomancer still feels like hot garbage with Well zones being the main drawback of the class as the boons you supply via the wells are the pinnacle of your existance but since they are so small it sometimes makes it really frustrating/not worth it to walk to a smallish zone for like 1 buff. Druid in PvE still is as frustrating as ever as spirits are your main reason for existing but they are inconsistent as to how they work as well as Glyphs don't do enough to be run over 3 side spirits. It'd be nice if spirits were made more consistent as to what they are affected by, because as of this point Spirits sometimes take tons of damage from things and sometimes they don't take like any damage at all. An example of this is like during Fractals of the Mist your spirits die in seconds to flux bomb but take like 0 damage from being inside 5 fire AoEs from Molten Firestorm and it makes little to no sense for the difference between the two. Keeping Spirits alive is really frustrating too as applying regen (generally Healing Spring will be the regen applier) to spirits sometimes just doesn't work even though the game should be prioritizing placing regen onto that spirit as it is at significantly lower health (this happens extremely often/consistently with Spirit of Nature causing it to die unexpectedly). On the same lines of the spirits needing buffs, the trait in Nature Magic called "Nature's Vengeance" is useless/debilitating on ranger as -33% health decay reduces the amount you heal to the spirits as druid and thus makes Celestial Avatar bar regeneration slower as well as the spirit activated skills granting boons is irrelevant as half of them you already provide by yourself and you don't generally want to want to spam cast your activated spirit abilities as it's just a loss in dps and moves them all over the place. A nice fix for this would be making the trait increase the Max Health of the Spirits by like 3x and switching the health loss be a base amount rather being a percent of health (don't remember if this is already how it works or not) as well as making the activated spirit skill part being changed to whenever it reapplies it's passive ability.By the way, changing a triggered cooldown from like 90 seconds to 300 seconds is basically removing the ability entirely. Did you know that PvP matches last on average like 660 seconds? WOW! Not to mention that Stoneform being nerfed extremely hampers the ability of Power Ranger to make decisions for greedy dps or to even go into melee range to try and cleave targets.

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Unwavering Avoidance: This trait now grants vigor instead of stability when evading an attack. The cooldown on this trait has been reduced to 5 seconds from 8 seconds.Determined Resolution: This trait now reduces incoming damage while you have vigor instead of stability. It no longer increases the duration of stability.

This kinda sticks out to me. If Jalis loses it's stability uptime all those people who complain about a high energy requirement stun break might actually have a point. It also removes the only source of stability for my Ventari build. Stability makes more sense given the stone Dwarf theme of the trait line though I guess you want more endurance recovery for the retal traits. Reducing condition damage as well rather than just power for the "less damage while having stability/vigor" trait would be nice.

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@"ParanoidKami.2867" said:Unwavering Avoidance: This trait now grants vigor instead of stability when evading an attack. The cooldown on this trait has been reduced to 5 seconds from 8 seconds.Determined Resolution: This trait now reduces incoming damage while you have vigor instead of stability. It no longer increases the duration of stability.

This kinda sticks out to me. If Jalis loses it's stability uptime all those people who complain about a high energy requirement stun break might actually have a point. It also removes the only source of stability for my Ventari build. Stability makes more sense given the stone Dwarf theme of the trait line though I guess you want more endurance recovery for the retal traits. Reducing condition damage as well rather than just power for the "less damage while having stability/vigor" trait would be nice.

I've been thinking about this and it might either be the time to give Ventari a stunbreak or accept the decision that Ventari elite is the best mean to counter pressure and heal at the same time. Invocation does have Stability on Stunbreak instead of a Stunbreak which is honestly putting more value into Charged Mists a little bit more.

Everything in this patch seems to make evades and decision making more important than ever for all classes, but most of these Revenant changes are forcing people to play like how the class was designed, there is a lot of things that are possible to do as a Revenant that nobody ever does and it's honestly time to put these things in the light.

The best example I can think of is when have you ever seen someone Infuse Light into Shiro with Impossible Odds and SotM Quickness? These are the kind of synergies I'm talking about and there's a lot of em, these combos "rarely to never" used in my experience fighting any Revenants(Or Herald Shiro since that's all anyone ever touched) and this is what Anet wants players do with the class.. It was also the very thing that turned off players from doing anything else, being stunned right after stun breaking as Revenant, people would favor Shiro a lot for this aside the other effects.

