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Balance Patch Preview - PvP


Cal Cohen.2358

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I'm okay with all the mesmer nerfs, however the change to mirage cloak is gonna take all the fun out of the class for me. I don't enjoy base mes or chronomancer anymore. Cloak was really cool and so much fun. Too strong I guess. But I wish they thought of another solution to keep it interesting and just as fun/cool.

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I do want to say that I understand the logic in nerfing CC skills heavily in the damage department, I think a lot of this is going too far with it to the point of ruining things like class identity.

For example: Prime Light Beam. Prime Light Beam is one of my favorite utility skills to have to play against. It's really cool, it fits with Holosmith really well thematically and gameplay wise. If I dodge it, I always feel like I gained a huge advantage in the fight. If I get tagged with it, there's always a wave of panic.

If I had any one complaint about the skill, the only thing I disliked was that it could be cast from stealth and since it has no projectile from stealth it is genuinely unavoidable. I really only wanted to see self revealed applied to the holosmith when they begin casting the skill so if they try to cast it from stealth I get to see the tell anyway.

I was fine with the damage. I was fine with the CC. I was fine with the flavor. This applies to other elites like Dragon Maw, Head Butt, ect. ect.

I think full on the point of balance patches is a massive increase in build diversity. We want to see MATs and one side might have a Greatsword/Dagger+Shield Spellbreaker on one side, and something that seems impossible with the current balance like a Hammer Berserker running Wild Blow. Hammer on warrior is all about having below average damage, little mobility, no defensive options but making up for it with heavy CC. If you do something like gut all the damage out of all the hammer skills that weapon kit will never be seen in game again. Like all the damage on the kit is gone I straight up think it will be outright impossible to score a single kill on any build ever if you have a weapon kit that literally just does not do damage the way you've done with warrior hammer now.

@Aza.2105 said:

@Aza.2105 said:

@"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.

Yeah and during this time daredevil has 3 evade bar.Mean where is the trade off ? you think having only one evade justify to evade when you want ?Here will be the use case : hit the mirage, burn his scepter block, his evade then CC burst, GG you are done.They can dodge while CCed : have you ever try to lock burst other spec (particulary thieves.) ? Mean how did they manage CC ?Btw as long as we have clones perturbing people, mesmer will stay strong huh ?

Daredevil doesn't have clones. The entire thief class was created to be squishy without evasion. Mesmer was created to feel pressure after their clones were destroyed. They weren't suppose to have access to the same amount of evasion as thief nor access to the same amount of stealth as thief. They also have a higher health pool than Thief.

Right now in terms of evade uptime, meta condition mirage is hitting close to 22 seconds of evade+distortion up time during the first minute of combat. SP Thief is hitting 30 seconds of evade up time throughout the first minute of combat. Mirage is already decidedly below thief+daredevil in evade up time right now before the change. Meta Spellbreaker with Magebane Tether right now is hitting 29 seconds of evade+block throughout the first minute of combat. Mirage is no longer a god of evading all incoming damage like it was before the adventure rune+energy sigil nerfs and the 1s Mirage Cloak duration.

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I feel like this needs to be said here in these threads.

Everyone needs to remember that this patch was never going to fix anything. It was never intended to, nor was it stated to. This kind of drastic shift in dynamic needed to happen if anything with this games balance was going to change. Not doing so would have simply kept us going in the same vicious circle we have been in for years and that does nothing to help things or move forward.

This patch hit all the notes I pretty much expected it to;

It would be chaotic as kitten. √Plenty of builds and skills were going to get broken. √People were going to rage hardcore at the changes. √The patch was never going to be a one fix for anything. √The patch was going to be a stepping stone to future changes. √

The entire point of this patch is to establish a new baseline for future changes and balance fixes going forward. It was meant to be a shift in a different direction, not an overall fix. The only things it fixed were some of the blatant power creep in the game which was asked for by many in the community, if not all. Cal even stated in the very first post of all of these threads that they are looking for feedback on the changes. He also stated that this update is directly intended to be a move to an overall new paradigm in the game.

Things look drastically different under this new dynamic showcased in the patch, look at it as a whole and give feedback based on that rather than what we know now because the dynamic we know now has clearly not been working out; which was why players even wanted a huge balance patch like this to happen in the first place. We got it, now work with ANet to help make sure the long term changes go well and PvP/WvW over the long term becomes healthier. Short term fixes weren't working, and for the long term fixes to work this was something that sorely needed to happen.