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@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:General

  • In PvP only, weapon strength will now always use the midpoint instead of randomly rolling across the range.

What range? I thought weapon stats didn't matter in PvP. The only thing the wiki says about it (not verified data I realize) is an offhand mention in conjunction with bundle items that they "appear to have an internal weapon strength of 922.5. This is the same value as a one-handed main hand weapon in sPvP,"

If level and rarity make or are going to make a difference, that would be good information to get out there. Many of my PvP characters just use the cheapest weapons I could find and I doubt I'm the only one.

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@"Alphonia.5731" said:It's nice to see boon intensive builds and builds that run bunker but still get insane dps mostly getting eviscerated from the meta game. Even better is to see boon soulbeast be (hopefully) entirely removed from the meta game (probably wont be with the change to stunbreak into protection and vigor). However with the pushes to lower power level, it means that bunker builds that exist just to stall are getting an insane buff. Most builds that are affected by this have their power reduced (which didn't matter on some of them as they had virtually no killing potential in the first place) while the healing/survivability of the builds remain mostly unaffected as the only thing for them that was significantly nerfed were the healing skills themselves and not the side skills that enhance survivability.As great as it is to see damage reduced so it isn't as much of a 3 second kill fiesta, there are still major problems that haven't really been addressed. Enduring Swing on Ranger should be reverted back to its evasion state rather than endurance state as it only feeds into the overarching problem of the Wilderness Survival tree being a requirement (way too good compared to most options) of playing ranger in PvP. The reasoning behind the nerf never even made sense in the first place as it went something along the lines of "feels luck based" even though it's just a auto chain that is easy to see and respond to. Sword on ranger needs more help than it has needed ever. Almost no one uses sword on ranger anymore as its evasion skill (Serpent Strike) has been locked behind using a suicide leap and the reason to use a main hand generally speaking is the access to off-hand Axe. It also doesn't help that Hornet Sting is way too slow to dodge anything effectively and pretty much is used exclusively for movement.Also feels like some classes were removed from the game while other classes were barely affected. d/p thief still does insane damage on a stat that they already pretty much max on as stealth still remains as a stupid mechanic that is extremely difficult to punish. Would like to see thieves become revealed if they go for a stealth attack and it misses (maybe exclude it to apply reveal when being manually blocked or rolled through) so they don't just keep trying for a stealth attack since they are completely free to do so. Necromancer pretty much just got significantly more health for free as all damage has been reduced for scaling percentages while the necromancer shroud health amount stays the same. There are probably many more things that I wont talk about in this post since it is already too long like blocking for (x) seconds is insanely strong in this meta game as well as rolling becoming closer to being on par as running tank stats.Now as for PvE, there are still things that need changing that people have been complaining about for years. Chronomancer still feels like hot garbage with Well zones being the main drawback of the class as the boons you supply via the wells are the pinnacle of your existance but since they are so small it sometimes makes it really frustrating/not worth it to walk to a smallish zone for like 1 buff. Druid in PvE still is as frustrating as ever as spirits are your main reason for existing but they are inconsistent as to how they work as well as Glyphs don't do enough to be run over 3 side spirits. It'd be nice if spirits were made more consistent as to what they are affected by, because as of this point Spirits sometimes take tons of damage from things and sometimes they don't take like any damage at all. An example of this is like during Fractals of the Mist your spirits die in seconds to flux bomb but take like 0 damage from being inside 5 fire AoEs from Molten Firestorm and it makes little to no sense for the difference between the two. Keeping Spirits alive is really frustrating too as applying regen (generally Healing Spring will be the regen applier) to spirits sometimes just doesn't work even though the game should be prioritizing placing regen onto that spirit as it is at significantly lower health (this happens extremely often/consistently with Spirit of Nature causing it to die unexpectedly). On the same lines of the spirits needing buffs, the trait in Nature Magic called "Nature's Vengeance" is useless/debilitating on ranger as -33% health decay reduces the amount you heal to the spirits as druid and thus makes Celestial Avatar bar regeneration slower as well as the spirit activated skills granting boons is irrelevant as half of them you already provide by yourself and you don't generally want to want to spam cast your activated spirit abilities as it's just a loss in dps and moves them all over the place. A nice fix for this would be making the trait increase the Max Health of the Spirits by like 3x and switching the health loss be a base amount rather being a percent of health (don't remember if this is already how it works or not) as well as making the activated spirit skill part being changed to whenever it reapplies it's passive ability.By the way, changing a triggered cooldown from like 90 seconds to 300 seconds is basically removing the ability entirely. Did you know that PvP matches last on average like 660 seconds? WOW! Not to mention that Stoneform being nerfed extremely hampers the ability of Power Ranger to make decisions for greedy dps or to even go into melee range to try and cleave targets.