I know its rough to see much of what it did happen and thinking purely short term it is definitely going to be a mess, but it needs to make a mess so that it can be properly cleaned up so long as their approach going forward is the right one and hopefully it will be so long a they keep to their intent on an increased release cadence for balance changes as well as continuing to heed constructive feedback based on the new dynamic this update will create.

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@Cal Cohen.2358 I will throw my opinion again one more time on this, thief will be a nightmare post patch if more work is not done on the Shadow Arts traitline, it will be a thief meta. Stealth is the most powerful ability in pvp in my opinion there are literally zero drawbacks to it.

Compared to almost all professions accross the board, Thief got away with some light nerfs. I suggest you look at this class again and bring it in line with every class thats getting the nerf bat.

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Speaking from a Plat 3 to Gold 3 PvP player's experience who has over 1,200 hours playing Condi-only Necro, primarily as a Corruption Necro, these corruption changes are pretty ghastly. Granted, it's hard to see it's total context without having played matches in this upcoming meta, but the issue for Condi necro already is the insane condi-cleanse (primarily through blast finishers and select utility spells on classes) and boon application rates (which seems generally untouched, as duration nerfs actually harm this build slightly, plus unreliability of what boon your corruption chooses) means that this is an across the board knee-cap to this sort of playstyle.

Reducing your boon corruption efficiency by ~50%, when your primary DPS ends up coming from Terror you inflict by flipping Stability (now going from a 5 out of ~14 chance in an average teamfight, to a 5 out of 28 chance). Seeing as this is the core of the build (as you can apply Chill, and if going reaper, bleeds, as well as banking on the additional damage they receive while feared) and how wonky Fear has been since the beginning of the game (since it can be cleansed both by AoE condi clears, as well as stun breaks) it's a bit distressing to see none of the durations for Fear go up (similar to other CC's) in compensation for the drastic reduction of a chance to land the crux of the build. Additionally, due to the low duration and need for re-application (plus often 1/2 to 1s cast times to apply a ~2s duration) it's often at the first condi cleansed by things like Diamond Skin and Engi blast finishers. Coupling this with now the increased CD's of Corrupt Boon (already unnecessary imo, as you're sacrificing a valuable defensive utility slot in an already slow-paced, DPS build) seems unnecessary for an already fringe build.

Reducing boon corruption for power-based weapons like Axe (and the corresponding shroud-based talent) makes sense, but there are already so many anti-synergies in the Necro talent tree / weapon spec's that to nerf the only true weapon synergy you have (Scep/Dag) seems misplaced. At the very least, shifting the corruption back to Dagger 5 as it's a slow moving, long cast, telegraphed move, or replacing some of the random Precision in Curses with corruption proc's would make more sense. I could write a whole 10 page essay on the breakdown of all the options Corruption Necro's have, but the TL;DR is that it's already the weaker option for Necro overall (if a bit of a safer pick), and that crippling it's key mechanic will most likely gut the viability at higher levels to deal with high skill cap Engi's/Elementalists/Revs/Guards, as blast finishers (as far as the patch notes go) are not being nerfed either.

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In case anybody is mistaking something,

1) They can't rework as easily so they just change passive cooldowns to 300 seconds.2) There is no "base damage", a skill's "base damage" is calculated using 1000 base power of a level 80 character. On the contrary, heal skills have a "base heal" since a level 80 character has 0 base healing power. So if a hammer skill has a power coefficient of 0.01 and 1000 base power, that skill should do (1048 1000 0.01) / (920 + 1000) = 5 damage on a light armored opponent without any toughness stat except for the baseline (1000).

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I get the power creep was an issue, but it doesn't seem like this will effect build diversity at all. Unless as others have mentioned it's going to be all about conditions now. Definitely some positives in here in terms of traits that didn't need high damage getting their damage coefficients reduce drastically, like Holo Shockwave.

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power damage -33%, heals -33%CCs do no damage, stability uptime dramatically reduced, stunbreak cooldowns increasedpassive defensive procs deletedboon uptimes reduced, boon corrupts reduced

all this great

However, condi changes aren't quite as clear. I'm not sure condi is getting cut as much as power. burst condi especially. The only blanket change I see is that it's much harder to increase the condition duration stat.