As a Soulbeast this resonates with me. I don't mind admitting that SB has exceeded its original role and needs to be dialed back.The pet meta sucks right now, because rangers pigeonholed themselves into [smokescale, Jacaranda, Siamoth, Gazelle] for maximum dps / sustain.

The only ranger nerf I've ever really disagreed with was the GS evasion swing change to enduring swing.I also agree that mechanically there's something imbalanced about why no ranger in Gold++ does not pack Wilderness Survival.I know I'd love to play with skirmishing again, but I can't because WS is just too useful. Aside from SB that leaves only one trait open. SB/WS/MM or SB/WS/BM-Eros

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Overall this looks very promising in theory but reserving my opinion until I can actually get my hands on it and give the patch a good go. Little dissapointed that Stealth as a mechanic was not looked at in pvp and also Shadow Arts trait line has basically got away scott free. I suggest you guys take a good look at both of these before this patch is locked down @Cal.

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@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:
General
  • In PvP only, weapon strength will now always use the midpoint instead of randomly rolling across the range.

What range? I thought weapon stats didn't matter in PvP. The only thing the wiki says about it (not verified data I realize) is an offhand mention in conjunction with bundle items that they "appear to have an internal weapon strength of 922.5. This is the same value as a one-handed main hand weapon in sPvP,"

If level and rarity make or are going to make a difference, that would be good information to get out there. Many of my PvP characters just use the cheapest weapons I could find and I doubt I'm the only one.

They're saying that the value will always be static in the structured weapons, it won't have a random roll in between it's min and max.

So if your max hit for a certain skill is 1337, it'll always be 1337 since the weapon strength won't be randomized. I'm all for this as it contributes better to the competitive nature, aside Crits still being on a chance but we can't really take that away.

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Hi cal. Very nice to see a shakeup this big.

Just a few things.

  1. Condi wasn't hit much. It doesn't need much changes but lowering the amount of applications for larger burst in condi is healthy for that kind of playstyle. However this means that condi clear frequency also needs reducing.
  2. Damage was hit much harder than defensive stuff. This will probably lead to a bunker meta which obviously no one wants. So please keep an eye on that.

Otherwise this is looking like a step in the right direction with a few outliers here and there which will come to light as the meta forms.

Please keep with that promise of regular update cadence until the game is back to a decent state because it won't be after this.

Thanks for the hard work. My thanks to the balance team!

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@Shao.7236 said:They're saying that the value will always be static in the structured weapons, it won't have a random roll in between it's min and max.

Yes, but what is the min/max they're using and how is it obtained? If it's based on the actual weapon we're holding that's useful information. If it's a standardized lv. 1 basic weapon, or lv. 80 exotic, or whatever, that's less impactful but still good to know.

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@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

@"Shao.7236" said:They're saying that the value will always be static in the structured weapons, it won't have a random roll in between it's min and max.

Yes, but what is the min/max they're using and how is it obtained? If it's based on the actual weapon we're holding that's useful information. If it's a standardized lv. 1 basic weapon, or lv. 80 exotic, or whatever, that's less impactful but still good to know.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weapon

Whatever the current structured weapons use. It still doesn't matter what rarity you use.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 said:

Warrior

Defense

  • Defy Pain: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 seconds
  • Last Stand: Increased cooldown from 90 seconds to 300 seconds

Please consider in the future just removing these two traits and replacing them with something interesting going forward. Auto proc passives are some of the most boring traits in the game anyway and nobody wants them there, not even people playing defense warrior.

300 second cooldowns is just absurd. Nobody in their right mind would take either at that CD. If that's the goal, then those two traits may as well be reworked into something else, as well as all passive saves that still exist.

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