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Oh also, while CC doing no damage as a general rule is cool---great, even---I'm not sold on cutting all of the damage from every single one of them. Like ones with really big tells that do nothing else, like engineer's big ol bomb. It seems wrong for it to not do any damage.

It's a minor complaint, though. I am interested to see how this goes.

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@Kuma.1503 said:

@"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

A few things to keep in mind:

GS had it's damage reduced. They likely won't be able to one shot you unless you've either taken prior damage or face tanked a GS4 without dodging the followup burst.Still unhealthy design imo, but it should be less frustrating to play against.

Mirage losing it's dodge hurts, but given that the overall power level of the game is going down, Mirage may not be pressured into dodging defensively as often as before. Considering the dodge can be used while stuned, their dodges have more value. Stunbreaks and stability got nerfed across the board, so Mirage's dodge starts to look a lot better by comparison. We'll have to wait and see how the meta shapes up. It's difficult to make predictions given the sheer scope of the changes.

For some reason the Elusive Mind change aren't in PvP/WvW notes, but Global version have a referece to PvP and WvW:

"Elusive Mind: This trait no longer stunbreaks or inflicts exhaustion. Increased the number of conditions cleansed from 1 to 3 in PvE, and to 2 in PvP and WvW."

So maybe the stunbreak is lost making that trait useless as a grandmaster. Also adding that to the single dodge make the Mirage undesirable to play. And less fun too, like they did with Chronomancer. Dodge is one of the basic mechanics that makes the gw2 desirable to play and unique against other games. Limiting Mirage to a single dodge is too much. There should other ways of balance Mirage Cloak instead of make the specialization undesirable to play and clunky, maybe changing the ambushes or looking in to the IH. When you dodge, you are timing it in the right moment. When you blink, etc. You do the same. As you are almost all time in movement, the use of mirrors in pvp can't replace the lose of a dodge, usually you can't reach them in the right moment and even distracting you of what you should be focusing. Now mesmer will have its two specializations erased from competitive modes as no one will play them. And it'll be even rare find a core mesmer as there is nothing that reward play a core mesmer with the upcoming changes against other professions and specializations. About all with the "improved" chaos skills and traits of this balance patch plus the previous patches. It is a clear example of how not to contribute to having a greater diversity in which to choose to play.

Anyways people will play what end dominating as usual. That will not change with this balance patch.

Another thing that i watch too is that, for the reason of tune all down, now a lot of traits are absolutely irrelevant and don't worth even consider use them. Perhaps is what it should be and rely only on the skills in competitive mode. But that could produce another problem. If the traits and skills from PvE and PvP/WvW starts to be different as it seems in several of them, then that could end with players making mistakes due to that when playing, as you must remember the effect of the version you are playing in each game mode. And many times, by the habit of playing more than one game mode you could end up making mistakes and losing the combat. Its strange because some of the traits that were not included in this PvP notes are in the Global version and mention PvP/WvW cooldowns, etc, in their changes. Not sure if those trait changes were missed here or if finally we are going to have different behavior and features between game modes.

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Hi, @Cal Cohen.2358

While reading this preview, i actually felt pretty excited of what is about to become of Gw2 even if my main, Weaver seems to be getting hit pretty hard; but i guess i wont know for sure until the patch comes out. that being said, from just these notes there are 2 professions which i don't believe are getting hit enough to be placed on the same playing field as others and might continue the old play style of spamming their way to victory; dps Firebrand and the BigHitter3ButtonKO class Rev. Please take another look into them before releasing the patch. Thanks :)

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The increased CD to rangers Swoop (both gs3 and soulbeast merge)..why? This is mainly a mobility/kiting skill which has nothing to do with the powercreep you're trying to address here. This reduces counterplay which contradicts what the post says about trying to improve counterplay. Also I don't see any other classes mobility skills getting increased CDs like warriors Rush or guards teleports or thieves shortbow 5/teleports.. this change seems pretty counterintuitive

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This is a totally crazy way to "balance" a game who started 7 years ago.We play gw2 because we like it, despite this balance is "not perfect". Yes the power chars, builds are too strong, but we play, simple way to fix this problem is rework "Damage done = (Weapon strength) Power (skill-specific coefficient) / (target's Armor)" and remove amulets like viper, if u dont want too high condi and power dmg togetherIf u do this change what u write this game will basically change, all class nerf, condition chars get 0 power dmg, builds change, result is have to change max hp, and hp bonuses, toughness, heal power, skill CD, condition cleanse, etc.I dont want play a new game, and I think Im not alone.Your new ideas try in GW3, or give me back my money.

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@Fulmine.7186 said:result is have to change max hp, and hp bonuses, toughness, heal power, skill CD, condition cleanse, etc.

And why exactly do you think that?

The end goal of this patch is to reduce power creep.If they were to decrease HP or nerf cleanse afterwards, they'd introduce more power creep, which contradicts the goal of this balance.Non-bunker builds are dying too fast and that's a fact. This balance is trying to fix that.

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I play several classes so, I'm not too partial to one class or another and, I REALLY did hate getting CC'd to death every match. That said, making coefficients on CC skills so COMICALLY low so that they are essentially neutered, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Right now with a Full Glass War, I'm getting double digit CRITS with my Rampage skills. What's the point of using a skill that stuns and does nothing else? In a 1v1, you're just prolonging the fight, you're not making any progress. If your team is all focusing the same guy, great but if not, it's pointless. I hope you know what you're doing. Cause, it seems like we're all in for condi DP Thiefs for ever and ever.

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@Acelidon.1358 said:The increased CD to rangers Swoop (both gs3 and soulbeast merge)..why? This is mainly a mobility/kiting skill which has nothing to do with the powercreep you're trying to address here. This reduces counterplay which contradicts what the post says about trying to improve counterplay. Also I don't see any other classes mobility skills getting increased CDs like warriors Rush or guards teleports or thieves shortbow 5/teleports.. this change seems pretty counterintuitive

Because both of those skills, on a 1500 range class (when using Longbow obviously), allowed Soulbeast to disengage very far away and that had little counterplay when they could just either reset the fight or just nope away entirely. They were especially problematic when they were used together which allowed for 2200 units of movement.

Rush is on a 20 second CD, 16 seconds when traited, and even if it is paired with Bull's Charge that is still less distance traveled than double Swoop and on a longer cooldown. As opposed to Swoop (Greatsword) being a 12 second CD, 9 1/2 seconds when traited, and Swoop (Beast Mode) being a 12 second CD. If anything it brings them in line.

As for shortbow, that is tied behind a resource mechanic. Without Trickery a Thief has 12 Initiative, which means Shortbow 5 can be used twice before they are out of initiative, or with Trickery it can be used about 2 and a half times. It leaves about 3 initiative left after its used twice in that scenario.

Guards teleports are all also either on longer cooldowns (Judge's Intervention and Merciful Intervention) or much shorter distances (Sword 2) and all require targets as opposed to the Swoop skills.

Again...if anything it brings them more in line. They were excessive.

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@"Hot Boy.7138" said:I'm okay with all the mesmer nerfs, however the change to mirage cloak is gonna take all the fun out of the class for me. I don't enjoy base mes or chronomancer anymore. Cloak was really cool and so much fun. Too strong I guess. But I wish they thought of another solution to keep it interesting and just as fun/cool.

People are massively over-estimating the impact of this change.

Baseline endurance recovers 5 per second. That means with no sigils, runes, vigor, food, traits, etc etc you recover 1 dodge every 10 seconds.

Over a 100 second engagement:

Pre-patch: Mirage can dodge 12 times (2 initial + 10 recovered)Post-patch: Mirage can dodge 11 times (1 initial + 10 recovered)

Again, that's not considering any other sources than base endurance recovery. When you factor in other sources of endurance recovery and mirage-mirror generation, the difference becomes even smaller.

It's not a nerf to endurance recovery. It just means you have 1 less "pre-loaded" up-front. It is not a "50% nerf".

Sure, it's a nerf, but it's not as big a nerf as you might think at first glance, and everything is getting nerfed anyway.

@"phokus.8934" said:Mirage needs to have their endurance regen added back and the ambushes need to be greatly buffed if they only get one dodge.

This still feels like a cheap way of balancing Mirage when they should've just looked at the ambushes with IH.

Endurance regen wasn't taken away at all?? You do understand the difference between "endurance" and "endurance regen" right? They even removed the Exhaustion from Elusive Mind!

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